A Rumor of War

by Philip Caputo

Paperback, 1987

Status

Available

Call number

B Cap

Call number

B Cap

Barcode

3916

Collection

Publication

Ballantine Books (1987), 328 pages

Description

"In March of 1965, Lieutenant Philip J. Caputo landed at Danang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home -- physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone. A Rumor of War is far more than one soldier's story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered America's indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. In the years since then, it has become not only a basic text on the Vietnam War but also renowned classic in the literature of wars throughout history and, as the author writes, of 'the things men do in war and the things war does to them.'" -- Back cover.

Original publication date

1977

User reviews

LibraryThing member sweetmarie9
I read this book for a US history course in college. It has since become one of my favorite books. Very visual - one of those books that just pulls you in.
LibraryThing member BruceAir
Caputo served in the Marines in the early days of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. This compelling memoir of that experience seems eerily relevant today.
LibraryThing member repb
First, Caputo is a wonderful writer. This is the third novel of his I have read and I had a hard time reading it. I think he would be pleased to hear this. It is about the Vietnam War. I liked Matterhorn better. This not as much because he spends so much time on the terrible psychological aspects
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of its effect on the combatants. I think I got it early on, but he keeps it going at it and at it. Like Matterhorn it does put a different spin on war, that's for sure.
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LibraryThing member Beavs
Probably my favorite book of all time.
LibraryThing member BradKautz
Recently I read A Rumor of War, the memoir of Phil Caputo of his time as a young Marine officer in Vietnam. Caputo had joined the Marines as an officer candidate while still a college student, primarily out of desire to break out of his suburban middle-class background and to experience adventure
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in his life. He spent roughly one and one-half years he spent in Vietnam and learned that the dreams of glory fueled by his imagination and the cultural portrayals of American military success, like those found in any war movie of the 40’s and 50’s, came at a cost he could never have imagined, and that in fact there was little glory and much sorrow to be found in the act of war.

Caputo divides his story into three parts. The first part tells of his early Marine training and then the arrival of his unit in Vietnam, in April, 1965, at the very beginning of the build-up of American forces. He, and the country at-large, felt confident, that the US military presence would be a decisive one. This sense of optimism, and the idealism that underlay it, was confronted by a harsh reality. One result of that reality was that the initial 5,000 troops of April, 1965 increased to 200,000 by year’s end. Caputo was part of an infantry company and he describes their day-to-day struggles with the climate, the Vietnamese they were fighting against, and the bureaucracy in graphic vignettes.

In the second phase of his Vietnam experience Caputo was reassigned and given a primarily administrative role, one that he defines as “the officer in charge of the dead.” He had the responsibility of keeping the official records of dead and wounded soldiers for each side, which included a ratio of American to Vietnamese casualties as a measure of the war’s “progress.” Another part of this job included completing the paperwork, and learning the details, for each American fatality. His previous experience as a field officer gave him a graphic understanding of the real meaning of the euphemisms that were used as descriptive terms for the reports. It is a task that placed an increasingly heavy load on his psyche.

In the last phase Caputo was transferred back to a combat unit and was again immersed into an environment where the physical and emotional toil never seemed to end. It’s only variation was found in whom, and by what means, another person on either side would become dead or wounded. And it is at this point in the story where he has his perhaps, and this is in my view as the reader, defining episode of his Vietnam experience, the time where in his words he “breaks” and finds himself crossing a psychological line that he would have never thought possible of a person of his background before coming to Vietnam. As this happens he realizes that such a possible inner change, and its consequent external results, could happen to virtually anyone.

Caputo’s memoir was written 10 years after his service in Vietnam, and I remember first hearing of it around the time it was published and then turned into a mini-series, about 30 years ago and roughly the same time as I was ending my own four years of military service, all of which was in the immediate post-Vietnam era of 1976-80. My service was in the Navy and I had little contact with people who had served on the ground in Vietnam, so I don’t personally know anyone who had a first-hand experience in a combat setting. But while I was in the Navy I did have the opportunity to travel widely, including to several places that have had significant exposure in world news in the intervening years as places of strife and conflict.

