War Story: The Classic True Story of the First Generation of Green Berets

by Jim Morris

Book Overview

Jim Morris was an educated young man who had always wanted to be a soldier. In 1963, he found the perfect war... "The war was like a great puzzle, great to think about, great to plan, great to do. It was so incredibly peaceful out there in the jungle." As an advisor to a Montagnard strike force, Morris and his guerrillas outfought and outmaneuvered the Viet Cong in his sector. But while he loved the ambushes, the firefights and the Montagnards, he...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312975929
• ISBN13: 9780312975920
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.2" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

Measuring the Cost

Published only four years after the fall of Saigon, War Story, was the first of what has become a plethora of non-fiction Vietnam War memoirs. But because of the political climate at the time of its initial publication this potential blockbuster bestseller was all but ignored by the New York publishing houses. While Robin Moore's The Green Berets was such a sensation in 1965 that it inspired a John Wayne movie, and the same photo of Army Special Forces Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler would grace both the book's paperback cover and Sadler's top hit record, by the early 1970's when Morris wrote War Story the attitude towards the Vietnam War and America's elite warriors was colored by the anti-war movement, My Lai, the bombing of Cambodia, and the media's slanted reporting on Tet. Vietnam wasn't a popular literary topic. Morris begins his memoir with the emotionally charged details of his re-occurring nightmare, a vivid and detailed replay of the firefight in which he had his left testicle shot off and was almost killed. In the nightmare though he is eventually killed. He ends the book with an emotionally charged memory also. In a heart-tugging coda, Morris recounts the scene. While standing in an Army hospital, his crippled right arm hanging at his side, his useless fingers attached to a mechanical brace he watches as the sun sets and the color guard lowers the flag; and tells us that as the flag is lowered "a feeling of almost overwhelming sadness, almost grief, came over me." As Morris attempts to salute the colors with his damaged right hand he stands "crying like a baby because I couldn't do it right." A professional soldier who began military school as an eleven-year-old, Morris joined the Army and Special Forces where he rose to the rank of major. He volunteered for three tours in Vietnam and received four Purple Hearts and four Bronze Stars among numerous other decorations before a medical discharge for wounds cut his career short. Jim Morris is a gifted story-teller and this book should be read for his Ludwig Faistenhammer and Larry Dring war stories alone. But at its heart War Story is the tale of Jim Morris, not an examination of the Vietnam War or even the role of Special Forces. It is, admittedly, a participant's interpretation of events. He offers up a good account of what it was like to be on the ground during the Montagnard revolt, to fight for survival during the Tet Offensive in Nha Trang, and to serve in the US Army's Special Forces during its hey-day in Vietnam. Summing up his Vietnam experience Morris quotes Michael Herr's Dispatches, "Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods." This is a book by a soldier who is proud of his service, an experienced and consummate warrior who without a second thought or any moral retrospection whatsoever begs God to please send him some VC to kill for his birthday. But Morris is a thinking man's warrior (he opens his book sections with quotes from the works of Ca

I agree with Jack Singlaub

This is THE book to read if you were never involved with Special Forces and wonder what it is like to be in SF. This is also the book to read if you WERE in SF in SE Asia and you find it hard to find books that relate people and events in a meaningful way to your own experiences, a clearer perspective than when we lived them. Besides all that, War Story a great read. Like candy or whatever you like best, a real treat page turner.

A well written story

This book is excellent. The only tactical problem I have with it is his constant discussion of smoking while in the field. I have read this book several times over the last 15 or so years. It is a great book. Smoking in the field can get you killed. I am hoping he added this for dramatic appeal. I feel his ideas for counter insurgency are right on. This book should be read by any Q course or assesment wanna be. One of his greatist ideas is utilizing graphics of infiltration routes via contact locations to create good graphics of where to place ATeam camps. I thought this was brilliant. I am hoping the Army has solved this through the implementation of all the graphics they do in their preparation of the order of battle that is done in their planning cycles.

down & dirty with the Green Berets and Fulro

I was in Vietnam as a reporter in 1964. Among other stunts, I hooked up with a Special Forces A Team based at Cheo Reo in the Central Highlands. (You can read about them in "Incident at Muc Wa".) Jim Morris was in the team that replaced these guys a few months later, and he inherited their interpreter, a handsome Montagnard called Cowboy, who unbeknownst to the Americans was a leading figure in an independence movement called Fulro, for Liberation of Oppressed Races.Morris tells his own story--the American story--of his multiple tours as a Green Beret in Vietnam. But running through it is the parallel story of Cowboy, who becomes a warlord in his own right--a sort of "fourth force" in this many-pronged war whose major participants were the South Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese, and the Americans. Cowboy worked for the Americans, plotted for the Montagnard, and may well have been murdered by the South Vietnamese.I just discovered this book last year, when it was recommended to me by one of the Green Berets I'd known in 1964. I'm delighted to see that it's back in print. It belongs on the shelf of any student of the Vietnam war.

A fascinating book on the early Vietnam War

I realize that for the last ten or fifteen years, there has been a flood of Vietnam War-related memoirs. However, Jim Morris' WAR STORY is an historical account you do not want to miss. In the early years of Vietnam, the author was an Army Special Forces Captain and advisor to both the South Vietnamese army an the indigenous Montagnards. WAR STORY chronicles Morris' adventures--some rather precarious--with these two groups. The battle scenes are vivid, and perfectly capture the chaos of a running gun fight in a jungle. What is best about WAR STORY, however, is Morris' ability to study himself, his comrades, and the war, without flinching. Part of this is due to the author's training as a journalist; also because the book was written in 1979, while the war was still fresh. All in all, this book will show you what it was like to be a soldier in the early days of the Vietnam War, when victory was still attainable.