Good points, duly taken. I have the films of both A Bridge Too Far and Blackhawk Down (and have read a good history of Rourke's Drif) - and appreciate that courage and sacrifice are undiminished by the background situation. I guess that it just seemed to me very sad and wrong that superbly trained and well-equipped troops found themselves so wrong-footed by a murderous rabble in trackie bottoms and flipflops. But then there was Vietnam.....