Product Description

DESPERATE LANDS is the unprecedented story of U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers and the missions they have carried out while fighting the war on terror in the Horn of Africa and in Afghanistan. The book is unique and timely, in that it tells the compelling story of our nations struggle and of its soldiers fighting a new and different kind of war never fought before a Global War on Terror. This true story comes at a time when our nation has divided feelings and opinions about this war a division that exists among both government leaders and the American people. These pages offer a different perspective that of lower enlisted soldiers reflecting their personal experience in combat zones in Africa and Afghanistan as they witnessed and experienced the fog of war. The author Special Forces Master Sergeant Regulo Zapata, Jr. shares his extraordinary journey through ancient and desperate lands at the front lines of this ongoing war. Here are true stories of sacrifice, bravery, excitement, horror, anger, tedium, fear, camaraderie, and more a firsthand look behind the headlines at the reality of the exceptional and difficult challenges U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers face as they defend America against the terrorist threat.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45136 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
An exciting read and fascinating journey. A must-read this year.
--Chief Warrant Officer John Brookins, U.S. Army Special Forces.

Excellent read! Regulo gives a detailed, emotional description of the efforts of Special Forces to hunt down terrorists in Africa and in Afghanistan and bring them to justice.
--Major Bill Lamos, United States Air Force (Retired).

Master Sgt. Regulo Zapata has written a fascinating account of life inside a contemporary Special Forces Operational Detachment ALPHA as it conducts missions around the world. Zapata is a member of the old breed of SF sergeants and provides a career professionals perspective on this small community of warrior-brothers that couldn't be written by anybody but a Green Beret. This book describes how an ODA works as it gears up for battle and then executes its many missions in strange places around the globe. A good addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in special operations forces at war.
--Hans Halberstadt, author, Roughneck Nine-One and War Stories of the Green Berets.

For Special Forces Master Sgt. Regulo Zapata, Jr., writing and publishing a book about the months he spent immersed in the fog of war along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was more daunting than the mission itself. Zapata's first sentence has been tweaked and edited, but it has always been about the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City, an event that sparked two wars. Zapata had been in the Army since he was 19 years old, but his involvement in the War on Terror began the day he was called on to report for duty. His goal was to lend his reader a glimpse into the everyday activities of Special Forces soldiers in Djibouti and Afghanistan while they trained villagers to fight Taliban forces. Although some readers have questioned Zapata's storytelling ability, many readers said his story is an accurate and insightful account of a soldier fighting the War on Terror.
--Sara Suddes, The Gilroy Dispatch

Master Sgt. Regulo Zapata has written a fascinating account of life inside a contemporary Special Forces Operational Detachment ALPHA as it conducts missions around the world. Zapata is a member of the old breed of SF sergeants and provides a career professionals perspective on this small community of warrior-brothers that couldn't be written by anybody but a Green Beret. This book describes how an ODA works as it gears up for battle and then executes its many missions in strange places around the globe. A good addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in special operations forces at war.
--Hans Halberstadt, author, Roughneck Nine-One and War Stories of the Green Berets.

About the Author
Regulo Zapata Jr. was an Army Special Operations NCO and retired as a Master Sergeant in 2003 after 28 years of service with the U.S.Army Special Forces. He now lives in Santa Clara County, California.

Customer Reviews

Desperate Lands an almost apt title!
I bought this book because of the ratings it got on amazon but like another reader above i am wondering if they were describing the same book as i just read. While there is no doubting the bravery of the man in question i quite frankly found this book very hard to read. I actually found the writing to be nothing short of 'strange' - at times it feels like the text was written by a robot or someone who does not have a good command of the english language - with lots of repetition and this is suddenly dispersed with the odd curse which seems like it was just put in there to liven things up - in short it feels uncomfortable to read and i think that the author wrote this book and then someone came along and 'dubbed it' ! Apart from all of that the book is extremely boring - dealing with the day to day medial tasks these guys took on and very little action which i think is what most readers/buyers of these types of books expect. Overall one of the worst special forces books i ever read because quite simply i had to 'fight' myself to keep reading it to the finish.

Can't put book down!
A great story of an honorable soldier. I was hooked into the book from the first few pages and don't want to put the book down. Desperate Lands is a perfect title and opens your eyes to the experiences of what our soldiers of the USA have to go through in the name of our country. A must have book!

Did anyone else read it??
I read through the reviews of this book before ordering it from Amazon, and after reading it... I'm really wondering if anyone else read the same book I did. First of all, the book is extremely short - 191 pages. Furthermore, 80 of those 191 pages have black and white pictures on them. So there are actually only 111 pages of full text and many of them aren't full.

I want to be clear that this isn't a critique of author's service in the Army and Nat Guard. I'm thankful for men like Zapata willing to serve the U.S., and I'm sure he served valiantly. That being said, there just wasn't anything the least bit exciting in this book (or even very informative for that matter). It barely mentioned the training that goes into making a Green Beret and spent very few pages on the actual missions that were carried out. In other books the author will quickly skim over details like filling out forms, shuffling team members, loading a humvee, etc. Not in this book. The reader can look forward to page after page of this kind of exciting narrative only to find that the actual mission lasts only a few pages and ends in a remarkably uneventful fashion. To be fair, there were brief points in the book when the Taliban attempted to drop artillery rounds in U.S. bases, and Zapata and his men did recover several weapons caches and take a few Taliban prisoners. It just wasn't a very exciting book, to put it mildly. As someone very interested in the Special Forces I would recommend some other books looooong before this one. For anyone interested in the training of Green Berets or SEALs check out Dick Couch's Chosen Soldier, Warrior Elite, and The Finishing School. Masters of Chaos by Linda Robinson is a great book about the missions and operations of the Green Berets. Lone Survivor and Inside Delta Force are also great reads on SEALs and Delta respectively.