Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.