Leave No Man Behind: Liberation and Capture Missions (review)

David Isby gives his readers in Leave No Man Behind one of the most thoroughly researched and well-written accounts to date of the high risk subset of Special Operations focused on capture and liberation missions. There are no punches spared in this account; successes and failures are handled with even handed analysis, and Isby has it right when he drives home the importance of timely and actionable intelligence as well as a force in being capable of fast operational reaction time.

The U.S. military has seldom desired these missions and, until the creation of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) in 1987—a four-star joint command dedicated to training, sustaining, and equipping special operations units to carry out capture and liberation missions—generally had not had forces in being capable of conducting them without extensive train-up and a fair degree of just plain luck.

Luck has not always been with U.S. efforts. Intelligence failures doomed the efforts of brave men at Sukchon-Sunchon in North Korea (1950), at Son Tay in North Vietnam (1972), and with the Mayaguez off the coast of Cambodia (1976). Where sound intelligence (particularly HUMINT) has been available to operators, success has frequently followed. Isby uses the liberation of Jessica Lynch and the capture of Saddam Hussein during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003) to demonstrate what can happen when operators get it right.

Another theme Isby establishes is the importance of a standing special operations capability able to react to the needs of the nation. The best two chapters in the book may well be those dedicated to the Son Tay raid and to the debacle that became Desert One (1980). In the former case, there was nothing quick about the creation/train-up of the raiders and the lag time between deciding to conduct the operation and having the ability to conduct it left a daring group of soldiers in control of an enemy POW camp 35 km west of Hanoi devoid of prisoners. Desert One drove home a similar lesson. In the years between Son Tay and Desert One, the U.S. Special Operations capability had atrophied to the point that, despite the best efforts of operators, the failure to quickly revive a capability doomed the effort and cost the lives of skilled soldiers and airmen. Failure did lead to the creation of USSOCOM, a fact frequently ignored by a Special Operations community seldom willing to see their current capabilities born at least in part out of the failure of Desert One.

Isby provides little to fault in his presentation. His research suggests a good variety of sources deeper than the norm for someone outside the special operations community. He understands the difficulty of such missions, has the components of success and failure correct to a fault, and provides a superb, lively read on the history of such missions.