Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War [Hardcover]

Michael Sallah (Author), Mitch Weiss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2006

At the outset of the Vietnam War, the Army created an experimental fighting unit that became known as "Tiger Force." The Tigers were to be made up of the cream of the crop-the very best and bravest soldiers the American military could offer. They would be given a long leash, allowed to operate in the field with less supervision. Their mission was to seek out enemy compounds and hiding places so that bombing runs could be accurately targeted. They were to go where no troops had gone, to become one with the jungle, to leave themselves behind and get deep inside the enemy's mind.The experiment went terribly wrong.What happened during the seven months Tiger Force descended into the abyss is the stuff of nightmares. Their crimes were uncountable, their madness beyond imagination-so much so that for almost four decades, the story of Tiger Force was covered up under orders that stretched all the way to the White House. Records were scrubbed, documents were destroyed, men were told to say nothing.But one person didn't follow orders. The product of years of investigative reporting, interviews around the world, and the discovery of an astonishing array of classified information, Tiger Force is a masterpiece of journalism. Winners of the Pulitzer Prize for their Tiger Force reporting, Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss have uncovered the last great secret of the Vietnam War.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. During the Vietnam War, Tiger Force was the code name of an elite platoon of the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry. Its pedigree was impeccable. The battalion's executive officer, Maj. David Hackworth, organized the 45-man volunteer force in 1966, and it became one of the war's most highly decorated units, paying for its reputation with heavy casualties. But for seven months beginning in May 1967, Tiger Force descended into a moral abyss. Operating in what was defined as enemy country, the platoon engaged in an orgy of atrocities that ranged from taking ears, scalps and teeth to the mass killing of unarmed civilians. Conservative estimates count victims in the hundreds. From 1971 to 1975, the army mounted an investigation that documented the crimes, but decided "nothing beneficial" could result from prosecuting the platoon members or their leader. And so the story remained the stuff of rumor until Toledo Blade reporters Michael Sallah, Mitch Weiss and John Mahr responded to a tip and started interviewing former Tiger Force members. The resulting newspaper series, "Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths," won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 and forms the basis of this outstanding book. In the best tradition of investigative journalism, the authors let the story speak for itself, and thus force readers to wonder: was Tiger Force's behavior aberrant or was it part of a half-submerged pattern spanning the entire war? (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Sallah and Weiss, who won a Pulitzer Prize (along with fellow reporter Joe Mahr) for their reporting on the Tiger Force in the Toledo Blade in 2003, have crafted a compelling, chilling story. Reviewers draw obvious parallels between the events detailed here and the My Lai massacre, as well as recent incidents from the war in Iraq. The book is a primer on journalistic technique, the narrative drawn from firsthand accounts in interviews with victims' families and more than 40 former members of the Tiger Force, as well as a suppressed 55-page document that came out of an army investigation. The authors visited the sites of many of the atrocities, pinpointing them through old radio logs. The result is one of the most important books on the Vietnam War.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; First edition (May 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316159972
• ISBN-13: 978-0316159975
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #618,978 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

101 of 116 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars War Crimes and WAR CRIMES.... A view from the 2nd of the 327th, June 3, 2006

By 

Thomas E. Quinn (Fresno, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War (Hardcover)

In 1966 volunteered for the draft and then for the airborne. I arrived in Vietnam in November 1967, and was assigned to the 101st Airborne, 1st Brigade, 327th, 2nd Battalion, Charlie Company, 3rd Platoon -- the "3rd Herd." I was the medic -- "Doc Quinn." I was wounded in A Shau Valley on March 21, 1968 and left Vietnam for good a month later. I grew up in the military, spent 5 years in Asia by the time I was 13 years old, got jungle survival training from the 1st Special Forces attached to my Boy Scout Troop in Okinawa in 1960-61 (training that helped make Vietnam the best camp out I ever had). That was when I first heard of a place they called "Indochina."

When I joined my platoon I heard stories of atrocities committed by people in our division, including rape and murder. These stories were told in matter-of-fact ways. I don't remember if particular units within the 101st were named.

The 1st Battalion had the Tiger Force. My 2nd Battalion had the Hawk Recons, the 502nd had the Recondo's. All were elites within elites and spirited units. I remember the day that orders came down that the Hawks had to give up their boonie hats and wear steel pots like the rest of us non-recon types. They went on "strike" for a few hours, burned off a lot of ammo into the hills to make their feelings known, and, finally, kept their boonie hats and the issue was forgotten.

When I read some of the original articles that were later reshaped into "Tiger Force," I thought -- so, that was where some of those rumors were coming from.

No one in my platoon, during my four months tenure with it in the field, committed any war crimes that I am aware of. In fact, they seemed quite a decent lot of very young men. On Christmas Eve, 1967, toward sunset, while lying on my back reading a book in an area known as Phan Thiet, all hell broke loose and then all was quiet. Several innocent mountain people, all young males & none armed, were killed when they, to their fatal surprise, walked in on our perimeter. The M-60 gunner responsible for their deaths, told me they walked up on him in single file, five yards apart -- a classic sign of a military column. He reacted fast as he was trained to do. He was deeply shaken by what he had done. If he's alive, he probably still is.

