Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War, by Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss

Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War, written by Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss, is a horrific and truly haunting account of atrocities committed by members of an elite recon platoon in Vietnam, less than a year before the 1968 massacre at My Lai.

Expanding on their Pulitzer Prize–winning series of articles published in the Toledo Blade in 2003, Weiss and Sallah detail what appears to have been a command-sanctioned (and possibly encouraged) murder of scores, maybe hundreds, of Vietnamese villagers from May through November of 1967.

Left in the field for weeks at a time and pushed for body counts by their commanding officers, the Tiger Force devolved into a sort of sadistic hit squad, executing and mutilating countless Vietnamese men, women, and children. Some of the soldiers in Tiger Force openly claimed, and sometimes even wore, trophies of the dead.

Would-be whistleblowers and those who openly attempted to prevent the actions of the platoon were ignored by their commanding officers and/or transferred to another unit. Others kept quiet out of fear of retaliation from other members of the force. It was not until a soldier from another unit returned stateside and reported a story he’d heard about a baby who had been beheaded by a member of Tiger Force that an investigation into the platoon’s activities was begun.

In exploring what was labeled the Coy Allegation, Army investigator Gustav Apsey started uncovering evidence that not only was the story of the murdered child likely true but that it was not a single incident, nor was it isolated to one soldier. Apsey went on to spend several years pursuing the case. His final report provided much evidence that war crimes had been committed, but, in the end, no one was ever charged. Those with political interests and the power to say so appear to have decided the investigation was better off suffocated.

Weiss and Sallah sew the Army’s investigation records together with their own interviews of former Tiger Force members and Vietnamese survivors to create a chilling and ultimately very sad narrative. The authors do a fine job of bringing home the horror and pain suffered by the people involved, including some of the willing participants.

How did the military let this happen, and why did the U.S. Government bury it? The cynics inside many of us know the answer, and that is why the story is so important. This book needs and deserves to be widely read.