Distinctions

Distinctions

I’ve finished We Were Soldiers Once… And Young by Lt. Gen. Hal Moore (Ret.) and journalist Joseph Galloway.

I can’t say enough good things about this book, and Somme Mud by E.P.F. Lynch. The contrast between these two books and the two wars is surprising.

Fifty years apart, yet the parallels are obvious, as are the problems of astonishingly bad command decisions.

For Aussie troops in the trenches of France, initially under the command of the British, it was a life of hell, mud, blood and needless sacrifice; once command shifted to the Australian generals, the Aussies had less casualties, gained more ground and captured more enemy than any other country (per capita).

For the American troops in the Ia Drang valley, it was lack of medivac, a command that constantly wanted updates and a Government policy that still holds sway today.

Hal Moore went into the battle at a disadvantage: troops who were ‘short’ – that is, soon to be rotated out of the army – stayed in the U.S., even when the whole battalion had trained to a well oiled and understood machine. They also came up against an equally professional and determined enemy.

The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops came down the Ho Chi Minh trail in Cambodia; the U.S. forces were not allowed to pursue them, thus giving the enemy a safe haven to regroup and rearm – that was a disaster for the American forces, though to widen the conflict into Cambodia may have lengthened the conflict, or shortened it and stopped the monstrous Khmer Rouge from ever coming to power in Cambodia. We’ll never know. This was a policy that bore closer scrutiny, rather than the hand-washing worry of ‘offending’ a supposed neutral country.

The second disastrous policy that is still in effect is the rotating of troops out of combat after a year. The NVA and Viet Cong troops fought the war for ten years, once; the Americans fought the same war ten times. The U.S. lost valuable experience when those soldiers went home; worse, the commanders were rotated out too, thus depriving the Army of combat experienced officers who knew how the enemy operated.

War isn’t about compromise, it’s about brutal death, catastrophic destruction, never-ending grief and ultimate victory or defeat for the opposing forces. There are no polite terms for war; no diplomatic speeches that can soothe the trauma.

For the troops in the First World War – allied and German - and in Vietnam – the U.S. forces, NVA, Viet Cong and South Vietnamese Army - there was no discussion on the why’s and wherefore’s. The soldiers did what every soldier has been doing for centuries: their job. And they did with distinction, with courage and with burning need to return home.

It is the young men and women who fight and die for the ideas of the old and foolish.

If you get a chance to read either of these books and you have an interest in military history, do so. They are written from soldiers’ points of view, and while they do have facts and figures, planning and strategy, they are overwhelmingly of how a soldier feels and acts under extraordinary circumstances.

I came away from those two books with the same thought: Governments may change; a soldier’s courage and dedication to duty do not.