Books about combat are compelling. There's an inherent thirst for the stories about brave men, completing impossible tasks under the worst of conditions. Cry Havoc tells the story of how the Army Rangers emerged from the shadow of the Vietnam War, and morphed themselves into what World War II hero and former commander of US forces in Vietnam General Creighton W. Abrams called, "the finest light infantry in the world." In October of 1983, those men would conduct the first mass combat parachute drop since Vietnam and do so under intense fire from Cuban and Grenadian forces.
Once the Rangers hit the ground, the action didn't stop. Over three days, they cleared the enemy from commanding positions overlooking the airfield, rescued over 400 US medical students, and conducted an air assault on an enemy training facility, an action that was considered a 'suicide mission'. And yet they accomplished all of their missions in the best tradition of their Ranger forefathers.
Cry Havoc is written on the back of extensive interviews with a very small, exclusive community of Rangers who undertook this perilous parachute jump in combat. The narrative is replete with intimate detail, raw emotion, and the chaos and immediacy of small unit action. Far reaching in its impact, the Rangers' performance during Urgent Fury has shaped the way the United States military undertakes special operations to this day. Until now, that story had never been told.