Press Club Author's Book Now Available Near You

Over a period of years, friends, fellow veterans and family members had encouraged me to write a book about my involvement in America's secret war from 1964 through 1972 during the Vietnam War.

It was all top secret, with billions of dollars hidden in the U.S. Navy's budget which bankrolled the secret war where American Green Berets and indigenous troops ran clandestine missions into Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam to determine what the enemy was doing in those "neutral" countries, where more than 100,000 enemy troops, engineers and transportation personnel worked for the North Vietnamese Army. I had two tours of duty in the secret war, all spent with a small reconnaissance team of American and South Vietnamese special operations soldiers. For our missions across the fence, we usually ran six-man teams, heavily armed and with sterile uniforms and equipment, to provide plausible deniability for the U.S. government if we were captured or killed in enemy territory. With my wife Anna's strong supportóincluding providing large bowls of home-made sorbet late at night, I launched into the writing process after friends had lead me to a small publisher outside of St. Louis, Real War Stories. The small company had editors who respected the written word submitted to themówords and concepts that they improved during crucial editing.

The book, Across the Fence: The Secret War in Vietnam was released October of 2003. The non-fiction book includes my story of entering a secret war and the tales of others who fought in this small, seldom discussed military action.

After 18 months of trials and tribulations, readers can go to a Barnes & Noble and order Across The Fence. - Press Club member and North County Times Community Editor J. Stryker Meyer.

Posted April 2005