Historically Underutilized Leadership

Although opposed to the Vietnam War, and a friend of his family reserved a spot for him in the National Guard, Al Gore enlisted in the US Army, and arrived in Vietnam on January 2, 1971, to serve as a field reporter, first with the 20th Engineer Brigade, then with the Army Engineer Command.

Gore opposed to war? War IS Hell, though it took about eight months before I had to kill my first children. At Trung Lap, at the edge of the "Iron Triangle", we were being mortared every night, until, late one evening, a counter-mortar unit from an American division gave me the the exact coordinates of the enemy mortars. When we returned fire, civilians died, including children.