<p style=”margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; line-height: normal;”><span style=”margin: 0px; font-family: ‘Times New Roman’,serif; font-size: 12pt;”><span style=”color: #000000;”>After months of hard fighting with LT McDonough’s 2^nd Platoon, the Viet Cong make a final and devastating assault on the defenseless village of Truong Lam. This course of action was at the time unthinkable to LT McDonough, because the population was almost exclusively women and children, a significant portion the families of the attackers. However, driven by fanatical motivation spawned from political idealism, the Viet Cong of the Bihn Dihn province effectively ended the mission of the American presence in this area of operations. While LT McDonough reflects on all the fighting, death, and suffering that was now stripped of closure and justification, he understands that leadership must be positive. Along with the responsibilities of leadership in combat, it is his role to ensure positive morale of his soldiers. If he is a trusted leadership official, and he is calm and collected, then his men will be calm and collected. He may be fully aware of the futility of their hard work and effort over the past months, but it is his job as a leader to not allow the rest of his men to think this way. He knows for the men to fight effectively for the rest of the time they are there, they cannot feel that there is no hope of victory. This is a burden that leaders must carry, they know the odds but cannot allow themselves to share that mentality to their men.</span></span></p>