Word: platooner
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Crowd Orchestration. Even if it had been planned, no Brechtian genius could have staged the audience participation better. Before Nixon was 60 seconds into his speech, the platoon of hecklers began to shout: "Tell us about Kent State!" "Right on!" "Make more bombs!" The vast majority of the audience began a counterpoint of loud and sustained applause. Nixon, hearing the radicals, hurried his speech, with half-stops in his monotone. But his lines about "the willingness to listen to somebody without trying to shout him down" summoned up thunderous ovations...
...Moscow's answer was to give increasingly heavy command responsibility to Russian soldiers. At the time of the ceasefire, according to authoritative Israeli estimates, Russians controlled all of Egypt's missiles and computers, four strategic air-bases, most jet aircraft, and all reconnaissance work down to the platoon level. Except for ground troops, as one well-informed Israeli official put it, "we were fighting the Red Army...
...Communists, apparently a mixed force of North Vietnamese sappers and Viet Cong guerrillas, skillfully pinned down one platoon of U.S. Marines and one of the Popular Forces that were on night ambush duty near by. A Regional Forces platoon was trapped inside its compound near the village's only military target, a bridge across the Ba Ren River. After pounding the three hamlets with some 200 mortar rounds, enemy troops slipped into Thanh My. By then, many of the residents, trying to escape the mortar explosions, had taken refuge in bunkers. They soon became graves...
...strike live-and-let-live bargains with the Communists in their areas. But ARVN is much better led than it was before Thieu began replacing the old mandarin generals with battle-seasoned officers and the products of improved training academies. One grim sign of a new aggressiveness on the platoon and company level is the soaring casualty rate among lieutenants and captains...
...thrown objects-but none seriously enough to require hospitalization. Though the units had served in riot situations before, most of the lower-ranking enlisted men had no war experience. The Guardsmen at Kent had apparently not paid much attention to whatever training they had been given. "Some in my platoon," said one of the troopers, "have never handled a rifle and hardly know how to load it." Some of the younger men had enlisted in the Guard to avoid regular military service and the hazards of Viet Nam. Said the wife of one Guardsman: "My husband is no murderer...