Welcome to werewolf country, son.

Oh, you want a map? Sure, you can have a map.

That... is a lot of trees. And rocks. And rice paddies. And the ten villages (flying yellow ARVN flags) we’re tasked with trying to keep safe from the werewolves. Helicopters can drop off supplies just about anywhere, but can only drop off troops on clear grassland (and US bases). Not in trees, not in rocks, not in the river, no not in rice paddies either. Not in villages either. Or on top of enemy bases, should those start showing up.
What will start showing up, tonight, are werewolves. Assuming they aren’t out there already. We have no way of knowing. Yet.
Somewhere out there are five or six warps in the fabric of reality. We can’t see them; we’ll never be able to see them, only extrapolate their positions by theoretical math. There could easily be one right outside our HQ.
Out of those holes, every night, werewolves will come forth to sow terror in the land. And they’ll stay until they bloody us or until we bloody them. Then they’ll run away.
And come back the next night.
Until they can start bringing in stronger werewolves. With werewolf cannons. And werewolf tanks.
And we won’t be able to see any of it. Unless we go looking for them, and get right up next to them.
But the people in the villages could know. And they might tell us.
If we can prove to them, that we can protect them from the werewolves.
And the villagers are touchy. They don’t really want us there, and may not help us find the werewolves, especially if the werewolves have been scaring them with threats about what will happen if they tell us. And if the stronger werewolves arrive, the villagers will regard that as a disaster: we can’t earn their trust back by killing those werewolves, because we shouldn’t have let them get into this area at all.
But neither can we permanently kill the weaker werewolves.
But that’s our job.
To fight, and win, what can’t be won against.
Let’s get to it.
Currently in our HQ, we have:
Three Hueys squads: no combat power, just for transport and supply.
One engineering company. (I’m assuming this is basically company level for most ground forces -- the game doesn’t specify, but I can’t imagine it would be much more than that at this scale.) They have armored personnel carriers, but suck at fighting.
One Green Beret platoon. GBs are of course awesome, but in this game they’re weaker than just about anything, which indicates the difference in unit size. But they can see three hexes out, which nothing else can do, and they can do a few special things like train mediocre ARVN troops once some other things are in place.
Three infantry companies. These are great at fighting, better than any other soft unit on either side. But they can only see one hex away, and unless I put them on helicopters, one company per copter squad (I doubt squad’s the right word but I’m too lazy to look up the proper term), they don’t travel fast.
One howitzer. This can launch strong attacks at range, but can’t move except by chopper, and can’t be placed anywhere except an American base. And we only have one base. Yet.
Fortunately, whoever sited our HQ had enough sense to plop it about equidistantly near four of the ten villages we’re supposed to protect; and a fifth one isn’t too far down the road.
Unfortunately, one of those four is this one, arguably the closest one, to our south.
And it is doomed.

It’s sitting across a river, with jungle running up to the river’s edge, completely surrounded by jungle and fields as far as could ever be feasibly approached. We can’t drop troops nearby, they’d have to be marched in. I have no idea yet if the engineers can get there, possibly not. Any engineering company will have a chore getting there if so; and clearing a place for a forward base to hold some troops. Very probably the company would be murdered by the VC before we could protect it.
At best, securing this one little corner will be a job for one Green Beret (for scout detecting early threats), at least one infantry maybe two, a dedicated engineering company for quite a while, and then parking the GB permanently at the forward base where it can train ARVN with a metric ton of arty support flown in to camp there. And the US infantry will have to stay there until enough ARVN troops are based nearby to feasibly repel any VC.
In fact, for proper detection we’ll probably have to have two forward bases set up there, capable of local and self-defense: one east and one west.
That’s a lot of political points spent on securing one village.
Wait, did I mention two more of the remaining six villages are in about the same crappy defensive position, except on the southwestern corner of the map?

Because they totally are.
And one more in the northwestern corner, though at least it’s on our side of the river.

That’s
four of our six assigned villages.
We only have to live here forty-five weeks. Not even a year.
They have to live here always.
Welcome to werewolf country.