Book Review: 'Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces'

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(C) 2001 Rubicon Inc. and Berkley Books
Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces, the seventh and final entry in Tom Clancy's nonfiction Guided Tour series about America's armed forces, sets its sights on the shadowy -- and often misunderstood -- roles and missions of the men the author calls "the quiet professionals" of the Army's Special Forces command.

They are sent to the world's hot spots-on covert missions fraught with danger. They are called on to perform at the peak of their physical and mental capabilities, primed for combat and surveillance, yet ready to pitch in with disaster relief operations. They are the Army's Special Forces Groups. Now follow Tom Clancy as he delves into the training and tools, missions and mindset of these elite operatives.

Special Forces includes:

  • The making of Special Forces personnel: recruitment and training
  • A rare look at actual Special Forces Group deployment Exercises
  • Tools of the trade: weapons, communications and sensor equipment, survival gear
  • Roles and missions: a mini-novel illustrates a probable scenario of Special Forces intervention
  • Exclusive photographs, illustrations and diagrams
Plus: an interview with General Hugh Shelton, USA, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (and the former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command-USSOCOM) – Publisher’s back cover blurb, Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces

Although the public image of the Special Forces stems from such movies as John Wayne's 1968 cornball classic The Green Berets and the Rambo series (Stallone's John Rambo is a former SF veteran who served in Vietnam) and Sgt. Barry Sadler's once-popular "Ballad of the Green Berets," Clancy and his co-author/researcher John D. Gresham point out that far from being hell-for-leather, shoot-first-ask-questions-later killing machines, SF soldiers are actually among the best troops in the U.S. Army.

They have to be, because the Special Forces troops’ missions -- ranging from blowing up a bridge or weapons factory far behind enemy lines to organizing, training, advising, and assisting foreign armies and police forces of "host" countries "to protect their societies or free them from subversion, lawlessness, insurgency, and terrorism." This means that in addition to their combat roles in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, SF teams are among the busiest of America's soldiers.

The book, which includes an interview with Gen. Henry Shelton, USA (Retired) and a foreword by Lt. Gen. William P. Yarborough USA (Retired), is divided into the following chapters:
  • Special Forces 101
  • The Road to the Top: An Interview with General Henry H. Shelton
  • Creating Special Forces Soldiers
  • Inside the Rucksack: Special Forces Stuff
  • U.S. Army Special Forces Command
  • Getting Ready: Training for the “Big” One
  • Downrange: Special Forces in the Field
  • Into the Twenty-first Century
  • Operation Merdeka
One of the more interesting insights I got from reading Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces is about the role played by SF deployments in El Salvador during the darkest days of that Central American nation's long-running civil war.

Back in the late 1980s, the Reagan Administration, knowing that any major American military intervention would be very unpopular at home and abroad (a Vietnam II in our own back yard, to put it bluntly), was caught in a decision-making dilemma. Clearly they did not wish El Salvador to "go Red" as Cuba and Nicaragua had in the past. However, the Pentagon and the White House knew the ruling class -- derived from the wealthy class of landowners and other top honchos -- was also very indifferent about the conditions of the Salvadoran poor, particularly those in the countryside. Using the army and national guard -- themselves derived from El Salvador's small middle class -- in repressive and counterproductive ways, El Salvador's government just made matters worse, using indiscriminate tactics and the infamous death squads.

Surely, Washington couldn't be too closely linked to a small group of wealthy "patrones" whose only interest was to maintain their lock on power and to ignore the people's legitimate demands for justice and social reform.

The solution? To use Special Forces to gradually change the mindset of the Salvadoran army. It took time, and quite a few of the SF advisers lost their lives in the crossfire between leftist forces and the army. Nevertheless, the Salvadoran officers and soldiers were "re-educated" and, as Clancy writes, "the Salvadoran Army tried acting in other than brutal and repressive ways toward their fellow countrymen, they began to halt activities of their death squads and to actually show respect for basic human rights.”

As a result, the rebels lost a lot of support, the Army started winning hearts, minds, and territory, and "by the end of the Cold War [a] peace treaty was a done deal, the civil war had ended, and today there is a coalition government...." Granted, the SF deployments alone were not responsible for this achievement, but they had a major effect in getting the Salvadoran people to see that the way things were being handled by both the government and the rebels were just leading to more bloodshed and chaos.

As in all the Guided Tour series,  Special Forces gives the general reading audience a look at the equipment, training, organization, and the soldiers themselves. There is an interview with Gen. Henry H. Shelton USA (Ret) former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an experienced Special Operations veteran who served with the Special Forces and also commanded Special Operations Command from 1996 to 1998. There are also overviews of the larger Special Operations Command and, finally, a short fictional account of SF personnel in action.
(Oh, and while the Special Forces troops are proud of their famous headgear, they really don't like to be called "Green Berets." As one of them told the authors, "We are NOT hats!")

Oddly enough, this fascinating book is not listed in the "other works" page of the late author's (or his successors') novels. It's still in print and available at various online stores, including Amazon. As a Clancy fan, I often wonder if Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces was somehow removed from the official canon - and why. 

  • Series: Tom Clancy's Guided Tours Military References (Book 7)
  • Paperback: 366 pages
  • Publisher: Berkley (February 1, 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0425172686
  • ISBN-13: 978-0425172681

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