The Fifth Special Forces in the Valleys of Vietnam, 1967: An Insider’s Account

In 1966, U.S. Army Special Forces were pushed out of the A Shau Valley by the North Vietnamese Army. In 1967, Douglas Coulter, serving with the Fifth Special Forces Group, led five-man reconnaissance teams into A Shau to discover whether NVA and Viet Cong troops were marshalling for an attack on the ancient city of Hue. His clear-eyed memoir recalls nighttime helicopter insertions and deep-jungle patrols miles behind enemy lines, and reflects on the cruel narcissism of U.S. moral and military superiority as the underlying cause of the Vietnam War.