Adrenaline Junkie

 “A Rumor of War”by Philip Caputo, 1977

After graduating from a Jesuit college in English literature in 1960, Caputo joined the Marines to get away from the boredom and safety of suburban life. (You read that right.) In a familiar and grueling process, he became a marine officer and is flown to Viet Nam in early 1965 to defend the Da Nang airfields after ARVN defeats. His platoon is made up of high-school dropouts from slums, dirt farms and Appalachia. This is his story, a combination of the enjoyment of combat and its cruel reality, with comradeship its redeeming quality, a comradeship that also produced barbarities of revenge.

This memoir reads like Matterhorn by Karl Malantes, whose similar ambivalent attitude also promotes war on the sly. The excitement, the making of a man, the solidarity, the mission, the discipline – all elide politics, which is absent from this narrative. This attitude is a fitting tribute to Caputo's middle-class, Catholic upbringing in American suburbia in the 1950s. But for a young reader not sucked in by military heroics, it might dissuade them from making the same deep mistake.

As a young man he arrives in a Viet Nam still without ubiquitous shell craters and multiple dead and wounded. Its the familiar tactile Viet Nam – insects, dust, heat, sweat, sun, shit, body odor, boredom and routine. Until the first casualty, a blasted foot from a mine. Sickness, disease, accidents and unfriendly-fire follow. Later in 1965 the U.S. brass decide the defensive war will become one of search and destroy. U.S. troops begin the offensive and the intervention starts in earnest. The criminal command from on high also came – that if they were running or dead and Vietnamese, they were VC, civilians be damned. The body count bloodbath had begun. Later, prisoners were not taken either, especially by the ARVN.

Gunship Huey's, transport helicopters, thundering howitzers, overwhelming noise announce the first big sortie into VC territory. Even though Caputo had read many books about WWII, he is happy as he flies in a chopper to the LZ. So he concludes that every generation will make the same mistake, forever. He mistakes his own avocation as a macho adrenaline junkie for a rationale of eternal war. He thinks war is a psychological phenomenon, not a political and economic one. This is a bourgeois, low-level cover for war.

What follows are routine commutes into the bush by helicopter and walking jungle trails west of Da Nang while being attacked by groups of phantom snipers. He describes the combination of viciousness towards Vietnamese civilians and the odd kindnesses of GIs. In one firefight, a platoon burns down a whole village in irritation. Caputo later wants to make amends to the villagers, but then notices they seem to have no emotion about the destruction, and he becomes angry with them. This is an odd reaction.  After killing some VC the units start to become hardened to war, a process Caputo shows in detail. With the first death by sniper fire in his unit, Caputo and the men realize they might die. Yes, you read that right. 

Checking the Bombs at Da Nang Airfield

PAPER the DEAD

As a second Lieutenant he's transferred off the line to battalion HQ where he became a paper pusher, gruesomely counting KIAs among other work. He notes that every kind of dead human body has the same terrible smell. He keeps up a VC KIA board that displays the tally for visiting generals from Westmoreland's HQ, and once had to include the dead bodies themselves for show. Caputo describes an attack against the Da Nang airbase by VC sappers and mortars which destroyed 6-7 planes. As casualties, exhaustion and stress mount in the units, depression and anger take over for many soldiers. He looks at the various peccadilloes and stupidities of officers and routine in a Marine HQ. He watches green, gung-ho marines stepping off the landing crafts. He remembers some of the dead. At this point, Caputo still thought the war was ok … though it was no longer “a splendid little war.”

Caputo rejoins another platoon, is more exhausted than ever in the constant rain and patrols, spends 3 forgetful R&R days in Sai Gon, then goes back to the moving front. He engages in a delirious and successful attack on a VC ville, then his platoon is shelled by 'friendly' fire. As his platoon heads back to the line, 9 are injured by a mine and in response, his troops burn half a village. He hates the VC and communism, you see, so revenge is sweeter. In a final 1966 operation southwest of Da Nang, Caputo calls in jets to strafe, bomb and napalm VC positions, after which his platoon burns a VC village along a river in a fit of rage in another 'successful' action.

Caputo is later accused of orchestrating the murder of two innocent young Vietnamese men in one VC ville, but is acquitted. He becomes an international war correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and returns to Sai Gon in 1975 as the south Vietnamese regime is collapsing. Then you realize the author – an educated, middle-class adrenaline junkie who enlisted - has used the war to jump-start his literary and journalism career. This book was called “the best book about Vietnam” and “a battle narrative of the first rank.” Each chapter is introduced by a pretentious literary quote. The reviewers loved that he was so sensitive and 'moral' during his involvement. Yet he was a pro-war fuck-head by any measure, though he personally turned against the war, probably because it was unwinnable. The whole pretense is fucking terrible and ignorant, but conventional reviewers embraced it. This memoir is an addition to the literature about the war, but mind the embedded war propaganda.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Matterhorn” and “What It Is Like to Go To War” (both by Marlantes);“Kill Anything That Moves” (Turse); “People’s History of the Vietnam War,” “Ken Burns,” “Soldiers in Revolt,” “In the Crossfire – Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary” (Van); “The Sympathizer” (Nguyen); “Da 5 Bloods” (Spike Lee) “The Latitude of Mercy,” “Tree of Smoke.”  

Other fiction on Vietnam, not reviewed below: Bao Ninh’s “The Sorrow of War;” all of Tim O’Brien’s books and: “Dispatches,” “Dues,” “The Farther Shore,” “In Pharaoh’s Army,” “The Bamboo Bed,” “Fire in the Hole,” “Black Virgin Mountain.”   And non-fiction:  “Working-Class War.”

And I got it at May Day's used/cutout section!

Red Frog

March 19, 2023