Reddit reviews The Village

If you want some great war non-fiction, I am a HUGE fan of a guy Bing West.

West was a former Marine general who served as a Lt in Vietnam, and later worked as a researcher for the Rand Corporation.

A few of his non-fiction books I really liked:

"The March Up". He and another Marine vet, Ray Smith grab themselves an SUV and ride along with 1st Marines on the initial OIF invasion of Iraq. The cool part is, since West has been an infantry Lt, a Vietnam vet, a General, and a former senior staff member under Reagan, West has access to everybody. He has high level connections to get one on one interviews with politicians and Generals and enough combat street cred to pull up a chair with Enlisted Pvts and company grade officers.

 
"The Strongest Tribe" All about the reconstruction effort in Iraq, post invasion, during the occupation/stability ops phase. He pulls no punches. Speaks quite plainly about the mistakes that were made. (Bremmer, Rumsfeld, etc)

 
"The Village" The story of a CAP (Combined Action Platoon) in Vietnam. West's experience with CAP operations is actually the foundation of his understanding of how modern counterinsurgency ops (OIF) should be run. You see the influence in his later works. The idea of a CAP was, patrol through, seek and destroy op with enemy, roll out was NOT effective Counterinsurgency policy. The CAP idea was to take a unit and make them part of the local community. They would live with and among the locals for an extended period of time to secure the area. The village is the tale of a Marine unit living for a year and a half in a Vietnamese village as the local neighbor/police presence, at a cost of half of their member's lives.

Interestingly enough, "pick a neighborhood to secure, find the most tactically defensible building in it, move in for the year" pretty much describes my first OIF deployment.

Implementation of the Marine Combined Action Concept in Future Contingencies

Involved evaluation and future implementation proposals of the Marine Combined Action Program, which had squads of Marines live in South Vietnamese hamlets and partner with their Popular Forces to facilitate military training and relationships with locals. There's a great book called The Village that tells the story of one of the squads and gives a good picture of the intent behind the program.