Steve Perry has kindly allowed us to feature a free download of a portion of his new book, a great personal memoir of his time with SOG. A small section is featured below and for the full free section download the PDF.

After returning home for a two week leave I reported to Fort Lewis, Washington to be transported to the Republic of South Vietnam. It was here in early December of 1968 that I befriended Ken Cryan another boy next door and native son of California. Ken and I became great friends and remained very close until his death in May of 1968. We traveled to Vietnam together, arriving at Cam Ranh Bay and from there to Fifth Special Forces Headquarters at Nha Trang. All of the other Special Forces men who had arrived with Ken and I were quickly assigned and shipped to their A or B teams around Vietnam. Ken and I began wondering what was wrong with us that nobody wanted us assigned to their teams.

Then one day before Christmas 1967, we were called into the office. As we stood at attention before the officers desk, the stoic faced captain informed us that we had both been assigned to C and C North and that we had been held pending approval of our Top Secret Clearances. Neither Ken nor I had any idea of what the officer was talking about or what C and C North was. We were loaded on a C 130 transport later that day (Christmas Eve 1967) headed north to Danang and by Christmas day, we had learned our fate as new guys assigned to the Special Operations Group (SOG). SOG was not officially part of the Special Forces operations in South East Asia, but Special Forces was used as a cover to shift highly trained insurgents into the top secret operations.

His site has some great unpublished pictures as well so well worth a visit. The book is a great read so highly recommended by the Modern Forces team.

www.brightlight1968.com/index.html