A lot of confusion, a lot of humor, a lot of broken dreams and broken promises, an occasional triumph.
1978-a chance meeting on a remote military airbase between two Green Berets involved in the same operation leads to a partnership that will last over forty years. Four years after that meeting, Nick Brokhausen and Jeff Miller leave the service within a few weeks of each other and begin an odyssey that takes them to dozens of countries on five continents.
Along with a small coterie of fellow former Special Operations and intelligence community veterans like Penguini, Max, Reek, The Spider Woman and a score of others-some heroes and some villains-they undertake a variety of missions for the government, other governments, large multinational corporations mostly in the aerospace or resource development industries, and occasionally just for suffering individuals who cannot find help anywhere else. In the process they lay the groundwork for an entire new industry of private military contractors. Two men sadly just a bit ahead of their time.
On his second combat tour, Nick Brokhausen served in Recon Team Habu, CCN. This unit was part of MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group), or Studies and Observations Group as it was innocuously called. The small recon companies that were the center of its activities conducted some of the most dangerous missions of the war, infiltrating areas controlled by the North Vietnamese in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. The companies never exceeded more than thirty Americans, yet they were the best source for the enemy's disposition and were key to the US military being able to take the war to the enemy. This was accomplished by utilizing both new and innovative technology, and tactics dating back to the French and Indian Wars.
This small unit racked up one of the most impressive records of awards for valor of any unit in the history of the United States Army. It came at a terrible price, however; the number of wounded and killed in action was incredibly high. Those missions today seem suicidal. In 1970 they seemed equally so, yet these men went out day after day with their indigenous allies-Montagnard tribesmen, Vietnamese, and Chinese Nungs-and faced the challenges with courage and resolve.
Whispers in the Tall Grass is the second volume of Nick's riveting memoir of his time with MACV-SOG.
A Green Beret's gripping memoir of American Special Forces in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War
In 1970, on his second tour to Vietnam, Nick Brokhausen served in Recon Team Habu, CCN. Officially, it was known as the Studies and Observations group. In fact, this Special Forces squad, which Brokhausen calls "an unwashed, profane, ribald, joyously alive fraternity," undertook some of the most dangerous and suicidal reconnaissance missions ever in the enemy-controlled territory of Cambodia and Laos. But they didn't infiltrate the jungles alone. They fought alongside the Montagnards-oppressed minorities from the mountain highlands, trained by the US military in guerilla tactics, armed, accustomed to the wild, and fully engaged in a war against the North Vietnamese. Together this small unit formed the backbone of ground reconnaissance in the Republic of Vietnam, racking up medals for valor-but at a terrible cost.
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