Author Description

Sgt Johnnie Johnson has just joined MACVSOG and will run covert reconnaissance missions across the border into Laos, as part of a select Recon Team operating out of CCN, SOG's northernmost field location. The missions are so risky and dangerous, they are just short of suicide, with RT members getting shot to pieces or killed regularly just attempting them, and CCN has the casualty rates to prove it. Sometimes, they exceed eighty percent monthly, so if you survive a tour there and only get wounded in the process, you consider yourself lucky. Most don't, and go home in a green rubber body bag. Johnson has had his first team shot out from under him, with everyone either killed or wounded, save him. He was lucky to even survive. Now he has to do it all over again, except this time with a brand new team he will have to form. He'll have to select the team members, train them, employ them, and hope they have learned enough to not only stay alive themselves, by keep the other team members around them from getting killed if they make a mistake. Since they'll be operating in Laos, a country they aren't legally supposed to be in, and it's practically crawling with North Vietnamese, that promises to be an extremely risky undertaking, fraught with danger. This story chronicles the missions, hardships, fears, failings, uncertainty, and environment Johnson and his team have to face in the process. It is based on several real-world covert missions conducted by by real Special Forces Recon Teams operating out of CCN during the Vietnam War. Consequently, its descriptions, language, and emotions are stark, vivid, gritty, and fear-filled. They detail the almost unbelievable difficulty and danger involved in successfully clandestinely inserting into Laos, moving stealthily through its jungles, locating a hidden North Vietnamese target, calling an airstrike in on it to destroy it, and finally extracting from the area safely. These were not missions for the faint hearted, since they w