3. Captain Willard - Apocalypse Now
Sir, I am unaware of any such activity or operation... nor would I be disposed to discuss such an operation if it did in fact exist, sir. - Captain Benjamin L. Willard
I'm going to go out on a pretty sturdy limb here and say that the war in Vietnam pretty much sucked all the way around. If the jungle didn't rot your body there was always the chance of an ambush or gruesome booby trap that would cap you at any moment just before you shipped back home. The pressure was on at all times. The enemy and the good guys all looked and dressed the same and children carried hand grenades on suicide missions. Everywhere there was death and the feeling that the good guys weren't making any progress. The fatal error America made in Nam was letting the politicians take charge of military affairs. It became a war of numbers. Like while playing the board game Risk if you lost two pieces, but the enemy lost eight than technically you won. However, if the enemy has 12 pieces and you only had three to begin with than overall the war is lost. America had plenty of troops in the fight, but the jungle could conceal millions of their enemies. Since no real objectives were known, the conflict became a war of ghosts, men who didn't really belong in the military performing non-official missions. Men like Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now. Willard may be an awesome character, but in real life he would make you sick. He is a souless and merciless monster who will put a bullet in the head of anyone who gets in the way of his mission and at the end of the day no one will ever know because his mission never really existed. It's men like him that caused the US Government to pass laws against military assassinations as well as crack down on Special Forces Black ops committing war crimes that would never be exposed. I was on a gun range once where a sixty-year-old man was plugging round after round in the bull's eye without fail each time. He grinned at me, "Got to be quick and accurate when they're shooting back at you." The man was wearing a hat that read C.I.A. I asked him, "You fight in Vietnam?" He was about the right age. "Not officially," he answered, packed up his gear and walked off. Till this day I wonder if I had just met Willard's equivalent in the flesh. That entire war really just puts you off the army altogether. Just ask my Dad who joined the army two years after the conflict ended.