On his first combat assignment, Cornett accompanied the Vietnamese Rangers on a search-and-destroy mission near Khe Sang. There he gained entree into a culture that he would ultimately respect greatly and admire deeply. Cornett's most challenging military duty began when he joined the Phoenix Program. As part of AK squad, he dressed in enemy uniform and roamed the deadly Central Highlands, capturing high-ranking VC officers in hot firefights and ambushes. It was there, deep in enemy territ...

The true story of one of the most dramatic and sustained special operations in military historyWhen American and British forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, select teams of special forces and intelligence operatives got to work looking for the WMD their governments had promised were there. They quickly realized no such weapons existed. Instead they faced an insurgency—a soaring spiral of extremism and violence that was almost impossible to understand, let alone reve...

"A fantastic read . . . Whether your interest is armour or history I would highly recommend this book" ( Military Modelling).The tank destroyer was a bold—though some would say flawed—answer to the challenge posed by the seemingly unstoppable German Blitzkrieg. The TD was conceived to be light and fast enough to outmaneuver panzer forces and go where tanks could not. At the same time, the TD would wield the firepower needed to kill any German tank on the b...

"ONE OF THE BEST VIETNAM WAR STORIES I'VE EVER READ, one damn good, compelling read. It's almost something out of a Clancy novel, yet it's true. The best thing I can say about it is I didn't want it to end."--Col. David Hackworth, New York Times bestselling author of About FaceBy the spring of 1970, American troops were ordered to pull out of Vietnam. The Marines of 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel "Wild Bill" Drumright, were assigned to cover th...

A founding member of the Navy SEALs recounts the formation of that elite fighting force in this "honest, no-holds-barred" memoir of the Vietnam War (Richard Marcinko, author of Rogue Warrior).Chief Petty Officer James "Patches" Watson was there at the start. As a high-performing frogman with the famed Underwater Demolition Team 21, he was chosen to become a founding member—or a "plank owner"—of the U.S. Navy SEALs.Through three tours in the jungle he...

FOUR CONGRESSIONAL MEDALS OF HONOR,THIRTEEN NAVAL CROSSES,SEVENTY-TWO SILVER STARS . . .In four and a half years in Vietnam, the Marines of the Third Reconnaissance Battalion repeatedly penetrated North Vietnamese and Vietcong sanctuaries by foot and by helicopter to find enemy forces, learn the enemy's intentions, and, when possible, bring deadly fire down on his head. Heavily armed, well-camouflaged teams of six and eight men daily exposed themselves to overwhelming ...

In just ten months in Vietnam, he was overrun, shot up, but not underworked—he survived fifty-four missions as point man. He has one hell of a story to tell.You didn't get into the Rangers without volunteering, and you didn't stay on point unless you liked it. But after watching most of his buddies die in a firefight when his LRRP team was overrun by the NVA, Kregg Jorgenson volunteered to serve on a Blue Team in the Air Cavalry, racing to the aid of soldi...

The men who served with in the 1st Infantry Division with F company, 52nd Infantry, (LRP) later redesignated as Company I, 75th Infantry (Ranger) --engaged in some of the fiercest, bloodiest fighting during the Vietnam War, suffering a greater relative aggregate of casualties that any other LRRP/LRP/ Ranger company. Their base was Lai Khe, within hailing distance of the Vietcong central headquarters, a mile inside Cambodia, with its vast stockpiles of weapons and thousands of transient VC ...

SNAKES, VIPERS, CROCS, SHARKS, AND THE VCWith 257 combat missions in Vietnam under his belt, Gary Smith is a living witness to the realities of Naval Special Warfare. He worked with some of the toughest and most highly motivated men in the world, executing missions in the murderous terrain of Rung Sat Special Zone and Dung Island. The key to their success: go where no ordinary soldier would go and no VC would expect them.Though death reigned as king in the jungles of Vietnam,...

As a young enlisted man, Randy Kington served on the front line with some of the first Marine combat units in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966. Kington describes his transformation from boy to man and the training that allowed him to survive nine months of some of the fiercest fighting of the Vietnam War. The good times of comradeship and of helping the underprivileged are contrasted with the life and death experiences that involved three major battles, countless ambushes, and search and destroy m...

AMBUSH VALLEYI Corps, Vietnam, 1967the Story of a Marine Infantry Battalion's Battle for SurvivalEric HammelIn the summer of 1967, the Marines in I Corps, South Vietnams northernmost military region, were doing eveything they could to lighten the pressure on the besieged Con Thien Combat Base.Still fresh after months of relatively light action around Khe Sanh, the 3d Battalion, 26th Marines, was sent to the Con Thien region to secure the combat basess endangered main supply route. On Septembe...

"Morning was always a welcome sight to us. It meant two things. The first was that we were still alive. . . ."In 1967, death was the constant companion of the Marines of Hotel Company, 2/5, as they patrolled the paddy dikes, mud, and mountains of the Arizona Territory southwest of Da Nang. But John Culbertson and most of the rest of Hotel Company were the same lean, fighting Marines who had survived the carnage of Operation Tuscaloosa. Hotel's grunts walked over the enemy, not arou...