Build a movie plot around this: Who does Courcey spot whom is presumably a scout? a one eyed VC soldier
The answer to this question is:
Major Asa Barker (Burt Lancaster) has been given this command: a poorly-manned outpost over seeing three villages named Boo Jum, Mung Tau & Hat Song and he is ordered to re-occupy a nearby, deserted hamlet named Muc Wa in rural South Vietnam somewhere near the rural Da Nang to Phnom Penh (Cambodia) highway that a decade earlier had been the scene of a massacre of French soldiers during the First Indochina War. Barker is a weary infantry veteran in his third war (he served in the Pacific during World War II as well as in the Korean War), who provides veteran supervision to a cadre of advisors attached to a group of South Vietnamese who are ordered to garrison the deserted hamlet of Muc Wa.[2]Major Barker and his executive officer, the career orientated Captain Olivetti receive four replacements. Second Lieutenant Hamilton has been passed over for promotion and sees volunteering for Vietnam is a way to obtain a promotion to remain in the Army. First Sergeant Oleozewski served in the Korean War under Major Barker and is burnt out fromthree tours in Vietnam; his last assignment saw his previous unit massacred. Cpl Abraham Lincoln is a combat medic and a drug addict. The mystery to Major Barker is the fourth man, the draftee Cpl. Courcey, a demolitions expert who extended his enlistment by six months to serve in Vietnam. Major Barker sends his four new men plus Cpl. Ackley, a communications expert to garrison Muc Wa with a half French half Vietnamese interpreter/interrogation specialist called Cowboy, a hardcore squad of Nung mercenaries and a motley mob of about 30 South Vietnamese Popular Force civilian "troops" armed with shotguns and old rifles with a sprinkling of machine guns attempt to create a defensible outpost at Muc Wa.On their way to Muc Wa along a dirt road, the column is ambushed at a roadblock, resulting in the overly enthusiastic Cowboy capturing and beheading the lone Viet Cong attacker. On reaching the hamlet, Hamilton sets up his defenses in a triangular formation and receives supplies...