ABSTRACT
Marine Philip Caputo waded ashore in South Vietnam in 1965 convinced that “like the French soldiers of the late eighteenth century, we [Americans] saw ourselves as the champions of ‘a cause that was destined to triumph.’ So, when we marched into the rice paddies on that damp March afternoon, we carried, along with our packs and rifles, the implicit convictions that the Viet Cong (VC) would be quickly beaten and that we were doing something altogether noble and good.” Later, he observed, “We kept the packs and rifles; the convictions, we lost.”1
