Soul Patrol review – heart stopping story of Vietnam’s first Black special ops team

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.