Nor does a reading of the letters suggest that the officers were being anything less than honest and straightforward. Indeed, some came with a warning that perhaps they ought not to be shared with cadets. One letter in particular offered some lewd details of the goings on with the female cast of a USO show. On the whole, however, these were letters about young men doing a job, written with little sense of drama or self-importance.

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Along with the writers’ enthusiasm for duty and responsibility, the self-doubt and insecurity that often accompany young leaders to war also come through. One officer wrote: ‘The men surprised me the other day, sir. After a class I threw open the floor to any questions. And the men started into the philosophy of the war. Why was the U.S. involved, what do we hope to gain, how [are] patriotism and freedom involved?’ Another officer wrote of his first experience leading men into battle: ‘I had only been a company commander for three weeks and this was a rude way for me to break in. As I sit here and look at the Silver Star I received for that day, I wonder if there was something I should or could have done to prevent our casualties. I’ll probably never know.’

Throughout the letters there was little bravado, nor any apparent attempt to soften the realities of war as these young leaders saw them. Among the most riveting letters are personal accounts of combat, including Campanella’s fateful day at LZ Bird. Campanella was an artillery forward observer attached to an infantry company that had been assigned to guard the perimeter of the firebase. In his book, Marshall described the young officer as ‘anything but flamboyant and almost determinedly serious.’ Marshall’s description comes as little surprise given the story Campanella recounted to his wife. The unit had expected some contact, but certainly not a full-scale assault by a human wave of NVA infantry. Startled from sleep shortly after midnight by the screams of wounded and the roar of a firefight, Campanella was stunned to discover that he was the only officer in the unit uninjured, and immediately had to assume command of the perimeter defenses.

‘The commander was seriously wounded,’ he wrote, ‘and I took charge of the company. It went through my mind what [a friend] had told me before I left for [Vietnam]. He had [seen] an article where an artillery FO had to take charge of an infantry company, and [thought] I had better study up on infantry tactics. Well I never thought it would happen to me but it did.’

Under a curtain of exploding mortar rounds, Campanella raced to the perimeter, where he was astonished to see 40 to 50 North Vietnamese hurling stick grenades and firing wildly. Campanella ordered the defenders back to the gun sections for a final stand. In the next desperate hours the lieutenant helped direct a determined defense, including firing 105mm ‘beehive’ rounds into the teeth of the charging enemy.

‘They say I am to get the Silver Star,’ Chuck Campanella wrote to his wife, ‘but they don’t need to give me anything because all I did was what the situation warranted….I came through alive and never want to see another one like that.’

Other letters offered additional harrowing examples, including an account of a young lieutenant colonel named Richard Cavasos, who later rose to become one of the Army’s most respected senior leaders. In another letter, a lieutenant described a typical day at war. ‘I had my radio back at the TOC,’ he wrote, ‘and proceeded to put it on my back and relayed messages to the 105[mm] howitzer battery. I coordinated with the air observer and instructed him to fire 175[mm gun], 8-inch [artillery], and 155[mm] defensive targets. Then I began to adjust Blue Max [Cobra gunships]. I had to continuously relay messages for both the infantry and artillery, plus coordinate the insertion and the air cover for the medevacs.’

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