POLICE BOOKS - Robert C. Bogison

Police Books

Robert C. Bogison

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Robert Bogison was born in a working-class neighborhood in Pontiac, Michigan. After graduating from Granada Hills High School in 1966 he focused on college, pool halls, surfing, and part-time jobs. In early January, 1968 Bogison enlisted in the US Army to become a Military Policeman. Basic training followed at Fort Ord, California and Military Police School, Fort Gordon, Georgia. His first duty station was the Correctional Training Facility at Fort Riley, Kansas assigned to rehabilitate incorrigible soldiers, some of whom had circulated for many years in the military penal system since being drafted in the early 1960s.
In July, 1969 he shipped out to the 284th Military Police Company headquartered in the infamous Long Binh Jail compound. Four months later - and by dint of unconventional personal initiative - he transferred to B Company, “Bushwhackers,” 720th Military Police Battalion to be a squad leader. B Company is the only combat infantry MP unit in Military Police Corps history.
He graduated with a BA in Sociology at California State University, Northridge in 1973.
In 1977 he joined the Reno, Nevada Police Department. Over ten years there he was assigned to the Intelligence Unit, the SWAT Team and five years with the Robbery/Homicide Unit. In 1987 he was appointed to the Los Angeles Police Department as a Tactics/Officer Survival Instructor, Homicide Detective and Homicide Detective Supervisor until he was medically retired in 2004 for job-related injuries. Nineteen years were devoted to homicide investigations. Since 2004, Robert and his wife Lorraine, have made their home on twenty acres of mountain land in the forest outside Bozeman, Montana in a house designed and built by his son, Brian a law school graduate of the University of London. His daughter Kari, is a graduate of the University of Alabama. Robert C. Bogison is the author of Up-Close & Personal In-Country, Chieu Hoi, Vietnam 1969-1970.

According to the book description of Up-Close & Personal In-Country, Chieu Hoi, Vietnam 1969-1970, “Military Police are not assigned infantry duties. To protect the largest military base in Vietnam two general officers sat down to talk, one came from the 9th Infantry Division and the other from the 18th Military Police Brigade. The Infantryman was severely strapped for personnel, could the 18th take a tasking at once for which it was completely untrained, unprepared and caught flat-footed? The answer came from the superbly adaptable men who got the job. The Bushwhackers.

America’s largest logistics base in the Vietnam War was Long Binh Post, north of Saigon. A major target for enemy sappers, the sprawling facility was under constant siege. In order to maintain a 24/7 cordon of protection, a Military Police unit was assigned ground infantry duties and a flotilla of riverine PBR gunboats to guard against infiltration and rocket attacks. They called themselves the “Bushwhackers." The job switch is unique in U.S. Army annals. Up-Close and Personal is the uncompromising saga of a young Californian coming of age in a job of great responsibility, danger and stress under combat conditions. Setting ambushes. Close-in engagements with the enemy. Retrieving decomposed remains. Navigating treacherous rivers and tributaries. And when it was over, soldiers lucky enough to survive a tour in-country were met by a hostile civilian population on the home front.