Men in Green Faces

They go out into the jungle as a team, inserted by Swift Boat or Huey for maximum impact. And when they killings tops, the enemy only knows one thing: they were hit by the Men in Green Faces. At base camp they wash off the paint, the blood and the mud, talk about home, and keep their weapons clean. But one of them is slipping into his own private war. His squad think Gene is their good luck charm. Gene thinks God is keeping him alive for one reason only: to find and kill a rogue NVA colonel--and everyone around him.This classic novel of Vietnam, written by former SEAL Gene Wentz and B. Abell Jurus, remains the most powerful and starkly realistic vision of Seal action ever captured in writing. here is the story of a good soldier trained to be part of an elite team of warriors--and of the killing grounds where he was forever changed.From Publishers WeeklyWith just weeks remaining in his 180-day tour of Vietnam, Navy SEAL Gene Michaels hopes he will live to see his pregnant wife again, but he thrives on his dangerous missions. In fact, he feels his service will be incomplete if he does not eliminate a North Vietnamese Army "enforcer," one Col. Nguyen, who has brought terror to South Vietnamese villages. His determination redoubles after his best friend dies in a Nguyen-led ambush. Intensifying Michaels's despair is the likelihood that the team was sold out by a Vietnamese interrogator whom he had offended. But finding Nguyen, while a high priority for the U.S. war effort, does not postpone any other missions. Michaels and his team are "inserted and extracted" literally every day, entering impenetrable jungles and engaging numerically superior forces. In what is to be their final mission, for example, Michaels leads his team of seven against Nguyen and a division of 5000 North Vietnamese regulars. But even this explosive "op" does not prove as deadly as the mission Michaels volunteers to join a day before his tour is up. With neither the Bible-reading Michaels nor anyone else reflecting on the war itself, the players are rather thinly developed, and the plot, nominally the search for Nguyen, is weaker as a result. But personalities inexorably emerge, and it is hard not to root for individual SEALs. Wentz fought in Vietnam as a Navy SEAL and freelance writer Jurus is director of the Southern California Writers' Conference. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsVietnam veteran Wentz draws on his own wartime experience with the Navy's toughest commandos for an exciting, unnerving, no-frills war novel. Working in small, tight, self-contained units, the Navy's SEAL (SEa, Air, Land) commandos took on dangerous, dirty little jobs requiring stealth, strength, and flawless cooperation. Wentz and Jurus successfully re-create the manic intensity that characterized SEAL operations at their height during the Vietnam war. They follow Seaman Gene Michaels through a dozen or so operations as he serves the latter half of his first hitch in the war zone. Deeply religious, married, and soon to become a father, Gene is seen as something of a good-luck charm by the rest of his unit. As long as he has been with them, they have made it out of every hair-raising operation unscathed. Gene credits God with the safe deliveries- -until his faith is tested with the death in battle of his best friend. Popping amphetamines, the young commando goes on a sleepless 12-day hunt for the North Vietnamese colonel he holds responsible for his friend's death. The title refers to the SEALs' practice of painting their faces before their sorties, providing camouflage and scaring the wits out of anyone unfortunate enough to tangle with them. All war, no politics. Grim but well done. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.