Sublime

Christiaan Rudolf de Wet,

Little Dieter Needs to Fly by Werner Herzog is Casey’s favorite documentary, made in 1997. This is about a U.S. fighter pilot in Vietnam who gets shot down in his very first mission, and is trapped as a POW for a number of years. This documentary will bring you to your knees. Any time you are having a bad day (or you think you have it hard), watch

I was there. So was my old war buddy, Bernard V. O’Hare.

MARINE SOF

Susan Marquis offers the most comprehensive account of this development in Unconventional Warfare: Rebuilding U.S. Special Operations Forces (Marquis 1997).

• Favorite documentaries? “Restrepo, which I’m sure you’ve seen. [TF: This was co-produced and co-filmed by Sebastian Junger, the next profile.]

soldiered with the Communist leadership that would ultimately wrest control of the country from the Nationalists. While there, he became interested in Chinese guerilla operations against the Japanese, specifically the small-unit, “democratic” leadership model that pushed authority and responsibility down to the most junior levels in small combat un

Man for man, the Japanese soldier was more aggressive and conditioned to hardship than his Allied counterpart: British general Bill Slim characterised the enemy condescendingly as “the greatest fighting insect in the world.” Until 1945, Hirohito’s men displayed exceptional night-fighting skills. Collectively, however, the Japanese army had nothing