This is the story that inspired the acclaimed Burt Lancaster movie, Go Tell the Spartans . The year is 1964--early days in South Vietnam--and the U.S. Army Raiders have garrisoned a town that the French abandoned ten years before. The Viet Cong attack, and the Americans reinforce. They're not about to repeat the mistakes of the French! 'Sad, bawdy, and compelling, ' wrote the Detroit Free Press . Prophetic, too, of how the larger war would end.