Robin Moore (1) (1925–2008)

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The Wars of the Green Berets: Amazing Stories from Vietnam to Present Day by Michael Lennon and Robin Moore brings forth fictionalized accounts of Green Beret operations from the 1950s to the first Gulf War. Mr. Moore is a published writer, and also co-wrote the lyrics for the famous Ballad of the Green Berets (1966).

I did not know that this book was fiction, and frankly, I would have had a difficult time figuring it out if it wasn’t disclosed to me by the book’s description. The stories are told through the fictional eyes of a bunch of characters engaged in conflicts in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Afghanistan, as well as Iraq.

There are a lot of historical contexts, which I found to be very interesting, and some of it certainly enlightening. I liked reading about the tactics, as well as what it takes to become a Green Beret.

However, I felt that the conversations whose only purpose was to educate the reader were wooden and annoying. They did nothing to move the story forward and were ridiculous given the context.

I appreciate what the authors tried, and somewhat succeeded to do in this book. They brought together warriors of past decades and intertwined their fates. This was cleverly done, and as an amateur student of history, I was impressed to read of how past policies still have influences, as well as relevance, to current affairs. After all, history is fluid, actions have consequences, and these men felt it.

Many of the operations talked about were familiar to me from previous readings. But I could not shake off the feeling that I have read better, less clumsy, narratives of these events. I also disliked much of the preaching in the book, and the epilogue was just rambling which I thought could have been discarded. This is just me, however, I don’t like to be preached to no matter where I’m at.

Regardless of these minor issues, I learned several things from The Wars of the Green Berets: Amazing Stories from Vietnam to Present Day by Michael Lennon and Robin Moore, and had fun while I was at it. The fact that these are fictional narratives did nothing to distract from actual events.… (mehr)

These are some amazing stories about Vietnam-era US Army Special Forces ("Green Berets") by an embedded reporter. It's hard to tell how much of this is accurate -- it was fictionalized for operational security reasons (among other reasons), but I believe it is widely perceived to be plausible/representative of that early stage of the conflict. I'm much more familiar personally with modern SF (2005-2010 or so), and this is pretty much another world from what "white" SF did in Iraq/Afghanistan, but that's because in those conflicts they were not really being used for their doctrinal mission, were kept on a short leash, and all the secret squirrel stuff was by definition done by JSOC.

The crazy thing (which could never happen today) is that the author went through Airborne/Jump School and SF training, and got very close to the action on various missions (to the level of carrying extra ammunition for others, but not generally a weapon.) At the time, SF wasn't directly fighting, just advising, so it is a little more understandable, but wow, times have changed.

Essentially, life at small bases, working with indigenous forces, struggles with the Republic of Vietnam government, interactions with CIA ("Combined Studies Group"), and some dirty tricks with agents (recruiting people who had personally been harmed by the communists, and operations across borders). Most of the stories are riveting while also being sad, and overall the whole thing is much sadder once you realize this was the early escalation phase of an ultimately doomed conflict.

A few of the stories seemed completely plausible -- details about how Vietnamese Government forces failed in the field, and politics between SF ODA and the conventional army. There was some weird fantasy stuff about running massive guerrilla operations with undercover networks and armies raised seems unlikely to have happened at that stage in the war.… (mehr)