A Rumor of War: The Classic Vietnam Memoir Paperback – Big Book, 1 August 2017

Caputo's digestion of the Vietnam War is a merit not only to the degraded soldiers involved, but a glorification of a pushy parent. In this case, the pushy parent is the United States government. Phil Caputo, a young, daring, idealistic man who joined the Marines in search of adventure and unexpectedly come across his own meaning. Taking you into the trenches head first, Caputo exemplifies the tragic events of the war as the soldiers, who believed they living their fathers World War II legacy only found death. The journeys through the Vietnamese jungles slowly transform Caputo and in a way harden him. Being shot at, never knowing exactly why he's out there and ultimately the death of his friend blow his preconceived notions out of the blood drenched jungle waters. The thematic which rears its ugly head from time to time is `natural human inclination versus duty.' In this case, the natural inclination was the why behind the war. Many soldiers did not know why they were fighting and were never given proper answers. However, the pressure from the US government is satiable. They want the soldiers to simply kill, and much like a baseball score, would deliver the winning numbers to the American public over the nightly news. Caputo's insight gives us a window view into how in reality; the soldiers were not at fault for the loss of the Vietnam War. In fact, the blame is placed upon the US government. With all of their secrets, special interests and bizarre motivations, they push American citizens to support the war and draft as many of them as they can. Through propaganda, patriotism takes a whole different meaning. In many ways, the fight that was waged in Vietnam was one that was doomed from the very beginning. The rooted purpose as to why the Americans landed on Vietnam was uncertain. Fighting the Viet Cong or the Viet Ming was much like trying to stop a water leak. Fighting through the jungle, the Americans faced a war unlike any other. The enemy was everywhere without a land marked base for the Americans to attack. Trying to stop this leak in one area, only meant that the leak would apply its pressure in another unexpected area. And throughout all of this, the American Citizens blamed the soldiers for everything. They blamed them for going to war, for loosing the war and even blamed those who had enough foresight to not fight in the war. Caputo's in the knee deep approach is a liberating view of the world. For so many years, the war had a lot of question marks written all over it. Many, simply believed that the war was lost because American soldiers were weak hippies. Caputo brings a different machine to the table as he gives us his through the eyes experience. His testimony gives us the fall of the romanticized idea of war, with its true horror, running around the jungle with no idea why your there, the loss of dear friends, the mechanistic view of death and numbers, endless despair and the overall frustration of fighting an enemy that in many ways was much like a ghost.Caputo describes the war much like an exercise in dehumanization, and I completely agree with him. I enjoyed the read simply because it gave me an insight I did not have before. The soldiers of this war were confused and were riding the wave of World War II. In reality, it was a sham. These soldiers were used simply as killing machines. Forced into combat with ideas of glory and honor. Ultimately, they found death and questions.

Philip Caputo's "A Rumor of War" is a masterpiece. Inside, he shows how a soldier fighting in the jungles in Vietnam is progressively transformed- and damaged. At the beginning, Caputo is a young man, living with his parents, going to university, swept up by John F. Kennedy's rhetoric about giving to one's country. Even so, Caputo wishes to prove himself, and joins the Marines against his parents' wishes. He takes us through his experience at basic training and bootcamp. By the end of these experiences, Caputo is hardened, but not damaged- and he still holds his patriotic ideals close to his heart. These ideals change dramatically during his experiences during the war. Taken overseas by the escalation of troops under President Johnson, Caputo arrives as a platoon commander, expecting the American troops to mop up the Viet Cong quickly and without much effort. Caputo was by no means alone in this early assessment, but the resilience of the Viet Cong forced all views to change.Caputo vividly describes his experience sleeping and eating during the war. Despite mosquito nets, one had to learn to sleep around swarms of mosquitos. During patrol, one would walk briefly through shallow water, and walk out of that water with leeches all over one's legs. Food was terrible. Sleep was short. But by far the most profound experience Caputo endures is the fighting itself. When Caputo sees the bodies of his men blown to little pieces, his view of the exaltation of humanity is challenged. He describes vividly how he encountered soldiers who had cut off the ears of Viet Cong as "trophies." He reacts with shock at first, but during his months in Vietnam, he finds himself becoming more and more like them. During an assault, his platoon with him included, enters into a battle frenzy as they burn down a village of 200 people- just for the hell of it. Once the frenzy is over, Caputo is disturbed, and describes how it was as if he was watching himself from outside his body, observing the carnage but unable to change it.His tour of duty comes to an end when Caputo sends two men to capture or kill two particular Viet Cong agents. When they return, they have killed two Vietnamese- but not Viet Cong. Caputo, disturbed, orders them to stick to their stories. Suddenly, the scene changes. It is some time later, and Caputo and his two men are on trial for murder- not manslaughter, but murder, as if they had murdered two boys on the strees of Los Angeles. The potential sentence is life in prison. Caputo draws an analogy between the experience of waiting for the verdict and the experience of going into battle- a tension, almost sexual in its intensity, that one desperately wishes to relieve, even as one dreads its ultimate conclusion. He wishes to receive the verdict- though he dreads the potential verdict- just as he wishes to come to a battle, even as he dreads his potential doom. Ultimately, Caputo is acquitted, and returns home at last. An epilogue describes Caputo's experience returning as a journalist in 1975 as he see Saigon fall to the North Vietnamese. Even though the U.S. had lost, it was finally over.

