Kent White

I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Prairie Fire" by Kent White, finding it both educational and engaging. Unbeknownst to all but the U.S. government and Special Forces soldiers in MACVSOG, U.S. military "Top Secret" forays were conducted into Laos and Cambodia throughout the Vietnam war. Now that the statute of limitations has expired, information about these Top Secret missions are available to the public; SF soldiers are now able to share their stories.

The author categorized his story as fiction, but is surely written based upon his personal experiences in these missions. He admits to taking some liberties within the tome for the sake of the story, but it was difficult for me to determine the difference between fact and fiction. Nevertheless, this is an exciting, edge of your seat read, as the author takes readers along on some of these forays into Laos. Each recon team has 2 - 3 Americans and several indigenous mercenaries from China, Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam, who stealthily move through the jungles to verify intelligence reports for the higher ups. These teams are on their own during these 5-day missions, except for air support, which would take up to an hour to arrive. Although their main task is to observe, sometimes the teams' existence is compromised, and they need to fight and evade until help arrives. This gets hairy, especially, when the enemy soldiers use "experienced trackers" to hunt them down. The time line of this story takes place during the final months of 1967, a period when North Vietnam was preparing for the famed "TET" offensive at the end of January, 1968. So the jungles were packed with traveling battalion sized units of soldiers, trucking convoys of supplies, rest areas and training schools. Their most perilous mission will be to locate a suspected POW camp with live Americans while all this is going on - those teams have a feeling of dread like no other mission before.

Although many soldiers died during these secret missions - complete teams simply vanished without a trace, their efforts significantly impacted how the war was fought in South Vietnam by eliminating supplies, weapons, armaments and enemy soldiers who never made it to the battlefields. Great job Mr. White! Already purchased your next book and will start it immediately after posting this review. Thank you for your service and welcome home!

John Podlaski, author
Cherries - A Vietnam War Novel.… (altro)