Gone Native: An NCO's Story

Sgt. Cornett had an exceptional military career, centered around multiple tours in Vietnam. The son of a military family, he enlisted to get a choice of assignments rather than whatever the draft tossed his way. A good record in bootcamp got him through Special Forces Medic training. He didn’t fit in with Special Forces culture, and after bouncing around the rear area teaching new troops medic techniques, he wound up with the “Foul Dudes” Lurps, a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol for the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne. Cornett and the Foul Dudes got into a ton of trouble: heavy combat, heavy drinking, smoking Marijuana and worse. It’s amazing Cornett even remembers anything that happened, given his substance consumption. Cornett got into tons of trouble off the battlefield, from an annulled marriage to a local beauty queen, to an arrest for drug trafficking after he hit on a waitress at a cop bar in Los Angeles with a trunk full of Vietnamese marijuana. The book picks up again when he joins Project Phoenix, and gets assigned to Montagnard villages, and a Vietnamese Ranger company operating out of Dalat. Cornett winds up marrying the sister-in-law of his commander, Captain Phong, but his American commanders won’t let him see his pregnant wife. After she miscarries, Cornett frags the XO, with the confession “Yeah I blew him up. He was an asshole.” The officer survived, Cornett served a few years in the brig, and then returned to the Army as an NCO, competition wrestler, and parachute team demonstrator.

This is a big rambling collection of warstories, and that’s its strength and weakness. Cornett gives it to you straight, but the book could benefit from some organization, and maybe a little more insight.