BOOK REVIEW: "THE 9TH INFANTRY DIVISION IN VIETNAM"

The illustrations are of some of the great military captains in European history. I explain who they are at the end of the post.

I've read a number of books about strategy and tactics on the battlefield. I usually avoid books about wars fought in the last two hundred years. It's hard to be objective about them, and modern armies tend to resemble bureaucracies. Reading about their sluggish and doctrinaire reaction to things makes you yearn for the days when Morgan the pirate could assault Panama with a plan of his own making, or Scipio could attack Carthage with only minimal interference from the Roman senate.

Even so, there's some worthy modern war books. One that all armchair generals agree is worth reading is Rommel's "Infantry Attacks." It's about Rommel's days as a young lieutenant in WWI, fighting in the Alps. The book is crude and hard to follow, but it's unique because it puts you behind the eyeballs of a young soldier who is in every way a natural for what he does. He loves his work and doesn't wish to be anywhere else. He regrets the need to harm others but delights in problem solving. Where others see only the fog of war, Rommel sees opportunity.

If America had its own Rommel in the last 50 years, that might be the then colonel Ira Hunt who commanded the amazing 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam in the late 60s. I never heard of Hunt or his men before I saw him talking about his book on BookTV. He was a marvelous speaker. According to the interviewer Hunt aggressively fought and won battles, kept morale high, and the casualty rate low. You have to wonder, how did he do it?

Hunt said that when he first arrived in Vietnam the situation was daunting. Our guys scored victories in the daytime, but the enemy owned the night. It was sometimes impossible to tell the difference between friends and foes. Helicopters were shot down when they attempted to land troops. Tunnels protected the enemy against artillary and air attacks. Booby traps took their toll, and the soldiers sucked at pacification. Hunt had his job cut out for him.

Hunt's reaction to all this was to simplify. Let professionals handle the pacification. Take back the night by fighting in the dark. Ambush, don't be ambushed. Make the tunnels a liability. The booby traps? Throw something heavy on a rope infront of you. Above all, keep the enemy engaged and on the defensive.

Things changed pretty quickly when Hunt took charge. Where previously helicopters avoided ground fire by landing troops 600 feet away from the enemy, now they landed them at night, right into the enemy's back yard. Hunt correctly guessed that few enemies would risk giving away their position by shooting at copters in the dark, especially if they knew their avenue of retreat was cut off by more helicopters.

And the tunnels? Hunt says he actually thought of them as being an asset for his side. Relying on pre-existing tunnels for protection reduced the enemy's mobility. At night heat and chemical sensors mounted on helicopters could detect areas of recent activity where tunnels were likely to be. The tunnels were more and more perceived as death traps by the enemy.

I'm simplifying here. Hunt didn't claim to come up with every new idea himself, and the enemy had clever ideas of their own, but you get the sense that Hunt was a superserious competitor. More than that he was that rarity in military history...a natural.

BTW: Just for the heck of it, I put up pictures (in no special order) of a few of what historians consider the greatest military commanders in European history. The top portrait is. of course, Napoleon. Under him is Scipio Africanus, the general who beat Hannibal and handed Rome an empire. For his trouble he was humiliated by Cato and left Rome, never to return. Beneath him is Alexander the Great, and beneath him is Turenne, the legendary general who fought for Louis XIV. Beneath him is Gustavus Adolphus, who fought in the bloody Thirty Years War. At the very bottom is John Churchill, better known as Marlborough.  He fought Louis XIV after Turenne's time. It's said that he never lost a battle.