Odin & Aesop

The Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, was created between North Vietnam and South
Vietnam in 1954. The DMZ was supposed to be a temporary buffer zone that
would keep previously hostile forces away from each other. When the planned
unification of North Vietnam and South Vietnam stalled out, the DMZ stayed on
with an air of permanence. It was four to six miles wide and ran about 47 miles
from the coast to the border with Laos. Don’t believe the label though. The DMZ
was anything but demilitarized. It’s here in the DMZ that 3rd Battalion, 26th
Marines got into the fight for its life in September 1967. In four days 3/26 lost 56
killed and 290 wounded.

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck commanded Imperial German military forces throughout the East Africa campaign during World War One.  His mostly African army of about 14,000 attacked, checked, and evaded much larger Allied forces for over four years.  When the war ended, Lettow-Vorbeck surrendered and returned undefeated to a hero’s welcome in Germany.  This book is how he remembers the experience.

By the middle of 1942 the United States had recovered from the shock of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the early defeats of Japan expanding into the Pacific.  Now it started parallel offensives north and south of the equator.  By the middle of 1944 the United States had retaken the Marianas Islands and was flowing over Japan’s empire like “a conquering tide.”

Eight soldiers from the Britain’s Special Air Service flew deep into northwestern Iraq on the night of January 22nd, 1991.  Their callsign was Bravo Two Zero.  Their mission was to destroy the SCUD missiles Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was using against Israel.  A young goat herder stumbled across the patrol after it was on the ground for less than a day.  With their cover blown and no way to call for help, the eight solders attempted to fight their way more than 100 miles across the desert to Syria.  Only one made it.  This book was written by Bravo Two Zero’s patrol leader and tells the story of what happened.

In November 1965, roughly 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry flew by helicopter into Vietnam’s Ia Drang Valley.  They were attacked by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers almost immediately.  Three days later, one of their sister battalions was unexpectedly attacked a short distance away. The U.S. lost 237 killed.  These two fights at landing zones X-Ray and Albany came on the front end of America’s build up in Vietnam and were a portent of things to come.  The two authors of this book were there.  One, Hal Moore, commanded the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry and the other, Joe Galloway, was a war correspondent.

Ernst Junger was an infantry officer in the German army throughout World War One.  He served in the trenches for close to four years, was wounded fourteen times, and was the youngest recipient of Germany’s highest award, Pour le Mérite.  Somehow, he lived.  Storm of Steel is his memoir.  It was first published in 1920.

After the United States invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein from power in spring 2003, the city of Fallujah became a hotbed of unrest.  In March 2004, four American contractors were brutally murdered and mutilated there.   President Bush ordered an attack to subdue the city.  This attack was called off early after it sparked a media and political firestorm.  With U.S. forces out of it, Fallujah became the red-hot epicenter of Iraq’s Sunni insurgency and the U.S. recommitted to taking it through large-scale offensive action.  This operation, known as Phantom Fury, lasted from through November and December 2004.  It was America’s bloodiest battle of the Iraq war.  Bing West tells the story in “No True Glory.”  We are joined in this episode by Mr. Pat Carroll who spent close to four years in Iraq working in or dealing with Fallujah

The German navy refitted the merchant ship Atlantis with weapons hidden in phony deckhouses and side structures.  Using its disguise as a freighter, the Atlantis stalked the ocean for over 600 days in 1940 and 1941.  She captured or sank 22 ships until cornered and sunk by the British.  Bernhard Rogge was the captain of the Atlantis throughout its service.  This is the story of what he and his crew did. 

John Paul Vann was a career Army officer.  He served in combat during the Korean War and was an advisor to the South Vietnamese Army’s IV Corps fighting the Viet Cong for a year from 1962 to 1963.  Vann retired from the Army a few months after completed that assignment.  He returned to Vietnam in 1965.  First he worked as an official for the Agency for International Development.  Vann was then made the Deputy for Civil Operations and Rural Development Support for the Third Corps Tactical Zone in the twelve provinces north and west of Saigon.  In 1968 he was assigned to the same position for the Fourth Corps Tactical Zone in the provinces south of Saigon.  Vann died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam on June 16, 1972.  During his years in Vietnam, he developed some strong views about what the United States was doing versus what he thought it should be doing. 

Charles MacDonald was twenty-one yeas old when he assumed command of Company I 23rd Infantry in October 1944.  His company had been in combat sense D plus 1 and MacDonald had never been in combat.  MacDonald learns his job in a trial by fire that tests him in every imaginable way.  In the eight months he was in command he fought in Battle of the Bulge and lead his infantry company across Germany in the last months of the war.  This story of a young infantry company commander leading men is battle during World War 2 is one of the most brutally honest accounts of leadership and combat ever written.