Mr H
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Source CSOURCE C: From A Rumor of War, written by Philip Caputo in 1977. Caputo volunteered to fight in Vietnam
| Philip Caputo wrote: | War is always attractive to young men who know nothing about it. We were persuaded to go into uniform by Kennedy’s challenge to “ask what you can do for your country.” The USA had never lost a war and it seemed that we were ordained to play cop to the communist robber and spread our political ideas around the world.
The rare occasion when the VC chose to fight a set-piece battle provided the only excitement, but beyond adding a few more corpses to the body count, these encounters achieved nothing.
Our mission was not to win terrain, but simply to kill. The pressure on unit commanders to produce enemy corpses was intense. It is not surprising that some men acquired a contempt for human life. |
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