Customer Reviews

Torturers of Tet (Saigon Commandos)

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I was a military policeman, stationed in Long Bihn, Bien Hoa areas. Our missions were to escort new troops from the Bien Hoa Airbase to the 90th Replacement station, and take DEROSing troops from the 90th to the airbase. Unfortunately, about ten years ago, all my Saigon Commando series were burned in a fire at the house of a friend who was reading them. I know I really liked the way Mr. Cain brought out all facets of MP work in a combat area. Many of us had good duty, puntuated by moments of terror. As a former MP, I would love to see all my brothers and sisters read Mr. Cain's series. I am hoping to join him in his mission, through a new novel, hopefully to be published, called 95 Bravo. The story follows a soldier, Greg Taylor through his BCT/MPAIT and tours of duty in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md, to Long Binh, RVN. During his tour, Greg Taylor has two bad relationships, loses a partner, becomes a military police clerk and still manages to get into it on ocassion. I would highly recommend Mr. Cain's books to anyone who wants to know what military police life was like.

The first in Cain's trilogy about the 1968 Tet Offensive in which 44 American military policemen were wounded in vicious street fighting - half that many were killed in action in the battle to save South Vietnam's capital city of three million from surprise Viet Cong attacks. Cain's Saigon Commandos series ran 12 books and was a fictionalized account of his own Tour of Duty with the 716th MP Bn. in "The 'Nam," (circa 1972-73, although the series takes place beginning in 1967). Not only are the characters, (Sgt. Mark Stryker, Specialist Tim Bryant, Private Nick Uhernik and all the rest), courageous and highly believable, they add an odd touch of comedy when you least expect it. Cain's Tet trilogy is especially recommended for armchair historians because it takes the actual transcripts of MP jeep-to-jeep radio transmissions, (taken from official logs, records and archives), and incorporates them into the fast-paced dialogue. Roger Corman, (movie maker of so many of the horror movies of the 1960's), was so impressed with Saigon Commandos that he sent the entire set of 12 installments to Screenwriter Tom McElvery Cleaver and told him to squeeze them into a screenplay. Tom settled on Book 9 in the series, ("Mad Minute"), from which the 1987 cult classic, Saigon Commandos, eventually evolved. One Hollywood producer called Saigon Commandos the Hill Street Blues of Vietnam. It was definitely the military police procedural of the 80's - with its tried and true formula of sex and violence every 15 pages or so - based on those crazy 60's many of us who were there will never forget!

I was a military policeman, stationed in Long Bihn, Bien Hoa areas. Our missions were to escort new troops from the Bien Hoa Airbase to the 90th Replacement station, and take DEROSing troops from the 90th to the airbase. Unfortunately, about ten years ago, all my Saigon Commando series were burned in a fire at the house of a friend who was reading them. I know I really liked the way Mr. Cain brought out all facets of MP work in a combat area. Many of us had good duty, puntuated by moments of terror. As a former MP, I would love to see all my brothers and sisters read Mr. Cain's series. I am hoping to join him in his mission, through a new novel, hopefully to be published, called 95 Bravo. The story follows a soldier, Greg Taylor through his BCT/MPAIT and tours of duty in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md, to Long Binh, RVN. During his tour, Greg Taylor has two bad relationships, loses a partner, becomes a military police clerk and still manages to get into it on ocassion. I would highly recommend Mr. Cain's books to anyone who wants to know what military police life was like.