Steel My Soldiers' Hearts: The Hopeless to Hardcore Transformation of U.S. Army, 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, VietnamIn this unforgettable true story from the Vietnam War, one of the most promising young lieutenant colonels the US Army had ever seen touched down in Vietnam for his second tour of duty, which would turn out to be his most daring and legendary. David H. Hackworth had just completed the writing of a tactical handbook for the Pentagon, and now he had been ordered to put his counterguerilla-fighting theories into action. He was given the morale-drained 4/39th—a battalion of poorly led draftees suffering the Army’s highest casualty rate and considered its worst fighting battalion. Hackwort’s hard-nosed, inventive and inspired leadership quickly turned the 4/39th into Vietnam’s valiant and ferocious Hardcore Recondos. Drawing on interviews with soldiers from the Hardcore Battalion conducted over the past decade by his partner and coauthor, Eilhys England, Hackworth takes readers along on their sniper missions, ambush actions, helicopter strikes and inside the quagmire of command politics. With Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts, Hackworth places the brotherhood of the 4/39th into the pantheon of our nation’s most heroic military warriors. |
Contents
THREE | 36 |
FOUR | 49 |
FIVE | 63 |
SEVEN | 105 |
On Toward Danger 01 March 1969 | 124 |
NINE | 154 |
ELEVEN | 188 |
TWELVE | 201 |
EIGHTEEN | 305 |
Fire Support Base Danger 13 April 1969 | 318 |
TWENTY | 334 |
TWENTYONE | 345 |
TWENTYTWO | 354 |
TWENTYTHREE | 365 |
TWENTYFOUR | 378 |
TWENTYFIVE | 400 |
THIRTEEN | 221 |
FOURTEEN | 244 |
FIFTEEN | 264 |
SIXTEEN | 280 |
SEVENTEEN | 291 |
AFTERWORD | 419 |
GLOSSARY | 427 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 437 |
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Common terms and phrases
2nd Platoon 9th Division Alert ambush ammo Army artillery ARVN battalion Battle Company battlefield Billy Scott bird booby traps brigade bullets Bumstead bunker canal Captain casualties Charley chopper Chum Clark Claymore Colonel combat Danger dead Delta DeRoos Doc Holley Dong Dong Tam dust-off enemy Evans Ewell fight fire firebase flying Foley force fuck going gooks grenade ground grunts gunships guys Hackworth Hardcore Hayes helicopter hell Hunt infantry Jim Robertson killed knew Lieutenant looked LRRP machine gun medevac medic Mergner minigun mission moved night operation perimeter platoon leader platoon sergeant position pulled radio recalls Recondo rice paddy rifle company Robertson running sampan says shit shot Snipers soldiers Spurlock squad leader Sun Tzu tactics Tahler told Tom Aiken took tree line troops unit Vietcong Vietnam Vietnamese walked weapons who'd wounded