Word: platooned
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Viet Nam is no war for the classic military historian. It offers no vast clash of arms; no divisions sweep and pivot to the grand strategy of latter-day Clausewitzes. Instead there are quick, dirty fire fights-usually on no more than platoon or company scale-set in copses of bamboo and thorn vine so thick that men kill at a range of 10 ft. without having once seen each other. It is a war of leg-shearing booby traps and dung-smeared punji stakes, of professional skill and personal courage. It is also a war that is tailor-made...
Zeno tells the grim story of a single pathfinder platoon in that battle. Heartened at first because they encounter almost no enemy opposition when they land in their drop zone, the 50-odd men in the platoon soon discover that they are in fact hopelessly trapped. After a few days of unrelieved agony, death becomes relatively unimportant. What matters more is how it will come. Using prose as direct and brutal as a trench knife to the gut, and with utter fidelity to military fact, the author meticulously ticks off the manner in which each man dies. The Cauldron...
...favor. In past wars and the earlier days of the Viet Nam conflict, the U.S. conducted patrols for reconnaissance and intelligence purposes only. Engagement with the enemy was to be avoided for the sound reason that a patrol seldom consists of a unit much larger than a 30-man platoon, and often is as small as a squad...
Possible & Potent. Typical of the results of the new tactic was an earlier Junction City battle in Tay Ninh. A U.S. deep patrol of platoon size flushed out what appeared to be two enemy companies on a heavily jungled hillside. Within two minutes of the first exchange of shots, more than 30 U.S. artillery pieces, all moved up the previous day to cover the patrol, were pounding the enemy. But the two Viet Cong companies proved to be two battalions instead, and the U.S. platoon was hard pressed when, 15 minutes after the artillery opened up, the first fighter-bombers...
Firepower v. Footwork. The President's new platoon also includes a military star: Lieut. General Bruce Palmer, 53, who was appointed last week as commander of Field Force II-a composite outfit of infantry, artillery and armored divisions that recently attempted, in vain, to wipe out the Viet Cong base headquarters near Cambodia. Palmer-who commanded the 23,000-man force in the Dominican Republic-replaces Lieut. General Jonathan Seaman. Having already proved his diplomatic deftness, Palmer will now have to adapt to a type of warfare where firepower counts less than footwork...