“A Rumor of War” is Philip Caputo’s memoir about his experience in the Vietnam War. This book is not merely an act of recording brutal and horrible act during the war, but also the account of how an adolescent comes to terms with his misdeeds taking part in the war in Indochina in 1965. In general, the book is just a story about war and a painful personal experience of a soldier. The author of the book was one of the first Americans to fight in Vietnam and one of the last to be evacuated from this country. The author also recounts his hallucinations and night terrors he experienced as a result of the war and his duties. He writes that the Vietnam War had one aspect that distinguished it from other conflicts – its savagery because even American farmers killed Vietnamese civilians with a psychopathic violence. Caputo was extremely confident that the mighty forces of the US would smash the Communists in Vietnam but their march to victory was difficult and floundered in jungles. For those soldiers, the Vietnam War turned into a frustrating and terrifying contest for survival.
The main reason behind the US entering the Vietnam War was a mere attempt to prevent Communism. Americans feared that Communists would take over in the world and were sure that the war would be brisk and triumphant. “War is always attractive to young men who know nothing about it, but we had also been seduced into uniform by Kennedy’s challenge to “ask what you can do for your country” and by the missionary idealism he had awakened in us” (Caputo, 1977). The author writes that America seemed omnipotent to those young, brave, and naïve soldiers; they considered themselves champions and were doing something good and noble. They had a very simple vision of their triumph: just go there and win. However, their confidence was early broken as they understood that their adventurous expedition had turned into a useless and exhausting war in which peasant guerrillas were their lethal enemies and in general, they fought for no cause. The war represented numerous weeks of tense waiting or savage manhunts through swamps and jungles. In fact, the war was a great lesson for those men who learned about death, fear, cruelty, suffering, comradeship, and cowardice. They left Vietnam as disillusioned twenty-five-year-old men with old heads on their young shoulders.
Caputo joined the Marines in 1960 for two reasons: he got swept up in the patriotic wave of the Kennedy era and became sick of the dull suburban existence. He had no idea of war but hungered for violence, challenges, and danger. Having seen a poster of the propaganda material of the Marines, Caputo because sure that it was the adventure he had been waiting for. Besides, the man wanted to demonstrate his parents that he was brave, responsible, and independent. In 1961, he was introduced to the military life and enlisted in boot camp. The boot camp represented an isolated society which demanded full commitment, strong values, and rigorous training. They had two types of training: physical and psychological. The US soldiers came to South Vietnam to eradicate Communists; however, Caputo writes, "Throughout [the Marines training] we were subjected to intense indoctrination, which seemed to borrow from communist brainwashing techniques" (Caputo, 1977). All day long they were marched, drilled, humiliated, shouted at, and harassed. The psychological ordeals were aimed at identifying weak personalities who would not withstand the war. Therefore, psychological abuse was designed to make soldiers feel destroyed and worthless until they proved to be satisfying. Besides, they were lectured on the codes of conduct marines were expected to observe. Finally, the Marine Corps had made self-confident, courageous, and highly efficient fighting men whose evolution would be completed in the Vietnam War.
When the author and other soldiers arrived in Vietnam for the first time, they took it as another military exercise. They stared at various maps, patrolled the borders of their base, and dug foxholes in case of attacks and enemy fire they had never seen. Some time later, among monsoon rains, diseases, biting mosquitoes, and random sniper fire, the soldiers changed their romantic images of war. They hardly sleep, creep along explosive mines trip wires, eat cold food, and run in the jungle under the heavy rain. This stressful environment has eventually led to psychological traumas from the stress loads. Soldiers become extremely angry and savage; they burn villages and begin to hate. Caputo begins to learn personally as he becomes responsible for reporting casualties. In this job, the author comes to see all the people’s lives that have been destroyed by the war. Caputo writes, “And the measures of Vietnam were not the distances it had advanced or the number of victories it had won, but the number of soldiers it had killed (the body count) and the proportion between that number and the number of its own dead (the kill ratio)” (Caputo, 1977). For the first time, the man begins to question what America is doing in this war.
After ending his tour of duty in South Vietnam, Philip Caputo left the Marines and became a journalist. He writes, “The war simply wasn’t my show any longer It wasn’t the VCs who were threatening to rob me of my liberty, but the United States government, in whose service I had enlistedI would never again allow myself to fall under the charms and spells of political witch doctors like John Kennedy” (Caputo, 1977). In 1975, he returned to this country again to write about the fall of Saigon and two years later, published “A Rumor of War”, the book that consists of his dark and painful account of his experiences during the Vietnam War. Later on in the memoir, Caputo discusses the reasons for wanting back into the field, “I felt useless and a little guilty about living in relative safety while other men risked their livesThe fear of madness was another motive I had begun to see almost everyone as they would look in death, including myself” (Caputo, 1977). Thus, Caputo’s desire to return back to the war was caused by his sense of nothingness and constant hallucinations. Caputo’s romantic images of war have been dramatically changed because he witnessed cruel and terrible murders of Vietnamese civilians. He writes that the war in general, the responsibility of American leaders, and the American military policies, in particular, were to blame.
References
Caputo, Philip. A Rumor of War. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977.
