Company of Heroes: A Forgotten Medal of Honor and Bravo Company’s War in Vietnam

by Eric Poole

There are many broad studies of the Vietnam War, but this work offers an insight into the harrowing experiences of just a small number of men from a single unit, deep in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia.

Its focus is the remarkable account of a Medal of Honor recipient Leslie Sabo Jr., whose brave actions were forgotten for over three decades. Sabo and other replacement soldiers in Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 506th Infantry (Currahees), 101st Airborne Division, were involved in intense, bloody engagements such as the battle for Hill 474 and the Mother's Day Ambush.

Beginning with their deployment at the height of the blistering Tet Offensive, and using military records and interviews with surviving soldiers, Eric Poole recreates the terror of combat amidst the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam. Company of Heroes, now published in paperback, tells the remarkable story of how Sabo earned his medal, as Bravo Company forged bonds of brotherhood in their daily battle for survival.

Genres: History, Military Fiction, Nonfiction, Asia

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 17, 2015

Reviews

[Samuel Steffen · Rating 5 out of 5]

**Company of Heroes** by Eric Poole is a powerful, heartfelt memoir that blends humor, vulnerability, and hard-won wisdom. Poole recounts his journey from a shy, bullied boy in small-town Iowa to a confident man embracing his truth as a gay individual—all while navigating family, faith, and self-acceptance. With sharp wit and emotional honesty, he turns personal pain into universal lessons on resilience and love. A quick, uplifting read that lingers long after the final page.

[John Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

An ok read for me. Too much of it was redundant like an effort to pad the length of the book was being made. Wasn't what I expected.

[Al Lock · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of Leslie Sabo, MOH recipient that the US Army misplaced the filing on, is worth reading. The book would have been better if the author had a good military historian as an editor. Little details like describing changing magazines in a machine gun (the US Army did not have magazine fed machineguns in the 101st during the period noted) or calling the 196th Infantry Brigade a Division are mistakes that should have been caught. Also, the book would have benefited from being tightened up, it's probably 25% longer than it should be.

[Dan Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed it. Stitched together from interviews with veterans. Kind of a history of life in middle America, Leslie Sabo's family, the Vietnam War, and how that conflict impacted the lives of the veterans and their families. Life is tough for refugees and widows of vets.

Huge disappointment that his parents died without ever knowing how their son died. The story they were told was nowhere near the truth. Why were they told an incorrect story? I'm glad that after all those decades, Leslie was given a proper award. Well, his surviving family was, anyway.

The fight was known as the Mother's Day ambush. It was interesting that the accounts of his actions were somewhat different. Just tells you that in a real firefight, most people only experience fragments of it - no one had the overall picture.

One thing the audiobook didn't address: was it SOP to enter a large clearing? I would have thought that would have been a red flag, particularly when the enemy has known that you were in the area for several hours. Seems like the NVA had prepared the clearing to be a killing field and the soldiers walked right onto their trap.

Recently listed to "Born in the USA" again. Seemed a lot more relevant after listening to this audiobook.

[Julian Douglass · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting story of the Bravo Company in Vietnam. While these are always interesting stories to hear from the actual soldiers and not read the stories from the textbook, I feel this story could have been better crafted. Mr. Poole tends to repeat himself constantly throughout the book, which makes it seem like he was struggling to fill pages to make this an actual book. He never follows a clear and consistent path, for example, he will be explaining a battle in Vietnam, and then jump to a story about Leslie Sabo's hometown with out any clear transition to make it seem like this is part of the story rather than his mind wandering while telling a story. Again, it seems to me that he needed to throw stuff in to make this a book. The editoriaalization that he also includes in this book makes it seem like he isn't a serious journalist or historian and rather a fan of the war who stumbled upon this story and was reporting his findings.

The story is an interesting one and this is a great way to see the war in a more personal way, I think Mr. Poole would have been better doing this as a long story for a magazine or a paper instead of writing a book.

[Ido · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book describing the courage and intrepidity of a young Screaming Eagle who sacrificed his life to save his comrades in a very bad situation and how his sacrifice was forgotten for almost 40 years before being stumbled upon. He was the son of immigrants who escaped the communist takeover of Hungary and was drafted into the US Army towards the end of the 60s when public opinion about the war in Vietnam was very hostile to those who went over and fought in it. It never ceases to amaze me to read stories of such people who selflessly give their lives to save their friends. It makes me believe that there is something good overall in most people and that gives me hope.

