[Chainmail]

Actually, it doesn't look like those soldiers set any fires. Best guess is that tracers fired during the preceding and unvideoed firefight started the fires. The video starts with a somewhat leisurely medevac (where I was, you'd never see a Huey sitting still on the ground) for what appear to be lightly wounded troops.

The local villagers don't appear to at all afraid of the soldiers or even hostile. The soldiers don't help put out the fires but they don't get in the way either.

I am not particularly impressed with the level of training of that bunch, since it shows them bunched up on that one trail and nobody seems interested in watching for movement around them and during that one scene while they are digging and cleaning their M-16s, you would think that they were on a stateside training exercise instead of Vietnam. They don't seem to be thinking about the possibility of mortar fire, judging by the shallowness of those holes and their indifference to cover.

The things you learned very quickly over there was to pay close attention to where you stepped and to the edges of the treelines where the enemy was almost certainly watching and waiting.

[Vermont Lt]

You bring up something that struck me watching that last night. I think some of that was US Army film, used for training or “propaganda.” I am a photographer and you can when when a shot is made under stressful conditions. There was no shake and the pictures were pretty damned sharp. It was shot from a tripod.

I have never been in combat, and I was a baby at the time these were made. But for the men wo were there: did you ever see a tripod in combat? I am taking a leap and suggesting you didn’t see a lot of that.