Duc Thang.

This is coolbert:

"'These people won’t listen. They make the same…mistakes over and over again in the same way.'"

Image as attributed to Life magazine.

That instantaneous thought having occurred to me when reading of the anti-helicopter mine was Ap Bac from the era of the Vietnam War.

BEFORE large-scale involvement of American forces during the Second Indo-China War Ap Bac a less than glorious [disastrous] military operation, South Vietnamese combat units [ARVN] and their American advisers defeated and rather soundly by the communist [VC] enemy, almost in a leisurely fashion.

This was Ap Bac. Operation Duc Thang to the South Vietnamese [ARVN].

Everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong and disastrously so.

Ap Bac a combination of heliborne assault, armor assault, parachute insertion and overland attack from several directions NONE of which succeeded!!

WELL, YOU HAVE TO READ THE WHOLE THING FOR YOURSELF.

AP Bac for the United States represents in a microcosm the entire American experience during the Vietnam War?

"microcosm - - noun 1.a miniature representation of something, esp a unit, group, or place regarded as a copy of a larger one"

Those words "these people won't listen" as spoken by the American aviator/adviser John Paul Vann flying over the battlefield in an observation aircraft the entire time, issuing command and orders to no avail. This was the Fire Fly concept as deemed by many counter-productive!

coolbert.