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History See other History Articles Title: A Rumor of War I have read this book, and it is a book that everyone should read; it brings an entirely new perspective to the current war in Iraq, and of course, to the coming one in Iran. It is a book that should be gifted to ANY young man, or woman now, of course, you think may be interested in 'signing up' in the military. Here is a quote from page 129; ''When I was in Korea,'' Colby said, ''I saw men sight their rifles in by shooting at Korean farmers. 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.'' I think that events in Iraq are proving this out. More at the bottom. The following was taken from; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rumor_of_War A Rumor of War is a 1977 autobiography by Philip Caputo about his service in the United States Marine Corps in the early years of American involvement in the Vietnam War. In the Foreword the author states his purpose for writing this book. As he clearly states, this is not a history book. Neither it is an historical accusation. The author states that his book is a story about war, based on a personal experience. The book is divided into three parts. The first section of the book, "The Splendid Little War", describes Lieutenant Philip Caputo's personal reasons for joining the United States Marine Corps (USMC), the training that followed, and his eventual arrival to Vietnam. Lt. Caputo was a member of the 9th Expeditionary Brigade of the USMC, the first American regular troops unit sent to take part in the Vietnam War. He arrived on March 8, 1965, and his early experiences reminded him of the colonial wars portrayed by Rudyard Kipling. The 9th Expeditionary Brigade was deployed to Da Nang, formerly Tourane, on a "merely defensive" condition, primarily to set a perimeter around an airstrip that ensured arrival and departure of military goods and personnel. The first skirmishes against the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong left Lt. Caputo and his comrades with the impression that the Vietnam conflict was small and relatively unimportant. In the second part of the book, "The Officer in Charge of the Dead", Lt. Caputo was reassigned from his riflemen company to a desk occupation documenting casualties. The position in the joint staff of the brigade was a change that he condemned, because he was proud of his rifleman duties. This distance from the main line of resistance gave Lt. Caputo a different perspective of the conflict. Lt. Caputo described senior officers as being more worried about trivial matters than strategy. Movies played in the open at night, risking potentially devastating mortar attacks. Lt. Caputo witnesses enemy corpses being treasured as hunting trophies, and shown off to generals. In the third part of the book, Lt. Caputo was reassigned to a riflemen company, "In the Grey Land of Death". He describes the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong as fierce and clever warriors and having earned the grudging respect of American soldiers as such. Lt. Caputo describes his fellow soldiers as having stopped wishing for epic, World War II-style battles; they had learned to detect boobytraps, to counter-snipe, and to comb the jungle in search of the enemy bunkers and rations. Lt. Caputo took part in these operations, until troops under his command miscarried orders and shot two suspects deliberately. Lt. Caputo assumed full responsibility for the incident and faced a court-martial. Eventually, he was relieved of his command and the charges were dropped. Lt. Caputo was reassigned to a training camp in North Carolina and eventually received an honorable discharge of service. In the Epilogue, almost ten years after the end of his tour of duty, Philip Caputo returned to Vietnam as a war journalist for a newspaper. Old memories of his war experiences and his comrades flooded his mind as he witnessed the fall of Saigon to the troops of North Vietnam. Caputo left Vietnam on April 29, 1975. From inside the cover; Philip Caputo has written a timeless testament to the men who leave their homes to kill and die in strange lands ... and of the things that grow and perish in the deepet part of themselves. This book is far more than that; it is a testament to the personel facts of war, and of how it affects men, and destroys men, and changes men forever. And he makes it personel as no other book has that I have read, as to how friends and fellow soldiers die; friends who did not think it could happen to them. Or how they are torn apart, many times past the ability of anyone to reconstruct them in any meaningfull way. In that it is a personel recollection, written by a master story teller, it is a timeless book of war and it's less than admirable affects on people; and this is the secret. We can talk all that we want to about how this war in Iraq is illegal, but the fact is that war is about people, and until we, the people of America, start to understand this, and move on this understanding, nothing can or will change. This is why we were told never to engage ourselves in foreign wars, because the only purpose for such wars is the destruction of a people, and the theft of their wealth. Not very hard to see how that applies to Iraq. Recommendation; read the book, buy extra copies and give them to young friends.
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#1. To: richard9151 (#0)
Excellent review - thanks. My grandfather told us about the trenches in France, the mustard gas at night, the horrible Red Cross, the battle-fields littered with the dead, wounded, and maimed boys; and that we should do everything within our power to never participate in a war on foreign soil. He suffered nightmares for the rest of his life from his experiences in WWI.
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