The fires on Bataan burned on the evening of April 9, 1942 -
illuminating the white flags of surrender against the nighttime sky.
Woefully outnumbered, outgunned, and ill-equipped, battered remnants of
the American-Philippine army surrendered to the forces of the Rising
Sun. Yet amongst the chaos and devastation of the American defeat, Army
Captain Donald D. Blackburn refused to lay down his arms.
With future SF legend Russell Volckmann, Blackburn escaped from Bataan
and fled to the mountainous jungles of North Luzon, where they raised a
private army of over 22,000 men against the Japanese. Once there,
Blackburn organized a guerrilla regiment from among the native tribes in
the Cagayan Valley. "Blackburn's Headhunters," as they came to be known,
devastated the Japanese 14th Army within the western provinces of North
Luzon and destroyed the Japanese naval base at Aparri - the largest
enemy anchorage in the Philippines.
After the war, Blackburn remained on active duty and played a key role
in initiating Special Forces operations in Southeast Asia. In 1958, as
commander of the 77th Special Forces Group, he spearheaded Operation
White Star in Laos - the first major deployment of American Special
Forces to a country with an active insurgency. Seven years later,
Blackburn took command of the highly classified Studies and Observations
Group (SOG), charged with performing secret missions now that main-force
Communist incursions were on the rise.
In the wake of the CIA's disastrous Leaping Lena program, in 1964
Blackburn revitalized the Special Operations campaign in South Vietnam.
Sending cross-border reconnaissance teams into Cambodia and North
Vietnam, he discovered the clandestine networks and supply nodes of the
infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail. Taking this information directly to General
Westmoreland, Blackburn received authorization to conduct full-scale
operations against the NVA and Viet Cong operating in Laos and Cambodia.
In combats large and small, the Communists realized they had met a
master of insurgent tactics - and he was on the US side.
Following his return to the United States, Blackburn was appointed
"Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities," where
he was the architect of the infamous Son Tay Prison Raid. Officially
termed Operation Ivory Coast, the Son Tay raid was the largest POW
rescue mission - and indeed, the largest Special Forces operation - of
the Vietnam War.
During a period when United States troops in Southeast Asia faced
guerrilla armies on every side, it has been little recognized today that
America had a superb covert commander of its own, his guerrilla skills
honed in resistance against Japan. This book follows Donald D. Blackburn
through both his youthful days of desperate combat against an Empire,
and through his days as a commander, imparting his lessons to the
newly-realized ranks of America's own Special Forces.
