Best of SOF

by Jack Hawkins Released in Los Angeles in 1978, The Deer Hunter was already becoming a legendary film by the time it hit “flyover country” a few months later. I was between girlfriends, a gung-ho “seventies copper” usually “drunk on adrenaline” from the endless barfight calls (or still depressed over …

by Susan Katz Keating “There’s a certain sound…” The song stuck with him for years afterwards. He was being marched to his execution in the jungles of Vietnam, and had been ordered to carry a radio to pick up “Radio Hanoi,” but he secretly dialed in to a station that …

by Cliff Wade Iraq, 2006 We found ourselves in the home of an Iraqi family during a massive clearing operation in an area characterized by terrain varying between urban landscape, farmland, palm groves, and small villages. We had been clearing routes of improvised explosive devices all morning. We had been …

By Heath Hansen Wedged between rocks, I scan with my binoculars and notice a bunker complex built into the top of theopposite hill. I keep observing and see three men, wearing green fatigues, walking between eachfighting position. All three are armed with AK-47’s. That isn’t Afghanistan. It’s Mexico. I had …

By Chris Sajnog From the May 2015 issue of SOF Across the ages, every great society has celebrated and revered a great warrior tradition and passed on the stories of these heroes in folklore. We can look back to the Spartans, Roman legionnaires, Vikings, knights, samurai or Aztecs, and each …

JIMMY STEWART FLEW IN VIETNAM?   WHAT MOVIE WAS THAT !!​ ©  J David Truby 2018 Brig. Gen. James Stewart (middle) and the crew of the Green-2 B-52 on February 20, 1966. The aircraft flew a classified Arc Light bombing mission over Vietnam with Stewart aboard as an official observer. Stewart was …

A Handful of Hard Men: The SAS and the Battle for Rhodesia    by Hannes Wessels Africa Unathorized With the collapse of colonialism and the European retreat from Africa the then colony of Southern Rhodesia refused to follow the political fashion of the time and succumb quietly. They decided to …

Christian Lambertsen and the Secret Story Behind Scuba From the archives of the CIA  Dr. Christian Lambertsen  The men and women of the Office of Strategic Services. (OSS) developed many spectacular devices for war-time use: exploding coal, invisible ink, tasteless poisons, miniature cameras and exotic knives. Some of these developments …

Huey in Vietnam By Eric Blehm In LEGEND, bestselling author Eric Blehm takes as his canvas Southeast Asia, and tells the unforgettable account of the U.S. Army’s 240th Assault Helicopter Company and Green Beret (Studies and Operations Group) Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez, who risked everything to rescue a Special Forces …

by Alex QuadeDiyala Province, Iraq — Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (A-Team) 072 rolled into the village. It was dead quiet. Nothing moved. Suddenly, “squirters”—people running away from the village and cars leaving at a high rate of speed. Clearly, something of interest was in that village. A-Team Commander Captain …