James “Tex” Wolchek Character Analysis

Tex Wolchek is an American officer and decorated veteran of World War II and the Korean War. Tex travels to Vietnam to observe Major Monet and his Foreign Legionnaires in their fight against the Communists, and ultimately decides to fight alongside them. However, Tex, Monet, and the Legionnaires lose every single battle, despite being skilled soldiers. After weeks of steady defeat and losing many men, Tex realizes that the Communists are fighting by nontraditional rules. He remembers a book he read on warfare tactics by Mao Tse-tung, and thinks that perhaps they should reassess the way that they fight the Communists and adopt Mao’s guerilla strategies. Although Monet is reticent to change his philosophy of warfare, Tex and MacWhite (there as an observer) eventually convince Monet to adopt the Communists’ guerilla warfare tactics. When they do, Tex and Monet and their men have their first real victory in months. However, when Tex, Monet, and MacWhite present their epiphany to French and American generals, the generals completely dismiss the idea of learning Communist ideology and methods, assuming that their own Western tactics are automatically superior. Tex and Monet respond by getting drunk in a bar.