Special Forces History

A Green Beret's gripping memoir of American Special Forces in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

The massive armies of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies posed a huge threat to the nations of Western Europe. US military planners decided they needed a plan to slow the juggernaut they expected when and if a war began. The plan was Special Forces Berlin. Their mission, should hostilities commence, was to wreak havoc behind enemy lines and buy time for vastly outnumbered NATO forces to conduct a breakout from the city.

July 1943: The largest invasion fleet ever assembled sailed for fortress Europe, aiming to bulldoze its way onto Nazi shores. At its vanguard went a few hundred elite forces soldiers. The Royal Navy warship carrying them-a former passenger ferry transformed for battle-bore the iconic winged dagger emblem carved on its prow, plus the motto 'Who Dares Wins,' painstakingly fashioned with the most rudimentary tools by Sergeant William 'Bill' Deakins, the foremost explosives expert on board and a Royal Engineer by trade.

In December of 1943, as Nazi forces sprawled around the world and the future of civilization hung in the balance, a group of highly trained US and Canadian soldiers from humble backgrounds was asked to do the impossible: capture a crucial Nazi stronghold perched atop stunningly steep cliffs. The men were a rough-and-ready group, assembled from towns nested in North America's most unforgiving terrain, where many of them had struggled through the Great Depression relying on canny survival skills and the fearlessness of youth.

This work offers a firsthand account of the Battle of Tora Bora and an insider's look at the extraordinary nature of America's supersecret counterterrorist unit---an elite and mysterious group known as Delta Force.

After eight challenging years in Afghanistan, the new U.S. strategy, aimed at winning hearts and minds rather than search-and-destroy, refocuses the conflict on Special Forces: unorthodox soldiers who work outside of traditional military forces to combine secret military operations with nation building.

Robin Moore became one of the first true embedded journalists by training with and fighting alongside the Green Berets in Vietnam. Though fictionalized, his work is an eye-opening exposé of the horrors of the Vietnam War and the basis for the hit John Wayne movie of the same title. Taut, fast-paced, and interspersed with unforgettable accounts of combat, Moore’s novel features an American major who goes "native" with Montagnard tribesmen, a courageous Vietnamese girl who poses as a rabid anti-American Communist to capture a murderous Viet Cong officer, and the unforgettable acts of courage of soldiers in the field.

Britain's Special Air Service - or SAS - was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young, gadabout aristocrat whose aimlessness in early life belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a battlefield map of World War II's African theater and saw a protracted struggle with Rommel's desert forces, Stirling saw an opportunity: Given a small number of elite, well-trained men, he could parachute behind enemy lines and sabotage their airplanes and war matériel.

Success in any area of life will depend on your level of self-discipline. There is no one better at creating and maintaining self-discipline than the elite special forces operators from around the world. Elite Special Forces like the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, Green Berets and others have unique systems of self-discipline that guarantees that they have success in whatever mission they have to undertake.

Award-winning historian Chris Bellamy uncovers the Gurkhas` origins in the Hills of Nepal, the extraordinary circumstances in which the British decided to recruit them, and their rapid emergence as elite troops. Bellamy looks at the wars the Gurkhas have fought this century, from the two world wars through the Falklands to Iraq and Afghanistan, and examines their remarkable status now, when each year 11,000 hopefuls apply for just over 170 places in the British Army Gurkhas.

It is difficult to find another soldier's story to equal Captain Darrell Watt's in terms of time spent on the field of battle and challenges faced. Even by the lofty standards of the SAS and Special Forces, one has to look far to find anyone who can match his record of resilience and valor in the face of such daunting odds and with resources so paltry. In the fight, he showed himself to be a military maestro. After 12 years in the cauldron of war, his cause slipped from beneath him, and Rhodesia gave way to Zimbabwe.

Wanted: Volunteers for Project Delta. Will guarantee you a medal. A body bag. Or both. With this call to arms, Charlie Beckwith revolutionized American armed combat. Beckwith's acclaimed memoir tells the story of Delta Force as only its maverick creator could tell it - from the bloody baptism of Vietnam to the top-secret training grounds of North Carolina to political battles in the upper levels of the Pentagon itself. This is the heart-pounding, first-person insider's view of the missions that made Delta Force legendary.

Liddell Hart stressed movement, flexibility, surprise. He saw that in most military campaigns dislocation of the enemy's psychological and physical balance is prelude to victory. This dislocation results from a strategic indirect approach. Reflect for a moment on the results of direct confrontation (trench war in World War I) versus indirect dislocation (Blitzkreig in World II). Liddell Hart is also tonic for business and political planning: Just change the vocabulary and his concepts fit.

An updated edition of the blockbuster best-selling leadership book that took America and the world by storm, two US Navy SEAL officers who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War demonstrate how to apply powerful leadership principles from the battlefield to business and life.

Uncommon Valor is a look into the formation and operation of an advanced Special Forces recon company during the Vietnam War. Code-named the Studies and Observations Group, SOG was the most covert US military unit in its time and contained only volunteers from such elite units as the Army's Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and Air Force Air Commandos. SOG warriors operated in small teams, going behind enemy lines in Laos and Cambodia and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, tasked with performing special reconnaissance, sabotaging North Vietnamese Army ammunition, and far more.

In the late summer of 1944, 80 British Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers undertook a covert commando raid, parachuting behind enemy lines into the Vosges Mountains in occupied France to sabotage Nazi-held roads, railways, and ammo dumps, and assassinate high-ranking German officers, undermining the final stand of Hitler's Third Reich. Despite their successes, more than half the men were captured, tortured, and executed. After the war ended, a top-secret black ops unit was formed to hunt down the SS commanders who had murdered their special forces comrades....

It is the winter of 1944. Allied forces have succeeded in liberating most of Axis-occupied Italy - with one crucial exception: the Nazi headquarters north of the Gothic Line. Heavily guarded and surrounded by rugged terrain, the mountain fortress is nearly impenetrable. But British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is determined to drive a dagger into the "soft underbelly of Europe." The Allied's plan: drop two paratroopers into the mountains-and take the fortress by storm....

This comprehensive guide by a Special Ops combat veteran is the ultimate reference for military tactics, techniques, and procedures. Intended for military SpecialOps personnel, this volume presents invaluable operational guidance with lessons learned from the legendary Military Assistance Command Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG). Drawing on Special Reconnaissance operations conducted during the Vietnam Era, author Edward Wolcoff provides practical information alongside operational accounts and analyses of specific missions.

Delta Force—the US Army’s most elite top-secret strike force. They dominate the modern battlefield, but you won’t hear about their heroics on CNN. No headlines can reveal their top-secret missions, and no book has ever taken readers inside—until now. Here, a founding member of Delta Force takes us behind the veil of secrecy and into the action to reveal the never-before-told story of First Special Forces Operational Detachment-D (Delta Force).

The extraordinary firsthand account of an American special forces unit in the jungles of southeast Asia and their guerilla operations against the Japanese during World War II!