Sober and reasonable.
Thanks. Vietnam is very personal to all who served. I wish Kerry would go away, but we have to see his defeat through until the end.
Reading the chapter of the book brought back alot of memories for me. The people on the sampan had to be dealt with as enemy combatants. They were out at night (there was a 6PM curfew in my AO) and were fair game. From my experience, it would be unlikely (for numerous reasons) that the VC or NVA would have stayed around to fire back. Therefore my initial reaction is that they DID NOT return fire. However, I wasn't there. So...
The fog of war is very real.
We had a friendly fire incident in our company when I first arrived. 32 years later, at one of our reunions, several of us were talking about it. Each person had a different take on it. One guy even placed the blame on the wrong guy - he had gone all those years thinking that! It turned out each person was wrong on their take - or had at least gotten one detail wrong. How do I know? I had a better vantage point and was in the platoon that was responsible for the accident.