Customer Reviews

LRRP Team Leader

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This book was a gift from a British researcher of (LRRP) Ranger operations of the Vietnam War. Thank you John, I will treasure it forever. I questioned how he knew so much about the details of a Long Range Reconnaissance Mission. That is until he sent my copy of the book "LRRP Team Leader." I was assigned to Company H, 75th Rangers in Vietnam 1970-1971. There are no words to describe just how violent an ambush or firefight can be. Particularly in a jungle environment where enemy contact is almost certain to be an up-close, in-your-face encounter. You would have to be there to experience the sound of bullets streaking past you; the exploding claymore mines and the concussion of artillery or rockets fired from a Cobra Gunship within mere yards of your position. Sgt. John Burford has performed an excellent job in authoring this book. He has succeeded in putting the reader right in the midst of the action. One can almost feel the fears, emotions and tragedies through the authors' own eyes and real life experience as a LRRP Ranger. Thanks Sgt. Burford for telling it the way it really was.

After reading all three books in the series, "Six Silent Men", I read "LRRP TEAM LEADER", by John Burford. I was unable to put down Rey Martinez, Kenn Miller and Gary Linderer's books without finishing them cover to cover, and John's book was no different.

John has the ability to stick the readers inside his ruck, and make them feel like they are looking over his shoulder.

Having spent a short time based at Camp Eagle with E Company 1st/501st (my war was over after being wounded while working an AO near abandoned Fire Base Brick, Feb 71), I am thankful for John's ability to paint a very detailed picture of everything he came in contact with.

Our government should do more than just award medals to John, Kenn, Rey, and Gary for their bravery under fire. They should also award and thank them for providing future generations of soldiers with the wisdom and knowledge that may help keep them and their fellow soldiers alive and help them defeat their enemies. Often there is made reference to "Rogers' Rangers Standing Orders", which are a great foundation for a soldier's education. However, if you want to go on to earn a Masters Degree, then you need to read these authors.

If either of my sons is ever to fight a war, I would not let them leave before memorizing every word written by John and the rest of the LRRP's.

Thanks, John, not only for serving in Vietnam, but for serving again by volunteering the hundreds of hours from your life, to record your experiences for the rest of us.

Jim Lynch SP4 US Army ret.

Unlike the other LRRP books out there this one is organized topically. It starts off kind of slow but if you can get into it, it really gets good. Unlike the Recon Marines who purposely engaged in firefights with the NVA and VC the airborne LRRPs were mostly used for scouting and tended to withdraw (or try to) when in close proximity to the enemy. The accounts of the ambushes in the second half of the book are very tense. Sgt. Burford's return to CONUS at the end of his tour to an unappreciative nation and a bunch of peaceniks is pretty sad.

I picked it up on a lark but wound up immensely enjoying it. It is definitely a very personal account of Burford's time and tour of duty in Vietnam with 101st LRRPs. It is written in a very interpersonal way that I find makes it different than many other books I have read. If you enjoy light reading about an important subject, I HIGHLY recommend this book to you.

John Burford wrote this book in a unique and interesting way by telling the story to his family while sitting around the kitchen table. My hat's off to him for a well-told story. It's a must-read for anyone who wants to know the full truth about that fateful patrol of 20 Nov 68. John does not embellish, modify, or exaggerate the facts. From his own research and investigation immediately after the patrol members returned to base, and his own combat experience in that unit, and his own knowledge regarding artillery and claymores, he came to his own conclusions about what actually happened on that patrol. He has put forth an account that differs from the other books written about that mission. It took courage for him to do that. Death and injury in a combat environment are horrific experiences, no matter what the circumstances. History appreciates the truth, painful though it may be.

This was one of my first LRP books, and wow what a book, its well written and a bit different constructed that other LRP books, but that ok......it tells you how it was like to be a LRP team leader, down to the nitty gritty, you almost fell that you are sitting in the couch with Honest John and having a cold beer with him while he is telling his story
The thing that also blows me away today as I read this book for the 7 or 8'th time....it backs up everything that both Gary Linderer, Larry chambers, WT Grant, Bill Meacham and Kenn Millers wrote in their books.....
Ok, Its clear that John Burford is mistaken in his beliefs that SGT Contreros called arty on his team on Nov 20......the us army don't have 3/4 inch bolts and rusty metal parts in their shells ;-), I know there are morons who will claim that these 3/4 inch bolts was "blow into the wounds by the artellery shells or some balony like that.
But in all the other things he says, John Burford is right on the money
We must also take into account that John Burford was in the field at the time of the debrief where Staff Sergeant Bruce Proctor threw the bolts on the table, but at the time it was a good guess
Go buy this book, its a great read

I have read John's book twice over and to tell you the truth, I lost a lots of sleep while reading the book I would not be able to put it down.I have read books by Ken Miller, Gary Linderer, Rey Martinez, Michael L Manning& Kreg Jorgenson. I rate this book with the others. John thank you for writting this book. Having been with Echo company LRRP/RANGER I can tell you knew what you were writting about. Roadrunner 6 out

I found this passage from John Burford book LRRP Team Leader to very insightful especially after reading about the 14 suicides at 101st Divisions Fort Campbell, within the two weeks.

