This book describes a critical chapter in the Vietnam conflict, the first eighteen months of combat by the U.S. Army's ground forces. The author focuses on initial deployments and early combat but attempts to presents the war in all of its detail: the enemy's strategy and tactics, General William C. Westmoreland's search and destroy operations, the helicopters and airmobile warfare, the immense firepower American forces could call upon to counter Communist control of the battlefield, the out-of-country enemy sanctuaries, and the allied efforts to win the allegiance of the South Vietnamese people to the nation's anti-Communist government.