Blackjack-33 » (Reprint)

James C. Donahue joined the Marine Corps when he was seventeen years old and served with the Corps through the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. After being discharged, he enlisted in the army and volunteered for Special Forces. As a Green Beret, he served with the 6th and 7th Special Forces Groups (Airborne) in Fort Bragg, NC, and with the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Vietnam. His many military awards and decorations include the Silver Star, three Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart, two Air Medals, the Combat Medical Badge, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.

After earning a bachelor's degree in anthropology and a master's in social sciences, Donahue went to work for the U.S. Department of Labor's Veterans Employment and Training Service. He has written two previous books, No Greater Love, which was awarded the Freedom Foundation's George Washington Honor Medal, and Mobile Guerrilla Force. James Donahue and his wife live in Glenwood, NY, and have two grown children.

"You have to react instinctively. In this game there's no second place, only the quick and the dead."

In Vietnam, Mobile Guerrilla Force was the only American unit that truly carried out guerrilla-style hit-and-run military operations. Armed with silencer-equipped MK-II British Sten guns, M-16s, M-79s, and M-60s, the men of the Mobile Guerilla Force roamed for weeks at a time through steamy triple-canopy jungle in areas owned by NVA and VC, destroying base camps, ambushing enemy forces, and gathering the intelligence Saigon desperately needed.

In 1967, James Donahue was a Special Forces medic and an assistant platoon leader for the Mobile Guerrilla Force's fiercely anti-Vietnamese Cambodian mercenaries. On mission Blackjack-33, they were to act as bait and lure VC and NVA regiments into decisive engagements so that they could be targeted and destroyed by the 1st Infantry Division. Well, the MGF did its job, but the 1st Infantry Division refused to show up. . . .

Now, with the brutal, unflinching honesty only an eyewitness could possess, Donahue relives the deadly adrenaline rush of firefights conducted on the run and medical operations performed under fire, capturing the savage courage and sacrifice of these proud U.S. and Cambodian warriors.