Customer Reviews

Once a Warrior King

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Among soldiers of the close-knit special operations community at Fort Bragg, NC, this book is considered a classic. It presents the salient events of a district advisor's year-long Vietnam tour of duty. A college ROTC student, Donovan became an infantry officer and, after additional training in civil affairs, deployed to Vietnam in the mid-1960's. The book was written after his return to the U.S. as a form of therapy. The true value of this book is not the events it recounts, but the insight it provides into the interplay of moral values with stress, anger, temptation, sleep-deprivation, fear, frustration, and other emotions as experienced by various members of a 5-man military advisory team in a remote province of Vietnam. Each incident reflects intense introspection and reflection; the result of the author's struggle to overcome the psychological demons that accompanied him home. One of the best personal memoirs of wartime experiences which has been written.

I was stationed in Duc Pho, Southern I Corp, and spent over 8 months living in a remote village with my platoon during 1969 and 1970. I saw so very much and understood so little. This book brought back the conflicts that haunted me for years and helped me come to grips with the most significant year of my life. Fear, anxiety, exhaustion, isolation, and confusion blended into an environment that this book describes like none that I have read.

I have been fortunate enough to mentor leadership development in the lives of many junior officers. To help them learn leadership dynamics, I have challenged them to read this book and write a comparative analysis of their leadership style to that of the author. In every instance, all those who accepted the challenge found a rich rewarding experience that was both enlightening and humbling. Well worth reading if you want to study leadership and teamwork in a high stress environment. Glad it is still available.

I read this four years ago as a junior in high school for my American History Class. The course was offered for college credit and I used to get frustrated by all the books my teacher made us read, not to mention the essays we had to write in response to what we learned. Near the end of the year she assigned "Once a Warrior King" and I was so impressed that I never forgot the impact the book had on me. It was a vivid statement from the point of view of a man fighting in Vietnam and I could feel everything with accuracy as if I had gone through the same trauma. He was a warrior king and it was a classic.

Absolutely the best personal history of the Vietnam War I've ever read. Should be required reading in high school history class. Donovan's time in-country personifies the best intentions and best efforts that Americans took into SE Asia.

I was the leader of MAT III-27 and served in Long An province, not far from where the author was located. The experiences he wrote about could have been mine and this book brought it home to me. I agree with the author's viewpoint concerning the attitude of the Vietnamese MACV was trying to turn around. Although I have not returned to Vietnam, I would expect nothing has changed in their way of life over the past thirty years. And that's not bad!

I think I probably read the first printing of Once a Warrior King and that was probably over a decade ago now, but David Donovans account of his time in Vietnam still remains one of my favourite accounts of the conflict.

This is absolutely the best first hand account of the Vietnam War. Very well written, detailed and introspective.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Viet Nam war as it really happened. From the violent beginning to the sad and tragic end, Donavan shows how it really was.

This book brought back painful memories for me. As a young sailor on a River Assault Boat in River Assault Division 92, I participated on "Operation Barrier Reef" in January 1969, from the MACV compound described in this book. Although this book does not cover boat operations and the part that Mobile Riverine or River Patrol Units played during this period of time, it is an excellent description of the warfare of the period and operations in a remote area of Vietnam without fire support or air support. Those of you that want a graphic description of
river operations in that area, read the prologue from Brown River, Black Berets, a description of a firefight on the Dong
Tiem Canal, that I participated in January 1969. Both books
are excellent background sources for river warfare and the
seldom covered special unit operations.