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Raider: The True Story of the Legendary Soldier Who Performed More POW Raids than Any Other American in History
Raider is the true story of the legendary soldier who performed more POW raids than any other American in history.He went into battle as a boy. And on one of the most daring missions of World War II, he became a man-- and the perfect soldier for America's next wars...Galen Charles Kittleson was slight, modest, and born to wage war. The son of an Iowa farmer, Kittleson volunteered in 1943 and caught the eye of his commanders. By 1945, PFC Kittleson was selected for the Army's smallest elite unit, the Alamo Scouts. While U.S. forces were pushing back the Japanese in the Pacific, the Alamo scouts unleashed legendary raids deep behind enemy lines, including the liberation of over 500 starved, beaten prisoners of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines. For Kittleson, a career as a raider had just begun...Charles W. Sasser chronicles the remarkable journey that was Kit Kittleson's courageous life in the service of his country. Now a veteran after first going to war as a boy twenty-five years ago, Kittleson volunteered for one last mission-- the most extraordinary and daring POW raid ever attempted by secret American Special Forces in Vietnam...
345 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 20, 2002
12 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
Charles W. Sasser
61 books59 followersCharles W. Sasser has been a full-time freelance writer/journalist/photographer since 1979. He is a veteran of both the U.S. Navy (journalist) and U.S. Army (Special Forces, the Green Berets), a combat veteran and former combat correspondent wounded in action. He also served fourteen years as a police officer (in Miami, Florida, and in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he was a homicide detective). He has taught at universities, lectured nationwide, and traveled extensively throughout the world. He has published over 2,500 articles and short stories in magazines ranging from Guideposts, Parents and Christian Life to Soldier of Fortune, True West, and Writer's Digest. He is author, co-author or contributing author of more than 30 books and novels.
As an adventurer, Sasser has, at various times: solo-canoed across the Yukon; sailed the Caribbean; motorbiked across the continent; rode camels in the Egyptian desert; floated the Amazon River; dived for pirate treasure; rode horses across Alaska; motorcycled Europe; climbed Mount Rainier; ran with the bulls in Spain; chased wild mustangs...
He has been a professional rodeo clown and bronc rider; professional kickboxer; sky diver and SCUBA diver; college professor; newspaperman; archaeologist/anthropologist...
Sasser now lives on a ranch in Chouteau, Oklahoma with wife Donna where he is a writer, rancher, and businessman who trains horses and team ropes. He also has a private pilot's license and is an ultralite aircraft Certified Flight Instructor.
As an adventurer, Sasser has, at various times: solo-canoed across the Yukon; sailed the Caribbean; motorbiked across the continent; rode camels in the Egyptian desert; floated the Amazon River; dived for pirate treasure; rode horses across Alaska; motorcycled Europe; climbed Mount Rainier; ran with the bulls in Spain; chased wild mustangs...
He has been a professional rodeo clown and bronc rider; professional kickboxer; sky diver and SCUBA diver; college professor; newspaperman; archaeologist/anthropologist...
Sasser now lives on a ranch in Chouteau, Oklahoma with wife Donna where he is a writer, rancher, and businessman who trains horses and team ropes. He also has a private pilot's license and is an ultralite aircraft Certified Flight Instructor.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 27, 2021
A page-turner of a novel about these daring raids, though the use of racial slurs and relative dehumanization of Vietnamese soldiers were things I found to be unnecessary.
Given this book was published shortly after the attacks of 9/11, perhaps this played a role in such choices, but I do think it lessens the story told.
Given this book was published shortly after the attacks of 9/11, perhaps this played a role in such choices, but I do think it lessens the story told.
October 29, 2025
I never knew Kittlesen personally but both my parents and my dads brother knew him. My brother was named after him, and to here some much about the man my brother was named after it's almost like getting to know him through stories shared through books like these.
January 7, 2019
Good read but if you don’t know the history you’ll be disappointed with the end.
March 6, 2024
Good history of a soldier involved in four POW raids.
April 28, 2013
A great biography of an exemplary soldier.
The formation of 6th Army’s Alamo Scouts during WWII propelled American armed forces into unconventional warfare and eventually evolved into elite special forces units such as the U.S. Navy SEALs and the U.S. Army Green Berets. The Alamo Scouts demanded elite, adventurous men for difficult and dangerous missions, often behind enemy lines. Much of the Alamo Scouts’ subsequent reputation was built upon two missions—both of them efforts to free prisoners of war from the Japanese. Galen Kittleson was heavily involved in these efforts.
Charles W. Sasser puts you in Kittleson's life subtly inserting facts in a wonderfully illustrated story so that the details did not become a list of events in his life but a story in which you felt you were there living Kittleson's life. A gentle reminder of the deaths and horror of war reminds the reader that Kittleson's life was not easy or fun, but one involving determination, will power, and risks for something he cared about; lives of the POWs. Sensory details and vocabulary properly lace a tapestry of detail in the horror of the conditions in prisoner of war camps, and the emotion Kittleson and the freed prisoners felt.
