Best of SOF

by Harry Ramsbottom In late October 2005, my team and I had been dropped off in a terrible little place on the Baghdad-to- Amman highway called Ar Rutbah, to coordinate supply convoys coming out of Jordan with the Marines who controlled this sector. The convoys mostly carried fuel and supplies …

Editor’s note: We get a lot of emails from men asking us to help them find work as mercenaries. I used to tell them we don’t run an employment agency. Now, I just offer them the inside scoop, and send this story about some soldiers of misfortune who learned a …

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 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 …

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 …

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 …

Series: OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II NPS Although the most publicized achievements of the OSS occurred in Europe and North Africa, Donovan’s organization also contributed to the war against Japan in the Far East. That contribution was mainly in the China-Burma-India Theater …