Prairie Fire

by Kent White Jr.

In 1967, the war in South Vietnam is raging. The North Vietnamese Army is pushing relentlessly into South Vietnam from its jungle bases in Cambodia and Laos, bringing supplies and destruction with it. Deadly clashes between the NVA and U.S. military units in the South are on the rise.

American troops are strictly forbidden from crossing into Cambodia and Laos, preventing U.S. forces from striking the enemy in its heart. A top-secret, covert unit has been formed to gather valuable intelligence on the enemy build-up. The unit is known as SOG, the Studies and Observation Group. SOG is comprised of U.S. Army Special Forces "Green Beret" personnel and local hill tribe mercenaries of South Vietnam. These fierce yet small reconnaissance teams infiltrate by helicopter deep into the dank jungles of Laos and Cambodia to penetrate enemy strongholds.

Missions, new assignments, and daring confrontations bond these brave SOG recon men to each other and to their allied mercenaries. The jungles of Southeast Asia are at once refuge and maelstrom. Many may never return.

A captured NVA soldier turned defector divulges the whereabouts of a POW camp in Laos, where American and South Vietnamese prisoners are being incarcerated. Staff Sergeant Steve McShane and his five man recon team are assigned the perilous mission to discover the truth about the reported prison and its secreted location . . . but at what cost?

Genres: Fiction

270 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Bernie Weisz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Title of Review: A 20 Year Vow of Secrecy to the U.S. Government after the Vietnam War Ended Prevented this Book’s Release!

Former Special Operations Group member Kent White turned author thinly veils “Prarie Fire” as “fiction,” yet it is all too obvious from the details within this story that this is anything near concocted drama. SOG, or more accurately deemed “Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG)” that White was a member of was a highly classified, multi-service United States special operations unit which conducted covert unconventional warfare operations prior to and during America’s 1964-1972 military involvement in the Vietnam War. SOG units conducted strategic reconnaissance missions in North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and were tasked with the capture of enemy prisoners, rescuing downed pilots, sabotaging enemy munitions caches as well as conducting rescue operations to retrieve prisoners of war throughout Southeast Asia. The author, or for that matter any American volunteering to serve in SOG signed an agreement with the U.S. Government for 20 years promising not to discuss or write about anything they saw, participated in or knew. Violation of this agreement would result in federal prosecution, fines and incarceration. White acknowledges this by asserting that while "Prarie Fire" was penned as a work of fiction, many of the events in this novel are only slight variations of actual occurrences.

The central theme of “Prarie Fire” concerns the revelation by a captured North Vietnamese Army officer under interrogation that a prisoner of war camp holding incarcerated Americans existed in supposedly neutral Laos, “off limits” by the rules of engagement agreed upon at the Geneva Convention, yet routinely used as a staging ground as well as a main artery of the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” for northern communist forces infiltrating into South Vietnam. Following the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, 591 American prisoners of war were returned during “Operation Homecoming. The U.S. listed about 1,350 Americans as prisoners of war or missing in action and roughly 1,200 Americans were reported killed in action and their bodies were not recovered. Many of these were airmen who were shot down over North Vietnam or Laos. Investigations of these incidents have involved determining whether the men involved survived their shoot down; if they did not survive, then they considered efforts to recover their remains. Considerable speculation and investigation has gone to a hypothesis that a significant number of these men were captured as prisoners of war by Communist forces in the two countries and kept as live prisoners after the war's conclusion for the United States in 1973. A vocal group of POW/MIA activists maintains that there has been a concerted conspiracy by the Vietnamese government and every American government since then to hide the existence of these prisoners. The U.S. government has steadfastly denied that prisoners were left behind or that any effort has been made to cover up their existence.

Yet in “Prarie Fire” White explains the endeavor by a U.S. “Recon Team” to discover the validity of the captured NVA officer turned collaborator’s claims by going “over the fence," i.e. infiltrating a 6 man team with generic uniforms minus any indication of American affiliation into Laos to verify this. Did this ever actually happen during the war? In November of 1970, a force of 56 American commandos raided an NVA POW camp near Hanoi in a province called Son Tay. An estimated 70 captured US military personnel were held there during the middle of the Vietnam War, thus necessitating an attempt to rescue these POW’s. Prior to the raid, all POW’s were moved to another camp by the NVA. U.S. intelligence may have identified this the day before the raid, but the raid was sent anyway. Although one of the U.S. helicopters crashed, the raid succeeded completely in its technical objective of seizing control of the camp with no American losses. Although there were no POW’s present to rescue, an unknown number of North Vietnamese soldiers were killed in the raid. Despite any official documentation of this due to SOG’s clandestine methods, you can be sure this prison camp’s discovery and reconnaissance involved SOG teams. Methods that SOG used, their use of mercenaries and infiltration techniques are all discussed. “Prairie Fire” is a non stop nail biter that will keep your attention to the very last page! A must read!

[John Podlaski · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Kirstin Morrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a work of fiction, this book seems to draw heavily on the author's own experiences as a Special Forces veteran of the Vietnam War.

This book neither congratulates nor condemns the policy makers; it pokes the standard amount at the disorganization and lack of sense in the orders that seem to come down from higher up; and it both humanizes the front-line soldiers while treating them within the story with respect.

There are no saints in this story, but you'll come to understand them a lot better by the end. Drinking and cheating and all sorts of things like that really just come out of being out of your social structure and in hell on earth, so the author never condemns.

Sadly, some of the playful interaction between characters seems a little forced. Early on most of the guys are pretty one note in their responses to things -- everything's a smile, everyone is brave all the time. But things get fleshed out a little later on as one of the characters develops into a main character.

There were a lot of slice of life scenes in this book that weren't tied into the plot and were only given as flavour. The scene with the cattle rancher in the hotel didn't move the plot or anything else forward, but it was enjoyable.

This book sets out to tell a story of a period of time and a group of people in a place. It succeeds in that. The structural problems, ineffective rising conflict, lack of real climax, difficulty differentiating between otherwise cookie-cutter characters, and tying all scenes together could have used some work, and I took a star off for that.

I had trouble getting into it for those reasons, but after a few false starts, I did finally enjoy finishing this book.

[Rodney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a fictional account of recon teams for macv-sog during the Vietnam war. If you can make it thru the stories about getting drunk at the beginning the middle and the end of the book are pretty interesting when the author finally gets around to describing actual missions. The only part of the book I did not enjoy was the alcohol drinking but otherwise it was a quick adventure story. When this book was written not much literature was available on macv-sog history but now several good books exist so I recommend that the reader read both non-fiction and fiction accounts of this era of military history.

[Christie Aliberti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read

Good read of some great men. I enjoyed the way author was able to tell the story without all the excessive descriptions of everything and just tell the story

[Landy Rayle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good read

KEnt writes from experience and told a terrific tale hard to put down once it gets rolling. I will read anything else he it's out.

[Bobby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. Takes me back to my days in-country. Look forward to another book.