ABSTRACT
In this fi lm, directed by Ted Post, the scene is set in Vietnam, in 1964, pre-Gulf of Tonkin. At an outpost in South Vietnam, a grizzled, sardonic veteran of both World War II and Korea, Major Asa Barker (Burt Lancaster), and his secondin-command, Captain Alfred Olivetti (Marc Singer), are sent four replacements: Sergeant Oleanowski ( Jonathan Goldsmith), who served with Barker in Korea and who has been advising South Vietnam army troops for three years (he is burned out and exhausted and an alcoholic); Lieutenant Raymond Hamilton ( Joe Unger), who declares he is ready to go into the fi eld and kill Communists; Corporal Abraham Lincoln (Dennis Howard), a medic and opium smoker; and Corporal Stephen Courcey (Craig Wasson), a demolitions expert. Barker is stunned by the mere presence of Courcey-a college graduate who can only be in Vietnam because he volunteered! And why would anyone do that? A couple of days later a psych-war specialist, Lieutenant Finley Wattsberg (David Clennon), shows up with charts and graphs and a certainty that a computer in Saigon will predict where the Viet Cong (VC) will attack next. Barker reacts with his usual cynicism but has no choice but to give Wattsberg a desk at which he can play with his statistics. (Wattsburg is based on a real fi gure in the history of the advisory period-one Robert “Blowtouch” Komer, a CIA offi cer who advocated computer models to gauge the success of the counterinsurgency warfare.)
Soon afterward, General Harnitz (Dolph Sweet) arrives and chastises Barker for sending an obviously faked briefi ng paper on a place called Muc Wa. Barker had declared it was a tiny hamlet with a handful of inhabitants and no strategic value. General Harnitz tells him it has been abandoned since the French war but it sits on the vital road to Penang, a town that fell with 2500 defenders to the Viet Minh. Asserting that we can’t let that happen to the U.S. Army in Vietnam, Harnitz orders Barker to fortify the village, even over Barker’s protest that he is seriously understaffed. Disgusted, but obeying orders, Barker assembles a ragtag force to be led by Hamilton with Sergeant Oleonowski as his second-incommand. Oleonowski will actually be in command as Barker tells Hamilton to lean very heavily on Oleonowski’s advice.
