Word: hieu
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Very important outpost," Hieu assured...
...Very important outpost," Hieu repeated...
...knew our formal role here: we were to establish a "presence," a word with a nice sophisticated ring. More specifically, we were supposed to engage the Viet Cong to keep them from moving through the A Shau Valley and fomenting their insurgency in the populated coastal provinces. But Hieu's words were the immediate reality. The base camp at A Shau was there to protect an airstrip that was there to supply the outpost...
...would spend nearly 20 years, one way or another, grappling with our experience in this country. And over all that time, Vietnam rarely made much more sense than Captain Hieu's circular reasoning on that January day in 1963. We're here because we're here, because...
...were coming down a steep hillside. I was a quarter of the way back in the column, the customary place for advisers. As usual, we were moving in single file, which meant that the V.C. could halt the entire column by picking off the first man. I had urged Hieu to break the battalion into three or four parallel columns, but the forest was so dense and the passes so narrow in places that Hieu let this bit of American wisdom go politely unheeded...