Word: platoons
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...their commanders failed them. Military psychiatrists who have studied what makes a soldier's moral compass go haywire in battle look first for a weak chain of command. That was a factor in the March 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when U.S. soldiers, including members of an Army platoon led by Lieut. William Calley, killed some 500 Vietnamese. Says a retired Army Green Beret colonel who fought in Vietnam: "Somebody has failed to say, 'No, that's not right.'" No one, apparently, was delivering that message last November in Haditha...
...seem all that malign, just a bit comical with its puttering cars, camp displays of military might and empty shelves. But now, it seems, east Germans may finally be ready to take a colder, harder look at their communist past. Just as films like Full Metal Jacket and Platoon captured the dark memories in the U.S. about the Vietnam War more than a decade after the conflict had ended, several German movies indicate a toughening of opinions about the G.D.R. A handful of new releases, including one by the makers of Goodbye Lenin! called The Red Cockatoo, explore the G.D.R...
...another sweltering afternoon�in the�most dangerous place in Iraq, and the men of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, are looking to pick a fight. First Lieut. Grier Jones splits his 30-odd-man platoon into two squads and sets them loose on the streets of Ramadi. They run block to block, covering one another as they sprint across intersections. Insurgents bob their heads out of homes to catch a glimpse of the Marines--"turkey peeking," as the troops call it--a sign that they are preparing to attack."We come out here every day, and we get shot...
...search for the insurgents on block-by-block foot patrols through the worst areas. It's perilous work. On one morning this month, Tasayco and Corporal Nathan Buck take their squad out to commandeer a small shopping complex, which will give cover for the rest of the platoon to push east. On the roof, Buck, his helmet emblazoned with the words DEATH DEALERS in thick letters, warns his Marines to stay alert. When Tasayco sees movement in a nearby window, Buck rises to check it out. An insurgent sniper fires at his head, cracking a round into...
...topics.” The other five fellows are Peter Alagona, a doctoral candidate in history at the University of California-Los Angeles; Nicole S. Downey, who is finishing a doctorate in environmental science and engineering at the California Institute of Technology; Peter Huybers, a former Army tank platoon leader with a doctorate in climate physics and chemistry from MIT; Valeriy Ivanov, an MIT-trained hydrologist; and Roxanne Willis ’97, a doctoral candidate at Yale who specializes in environmental history and literature. —Staff writer Alexandra C. Bell can be reached at acbell@fas.harvard.edu