Most of the men on the teams were really kids, eighteen to twenty-one years old. At twenty-five, I was an old man, but I had an attitude that worked well with the men, and we got along fine. We used a lot of machismo to ward off fear and keep some grasp on basic sanity. We had nicknames, I was Honest John, Larry Chambers was Killer Man, Don Harris was G. T., John Looney was Joe Don, and Meszams was Mezoo. Our team was called the "Death Makers," a name that came from the Airborne tattoo on my leg.
I had business cards printed for the whole company, with space to put your name on the front and anything you wanted on the back. We even had the Doctor Death Maker kit, with special fuses and booby-trap devices for field use. In order to pull these long range patrol missions, the army was sending a few men out into the jungle for six days, with no friendly troops anywhere near, so we needed all the hype we could scrape up to keep going back out.

We didn't take officers on missions. A LRRP team (pronounced `Lurp') was made up of a sergeant E-5 with five other men, grade E-4 below. Most of the men had less than a year and a half in the Army. I was lucky, I'd been in the army seven years; gone to all types of schools and had years of small-unit leadership, map reading, demolitions, patrolling, and related subjects. The time and training paid off in the field, and my teams pulled some great missions. Our LRRP Company had one of the highest kill rates and the lowest casualty rate in the 101st Airborne Division.

Awesome Power Trip
There was one thing about being a Lurp that still haunts me to this day--it was an awesome power trip for a young man. We had all this power in our hands. Once the team was on the ground, the team leader was it; he was in charge, he called the shots, and he had, at his call, all the support and firepower the army could muster. The responsibility of being a team leader was a heavy load, and it rested on some young shoulders. We weren't going out on a holiday trip. The missions were real; there were people out there who wanted to kill you. One mistake, one moment of panic, and six people would cease to exist. Everybody depended on their teammates, and there wasn't any room for a jerk.

In an infantry company, it took an officer to call an air strike, and an officer or ranking NCO to direct artillery fire. Lurp's, rank E-5 and E-4, had that responsibility on a team mission. If a team was in contact, the team leader made the decision to stay on the ground and continue the mission or to have the team extracted. The CO knew the team leader was the man on the spot, and backed him. All of this power was at our fingertips in the form of the radio, and if we needed help, we just keyed the handset. We had a special deal with the army. We knew we couldn't get reinforcements if we got into contact with an enemy force, but they would bust their butts to get artillery, gunships, or air strikes to us. After that, it was up to us to save ourselves.

A Dark Side
There was a dark side to being a lurp. It just wasn't natural for men to go out on missions of the kind we did, and we had to use a lot of psychological mumbo jumbo to keep going back. Some of the things we lost were the social and moral taboos against killing. They were stripped away from us by the need to survive. Killing became all right; it was good, and for doing it well, we were looked up to by our peers and praised by our superiors, If we got into trouble 'contact"), the solution was to inflict the maximum amount of destruction on our antagonizers and kill them. Swift violence and killing became the solutions of choice. Once the moral and social taboos were stripped away, they couldn't be glued back on. I think of it like a fine china plate; if you break it, you can glue it back together, but it's never again the same. To this day, if I get pushed back into a corner, a calm feeling comes over me as I accept the fact that I am going to do whatever is needed to whoever is bothering me. I now go out of my way to steer clear of trouble.

This is a great book about what LRRP's did in Vietnam, plus it goes into details that other books don't touch like the effect of salt on the soldiers, how it felt killing the enemy and more, I recommend this book to all readers that are interested about LRRP's and Vietnam, it complements the other 101st Screaming Eagles books about LRRP's very well.

Reading and actually feeling what was written in LRRP Team Leader has left me with the feeling that I too, belong amidst the comradery and teamwork that unified Lurp teams. John Burford has brought his experiences to life with vivid details of combat action and what it's like to operate in the field. Even though I am only 19, and did not experience the Vietnam War or the anti-war sentiment on the home front, I still feel that I can relate to the comfort of being part of a combat team in contrast to the disapointing and shameful atmosphere of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War.