"Albany" Chpts 18-20

Two topics really caught my attention during this section. The first is the objective principle of war. This principle says that every military operation must be directed toward a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective. However, Lieutenant Colonel McDade and his troops were not given a clearly defined mission; rather they were just told to walk through the jungle until they arrived at LZ Albany. This caused numerous complications and I think is linked to the heavy number of casualties the battalion took. Had McDade been given a more thorough mission, he would have been more tactical and not allowed his troops to just be lolling around.
This leads to the second issue that caught my attention, command and control. Basically there was none. The soldiers in the companies at the rear of the formation were lounging around and no one was giving orders because their commanders had moved to the front of the formation for a quick meeting. During the battle, the battalion was split up and there were many instances where soldiers were not sure whether they were being fired upon by their soldiers or by the North Vietnamese. McDade was out of contact with his people and unable to report on his accountability to higher, which was problematic because this limited their ability to call for air strikes. The lack of command and control on the side of the Americans had fatal results for the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry.