Book Review: TIGER FORCE

(Not my usual spastic self because A. It's a somber book and B. It's a formal book review).

 My review can also be found on Goodreads. Link to the book.

Sallah, Michael, and Mitch Weiss. Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War. New York, NY: Little, Brown, 2006. Print.

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            Tiger Force throws no curves; it is a straightforward book that delivers what Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss promise to deliver right from the front of the cover. The “true story of men and war” presents itself in a simplistic, chronological structure that nevertheless does justice to a highly disturbing story.

The book begins with a prologue that sets up the after-story of one of the most notorious killers on Tiger Force (a reconnaissance platoon of the 1^st Battalion/327^th Infantry developed for the largely guerilla nature of the Vietnam War)—Sam Ybarra. In 1975, following the anticlimactic conclusion of the Vietnam War, Ybarra, an alcoholic suffering from PTSD, is living with his mom on the San Carlos Indian Reservation. An agent from the CID called Gustav Apsey has arrived for an interview, but Ybarra turns him away.

Flashback to 1967; the signs of mental cracking are already beginning to manifest. Replacements fill in for the two killed and the twenty-five wounded Tigers after the Mother’s Day Massacre. In addition to Ybarra and his best friend Kenneth Green, the reader is introduced to the surviving and new members of the platoon. There is happy-go-lucky surfer Kerrigan, tough-love sergeant Doyle, idealistic medic Bowman, and many more. Later on, these succinct profiles melt away until only the killers and the anti-killers remain.

The book is essentially divided into three phases: The Song Ve Valley, Operation Wheeler, and the post-war investigation. In the South Ve Valley portion, Tiger Force receives the mission to relocate villagers living in the fertile, rice paddy, which feeds the Viet Cong. Despite the many leaflets and the promise of food and shelter at the relocation camps, the Tigers are met with resistance. By the end of the South Ve Valley, ten unthreatening farmers are killed; elderly men are beaten until their brains come out; hamlets are torched; and ears are cut off and collected for trophies and necklaces. The killings only escalate with Operation Wheeler, a search and destroy missions during which the entire area of Quang Tin becomes a free fire zone. The most grotesque of atrocities, one that is repeatedly underscored during future investigations, is the beheading of a baby by Ybarra.

The third phase of the book, the investigation, opens in 1972. The reader follows the diligent and relentless CID agent Gustav Apsey. In order to get the reluctant ex-Tigers to talk, Apsey faces long hours in the office, numerous flights to track down Tigers who have scattered to other outposts in the army or to civilian life, and even gunpoint at the home of an unstable veteran. Then, just as his work comes to fruition, he is shipped away to Korea. The case is closed. No one receives justice.

For a book of this moderate size, Tiger Force packs in a hefty blow of information to the gut. It leaves the reader at once reeling and numb from the sheer amount of information and the horrid nature of the events described. Its inconclusive ending may drive the reader to look up more information on Tiger Force. As the book would suggest, however, an Internet search on Tiger Force turns up an unfortunate dearth of information. As a result, it is only more incredible that Sallah and Weiss were able to write in the third person narrative, fleshing out details of events, backgrounds, and in-the-moment actions.

As expected from Sallah and Weiss, both of whom received the Pulitzer for their journalism detailing Tiger Force, the writing is streamlined, frank, and at times, dry. The dryness, however, serves the story well, for what takes the stage in the book is what happened. Though it brushes on some of the psychology of war and men, Tiger Force is not by any means a book unraveling the beauty of life and the ugliness of war. Any flowery language would detract from its mission: why did the atrocities happen? Why did nobody stop them?

            However, in asking the question why? Sallah and Weiss flaunt the weakest point in the book.

While an empathy link between the reader and the soldier in any book of war is incredibly difficult—even foolish—to establish (after all, no amount of living vicariously through words will truly recreate that fine tightrope between life and death), sympathy toward men of war can and has been achieved in other war books. Tiger Force, however, vacillates between portraying the Tigers as men who committed the atrocities because they were frayed to the quick and men who committed atrocities because a factor in their psyches and backgrounds made them susceptible to becoming bloodthirsty, twisted killers who beheaded babies. At times, Sallah and Weiss seemed to favor the latter explanation, tossing out hypotheses not limited to abusive parents and rocky childhoods. In addition, the clear distinction made between Tiger Force’s story and My Lai’s make it harder for the reader to attribute the killings to “madness” brought about by weeks of being picked off by snipers and booby-traps (which seemed to be the favored explanation in the beginning). In particular, the reader may be confused as to how to view Sam Ybarra. His post-war days are tragic, flooded with alcohol, nightmares, and guilt, but Sallah and Weiss do not expand that into point about personal punishment versus punishment by justice.

The problem with Tiger Force is that it is minimally biased in details, word choice, and tone. That is all very well—for journalism. Tiger Force, however, is not journalism. As a book, it should be doing more than to inform; it should offer a unique perspective from the authors themselves on the subject matter. The problem with Tiger Force is that it suspiciously resembles a collage of news articles from the authors’ work in the Toledo Blade’s Tiger Force series.

Thus, the praise of Edward Nawokta serves as a double-edged sword:

“Tiger Force is a shining example of how journalism can fulfill its most noble aims: informing and, consequently, empowering the public.”

Perhaps the point of the authors is there is no answer to the why.

Perhaps the point of the authors is that it all happened. And not a thing was done about it.