Customer Reviews

The Green Berets

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great book. Very accurate, painfully so in many instances, especially considering the absurd restrictions placed on units operating in the field. Ironically, Moore's account of Special Forces operations in Vietnam is much more accurate than anything you'll ever get from the US government...even 40 years later.

Post Script: In the first Chapter, Moore writes about Capt. Steve Kornie, a larger than life Special Forces officer. Darn near everything Moore wrote was accurate! The officer's real name is Larry Allan Thorne (the "Americanized" version of his Finnish name - Lauri Allan Torni). He was a truly remarkable man by any measure.

Major Thorne was lost on a cross-border mission into Laos on 18 October 1965; but, at that time, and "for the record" he was classified as Missing In Action resulting from a helicopter crash 25 miles south of Da Nang (not even close).

A joint US-Vietnamese team found the wreckage in 1997, excavated the site in 1999, and collected the remains of Maj. Thorne and 3 Vietnamese (two pilots and a door gunner). A decision was made to do a joint internment at Arlington, since what little remained of the bodies was intermingled. Although positive identification, however, was made through Thorne's dental records and parts of the Swedish-K submachine gun that was his personal weapon.

The memorial stone is atypically large for Arlington; and the local Vietnamese community ensures that fresh flowers are maintained at the grave. I have provided additional information should you be in the neighborhood and would like to visit the site. Unless you have very specific information on dates of internment and the correct spelling of the name, you will not be successful in locating the site through the cemetery administration.

[...]

I read this book while I was at US Army Basic Training, Ft Ord, June 1965. One of my buddies who had enlisted for Special Forces had the book. Little did I know I would be at some of the places in the book, doing the same things. I arrived "In Country" during May 1968 as a member of the 5th Special Forces Group. I learned first hand that Robin knew what he was talking about, and that he had a wonderful way of telling it. Enjoy the book. It is as real as it can get.

I was blown away that some people did not like this book! I absolutely loved it! Before you begin reading it you must put it in the context of the time it was written. This is a book written before any of our main troops were sent to 'nam and therefore the things we know now are simply hindsite and can not be applied to this book. This book, while called fiction, is the closest you will ever get to truly understanding our most well known and almost mystical special forces group. It details, with fake names due to govt regulations at the time, many Beret missions that were, until lately, highly classified. This book will take you on many missions that seem like they are straight off of a hollywood script...in fact these stories are what created most of those scripts. You will join the berets in battle, deep behind enemy lines and see how they fought before the days when rescue was an artillery shot away. You will love each chapter of this book and it will be a very quick read. Please do yourself the favor, if you have any interest in this subject, of picking up this important book and learning a bit about America's Green Berets!

The Green Berets by Robin Moore was first published in 1965. It is classified as fiction. From personal experience, and the experiences of very close friends, I can truthfully say that this work is much closer to fact than many of the so called popular history works that have been published since the war. In fact, it is much closer to the truth than in many government documents which we now have available for study. A war story; yes certainly, by all means, but an extremely accurate one.

This is the story of the U.S. Army Special Forces during the time they served in South Vietnam (among other points in the world). Robin Moore is a natural story teller but has based his story on more fact than fiction. Like any "war story," small parts may have been altered here and there simply to make the story more readable but still and all the author sticks to what actually happened. Moore is a master at not only conveying physical happenings, but also the emotions, attitudes and thought process of the various characters we meet in this tale. Some of the events have of course been dramatized but again, the background material to which the author hangs his story is all fact.

Now please do not judge this work by the horrible movie staring John Wayne which used this book as a God-awful propaganda film. I have nothing against Wayne, love some of his western movies and action movies, but this was one of the poorest films he ever acted in and sort of made a travesty of this author's work, and indeed, the Special Forces guys. The book is nothing like the movie and the only resemblance between the two is the title.

It has become the in thing, now as during the later parts of the war, for the professional whiners, and the professional sensitive, to look down upon the men who made up the Special Forces during this gut wrenching time in our nation's history. The men who made up the Special Force Units were themselves very professional. They were given a job and they did it with the best of their ability, which I might add, was considerable, i.e. their ability. This job was a difficult, dirty and in many ways a thankless job, but they did it anyway. I hold absolutely no ranker against those who opposed the war. I was not overly thrilled with the whole mess myself, but it does gripe me that so many took their anger out on the soldier's who did what they felt was their duty and did it well.

Highly recommend this work. It was good when it was first published and has held up well over the years.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

In 1965, when I first read this book, I believed most of it because I didn't know any difference. During Infantry OCS (Officer Candidate School), I read it again as a book-report (1966) and did not believe any of it...any at all. Then on the flight back, after spending 13 months in Southeast Asia as a Special Forces officer, I read it again. The book is true...completely true. As a-matter-of-fact, it actually left out some of the things we experieced and the "politics" we had to deal with, but what he told in the book was true. Robin Moore holds our respect for what he had to accomplish (at his age) in order to write this factual book. We loved the book and laughed at the movie.

Understand that Special Forces, at that time, were very different from Special Forces today. Remember, we were the most highly decorated unit in history for a reason. The ones today are great, but they built on our experieces. We were not the "quite professionals"...but we were the "movers and doers" of our time. I add this only because some authors today should recognize this hard-earned fact.

H. G. Kidd
Ex-Special Forces.

I liked this book so much I bought an old paperback copy and added it to my personal collection. I believe that there's a picture of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, or someone that looks a lot like him, on the cover. The movie made in 1968 does NOT do Robin Moore's work justice. I found the short stories in this book to be very well written.

I first read this book when I was 14 years old,and I was struck by the humor, and the pathos of the men in the stories. If you are interested in war stories about the vietnam war before the tet offensive the you will love this book. I highly recomend this book to anybody who is a war story buff.``````````

The new edition of Robin Moore's Vietnam War era classic "The Green Berets" is as timely and relevant today as it was when it was published over forty years ago.

What is amazing is that the problems faced by the Green Berets in Vietnam described by Moore are the very same problems faced by our soldiers today in the War on Terror. These include the problems of corrupt local soldiers, relegious differences and the ago old cultural clash between the coventional military mindset and the unconventional warrior.

The new edition also contains materials which were not in the original edition. It was also enjoyable to read the various stories which conributed elements to the John Wayne movie which was based on the book. The book is well worth your time.

Robin Moore's "The Green Berets" is an outstanding account of a part of the Vietnam War that didn't find its way into the daily headlines and television reports. Far from the images in the Rambo movies, Special Forces teams worked side-by-side with Vietnamese indigenous peoples like the Montagnards in an attempt to stem the flow of communist forces from North Vietnam and China. You will read an amazing collection of war stories that may seem unbelievable unless you have been in Special Forces. John Wayne's The Green Berets was based on this book. Moore's book has motivated many, including myself, to purse a career in Special Operations. Get it before it goes out of print again! de opresso liber...

The entire book was based on true story, written as fiction to get around the DOD security regulations. I read it when I was 12- joined SF and sent the next 25 years "freeing the oppressed."

Robin went to Afghanistan where he was the only one let inside the Special Forces bases and operations- his new book, THE HUNT FOR BIN LADEN will be available...

enjoy
de oppresso liber