[Bill Conrad · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book description seemed like a revealing slice of history, and I gave it a try. Company of Heroes follows the US Army’s Bravo Company’s exploits deep in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia. Eric describes the main individuals, their background, and their roles in each battle. The result places the battles and soldiers into context regarding the more significant conflict.
This book provided a lot of insight into that time period, and I learned a lot about those involved. My only complaint is that I would have liked the action to be separated from the people’s background, preferably into different chapters. It was a little hard to follow. Given that, this is still a great read.

[Snakeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read about soldiers in Vietnam and after.

[patrick Lorelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book titled Company of Heroes, is just that. It begins with a look into how the author became informed of this story and then the research into the life of Leslie Sabo Jr. who began his tour in Vietnam on November 13, 1969 with Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion 506 Infantry Regiment 101st Airborne Division. The author starts each chapter with a part of a letter that was written home by Sabo, and he goes into the back ground of not only Sabo and his family but as you meet each soldier you find out where they were from and a short back ground into their history. You also learn about the history of the 506. He then takes you the first days of when he arrives in Vietnam the men who is with him and how they go in to be replacements. He also gives a little back ground about the war that is not what you always saw or read about the actual truth that are young men were winning but the media was making it out like it was a losing cause. You then get to go with them out on patrol and get a sense of what it was like in the jungle with the weather and the equipment that they had to carry. How the guys that had been there for a while would look after the new ones. As the book goes along you also see what they go through when they lose a friend and the author does have all of their names in the front of the book. You can see how they become a close knit unit relying on each other to do their job for all of their lives depend on it. You begin to see how they all began to work together. You also get to see the type of person Sabo was before he entered the Army and the effect that he still had on people even after decades had past. This all leads up to a battle that takes place in Cambodia in May of 1970. The 101st along with a few other units were sent into Cambodia to take the battle directly to the enemy and their supply route the Hoe chi mien trail. They would have a few run ins but nothing serious until May 10, 1970 mothers while on patrol like most days the unit came into an area surrounded by trees and brush. They were not grouped together kind of a scattered line. When all of a sudden they were attacked liked they had never been attacked before. The first four lead men went down and the rest of the men followed returning fire but not really being able to see anything. The radio operator found out that he could not get a call out because he was being stepped on and another time had no single. As the battle continued some men were trying to get to the ones in front to pull them back to help them in first aid, but to no avail. There were many acts of valor that day, Donald Smith, attacked an enemy machine gun bunker with grenades that silenced the guns and his live. James Debrew and Ernie Moore were found the next day still next to the 60mm machine gun that they were in charge of. Larry Debrew ran into an open clearing to recuse a wounded soldier. But they said Leslie Sabo’s actions were outstanding because when he took assessment of the situation he made sure that they did not get out flacked and over run. 2nd Platoon took the brunt of the casualties nearly 100%, 3rd Platoon was still fighting. Sabo, would jump onto a wounded soldier to deflect a grenade, he charged a machine gun bunker and when help was finally there in the form of medivac he stepped out from his cover and directed fire to open up a landing zone for the wounded. He sacrificed his life for his comrades. The author then takes you through the lives of the ones who made it out and Sabo’s family. You jump to 1999 when a man by the name of Alton Mabb Jr. Came across Sergeant Sabo’s Army’s service record and noticed the thickness. Size matters” the Army does not waste paper”. This would be the beginning of the fight for Sergeant Sabo to be recognize through it would take a lot of work and changing the three year after the deed is done, but on May 16, 2012 he was awarded the Medal of Honor and the remaining men from his unit and that day were at the White House also and were also asked to stand and be recognized for their service. Truly a very moving and touching story, sad that the paper work got lost and took so long for him and all the men to be recognized. Being a son of a WWII AND Korean Veteran plus an Uncle who fought in Vietnam, this book gave all the men and their families much Honor in how their memory was shared with the reader. An outstanding book and outstanding men. A great book. I got this book from net galley.