A RUMOR OF WAR, by Philip Caputo.This is a RE-read for me. I first read Caputo's Vietnam war memoir more than 35 years ago, in a mass market paperback edition, when it was still a pretty new book. Then it was just a very popular and bestselling book. This time I read it in a 1996 Holt Paperback edition, with a front cover caption calling it "The Classic Vietnam Memoir." And it has certainly earned this title, still in print, still much-read. One of the lines I remembered was a comment from a seasoned Korean War veteran, who told the young Lieutenant Caputo - "Before you leave here, sir, you're going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy." And in the madness and heat of combat, young Caputo learned this to be too true. Indeed, he even discovered some of that brutality in himself.One especially affecting section of the narrative depicts the time that Caputo spent as "Officer in Charge of the Dead," and the fevered, too-real nightmares that went with that job. Another is the unsettling, inebriated feeling he experiences during R&R in Saigon, a feeling that he suddenly realizes is no more than freedom from fear. Similarly, near the end of his tour, he feels it again when he becomes, at least temporarily, indifferent to death."It was not a feeling of invincibility; indifference, rather. I had ceased to fear death because I had ceased to care about it. Certainly I had no illusions that my death, if it came, would be a sacrifice. It would merely be a death, and not a good one either ... There were no good deaths in the war."The real insanity of the war is perhaps best illustrated in Caputo's being brought up on murder charges for a patrol and 'snatch' of suspected VC's he helped to plan. By that time he was not simply indifferent, he was angry, and he could no longer stomach the war.The flat numbness that was felt by so many veterans of the Vietnam war is well summed up with the final lines of Caputo's story as he takes off on a flight out of Vietnam, bound for home -"None of us was a hero. We would not return to cheering crowds, parades, and the pealing of great cathedral bells. We had done nothing more than endure. We had survived, and that was our only victory."Philip Caputo is a fine writer, and yes, this is "The classic Vietnam memoir." Very highly recommended.- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA

A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo was a very good book. Taken from his experiences as a marine in Vietnam, Caputo narrates the events and conflicts that he went through. For those who like more of a narrative that describes more of the actual fighting and conditions on the frontlines rather than a holistic approach to history this is the book. He begins with his first experience as a lieutenant waiting for the orders to move out to Vietnam from Okinawa, hence the title of the book A Rumor of War which speaks the of long wait for the eventual conflict to come. He then writes of the various encounters and experiences he had while fighting in Vietnam. This conflict differed in the lack of major battles with large confrontations between opposing forces. Instead there are many small ambushes and patrols that are documented in the book. This can get a bit tiring because of the repetitive subject of patrol after patrol, but Caputo always includes some different aspect about each patrol. Thus the book captures your attention.Caputo maintains a respectful position throughout the book by not letting his views on the war influence the way he portrayed it. He explicitly states in the book that his narrative is not to glorify or challenge the war. It is simply to say what happened. Caputo does this very well when he keeps to his narrative style while being able to reveal the emotions and thoughts of individual soldiers. Thus we get a deeper view of what Caputo felt and thought at the time while he was in the war. He lays plainly the conditions and dilemmas that soldiers faced in fighting an enemy they could not always see or identify. Through this process and the atrocities they face, the soldiers become increasingly demoralized and dehumanized. Thus Caputo really captures the essence of war and its psychological conditions. As a historical account, this book does not suffice. But as a narrative, what its focus really is, it stands as a great testimony to the conflict. "War is hell."

This was my second reading of this book and it struck a chord with me. If you want to get a sense of the Vietnam War (1965-66) from the point of view of a young USMC infantry lieutenant (a platoon leader) then this is the book. You will feel the oppressive heat, you will see the jungle, the dirty river, the small villages, you will hear the cannon fire. There is blood, sweat, tears, mud, mosquitoes, leeches, monsoon rains, muck filled fighting holes, the stench of your own feet and body, the stench of dead bodies, confusion & chaos, boredom. Imagine being on a patrol in the jungle (searching for VC) but distracted by mines, booby traps, trip wires, snipers and mortar fire or sitting in a fighting hole looking for signs of the enemy to your front in the pitch black night. This book will take you there. And I'm not even going to mention the politics of it all. What was the point, what was the mission? There was a great story in the book from the mouth of a chaplain re. what the death of a single marine does to a family back home ("the world"). Like Lt Caputo, I was a Lt in the USMC (1978-82) but I was lucky, there was no war in Vietnam. There was no war in Afghanistan. Vietnam, Afghanistan, it's the same thing. What is the national security issue and the mission in Afghanistan in 2014? Why do we continue to lose good young men? For what? Lt Caputo had the good fortune to survive his 16 months in Vietnam. He left w/o physical injuries but fellow marines he knew did not. He wrote this book for the purpose of telling the truth about the ugliness of war. He succeeded. This book should be required reading at West Point, the Naval Academy, the AFA. Read this book and understand. The things men do.