Comanche Six: Company Commander in Vietnam

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For those who didn’t return, who, like the centurions and their soldiers, deserved better from the republic they served.

And especially for William “Billy” McCarty. He made us laugh, and we miss him.

This is a story of American soldiers who fought in a faraway place, for an elusive cause, for eleven long years.

Historians now tell us our country’s military involvement in Indochina can be chronologically divided into three distinct phases. The early 1960’s was the period of the advisor, a period in which we tried to turn the tide in a relatively small insurgency, employing only a modest expenditure in men and material. This phase ended with the introduction of North Vietnam’s armies into the fray and the subsequent arrival of our ground forces in 1965. For the next three years, we sought to end the war by judicious use of our military might and would have probably succeeded in doing so had our national will not collapsed in the aftermath of the enemy’s 1968 Tet offensive. During the final and most costly phase, from the spring of 1968 until the Paris Accords were signed five years later, we simply looked for a way out.

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