The Lionheads

This novel recounts a few days of riverine operations by an infantry brigade of the "Lionheads" division in Vietnam -- and the dilemmas confronting its leaders when they are ordered to execute an operation they apprehend will needlessly cost lives. Written in 1972 by then-Major Josiah Bunting (a Rhodes Scholar who is now the superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute), this novel's narrative line and style have a fidelity and closeness to the time unmatched by later Vietnam war novels. The brilliant opening chapter -- portraying a division briefing to a gathering of lords, knights, and attendants -- is worth the price of the book. "The Lionheads" regularly appears on reading lists for armed forces officers deliberating the ethics of leadership. Anyone studying the Vietnam war may profitably compare this book, with its strong moral viewpoint, to the portrayals and judgments about the war in other fiction and non-fiction accounts of the war