Elite Bastards

Book excerpt: The quintessential first-person combat memoir of a special forces soldier fighting in the jungles of Vietnam. This is the quintessential first-person combat memoir of a special forces soldier at war. Edward Dvorak joined the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam in the summer of 1967. He then joined Company F, 51st Infantry, Long Range Patrol, Airborne. For Dvorak and his buddies of Company F, LRP, their real training started with the MACV (Military Assistant Command Vietnam) Recondo School at the 5th Special Forces Compound in Nha Trang, South Vietnam. That training culminated with an actual Combat LRP mission. If you lived through the patrol, you graduated. Dvorak would remain with Company F for 19 months going on dozens of combat patrols deep behind enemy lines.