Blackjack-33 ─ With Special Forces in the Viet Cong Forbidden Zone

“You have to react instinctively. In this game there’s no second place, only the quick and the dead.”

In Vietnam, Mobile Guerrilla Force conducted unconventional operations against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. Armed with silencer-equipped MK-II British Sten guns, M-16s, M-79s, and M-60 machine guns, the men of the Mobile Guerrilla Force operated in the steamy, triple-canopy jungle owned by the NVA and VC, destroying base camps, ambushing patrols, and gathering the intelligence that General Westmoreland desperately needed.

In 1967, James Donahue was a Special Forces medic and assistant platoon leader assigned to the Mobile Guerrilla Force and their fiercely anti-Communist Cambodian freedom fighters. Their mission: to locate the 271st Main Force Viet Cong Regiment so they could be engaged and destroyed by the 1st Infantry Division.

Now, with the brutal, unflinching honesty only an eye witness could possess, Donahue relives the adrenaline rush of firefights, air strikes, human wave attacks, ambushes, and attacks on enemy base camps. Following the operation the surviving Special Forces members of the Mobile Guerrilla Force were decorated by Major General John Hay, Commanding General, 1st Infantry Division.

James C. Donahue joined the Marine Corps when he was seventeen years old and served with the Corps through the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. After being discharged, he enlisted in the Army and volunteered for Special Forces. As a Green Beret, he served with the 6th and 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and with the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Vietnam. His many military awards and decorations include the Silver Star, three Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart, two Air Medals, the Combat Medical Badge, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.

He was seriously wounded on July 18, 1967, and returned to the States where he earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a master’s in social sciences. In 1983 AMVETS selected him as the “Outstanding Civil Servant” in the nation. He has written two previous books, Blackjack-34, which was awarded the Freedom Foundation’s George Washington Honor Medal, and Mobile Guerrilla Force. Donahue and his wife live in Lakewood Ranch, Florida, and have two grown children.