The men behind the Trident

It was in South Vietnam's notorious Viet Cong-controlled and predator-infested mangrove swamps in the 1960s that the U.S. Navy Sea-Air-Land commandos, or SEALs, established their richly deserved reputation as America's best trained and most effective special warfare operators. SEAL Team One was then a top secret unit, its exploits cloaked in mystery. Here for the first time, the SEALs who were there talk about the missions that are left out of the official histories and existing accounts. Extraordinarily gripping and personal, their narratives reveal what really happened on those covert forays. These "devils in green faces," as the Viet Cong called the camo-painted SEALs they came to fear, vividly describe an astonishing variety of firefights, ambushes, raids, and prisoner snatches. They also provide insider perspectives on experimental and exclusive weapons and equipment, such as the Stoner light machine gun and a duckbill-muzzled shotgun. They reveal long-secret tactics and techniques that evolved through their own ingenuity, flexibility, and teamwork - and that were paid for in blood while fighting the elusive VC in the Rung Sat Special Zone, the Mekong Delta, and other areas. Dennis Cummings has succeeded in coaxing the SEALs to reveal what made them tick, why they volunteered for such dangerous work and returned for multiple tours in the unpopular war, how they pooled their special talents and motivations, and finally how they overcame fear, frustration, and personal losses. A counter to the uncorroborated barroom braggadocio common to other accounts, Cummings's achievement gives the reader the best picture available of what it really meant to wear the distinctive SEAL trident insignia.