Phantom Warriors

[exlrrp]

I just got through reading the 2d book of two by Gary Linderer.
What these are are lrrp and Ranger war stories and about as varied a collection as you'll find.
I thought for decades that this was the untold story of the war--the lrrps--and now its coming out just how fantastic this experience really was
It's difficult to tell lrrp stories because they are kind of incredible. I havent told all my stories because I have troub le believing a few myself. Theyre hard to put into words, the easiest ones to tell are about other people, not your own.
I came across these books after the 2d one was written which was too bad because Lindererer says he's not writing another book. I have a few stories that might have been included on a 3d. I guess every lrrp has them--like the time the NVA peed on me, the time they dropped us on a platoon of NVA or the time a tiger found Team 4-6 in the middle of the night. The extraordinary was routine.
Linderer, a former lrrp, has written several books but these are the only 2 Ive read. Everything seems right about the stories with a few exceptions ( a 17 year old lrrp? an 18 year old E6?) I have emailed him about a few of these.
But in the main, the stories are good ol lrrp stories. There's the one about the major general that was trying to micromanage the lrrp patrol from a helicopter--they told him to fck off and he brought them up in front of a court martial--this became a legendary story among lrrps, its good to see it down in writing.
It talks matter of factly about some stuff that really happened--the philosophy on killing civilians for example (if they compromised the missson) It tells of the long exciting waits for extraction when the promised helicopters didn't come, when other promised support evaporates and all thats left is some one on one nation building untill your country thinks about you again.
But most of all I liked these books because they tell the story of the lrrps as they really were: not a bunch of lifer pros, like SOG but a bunch of hardcore E5s, E4s and E3s, a bunch of kids really, always outnumbered and miles away from help, taking the war to the enemy and shoving it down their throats.
It was the greatest thing I ever did in my life.
I recommend these books

James Worth

Happy just to be alive