One fellow in our company, I learned, was thoroughly disliked when he'd drop by our platoon for a little bull-jive and coffee -- the company sniper. He wasn't liked, I was told, because he was a cold blooded killer.

During one of our operations right after Tet '68, in the Hue region, word came from the Company Commander that he did not want us to be quite so hesitant when we "suspected" the enemy was on us. He had earlier told us to use greater caution because we were operating in a very populated area, but our caution led to our gunner, Gibbs, getting an AK round in the chest.

That night or the next day, we heard that the sniper, acting "less hesitantly," shot a grandmother and her granddaughter at point blank range. The people around me were disgusted. Rumor had it the Company Commander was angered.

The story in Tiger Force is about war crimes. The men responsible should have been charged. More importantly and even less likely to have happened, the officers responsible for them should have been charged, at least exposed.

As awful as the Tiger Force rampage was, as awful as My Lai, et al, was, the truly stupendous, systematic, and policy driven atrocities of the Vietnam War was not mainly the work of us kids with guns -- as real, as awful, as that was when it was cold blooded murder -- as shown in this fine piece of research. The real atrocities began with the routine and relentless use of 105mm & 155mm howitzers, helicopter gunships, Puff-the-Magic Dragons - fixed wing aircraft mounted with gatling-guns, the F-4 Phanthom jets and their 20mm gatling guns, the B-52's, the USS New Jersey's 16 inch guns, etc, etc -- in short, the American Way of War: high fire-power combined with vague, liberal rhetoric. I saw it all and am still appalled.

P.S. The reviewer who identified himself as a Tiger Force medic -- why not give your name? Soldiers, current or ex, are not afraid to say who we are and speak from our name. To claim you never saw any dead except in uniform I find suspect, along with other things you write.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First-Rate Military Epic, June 14, 2006

By 

Chris Peake (SC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War (Hardcover)

In 1967, I was part of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade in the Quang Tin province and I can say without a doubt that the rumors about the Tigers were always making the rounds. I took the time to read the book for several reasons, some of which I will share. Shortly after the articles appeared in the newspapers and Internet in 2003, I had to make a trip to Washington DC, so I stopped at the National Archives in suburban DC to research this investigation -- or at least get what I could. I spent three years as a librarian/researcher after the war (it's about the only thing I could do at the time), so I pulled all the records of the Coy Allegation, or the Tiger Force case. I know that many of the records are missing, but I did manage to read the entire case file in a day and a half. The book not only accurately portayed the case, but added significant context that the reports do not. Few people realize how badly General Westmoreland wanted to control the central highlands. He would have done anything at the time (1967). We were erroneously led to believe in what was known as the "Scissors Theory." That if somehow South Vietnam was severed, we would not be able to mobilize troops to the DMZ. First, we relied totally on air support, so I find it difficult to believe we would lose the war because our infantry would somehow not be able to move northward if the VC or NVA managed to take control of those strategic provinces. There's no question the 1/327 was used in our ridiculous strategic hamlet program, and for anyone to say otherwise is a liar and a fool for trying to pass on such nonsense. The Tigers were a part of the 1/327. After reading the case file, it was clear the investigators found probable cause against many of the soldiers. These soldiers were already afforded opportunities to hire lawyers -- this is in the records. I want to commend the authors for the great work on this book and sharing this with the country at a time we need to hear these things. A special thanks for showing compassion to the soldiers and explaining why soldiers go wrong and what happened to the Tigers. A great job. There are going to be some people -- mostly vets -- who will cast aspersions, but who have no room to talk. They need to acknowledge what happened so that these events don't happen again.

33 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Thriller, May 19, 2006

By 

Steve Szymanski (ILL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War (Hardcover)

I was a bit suspect of this book for many reasons when I bought it at Barnes and Noble. So many of the soldiers aren't even around anymore. The events were more than three decades ago. A lot of ghosts. But after finishing this work, I'm not disappointed. This is a great book -- one, I believe, that should be read by all students of military history. This is a lesson on what can go wrong in war and why we need to carefully assess why we choose to go into armed conflicts. First, my concerns witht he book were put aside when I saw that the authors drew on investigative transcripts of interviews with the soldiers by Army agents -- a lot of interviews over many years. Then I saw that so many of the former grunts were still alive. I guess it's fair to say Tiger Force was a very special unit and I believe anyone who belonged to this squad should be proud. They were the elite in Vietnam. But there's no question that things went really, really bad in 1967. When the brainy generals in Vietnam decided to turn these guys loose on civilians they might as well have been brewing a recipe for a bomb. I still question why would the Army take intense, bush killers and mix them in with Vietnamese farmers and not expect the worst? This is why hundreds of Vietnamese civilians died from this platoon. What I liked about the book was that it showed how the men began crossing over -- one by one, sometimes very painfully. The authors did a great job of telling the story through the soldiers. In some ways, it's very sad. On another level, it's a story that needs to come out. Tell the truth and learn from it.