A PERSONAL ACCOUNT BY I NFANTRY LIEUTENANT AND

PLATOON COMMANDER TOM VOSSLER

After months of indecision by the National Command Authority, President Richard Nixon permitted an attack in May 1970 by U.S. and South Vietnamese armed forces across the South Vietnam/Cambodian border to destroy the substantial Communist sanctuary areas along South Vietnam’s border with supposedly neutral Cambodia.

Colonel Tom Vossler (U.S. Army, Retired), former Director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, and member of the National Army ROTC Hall of Fame, and Gettysburg area resident, provides an informed discussion of the events. Tom was on the frontline of battlefields in Vietnam as an infantry Lieutenant and rifle platoon leader. He subsequently was second in command of a mechanized infantry company making the attacks across South Vietnam’s border into the Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia.

Tom’s account will carry us from the strategic level – his subsequent personal one-on-one recollections with General William C. Westmoreland, to the tactical level – in the dirt – in the elephant grass – in the trees with the grunts.