Review: SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos in Vietnam

A weekend reading review!  Because Pastors also need a break from heavily theological reading! Actually this weekend I’m preaching at a retreat!

 

John L. Plaster. SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos in Vietnam.  New York, NY: Simon Schuster, January 1st 2019. 368 pp.

5 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

Have you ever heard of a Special Operations group called MACV SOG?  If not, it might be because this is one of the most secretive group during the Vietname War since it operatives had to agree not to talk about their experience for twenty years.  Yet much of today’s Special operations group and capabilities in the modern US military owe its tactics and capabilities to this covert group.  If you are interested in US special operations forces, military history and also the military side to the Vietnam War this book is a must-read.

 

The author John Plaster himself is a three tour veteran of MACV SOG which stands for Miliary Assistance Command Vietnam, Studies and Observation Group.  Often it was called SOG.  This book isn’t really a war memoir or a biography but a fascinating history book of the US’ special operations history in Vietnam and into Vietnam’s neighboring countries (although the author at times gives his personal account when it is appropriate).  I was blown away at the amount of details the book provide especially with the early days in the 1950s and early 1960s of US military effort and assistance to anti-Communists.  In addition the book tells us of the men who were instrumental in leading that effort whether in the early days or towards the end of the Vietnam War.  And these leading men weren’t just high ranking officials but the author gives important operators their credit too.  Much of SOG’s secret war didn’t take place in Vietnam but in neighboring Laos and Cambodia where they fought the North Vietnamese who supposedly weren’t suppose to there either but they were secretly sneaking into South Vietnam using the Ho Chi Minh trail.

I read this book and couldn’t put it down.  There’s books on the conventional military which already fascinates me enough.  Then there’s books on special operations unit and elite outfit and those are especially of interests to me.  But this unit SOG and their stories is at a totally different level in terms of what these guys accomplished and the terrible situation they faced where often in small groups of two or three Americans and a few ethnic minority tribal soldiers they fought against hundreds of regular North Vietnamese forces.  Outnumbered and outgun these men were daring and ferocious.   It might sound cheesy but these guys were like real life Rambo and Jason Borne all roll into one.  But this book isn’t just telling exaggerated stories in case some might be doubtful; some of these stories and heroism of men in the unit have received the Medal of Honor and there’s official citation of what happened.

Even for those who are familiar with other military reading when it comes to SOG there’s a totally different lingo and even method of operations.  The author does a good job describing that to the readers for their understanding.  The seventeen chapters in the book is a rich survey of various types of operations SOG conduced but also various point in their history and also accomplishments.  For instance there’s a chapter titled “Bloody ’68” which tells us the difficulties the group faced that year.  The group’s casualties exceeded 100 percent the highest rate since the Civil War.  Every single operator was wounded at least once and half of the men died.  Overall over three hundred SOG operators were lost and 57 of them as MIAs.  Yet the causality ratio to enemies killed were astounding and unprecedented.

This is the first book I read about MACV SOG but it definitely won’t be my last.