Prior to Ap Bac, the Kennedy administration had succeeded in preventing the American public from being more than vaguely conscious that the country w… - George Patton IV

In each generation, as long as we are to remain a great nation, a group of us are somehow chosen, perhaps by the Almighty, to serve our country and our army and to serve the nation. Perhaps it is a small group, woefully inadequate, but it is there, and regardless of how we see it, regardless of the dwindling budget, the ancient outdated tanks of the 1920s and equipment, the congressional pressures to cut, cut, cut, that group will stay, and as the poet said: "Some for honor, and some for pay."

I've got to say the soldiers in Vietnam that I was associated with in my three tours, who were pretty much front-line troops, were the best I'd ever seen on any battlefield. The soldiers were up against some incredibly difficult rules of engagement. I'll tell you a story. It's a real good story. We had some villages to run civic action and medical help in. My engineer company built a school. We were in the village of Binh My, and we got some lumber to rebuild a schoolhouse. We were about two thirds of the way completed. We had a teacher hired who was a cripple. My engineer company was bringing in the supplies in an armored personnel carrier along the little road up to the schoolhouse and they hit a mine. Luckily nobody was seriously injured. Well, the engineers went out there and fixed the armored personnel carrier, and then continued right on building the school. I went up to them and said, "You all are pretty complacent about this." And they said, "Sir, that's our job." There's no way of telling who laid that mine. But it was someone who didn't want us to build that school. They knew we used that little trail. But we just went right on.

I don't know how long this thing will last... We can still lose this war. That's a real clear statement. I wouldn't be a goddamned bit surprised but that we can still lose it. And then you can just write those casualties off and those ever-increasing names on those ever-increasing monuments... You can keep putting them on the monuments and giving out all this crap, all this posthumous DSCs and Purple Hearts... but there's no end to this thing.