Later there were briefings and lectures by training officers or experienced men who would try in their varyingly inadequate ways to convey to you a picture of what you would be up against. The Mountains of the Moon always featured in these events, although now they were usually called by their true name—The Long Hai Hills. By any name they remained the most hostile and evil of places, the proverbial edge of the world from which none returned. You did notice that these abominable mountains seemed to grow in size and population of enemy every time you heard of them. In any case, the idea presented was that when the Pig Battalion finally captured the Mountains of the Moon, the war would be as good as over.
More lies....

Willi Heinrich’s book proved to be very hard to find in its hardback form when I was looking for it years later, because it was first published under the title The Willing Flesh. It seems to have become called The Cross of Iron when the paperback was released and stayed that way. Late in the seventies, they made a grim but okay film from it, which of course bore its American title.
    This was the most popular amongst the soldiers, a vivid account of a German unit trying to survive when abandoned behind Russian lines during  the retreat from the Eastern Front in WW2. Oddly, it was the closest thing any of us had ever read to the way we operated. The point that our activities far more closely resembled those of the Germans than they did the good guys in conventional war novels was not lost on us.
    It was a rare experience for me as well in that I can actually remember the physical circumstances of reading it. If I were ever to return to the Vietnam jungle, I would be hard-pressed to relocate any of the places where memorable events occurred, but I am certain that if I stumbled upon those very spots where I sat reading the early pages of The Cross of Iron, I would recognise them immediately. Especially the bits where Steiner returns from his lone recon missions. I related to him being me just as I was then, completely.