Customer Reviews

Tiger Men (Asian Portraits)

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Barry Petersen is one of the most fascinating people that I have ever met.My Dad (an ex-soldier) and I drank a lot of beer and heard a lot of stories from Baz,as he was our neighbour.All of them check out,in fact Baz was quite modest about his experiences.
In the official history of Australian Special Forces in Vietnam,Barry is the only person with a chapter to himself.Special Forces soldiers that I have met testify to his skill,bravery and compassion for his private Montagnard army.
This is a riveting account of a little-known part of the Vietnam conflict from a tough,intelligent likeable writer and a brave and modest soldier.
Thoroughly recommended to anyone with an interest in the war and the Vietnamese people.

I found this to be a very enjoyable book and informative. I was in the same area he was during the same time frame, but wasn't aware of his operations. Good information about the early years in Viet-Nam with the Rhade Montagnards.

Barry Petersen gives his account of our early efforts in Vietnam, when the U.S. was transitioning from village defense to border surveillance. His unique bottom up viewpoint highlights the often ignored personal nature of the war, and how the personalities of various American, Vietnamese, and Montagnard leaders effected the war effort in the Highlands. His Truong Son Commando Force decided to call its base 'Dam San', after the hero in a Rhade epic saga. Strangely enough, in 1961 the French Army disbanded an Airborne Commando (#35) in Algeria composed mostly of Rhade and Jarai, with exactly that name. One wonders if any Montagnard veterans of Algeria ended up in Petersen's force. Both shared the same insignia, but snarling tiger heads are common Asian symbols. Petersen's account of the early days of 'the United Front for the Struggle of Oppressed Races" (FULRO) are the most comprehensive I've seen in a single source. For those who loved the 'Yards' and were interested in FULRO, "Tiger Men" is a must read. Likewise, anyone who has traveled through Ban Me Thuot recently will find in Tiger Men a description of a town and way of life that has disappeared. The quiet, shaded former Rhade tribal capital is now a bustling city of 316,000 conquerors, capital to the Vietnamese coffee industry, the second largest in the world.