What came as a greater surprise was Taylor’s view of what this war was all about. He assigned Lansdale the task of looking into the possibility and cost of erecting a huge fence which would run the length of the country and stop infiltration. For years, Lansdale, along with other knowledgeable Americans in Vietnam, had mocked the French Expeditionary Forces for their preoccupation with static outposts, what the Americans considered a Maginot Line mentality; now as he took the assignment from Taylor he thought to himself, Here we are, trying to create our own Maginot Line. It was, he thought as
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