Soul Patrol review – heartstopping story of the US army’s first Black special ops team at work in Vietnam

Based on a 2003 memoir, this remarkable documentary shows the incredible bravery these young men showed in the face of battle and unrelenting bigotry Here is the remarkable story of the US army’s “Soul Patrol” unit in the Vietnam war: the all-Black Long-Range Reconnaissance Patro

Based on a 2003 memoir, this remarkable documentary shows the incredible bravery these young men showed in the face of battle and unrelenting bigotry Here is the remarkable story of the US army’s “Soul Patrol” unit in the Vietnam war: the all-Black Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol (or LURP), a six-man team of largely teenage African American soldiers, within Company F 51st Infantry. Their duty was to go behind the Vietcong enemy lines, each carrying 150lbs of kit and an M16 assault rifle, and in conditions of terrifying danger report on the enemy’s movements. One heart stopping anecdote is about a panicky member of the unit, who had never seen fireflies before, and became convinced he had seen a Vietcong insurgent in the undergrowth, smoking a cigarette.

The film also reports on their later, poignant reunion as old men, using their contemporary home-movie footage and dramatically recreating some scenes. It is based on the 2003 memoir of the same title by unit member Ed Emanuel (who had gone into journalism in civilian life), based on his own experiences and those of his comrades who he had been able to track down. The publication of the book itself was intended to bring other ex-soldiers out of the woodwork, which it duly did.

The Soul Patrol was at one level a special forces unit, an elite squad that was tough, capable, resourceful, operating at the highest standards of soldiering – and yet it was also subject to racist exploitation as cannon-fodder. This was what many in the unit came to suspect, and one interviewee here recounts his almost hallucinatory sense the enemy itself had spared them from certain death in the jungle, aware of their awful sacrificial purpose. Continue reading...