While Caputo tells a story that is based on events that happened 45 years ago much of what he experiences internally is relevant today, i.e. that “ordinary” people under profound physical and emotional stress can find themselves capable of thoughts and behavior they would consider impossible in the “ordinary” circumstances of their lives. Sadly, we hear of examples of such things all too often. They happen in distant lands and they happen in our own towns, sometimes even our own homes.

Something that I, as a Christian, find absent from Caputo’s memoir is any kind of reference to God, or even a higher moral truth in the most generic sense. I have heard the phrase “There are no atheists in foxholes” but in his extensive reflection on his Vietnam experience, which includes many occasions in foxholes, as well as other things that surely must have been as intense and terrifying, both god and God appear to be absent.

While I hope that in profound adversity, such as what Caputo describes in Vietnam or that can be found in a myriad of difficult situations that a person could encounter, I would place my trust in God, the fact is that even the strongest and deepest Christian faith is still imperfect. I don’t really know if or where I would break under the stress. I do know that God has made a claim on me, a claim that is sealed in his promise and that cannot be broken, and that he will always be present, whether I can discern it at the moment or not. And that same promise belongs to all who call in faith on the name of Jesus.

Last night at my Bible study we happened to be singing the hymn This Is My Father’s World, which has lots of imagery of God’s world as a beautiful and peaceful place. And we often experience God’s world in that way. But the song also says this in its third verse:

This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world: the battle is not done:
Jesus Who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.

The promise, not of the hymn but of God in the words of the Bible, is that whatever happens to us, be it good or bad, happens within a world that is always in God’s control, and I praise God that the last word will not be mine, but his.
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LibraryThing member TimBazzett
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
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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.
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LibraryThing member pennsylady
4 ★

This is the story of Marine Lieutenant Philip J. Caputo who landed at Danang (March 1965) with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam.
The story is his and the men with whom he fought.

An overview says it better than I.
"Upon it's publication in 1977, it shattered America’s
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indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam.

Although I wasn't totally immersed in L. J. Ganser as reader,please realize that it was just my personal preference.
-----

“Every war seems to find its own voice: Caputo . . . is an eloquent spokesman for all we lost in Vietnam.”—C. D. B. Bryan, Saturday Review
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LibraryThing member johnwbeha
I think I have read this back in the eighties; but I am not sure. But reading it [again] was no hardship. This is certainly one of the masterpieces to emerge from the Vietnam War. The core of the book takes place in the early days of the war, when the US troops move from advisors to combatants. It
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tells simply and clearly of the horror and fascination of war through the eyes of a naive junior officer. The writing style is very clear and uncluttered and, although I often shuddered, I enjoyed the read. The story is in the core of the book, but I urge everyone to read the prologue and the epilogue. These are brillantly set out thoughts on why the US were there in the first place [despite the French experience and the massive corruption] and then why it all went wrong. As I said a masterpiece!
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LibraryThing member SigmundFraud
Awesome. Spellbinding. Frightening. Such is the war memoir A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo who served in Vietnam as a young lad in 1965. As someone who has never been in the army let alone war this memoir is an eye opener, albeit a frightening one. I don't recall being opposed to the Vietnam War at
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the time as many were. I think I may have supported it while knowing almost nothing about it. Such a moral conflict for our young conscientious American men who were put in an impossible situation. Having read this memoir I now know that the war was wrong and too many of our young resources gave their lives for no justifiable reason. This book is important and I urge you to read it. I have been moved by it and disgusted by the facts.
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LibraryThing member juju2cat
Fascinating. Written with beautiful intelligence about the horrors of war. Viet Nam was the only war the US did not win. Caputo's book fills your soul with dread; the guerilla style warfare, the heat and bugs. How can any normal person survive being in a war for an hour, a day, a year?? Great book.
LibraryThing member kslade
Good eye-opening Vietnam War memoir.

Rating

(324 ratings; 4)

Pages

328
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