Infantry in Vietnam: Small Unit Actions in the Early Days , 1965-66 edited by LTC Albert N Garland, USA (Ret)

Book #101 of 2012:  I’ve completed reading Infantry in Vietnam: Small Unit Actions in the Early Days , 1965-66 edited by LTC Albert N Garland, USA (Ret), with a foreword by William Westmoreland. It’s an excellent collection of contemporary accounts of platoon and company sized actions during the early years of the war, complete with wonderfully specific details that are largely lost to time. (50 years on, the emphasis is rightly on the broader handling of the war, not, for instance, the subtle agricultural clues that give away the presence of VC in an area).  

As I read the book I picked up on the fact that action after action, the US was learning. They were adapting tactics, technology, and thinking to the odd new war they had inherited, and it’s a fascinating transition to experience - second-hand.  I’m glad I wasn't there to iron out the kinks myself.

One troubling thing I read was a passage on pg. 110. “ . . . Brigadier General Ellis W. Williamson . . . emphasized whenever he could the deliberate and effective use of firepower.  . . [he] advanced the concept of using this firepower in any and all situations where its use might precluded the unnecessary exposure of personnel to hostile fire. He continually urged his subordinate commanders to use firepower first, and to use as much as necessary in lieu of or to precede the actual advance of the troops.”  [emphasis mine]

Jump ahead twenty years to a documentary about the Gulf War, in which Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf referenced his time during the Invasion of Grenada. He mentioned, with disdain, that infantry movement stalled at the slightest hint of enemy contact, with troops calling in air strikes or artillery to eliminate a single sniper. The aggressive, offensive nature of infantry had been curtailed by this holdover mindset from Vietnam, and he made immediate efforts to change that culture. 

During the rest of the book you see evidence of that defensive idea influencing action on the ground. Oh, there was plenty of fighting, and no one, least of all me, is equating that doctrine with cowardice, but from a distance it’s hard not to scream “What are you doing? You are giving the VC the initiative.” Unit action reports end with American units surrounding VC only to sit and wait for air support or daylight, allowing their escape, and one chapter revolves around a unit that expended  an ungodly amount of air, naval and artillery support, all for a single Viet Cong, without ever once attempting to initiate contact themselves. 

This book was the last of three I bought in an Ebay lot earlier this year, and I’m happy to say that was $1.99 well spent. I hope there are other titles in the series detailing the later years of the war. Grade: A+