[Karl Jorgenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A non-fiction, journalism-like telling of the battles of the Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division in Viet Nam from 1969-70. This was the 'Vietnamization' period, evented by tricky-Dick Nixon, in theory the training of South Vietnamese troops to replace American troops and defend their own country. In practice, rampant corruption in ARVN and ruthless tactics by the North negated the efforts.
But I'm sure the identical tactics will work perfectly in Iraq, because they don't have jungle, right? U.S. troops have trained and equipped the Iraqi army, as they trained and equipped ARVN, and in both cases, it's their homeland that's at stake. The parallel is so obvious, so shocking, that only President Obama and Congress can't see it.
But I digress. Bravo Company wandered into an ambush on May 11, 1970, and got shot to hell. One of their dead received the Congressional Medal of Honor, though it took 43 years to deliver it. This was an elite unit, battle hardened in dozens of firefights. That they would fight heroically against a hugely superior force is not surprising. What is surprising is that they would be ambushed with such deadly effectiveness. The enemy fired on them from prepared positions, kept them pinned down, and repeatedly tried to overrun the U.S. soldiers. Prepared positions? Could a patrol, or point-man, or scout not have discovered these positions before the whole company (two of three platoons) blundered into a massive kill zone? I shake my head at a tragedy that shouldn't have happened.
Anyway, Poole is an okay writer. He's no Ambrose or Keegan, but he gets the detail of the men's lives down and he's done his research. Mostly. The book is padded to 30% extra, with repetitions of details as though refreshing our memory from what we just read.
Also, curiously, the M-60 machine gun, the common man-portable machine gun for about every combat unit in 'Nam, is often referred to, in three different ways: M-60 (correct) .60 caliber (wrong. Jesus, how big would that bullet be? The M-60 fires .30 caliber bullets--7.65 millimeter) and also as a '60 mm machine gun', I suppose because of the '60'. This is particularly dumb: 60 mm would be over two inches, a bullet weighing three or four pounds and the size of grenade. Imagine firing a belt of those. The gun would have to be the size of construction crane. Imagine carrying the ammunition.
Anyway, in this one regard, it's clear nobody who had ever been in the military or read a book about the Viet Nam military reviewed the manuscript. Instead, the author makes two conflicting guesses: M-60 must mean .60 caliber, or 60 mm. Actually, it's just the model number. (Or maybe it was invented in 1960; that would be about right. A lot of military weapons, but not all, are designated by the year of invention/use. Colt 1911, Browning model 1919, etc.
Sad.

[Elgin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eric Poole pulls together some of the Vietnam history of Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion of the 101st Airborne and of private Leslie Sabo. Leslie Sabo was awarded the Medal of Honor (posthumously) for laying down his life for his comrades in Laos. The medal was awarded 42 years after the act of heroism. The delay was largely a result of confusion and transfer of personnel after the indecent, leaving none to follow up an the story of Sabo's bravery.

Company of Heroes honors Sabo by telling his life story, but also honors the other members of Bravo Company. The war was directed by men in Washington DC who were dedicated to keeping a corrupt regime in power and who really had no idea at all of how to win a war that we should never have taken on. As a result the soldiers had only themselves to rely on and their focus was on being there for their comrades. Sabo's actions illustrate and result from this Company loyalty.

The second part of the story is the hardship faced by the returning soldiers and their families and the families of those who did not return. Vietnam vets and their families have had their lives changed in irreparable ways. The government has failed to support the returning vets (as they even today fail to support the veterans for the Middle East wars.) Furthermore, popular opposition to the war (also a result of incompetent leadership) made it very difficult for Vietnam veterans to return to society.

I am very glad that Leslie Sabo was finally honored for his bravery and sacrifice. I also hope that in the future we finally have leaders that understand the true costs of war not only on the nations we invade, but also on the people they force into combat and the families left behind. Too often, wars are conducted by egotistic men who are more interested in their own place in history and not in the welfare of the true victims of war.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointing. Potential was high for an informative story about overlooked heroics during the Vietnam War, and unfortunately what was delivered was a massively padded, repetitive, and pretty boring account. I'm sure Poole did his research, and maybe he wanted to throw everything in, but in reality this book would have been better as a longform piece. I am wondering if this was his first attempt at dealing with military nonfiction. Did the publisher insist on a certain number of pages, and by golly, Poole was going to deliver. Yet even the delivery was awkward. It is not that the book was terrible, and no doubt some readers will enjoy it, but Poole needed much stronger editorial oversight. Reading it was like slogging through a tropical jungle, while getting increasing frustrated and weary.

[Chris Bohl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read too long

Excellent read but several errors in military weapons definitions and other matters. The book was far too long and there was much which was downright boring. Okay book for when you cannot go anywhere and have time.
If shorter it would have been worth it.

[Wiley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting account of a little known effort to have a medal of Honor awarded decades later...But, too much irrelevant detail about various peripheral characters/persons and not enough detail about the actual combat event told in an exciting, engaging manner.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read. I did not get caught up in the story.

[Vern · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those that don't understand the difference between the politics of war, and the realities of the warrior, you should read this book.

[AlegnaB † · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 -- I listened to the eaudio, and quite a lot of it was boring to me.