Rating: 
Summary: superlative book
Review: This is a wonderful book. It tells the story of 15 marines assigned
to defend a hamlet, working with about the same number of Popular Force
militiamen. Of that original band, 7 are killed in the first half of
the book, most of them in a single firefight when their "fort" is
over-run. (The PFs suffer losses at roughly the same rate.) But
they love the work, get along fine with the villagers, and exact an
even higher toll on the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units sent
against them.Bing West is a gifted writer. Here he is, describing a
marine with a fifty-caliber machine gun: "The drunken soldier was set now, having leaned his body over the
rear of the gun and swung the heavy barrel upward. It wavered around
the fort and then slowly swung out toward the paddies, like a compass
needle coming to rest. Then came the solid, belting jackhammer sound
of the weapon firing and the thick incendiary slugs, big as cigars,
burned out over the paddies." He also knows what he's writing about: West was a platoon leader
in Vietnam; he visited the village often, and he led some of the
patrols he describes, though mostly the book is based on interviews
with the men of the combined-action squad. Later, West was an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan
administration. He wrote the superlative account of the 2003 Iraq
War, "The March Up", which is what led me
to this book. I'm glad I had the chance to discover it, and I
recommend it without reservation. -- Dan Ford
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