The following comments were left by the assessors: (edit · refresh)
The material covered in this book combines several themes found in every Hollywood movie for the last two decades covering Vietnam.
There are several discrepancies in the mechanics of the Army that Mr. Myers writes about. One is that he talks about the main character being in a regular light Infantry squad lead by a Lieutenant, Squads are lead by Sergeants, Lieutenants Lead Platoons. Mr. Myers stated that all the privates in the Squad were promoted to CPL. It doesn't work that way in the Army. Mr. Myers calls the M60 machine gun a 60 Caliber machine gun. It is a .308 Caliber, 7.62mm. The Army in 1967 called the M60's round the 7.62mm. Also the manner in which Mr. Myers repeatedly calls everyone's weapons "piece" is comical. Additionally Mr. Myers apparently did not himself perform any helicopter mission while in the service as his description of the helicopter operations in his book are nothing short of comical. In his book Mr. Myers' fantasy squad flies in and out of all combat operations. At one point he states that the "struts" of the Huey helicopter are designed to take the impact of landing. The Huey has permanently mounted hard, inflexible skids (Not Skis as Mr. Myers states in another passage). Door Gunners on Hueys almost always used M60 machine guns (7.62mm), in Mr. Myers’ world they used .50 caliber machine guns. Mr. Myers has the pilot at one point turn around and kick a man in the head who had just accidentally discharged his weapon when boarding during a "Hot LZ" extraction. Point one is that the pilots cannot just "turn around" and kick someone when they are in the pilot seat (physically impossible) and secondly the pilots would be too concerned with getting out of the area first. Also the helicopters have two doors and in the book they only have one. The claymore mine is not detonated by trip wire as Mr. Myers stated at one point. Additionally not every claymore mine emplaced by American soldiers was found by the Viet Cong and turned around towards American troops as Mr. Myers would have you believe. There are several more major discrepancies in this book but I have gone on long enough. The only reason I continued to read the book was for the comedy of Mr. Myers' lack of basic Army knowledge, particularly the Infantry that which is what he wrote about. Reading this book was like have a conversation about room clearing with a cook. This book is actually a discredit to the "Brothers" who served in the Viet Nam war. The characters in this book all seem very uneducated, ignorant and two dimensional. To call this book a great book of Viet Nam history is a lie. Whoever gave this book an award was neither knowledgeable on military matters nor knowledgeable on Vietnam. This award must have been given on the "good 'ole boy" system. I would not ban this book from schools due to the language it contains. I would ban this book due to the major historical inaccuracies it contains.
