History in Platoon: Another Report about Firebase Burt

Peter Holt’s’Platoon’

QUOTE: Those of you who have seen the movie “Platoon” might remember the big jungle battle that closes the film.

If you thought it was a Hollywood concoction divorced from real life, you’d be wrong.

The movie’s director, Oliver Stone, was a young soldier with the Army’s 25th Infantry Division at Firebase Burt on the Cambodian border when what seemed like the entire North Vietnamese army overran the post.

Peter Holt, who later would become chairman and CEO of the San Antonio Spurs, was there, too.

“They were all around you, so there wasn’t anything to do but fight all around you. Yeah, it was scary. Lit up like a Christmas tree. I remember they had that big, whatever that was circling around, dropping those flares, so that place was eerily lit up. I thought (Stone) got it pretty right.”