I loved this and have been able to meet with some of my old unit members from 50 years ago.I ordered this book as a gift for my husband. My husband was a CAP Marine In VietNam 1969-1970. He read it from cover to cover. Then we purchased another copy for a Silent Auction for a CAP Reunion. I’m thinking every CAP Marine or child of a CAP Marine would appreciate this book. My husband has been doing “Civic Action » for many years. I didn’t realize until recently that it started in VietNam. Books like this help to understand who you are living with. God Bless these guys and God Bless their wives.The Combined Action Platoons were an innovative attempt to employ counterinsurgency best practices in Vietnam, and I was hoping that these first-hand accounts of the men who served in them would provide useful insights to those like myself, who consider themselves students of insurgency and COIN. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the accounts were devoid of any insight at all. A few offered useful nuggets, a few were border-line unreadable (for their lack of coherence), but most were just plain superficial and unhelpful. I applaud the author for the attempt. I'm a big fan of oral histories, and he lays out the interviews chronologically in order of when the Marines served, in an attempt to show--through the accounts--how the program evolved over time. But in this case too much time had passed (the book was written in the early 1990s) and too many of the interviewees were young enlisted men or junior NCOs when they served in the CAPs, so their strategic perspective was limited. As a result, too many of the interviews are little more than "day in the life" accounts or "let me tell you about the day my buddy died" with little to offer on the workings or value of the CAPs. Moreover, I did not see any evolution of the program, but rather a roller-coaster of personal opinions that contradicted each other. For instance, interviewee opinion of the Popular Forces--local fighters that made up the Vietnamese component of the CAPs; the "combined" part of CAP--bounced back and forth between "useless" and "brave and effective" based solely on the experiences, opinions, or recollections of each person, rather than showing some sort of evolution. Perhaps that is to be expected, but I walked away feeling like I knew less about the CAPs than before I started reading the book.To end this review on a positive note, if you are simply interested in war stories and aren't looking to gain significant insights into the CAPs, some of the stories are interesting. And the author does a nice job of providing an overview of the Combined Action Program in the first chapter.For those of you who are military history buffs, this is a must read. You will understand the role of CAP units and how they changed over the duration of the war.My friend has a section in the book so I was super excited to read about a part of their life I did not know much about. A good read to learn about a really interesting program. Loved hearing all of the personal accounts.As a former CAP Marine I can relate to many of the stories. One of the reviews suggested this book didn't include the big picture but when you're in a small unit in the middle of the jungle, there is no big picture.Primary resources used to discuss a very unique approach by the Marines in Vietnam. Down to earth, gritty. My unit and some of my buddies were part of this project. Great overview of the Combined Action Platoons.Just like it happened CAP 2-10