The author also writes about how the tour duty of one soldier should last for one year, however, many soldiers unfortunately lost their lives during the first month mainly due to lack of intelligence and experience.
“Soldiers were most likely to die in the first month. The large majority of deaths took place in the first six months.” He explains how the amounts of death rates are high and compares an average soldier’s tour duty lasting one year to the large majority of soldiers who died within the first six months.
Another point which Bilton discusses is the soldier’s experience throughout the war. “Just as a soldier was gaining experience he was sent home. A rookie army was constantly throwing inexperienced men against experienced guerrillas.” He talks about how soldiers were immediately sent home just when they were beginning to gain experience during the war. He also describes the recruits as ‘rookies,’ stating them as beginners and inexperienced. He then goes on to say that men with hardly any experience were being thrown in by rookie armies against experienced guerrillas on their home ground. The source is not biased as the author Michael Bilton is British therefore he would have a neutral opinion of the war.
The source also has the benefit of hindsight as Bilton received information from other sources for the book making the source both reliable and unreliable.
On the other hand, we can question the reliability of the source as it is only an extract from the book ‘Four hours in My Lai’, it could contain more important information and useful facts which does not appear in the extract in Source A, an historian would need to see more information for it to be reliable.
Another reason which makes the source limited is that the source is only one person’s opinion.
The source is also limited as the extract only highlights some of the problems which soldiers had to face; there were many more other problems recruits faced not included in the extract. Using my own knowledge, I know that the US army used tactics such as bombing and the enemy had used guerrilla tactics which is not mentioned.
I know the author had no first hand experience meaning he was not actually at that place and at that time to make comments on the war, he was relying on other sources to get information for his story making the source unreliable.
The information in the book could have been exaggerated to catch the reader’s attention so that more and more people would be interested in buying the book to publish more copies.
