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Donahue, James C. Mobile Guerrilla Force: With the Special Forces in War Zone D. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1996. 228pp. $28.95
James Donahue served with the Green Berets in Vietnam. Mobile Guerrilla Force, his second book based on his experiences there, focuses on operation BLACKJACK 31, a legendary Special Forces (SF) mission conducted in early 1967. The Mobile Guerrilla Force (MGF) was a special operations strike unit created by the U.S. Army's 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), manned predominantly by indigenous troops and led by American Green Berets. This distinguished the MGF from the common SF experience in Vietnam. Generally, as with the Civilian Irregular Defense Group program, indigenous units were led by South Vietnamese Special Forces personnel; U.S. Special Forces troopers served as advisors. Sergeant James Donahue was an assistant platoon leader and medic with the MGF during BLACKJACK 31.
The operation was a month-long incursion by an MGF company into War Zone D, a communist sanctuary north of Saigon that allied conventional forces had never entered. The mission was led by Captain...