★ 05/25/2015
Blehm (Fearless) delivers an intense tale of how a poor, troubled boy found salvation and purpose as a solider in the story of Raul "Roy" Benavidez (1935–1998), a Green Beret who saved "at least eight men" during a vicious May 1968 firefight in Cambodia. Incursions into Cambodia were so secret that the troops involved were sworn never to divulge any information about them. Green Beret units engaged in regular missions across the Cambodian border to hunt down North Vietnamese (NVA) troops who used the officially nonaligned country as a base to supply their forces in South Vietnam. On Benavidez's second deployment, he aided a unit surrounded by NVA troops and in the process suffered wounds so severe that he looked like a "human ketchup bottle." Blehm's harrowing and bloody descriptions of the fighting reveal how these missions depended on the paratroopers' mix of superior skill and sheer audacity. Benavidez's incredible actions earned him high accolades; years later, when news of his deeds spread following publication a story in his Texas hometown newspaper, his fellow soldiers pressed for Benavidez to receive his "long-overdue and unfairly denied Congressional Medal of Honor." Blehm gives the jungle hell of the Vietnam War a graphic, suspenseful treatment. (May)
05/01/2015
In 1968, during a period when American forces were forbidden to be in Cambodia, a 12-man team of Special Forces and indigenous fighters was inserted into a clearing near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The area turned out to house a major North Vietnamese base, and a firefight ensued. Staff Sgt. Roy Benavidez jumped into one of the helicopters sent to extract the beleaguered survivors. He organized a defense, was wounded several times, and ultimately ensured all survivors were transported out of Cambodia. Blehm (Fearless; The Only Thing Worth Dying For) relates Benavidez's life story from bracero to combat hero, using him as the touch point for the ill-fated mission. After 13 years, the sergeant was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. While the index is helpful, the lack of bibliography or sources listed means that conversations from the 1960s are related verbatim. VERDICT This stirring story of heroism and sacrifice will appeal to readers interested in the Vietnam War and military history in general. [See Prepub Alert, 10/13/14.]—Edwin Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS
2015-03-15
Sometimes-trudging, sometimes-moving narrative of a combat mission gone terribly wrong and the layers of politics and memory surrounding it. Roy Benavidez (1935-1998) was the first noncommissioned officer to be awarded a West Point saber and the first enlisted soldier to lend his name to a Navy ship. He was also extraordinarily valiant, knowingly putting himself in harm's way to save his fellow fighters when their mission took them into a hornet's nest of North Vietnamese soldiers. Unfortunately for all concerned, their battle took place in supposedly neutral Cambodia, where Americans weren't supposed to be. As Blehm (Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown, 2012, etc.) divines, it was probably that geographical detail that kept Benavidez from winning a Medal of Honor, something corrected a dozen years after the fact. The author's long-held fascination with all things Green Beret continues apace here, and his thorough reconstruction of the ill-fated battle is reminiscent of C.D.B. Bryan's much differently intended exposé Friendly Fire (1976). At spots, the narrative is too portentous and detail-caressing, in the way of civilians when writing of battle: "He flipped a switch, and Roy heard the discord of battle from a little speaker that buzzed with static: the sharp, repeated crack of rifle fire, the muffled impact of explosions, and, most unnerving, the cursing and urgent calls for air support and extraction." Or, "he was going to fight the red tide of communism before it crossed the oceans and crashed onto the shores of America." A little goes a long way, especially when a single firefight stretches for pages. Overall, the narrative seems a good magazine article pulled into book length, with some slipshod moments (e.g., one doesn't get a master's degree in Shakespeare) and too many draggy stretches. In the hands of a Junger or Krakauer, this story might have taken more memorable form. Still, Vietnam War completists will be interested.
Roy Benavidez is a real badass, a modern day Spartan, the heart of what every warrior prays for when everything goes wrong.”
——MARCUS LUTTRELL, retired Navy SEAL and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Lone Survivor
“I fought beside and led U.S. Special Operations soldiers, sailors, and airmen during three wars— World War II, Korea, and Vietnam—including the men [of SOG] depicted in Legend. Never have I read a more powerfully honest, realistic, or moving account of the war in Southeast Asia. Eric Blehm masterfully encapsulates the hearts of the men, their impossible mission, and the quagmire of politics of the era and wraps it up in a single bloody battle that portrays the American fighting man at his best.”
——MAJOR GENERAL JOHN K. (JACK) SINGLAUB, U.S. Army (Ret.)
“Legend may be the most important book ever written about the men of Special Operations. It brings to life in touching and brutal detail one of Special Operations Force’s first true heroes as well as the other heroic men who fought and died with him in the jungles of Cambodia. Master Sergeant Roy Benavidez represented the best of the quiet professionals whose incredible actions were long overlooked and lost to history only to be rediscovered through Blehm’s painstaking research and magnificent writing.”
——LIEUTENANT COLONEL JASON AMERINE, U.S. Army Special Forces
"[Legend] is one of the most honest and engrossing narratives of the war I have ever read…. Blehm faithfully describes the complicated choreography of war, and shows us why the Congressional Medal of Honor was bestowed on Sergeant Benavidez for his actions. A magnificent narrative, painstakingly told by a master storyteller."
——MAJ. GEN. PAUL VALLELY
