Green Berets in the Vanguard: Inside Special Forces, 1953-1963 [Hardcover]

Chalmers Archer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2001 | Series: Naval Institute Special Warfare Series

An uplifting and sometimes harrowing memoir of the early years of the U.S. Army's special forces by an African American in the first unit in Vietnam.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Green Berets the Army's Special Forces conducted civilian-clothes, clandestine operations in 1956 in Thailand, in 1957 in Taiwan and South Vietnam and in 1959 and 1961 in Laos. Archer (Growing Up Black in Mississippi) gives a first-person account of those early and pivotal missions in this instructive memoir. Archer earned the nickname "Sergeant Special Forces" because he was there at the birth of the Green Berets, and his outfit, the 14th Special Forces Operational Detachment, was the first American combat unit deployed to Vietnam, taking part in a series of hazardous missions he describes in evocative detail. Their mission was to train the South Vietnamese in special forces warfare, as well as to seek out and engage the Viet Cong guerrillas. Archer clearly shows that he and his fellow Green Berets were highly motivated and extremely proficient in finding methods that worked. They concentrated on working with and respecting the people they trained and eschewed large-scale, conventional warfare they practiced winning "hearts and minds." Archer writes with wit and delicacy of his experiences in the jungle (his "snake eater" company often surviving on a plethora of seeming non-foods), and with unsparing clarity of the racism he sometimes encountered. He insists that if the tactics his team developed had been adopted by Washington something they repeatedly advocated the course of the war would have been different. (Mar. 26) Forecast: This is a book mainly for the Vietnam War academic industry in its military and civilian incarnations not a negligible market. And Archer's experiences as a black Green Beret, coming during a key period of post-WWII integration of the armed forces, will be of interest to historians of the period in general.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Chalmers Archer is an accomplished writer and educator who recently retired as a professor and administrator at Northern Virginia Community College. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Nonfiction.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 139 pages
• Publisher: Naval Inst Pr; 1St Edition edition (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557500231
• ISBN-13: 978-1557500236
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,610,070 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars how the Green Berets got to Vietnam, May 9, 2001

By 

Daniel Ford (at danford dot net) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Green Berets in the Vanguard: Inside Special Forces, 1953-1963 (Hardcover)

Chalmers Archer must have been a remarkable soldier, for he was a black Green Beret at a time when the U.S. Army Special Forces was almost entirely a lily-white outfit. His book belongs on the shelf of every student of the Green Berets.

It's not a knock-you-dead combat yarn like Jim Morris's "War Story"--Archer didn't really serve what you could call a combat tour in Vietnam. He was there much earlier, knocking about Southeast Asia in the years before there was a Vietnam War (or American War, as the Vietnamese prefer to call it). He was in Laos, Thailand, the Philippines, and of course Vietnam when the Green Berets were first staking out their claim to fame, and when men like Archer created the jungle-training practices that would make Special Forces the most effective American combat arm in South Vietnam.

To me, the most interesting anecdote is the account of the American training mission that was attacked by the Viet Cong as it graduated its first class of Vietnamese Special Forces. Officially, Captain Harry Cramer died of an accidental explosion, and he wasn't even listed on The Wall (the Vietnam war memorial in Washington, D.C.) until 1983. In fact, as Archer recalls, Crame died in a mortar attack, and he was the first American to be killed in that long war--21 October 1957.

This is a slight book--just 138 pages. How it can be priced at more than forty bucks is beyond me, so I'm glad to see that there are cut-rate copies available from the vendors of new-used books on this site.

5.0 out of 5 stars Early Days of SF in Vietnam, January 4, 2011

By 

Rob Krott "Rob Krott" (Iraq) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Green Berets in the Vanguard: Inside Special Forces, 1953-1963 (Hardcover)

The author of the award winning Growing Up Black in Mississippi has written Green Berets in the Vanguard: Inside Special Forces, 1953-1963. Archer was one of the first operational SF NCOs in U.S. Army Special Forces and details the early missions of U.S. Army Special Forces in South East Asia. His narrative includes details on the planning and operations of the earliest missions into Laos, Thailand, and South Vietnam, which until recently were shrouded in secrecy. His perspective is unique, not only one of the first to wear a green beret but also as one of the first African-Americans to serve in the elite unit. Chalmers Archer witnessed the first actual American combat death in Vietnam and as a medic and trainer with the Vietnamese Special Forces at Nha Trang, treated the first wounded in the war. This is a fascinating book about the early days of SF and chronicles the complete history of the 14th Special Forces Operational Detachment that set the standard for foreign training missions. Green Berets in the Vanguard also details the changes in Special Forces doctrine from unconventional warfare to counterinsurgency.

Rob Krott is the author of Save the Last Bullet for Yourself, a war memoir of Somalia and the Balkans.

1.0 out of 5 stars Rather boring!, June 4, 2006

By 

Karsten (Ft. Worth, Texas, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Green Berets in the Vanguard: Inside Special Forces, 1953-1963 (Hardcover)

I found a used copy of the book in a bookstore and I am happy that I didn't pay the full price for it. From reading the title I expected something more exciting.

The book starts interestingly but becomes boring after the first half due to constant repetition of details and self-glorification by the author. He also put a lot of advertising for his first work into the book's contents.

It might be interesting for other readers but for me it was rather disappointing.