We Few

March 5, 2018
First published in 2005, this offbeat memoir deals with Brokhausen’s action-heavy second tour of duty in the Vietnam War as a Green Beret, working with indigenous Montagnard fighters on secret, dangerous reconnaissance missions into enemy-controlled territory in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in 1970. In overheated, salty language, Brokhausen offers lots of details about many of the recon missions, complete with reconstructed dialogue. He also rails against perceived enemies, both foreign and domestic; in the latter category are rear-echelon American soldiers, MPs, and just about any other troops who were not battle-hardened Special Forces men. (He even goes after Donut Dollies—American volunteer Red Cross workers—calling them “stuck-up little snots.”) It’s hard to tell how much of Brokhausen’s profanity-laden screeds is bluster and how much sincere, and his depictions of drunken brawls and other violent behavior have a patina of embellishment. On the other hand, he tells readers that the book—“a tribute to my peers”—is his attempt to provide a “window to the past” by looking at the men of the Special Forces in Vietnam, an “unwashed, profane, ribald, joyously alive fraternity.” More sensationalized than truly gripping, these war stories, in the main, don’t ring true.