A Rumor of War Read Online Free PDF Page B

just a line of determined men firing short bursts from the hip as they advanced on the enemy at a stately walk.
    It was easy to do in the bloodless make-believe of field problems, in which every operation went according to plan and the only danger was the remote one of falling and breaking an ankle. We took these stage-managed exercises seriously, thinking they resembled actual combat. We couldn’t know then that they bore about as much similarity to the real thing as shadowboxing does to street-fighting. Diligently we composed our five-paragraph attack orders. We huddled in pine-scented thickets, soberly playing the roles assigned to us—student platoon leader, student squad leader—and with our maps spread flat, planned the destruction of our fictitious enemy, the aggressor forces. We fought them throughout the spring and summer, enveloped them, went at them with squad rushes, and made frontal assaults against the sun-browned hills they defended, yelling battle cries as we charged through storms of blank cartridge fire.

    At the time, counterinsurgency was fashionable in military circles: it had become obvious that the next war, if there was to be one, would be fought in Indochina (that August, when the Tonkin Gulf resolution was passed, we were midway through the Basic course); and combating insurgencies gave the services a special mission in the age of the New Frontier. The Peace Corps could go off to build dams in India or schools in Bolivia, but it was up to the War Corps to do the man’s work of battling Communist guerrillas, the new barbarians who menaced the far-flung interests of the new Rome. Finally, counterinsurgency was still surrounded by the Kennedy mystique, even though the young president had been dead for nearly a year. But the glamorous prince of Camelot had given the new doctrine his imprimatur by sending the first Special Forces detachments to Vietnam, glamorous figures themselves in their green berets and paratrooper boots.
    The fascination was strongest among the junior officers, who were drawn by the apparent romance of fighting guerrilla bands in far-off places. Beyond that, a feeling of inadequacy came over us whenever we compared the colorful chests of combat veterans to our own, naked except for marksmanship badges. We wanted to dress up that blank khaki with Bronze and Silver Stars, and Vietnam appeared to be the most likely place where we could win them.
    The senior first lieutenant who tutored us in counterguerrilla operations had served there for thirty days as a “military observer,” which did not exactly qualify him as an expert. He had been wounded, however, and although it had happened under less than heroic circumstances—he was hit in the buttocks while squatting over a latrine—the Purple Heart pinned above his left pocket gave him an air of authority.
    Anyway, he sounded authoritative as he revealed to us the mysteries of counterrevolution. His lectures were full of enough jargon to dispel the illusion that guerrilla-fighting was something like Indian-fighting, a rough, seat-of-the-pants form of warfare. On the contrary, it appeared to be a highly specialized art; complex tactics with esoteric names were required to outwit the wily insurgents. We were taught how to batter them into submission with the Hammer and Anvil Movement, to make them dance to their deaths in a Minuet Ambush, to trap them in a Constricting Cordon, and to repulse their attacks with the Triangular Defense.
    These strange maneuvers we practiced in the steamy bottomlands that were as close an approximation of Asian jungles as Virginia could offer. Many months later, I would remember, as a grown man remembers the games played in boyhood, how we ran around in those woods, ambushing each other and raiding imaginary guerrilla camps. In our enthusiasm, we tried to make these playact exercises as realistic as possible, even in such minor details as our dress. I have kept a photograph taken of another lieutenant and