Mobile Guerrilla Force

This authentic firsthand account of Operation Blackjack-31 chronicles the first foray of 13 hand-picked Green Berets and a company of free Cambodian guerrillas into War Zone D - the VC's secret zone about which allied intelligence knew little or nothing - in January 1967. Their orders were to conduct guerrilla operations for an undetermined period, without artillery support or possibility of reinforcement. Detachment A-303 turned the suicide mission into a dramatic success. With surgical precision and a novelist's grasp of dialogue, timing, and dramatic pacing, the author puts the reader on the ground with the force for 31 days without respite. A surprisingly fresh description of close-in combat, Donahue's account stands as a powerful testament to the few who mattered little in the big picture but who were all that mattered to each other. Blackjack-31 was a historic departure from the conventional military thinking that dominated the war in Vietnam, and it clearly demonstrated that American-led indigenous forces could conduct guerrilla operations against the enemy, and win.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.