US Military History Special Forces

CMH Pub 91-6. United States Army in Vietnam. Covers the United States buildup in Vietnam from every angle: strategy, operations, tactics, logistics, inter-service relations, personnel policy, diplomacy, civil relations, and the handling of the news media to show how the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) developed and became the linchpin holding the entire American effort in Vietnam together.

During the Vietnam War, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MACVSOG) was a highly-classified, U.S. joint-service organization that consisted of personnel from Army Special Forces, the Air Force, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance units, and the CIA. This secret organization was committed to action in Southeast Asia even before the major build-up of U.S. forces in 1965 and also fielded a division-sized element of South Vietnamese military personnel, indigenous Montagnards, ethnic Chinese Nungs, and Taiwanese pilots in its varied reconnaissance, naval, air, and agent operations. MACVSOG was without doubt the most unique U.S. unit to participate in the Vietnam War, since its operational mandate authorized its missions to take place “over the fence” in North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, where most other American units were forbidden to go. During its nine-year existence it managed to participate in most of the significant operations and incidents of the conflict. MACVSOG was there during the Gulf of Tonkin incidents, during air operations over North Vietnam, the Tet Offensive, the secret bombing of and ground incursion into Cambodia, Operation Lam Son 719, the Green Beret murder case, the Easter Invasion, the Phoenix Program, and the Son Tay POW Raid. The story of this extraordinary unit has never before been told in full and comes as a timely blueprint for combined-arms, multi-national unconventional warfare in the post-9/11 age.Unlike previous works on the subject, Black Ops, Vietnam is a complete chronological history of the unit drawn from declassified documents, memoirs, and previous works on the subject, which tended to focus only on particular aspects of the unit’s operations.

A new edition of this classic illustrated history of the operations and operatives of MACV-SOG in the Vietnam War. In 1972 the U.S. military destroyed all known photos of the top-secret Studies and Observations Group, with the intention that details could never be made public. But unknown to those in charge, SOG veterans had brought back with them hundreds of photographs of SOG in action and would keep them secret for more than three decades. In this new edition of SOG: A Photo History, more than 700 irreplaceable photos bring to life the stories of SOG legends Larry Thorne, Bob Howard, Dick Meadows, George Sisler, "Q" and others, and document what really happened deep inside enemy territory: Operation Tailwind, the Son Tay raid, SOG's defense of Khe Sanh, Hatchet Force operations, Bright Light rescues, HALO insertions, string extractions, SOG's darkest programs and much more.

QUOTE: "As the commander of SOG, I can say that "Across The Fence" accurately reflects why the secret war was hazardous for our troops and so deadly for the enemy. Major General John K. Singlaub (U.S. Army Ret.) ----------------------------------------- Far beyond the battlefields of Vietnam, across the fence in Laos and Cambodia, America fought a deadly secret war. Known only as SOG, the Special Forces men of the Studies and Operations Group didn't play by the rules. They used every trick in the book to defeat the communist forces and if those didn't work they made up new ones. SOG operators tapped into phone wires, ambushed enemy units and gathered some of the most important intelligence of the war. All of this came at a staggering price in terms of casualties. At one point the casualty rate exceeded one hundred percent. So, what kept these extraordinary men running missions that were sure to get them wounded or killed? Why did they return to Vietnam for a second tour of duty with SOG? The answers to those questions are in this book.