Lieutenant Dangerous: A Vietnam War Memoir by Jeff Danziger

Author:Jeff Danziger [Danziger, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Military, Personal Memoirs, history, Vietnam War
ISBN: 9781586422738
Google: fAEyEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2021-11-15T23:43:46.751700+00:00

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You will remember that I began writing all this after a discussion about the war with a group of young people who had asked about it. I tried to make my role, if not heroic, at least understandable. Tales of all these failures of planning and operations, many years after the fact, illustrate that I also was personally a profound failure. It is the soldier’s right to complain. The process of complaining should involve checking to see if your complaints were heeded and the faults corrected. But I never did, and that is shameful. Part of my self-excuse was that it was not my job to fix obvious shortfalls in planning. I wanted nothing from the army, or the war, but to get home safely.

The headquarters of the 1st Cavalry Division was in a town named Phuoc Vinh, the district capital of Binh Duong province. I have been back there, in 1993. There is nothing left of the American base. There is however a large golf course and club for Japanese businessmen. In 1969 the 1st Cavalry had taken over the base from units of the 1st Infantry and had expanded its area. The 1st Cavalry had also expanded its name to the 1st Air Cavalry with the inclusion of a great many helicopters. They had Hueys, the basic transportation helicopters; Loaches or light observation helicopters; and Cobras, narrow-bodied attack gunships, loaded with machine guns and rocket pods. The tactical theory behind all these helicopters was that the army could move troops in, support their advance with rockets and machine-gun fire, and then pull the troops back out quickly after the effect had been gained. The only question not sufficiently answered was why. Why move into an area, shoot it up, and then retreat? No answer. But this was done time and time again. In short, it was part of a holding plan, holding until someone came forward with a long-range political solution. And as of 1969, no one had.

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