"Steel My Soldiers' Hearts" by Col. David Hackworth

The Michigan Partisan

By Page W. H. Brousseau IV
TIMES STAFF WRITER

Vietnam. The word has a different meaning to those who were for and against the Vietnam War. Now with "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts," we learn that those who fought the war viewed it from a different angle altogether, and that angle was ground level, eyeball to eyeball with the enemy and knee deep in mud.

Colonel David H. Hackworth may be best known currently for his many appearances on the cable news channels, and prefers to be called just "Hack." He was just fourteen when he joined the Merchant Marines in World War II; he was just out of puberty when valor in the Korean War earned him a battle field commission. His writing style is blunt and to the point, as was his soldiering style. In late 1968 Hack was appointed Commanding Officer of the 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, 9th Division, known as the "4/39" or "the worst gaddamn battalion I've ever seen in the Army," as the division commander told Hack. The 4/39 was based in southern South Vietnam next to Cambodia. This place was festering with ants, water and the North Vietnamese Army.

When Hack flew in to assess the situation, a feeling of "this must be a comedy" enters the reader's mind. First off, the Lt Col that Hack was relieving had established base camp in the middle of a mine field. Nearly everyday, members of 4/39 were becoming casualties because of their incompetent and uncaring CO. The CO, too busy counting the days until he left, did not bother to even move the base, and he allowed groves of brush and trees to stand leaving the enemy plenty of cover to conduct mortar attacks.

The troops of 4/39 were an undisciplined lot, walking around without proper uniforms or even their weapons, many of which were covered with dirt and rust. Enemy to friendly dead ratio was barely in the good guy's favor. After Hack moved the base, he quickly went to work on his men, stomping those who refused to listen and relieving the company and platoon officers that could not cut it. "Fall out," are the only reflective words he has for the removal of these men. His view was that there was a war to fight and if a commander was unable to lead further "on the job training" more of his men would get killed.

So intense Hack was in turning around 4/39, or "Hardcore" as he renamed the unit, a bounty was put on his head. Hack writes of bullets "dinging" off his helicopter while flying over friendly bases. Hack knew he had his men's attention when his chain of command insisted he move to a new unit. Hack ordered all men to sleep in fortified bunkers and he Court Martialed troops sleeping in the coolness of the night outside of the bunkers, but after the next mortar attack produced only a few wounded many Hardcore soldiers started to come around to Hack's leadership style. Before long, Hardcore was starting to be feared in their sector by the enemy.

Hack, however, feared his superiors, men that were more interested in numbers of enemy dead than Hardcore dead. The book is filled with colonels and generals contradicting Hack's orders and advice only to blunder into kill zones. The valor of those members of Hardcore is underscored by the backslapping medal giveaways that went all the way up the chain of command. While scores of visitors would congratulate Hardcore with its impressive kill ratios, no generals would direct other units to follow Hack's game plan of "out G'ing the G" or "out Guerillaing the Guerilla." The generals were still fighting World War II, and the colonels were fighting the Korean War. None seemed to understand the rules had changed; units had to move with lighting speed, strike hard, and use snipers, ambushes and booby traps against the enemy that was entirely on the offense.

"Steel My Soldiers' Hearts" is a frustrating tale of sorrow and valor, and gives a new perspective on why we lost Vietnam. As Hackworth writes, "The truth is that few in the Hardcore, myself most definitely included, fought for the United States of America, the flag, Richard Milhous Nixon or the 9th Division. We fought for each other. We'd have died for each other…our allegiance was to our Hardcore brothers. We hung in there for each other. Our biggest fear was to let a buddy down."