Word: compella
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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Private First Class Paul Compella's parents still live in Torrington, Conn., and when they go past the school gym named for their son who was killed in Kien Hoa province, Viet Nam, March 14, 1968, they are burdened each time with a prideful sorrow. Paul's bronze star was melted into the plaque underneath the press box. The parents think about the world. "This is not Viet Nam," says Carmine Compella. "You see the hardware the Russians put into Afghanistan? They are after that oil. We'd have a reason if we fought this...
Colonel George Robertson, who commanded the Infantry Brigade of the Riverine Force on the Giao Thong the night of Compella's death, is retired at Sea Island, Ga., living gently off his pension and his wife's inheritance. His mind is free to pursue W.H. Auden and Thomas Love Peacock, but his soul, forged at West Point, still hears distant thunder. "Leadership is never good when it is self-conscious," he says. "The President should respond instinctively to events -but the instinct is really educated intellection, and it has to be harnessed to a natural appetite for decision...
Lieut. General George Simpson Lemming (ret.) ponders his proud military history in La Jolla, Calif. He commanded the 12th Infantry Division ("the Lionheads"), of which Robertson's Riverines were a part the night Compella died. The enemy body count for the operation was 158. Says Lemming: "The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is a gift. The terrain would be very good, especially for armor. And there would not be any beatniks raising hell with Washington. Resupply would be difficult, but of course we could do it with the petroleum from Iran. Might as well take them over while...
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