Hackworth, David H., and Eilys England. Steel My Soldiers' Hearts

Naval War College Review, Wntr, 2004 by Jon Czarnecki

New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. 444pp. $27.95

There are so many books about the Vietnam War and the Vietnam experience that the message of one more risks being lost amidst a vast ocean of tragic tales told with great pain. However, Hackworth and England have provided something more than a reminiscence of an Army combat unit in the post-Tet Offensive world of Vietnam; they have presented readers with a tactical reform primer for infantry. All the information is there in stark GI English, beginning with the first sentence of chapter 1 (not repeated here out of delicacy), and finishing up with the last sentences of the last chapter: "We now need to fight smart as much as we need to get even. There is no other choice. We do it right or we lose. We win--or we die." Hackworth and England are referring to the new war against terrorism in the post-9/11 world. The quotation applies to the current day, and it applied to Hackworth's nightmare battalion in the Mekong Delta in 1969.

His unit was the 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 9th Infantry Division. The troops making up the battalion were, as the authors state, citizen draftee soldiers, not the volunteers that had filled the first combat units that went into Vietnam back in 1965. These soldiers did not want to be in Vietnam. They had come from a country where protests against the war had become large-scale performance art, widely publicized by news media and, most importantly, were supported by a large portion of the population. These reluctant warriors were doubly cursed, for they were part of an army the leadership of which had started to unravel in the face of the stubborn refusal of an enemy to admit defeat, an enemy who still could attack U.S. soldiers with skill, speed, and lethality. Hackworth and England are unsparing in their depictions of the martinets and incompetents who made up a fair portion of the officer and noncommissioned officers' corps that led soldiers into the Delta swamps and rice paddies--beginning with the battalion commander who places his unit's main base in the middle of a Viet Cong minefield, through a commanding general more focused on maximizing body counts for his own career than on effectively fighting an elusive enemy.

Despite determined opposition both from the enemy and higher headquarters, Hackworth achieved an organizational transformation of his hard-luck battalion. The 4/39th became a skilled, deadly foe of the Viet Cong in the Delta, a unit that took the fight to the enemy, taking away his initiative. Hackworth did this through reimposition of a strict but fair discipline, introduction of and training in proven and successful fieldcraft, and leadership from the front. There are no magic bullets or technological fixes for this kind of transformation, just simple success on the battlefield--the enemy dies or goes away. In the beginning of his command, Hackworth's disciplinarian approach earned him a contract on his head from his own soldiers. By the time he left, one of these same soldiers would write, "The most terrible thing happened today. Colonel Hackworth left. You remember the one everyone hated, and wanted shot? Now there's another bounty out for him--to anyone who can get him back."

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts contains the collected practical wisdom of this successful battalion commander. Curiously, however, the wisdom that keeps soldiers alive on the battlefield does not necessarily contribute to the end of battles or wars. Hackworth and England acknowledge as much in an account of a conversation between Hackworth and John Paul Vann. Hackworth and Vann were compatriots and friends; Vann had been Hackworth's company commander in Korea. Vann, now a civilian advisor to the South Vietnamese regime, told Hackworth that while his battalion was improving the security of the area, they were killing too many civilians. Vann added, "Once the 9th's out of here, I reckon that eighty to ninety percent of the Delta's population will come to our side. You guys have been the VC's biggest recruiter. You kill a boy's mama, which side do you reckon he'll join?"

Therein lies the major lesson of this frank, valuable book. A nation's armed forces can be exceptionally well trained, exceptionally lethal, and full of esprit de corps. They can win all the battles. They can maximize the body count. But if the end of the battle or war is flawed--or worse, uncertain--no amount of courage, steel, or personal battlefield leadership will have obtained victory.

JON CZARNECKI

Naval Postgraduate School

Monterey, California