>> i was 15 years old, and i was born in a little town in bayonne, new jersey. a background laying down for me, a middle-class life in a small little town. so i save money, got on the bus, went to new york, looked around, not knowing what i was looking for, but i wanted lightning to strike that day. i wanted to be told at 15," yes, my son." i was on my way back, disappointed. and there was marilyn monroe. of course, when you are 15 years old, and out comes this magnificently beautiful woman, and she stopped and arranged her white fox coat and looked at me and said, "hi." that is what i needed. one little tiny sign that there was someone outside my small little world. i cannot comprehend, but i knew that that meant i could go somewhere in my life. it was difficult to explain. that yearn for something that you could not express. tavis: and this is not just somebody, this is marilyn monroe, and you're trying to move into this field. >> i was trying to make a better life for myself. one of the things about the book that i learned in writing it is how extraordinary h

you've got six weeks of getting to know your troops including operation silver bayonne net, which was probably exactly what you needed in the sense that the troops feared they were out there but the amount of activity was low. and so then you're back in base camp, and you get word that there's another operation, and you're going to move to stage for that? >> yeah. let me say something about my assumption of command. the troops knew -- one of the things that i did before i -- we'd got to vietnam, when i joined the battalion, hal moore knew that i -- my background in special forces and all this, and i had been an avid reader of counterinsurgency operation books and so forth. i read a lot. i brought this foot locker full of books with me when i joined the battalion. so he had me give can classes at benning on counterambush drills and a lot of things which i'd learned in special forces and also through my reading. there was a good little book the british put out called "the small war's manual." it was much better than anything the u.s. army had about counterinsurgency. i had a copy of tha