Galen was among the initial volunteers. His first POW mission in late 1944 went behind enemy lines in New Guinea where a small contingent of Alamo Scouts freed 66 Dutch and French civilians being held by the Japanese at Cape Oransbari.
Four months later, in January 1945, Army Rangers and Alamo Scouts liberated 513 American and Filipino survivors of the Bataan Death March being held at the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines, a feat celebrated in a number of books and in the movie, The Great Raid. Galen’s mission was to help blast open the front gates of the prison.
In 1968, there were 1,463 U.S. POWs and MIAs listed in Southeast Asia. In spite of all U.S. efforts, not a single American had actually been rescued from a POW camp. Notices appeared on bulletin boards throughout the U.S. Army Special Forces section at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The Son Tay Raid was one of the most elaborate ever devised to recover American POWs. In November 1970, six helicopters with 50 specially-selected and specially-trained Green Berets landed at the camp in North Vietnam in the middle of the night. The raid left a large enemy body count behind, with only one American wounded—but Pappy Kittleson and his teams faced disappointment again. The prisoners had been moved north to the notorious “Hanoi Hilton” within the past several days.
Where the book really goes wrong is the subject, it doesn't pick a path, history or biography, and stay on it. The book doesn't provide more history than a chronology of asymmetrical warfare, or more biography than the months of WWII and Vietnam. It ends up skirting both and suffering for it.
The formation of 6th Army’s Alamo Scouts during WWII propelled American armed forces into unconventional warfare and eventually evolved into elite special forces units such as the U.S. Navy SEALs and the U.S. Army Green Berets. The Alamo Scouts demanded elite, adventurous men for difficult and dangerous missions, often behind enemy lines. Much of the Alamo Scouts’ subsequent reputation was built upon two missions—both of them efforts to free prisoners of war from the Japanese. Galen Kittleson was heavily involved in these efforts.
Charles W. Sasser puts you in Kittleson's life subtly inserting facts in a wonderfully illustrated story so that the details did not become a list of events in his life but a story in which you felt you were there living Kittleson's life. A gentle reminder of the deaths and horror of war reminds the reader that Kittleson's life was not easy or fun, but one involving determination, will power, and risks for something he cared about; lives of the POWs. Sensory details and vocabulary properly lace a tapestry of detail in the horror of the conditions in prisoner of war camps, and the emotion Kittleson and the freed prisoners felt.
Galen was among the initial volunteers. His first POW mission in late 1944 went behind enemy lines in New Guinea where a small contingent of Alamo Scouts freed 66 Dutch and French civilians being held by the Japanese at Cape Oransbari.
Four months later, in January 1945, Army Rangers and Alamo Scouts liberated 513 American and Filipino survivors of the Bataan Death March being held at the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines, a feat celebrated in a number of books and in the movie, The Great Raid. Galen’s mission was to help blast open the front gates of the prison.
In 1968, there were 1,463 U.S. POWs and MIAs listed in Southeast Asia. In spite of all U.S. efforts, not a single American had actually been rescued from a POW camp. Notices appeared on bulletin boards throughout the U.S. Army Special Forces section at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The Son Tay Raid was one of the most elaborate ever devised to recover American POWs. In November 1970, six helicopters with 50 specially-selected and specially-trained Green Berets landed at the camp in North Vietnam in the middle of the night. The raid left a large enemy body count behind, with only one American wounded—but Pappy Kittleson and his teams faced disappointment again. The prisoners had been moved north to the notorious “Hanoi Hilton” within the past several days.
Where the book really goes wrong is the subject, it doesn't pick a path, history or biography, and stay on it. The book doesn't provide more history than a chronology of asymmetrical warfare, or more biography than the months of WWII and Vietnam. It ends up skirting both and suffering for it.
June 11, 2011
If we didn't have men like Galen Kitlleson, we'd have to make them up. A hero of two wars (WWII and Vietnam), Kittleson participated in 4 POW camp raids, including the one that freed the survivors of the Bataan Death March.
September 20, 2013
It's reallythree and a half stars, but I can't get a half, so we go to four. Better written than the work on the Alamo Scouts, but it still comes down a lot to sort of like reading a diary. This has a little more substance to it, though.
May 24, 2010
this was a true story about WWII and Veitnam and the rescuing of POW's it was pretty interesting
June 3, 2012
A true American hero. A great read about a man's journey in WWII and Vietnam.
January 8, 2013
Very good book! I was not disappointed. The pace was excellent and the descriptions of the situations put you right in the action, which was very exciting being a true story.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews