Steel My Soldiers' Hearts

In January 1969, Lieutenant Colonel David Hackworth arrived in Vietnam for his second tour of duty, which turned out to be his most daring and legendary. On the back of a Pentagon career that would see him appointed as the youngest major general in US Army history and a reputation earned during two decades as an investigative reporter, Hackworth was given command of 4/39th—a battalion of poorly led draftees suffering the Army's the highest casualty rate and considered its worst fighting battalion. Hackworth's hard-nosed, inventive and inspired leadership quickly turned the 4/39th into Vietnam's most valiant, unstoppable force—the Hardcore Recondos. Over the past decade, Hackworth has drawn on interviews with soldiers from the Hardcore Battalion to portray their sniper missions, ambush actions, helicopter strikes and inside the quagmire of command politics in his best-selling book, _The Better War_.