David M. Toczek

This monograph takes the 1963 battle of Ap Bac, where an ad hoc VC battalion went toe to toe with ARVN regulars and came off better in the deal, and treats it as a paradigm of the Vietnam War. Most of the pathologies of the war are there; the poor Vietnamese leadership, the American frustration on the ground at not being able to fix and kill the VC, the lack of appropriate doctrine, and never-ceasing "happy talk" from on high in the American echelons beyond reality. One also gets a blow by blow reconstruction of what actually happened in the action, which at some points looked like "Black Hawk Down" with rice paddies.… (meer)