James Estep: Comanche Six: Company Commander in Vietnam

The young captain saw war as man’s ultimate competitive sport. It was this realization that brought James Estep back to Vietnam for a third tour — this time as a company commander in the famed 1st Cavalry Division. Call-sign “Comanche Six,” he commanded an airmobile rifle company. They were pawns in this game of war: picked up by helicopters and dropped off at an LZ in the heart of “Indian country,” with orders to launch search-and-destroy missions by day, and “trick or treat” patrols at night — to find the elusive “Charlie” and kill him.

Vietnam has been called the “company commander’s war” — these were the young officers who ran the war on a day-to-day basis, making life and death decisions in the jungles, rice paddies, and villages. Estep quickly learned what it meant to be a leader of men: to comfort an 18-year-old who had killed for the first time, to give confidence to an intimidated platoon leader, to revitalize the morale of a “hard-luck” company, to gain the trust of his crusty first sergeant, and, most of all, to confront and conquer his own fears.

Company Commander in Vietnam will stand as one of the fine memoirs of Vietnam, it is an honest and compelling story of American infantrymen caught up in a war that could not be won. But more than one man’s story, it is a revealing look at “the way of war” — how young boys become fighters and leaders, what they give, what they gain — and lose — in the end.