GPO

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Reviews from Goodreads:

Ben B rated it with 4 stars and had this to say, "Careful, detailed analysis of close combat."

Robert Burr rated it with 4 stars and had this to say, "Not the first place you want to go for information on warfare during this period, but an immensely rewarding read once you have some basic grounding in the way the armies involved worked. The battles are vividly described and thoughtfully analyzed."

Tom rated it with 4 stars and had this to say, "First of these true RVN books I have read in many years. It was better now that I am farther from the events. I could feel myself in a few of those encounters. I knew the territory quite well."

Kristopher Swinson rated it with 2 stars and had this to say, "I could read this sort of stuff all day, but only extract so much of value. Sad to say, there wasn't much to the third story, though the gunboat battle in #4 picked up the pace, and the overrun Special Forces camp at Lang Vei in #6 was rather exciting. (Those were some tough men facing the first successful use of Vietnamese armor (163), and it didn't help events that there was a great deal of confusion about who was Viet Cong and who was CIDG.) I admire those who endured a calm and collected death (24-25), expended all their ammo against the enemy (118), and/or kept returning to aid others at the front, however exhausted they might be (167-168).

One must appreciate the different mode of combat, when it was a "rare opportunity" to openly engage "any concentration of forces" (105). Vietnam was more about conducting warfare against "an aggressive, expertly camouflaged, and well-armed enemy force that could shoot well and was not afraid to die" (24). There was considerable difficulty creating landing locations (40, 109) in the jungle.

I rather liked the streamlined soldierly language of precision, which apprises one fully of overall troop movements as well as individual heroic actions, to say nothing of the reports of brave Americans about whom it was said that "piles of enemy dead in front of the positions testified to the enemy's tactical failure"