Abandoned in Hell: The Fight for Vietnam’s Firebase Kate

Former Army Special Forces Captain Albracht and prolific author and screenwriter Wolf (Buddha’s Child) present a riveting look at a little-known but compelling Vietnam War story. It centers on how, in October of 1969, Albracht, a young Green Beret officer, managed to lead his vastly outnumbered American troops and their Montagnard tribesmen allies on a desperate and daring escape from a remote hilltop outpost deep in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The authors mix a history of the American war in Vietnam through 1969 with Albracht’s first-person story and the thoughts of survivors interviewed for the book. At Firebase Kate, some 200 Americans and Montagnards—“positioned as bait, designed to lure the North Vietnamese across the [Cambodian] border”—came under a withering five-day attack by three enemy regiments, some 6,000 men. Despite being wounded and near exhaustion—and with virtually no ammunition or water—Albracht brought off a minor miracle, leading “a hundred and fifty fighting men, many suffering from wounds or battle shock, through a gauntlet of fire” to safety. [em](Feb.) [/em]