In graduate school, one of my top professors was Dr. Samuel Sarkesian. Before becoming a professor at Loyola Chicago, he had a military career, ending up as a Lieutenant Colonel. That quiet man was one of the first officers chosen by Colonel Aaron Bank to set up the 10th Special Forces. Formed in 1952, it was designed to combat terrorism, operate behind enemy lines, etc. He served behind North Korean lines during the Korean War, as well as on various missions in Africa, Eastern Europe, Viet Nam, etc.
As one of the courses I had from him centered on guerilla warfare (we read Mao, Che, Debray, etc.) he highly recommend this book as a primer on how the Communists fought the French during their war in Indo-China and the dilemma Western armies have in combating insurgent movements both in the countryside and in urban areas. Reading this novel caused all those classes and discussions to come roaring back from the recesses of my mind and I felt the same sense of excitement as I did during those classes so many years ago.
This is an outstanding novel, one which will teach the novice more about guerilla warfare than reading several scholarly textbooks. It is not a shoot-em up, gory book, but one easily understands the steps that may necessarily be taken especially when dealing with tribal societies (such as we currently have in the Middle East).
I highly recommend this novel and if all else fails and you are lazy, watch a movie called “The Lost Command” which was loosely based on this novel.
Read this book, and you will have a better understanding of the problems we face and realize that without boots on the ground, we only prolong the war and cause ourselves more casualties.
