Fields of Fire
I’ve been impressed since I first noticed Jim Webb, the current junior Senator from Virginia, during his run for his Senate seat. While I don’t agree with all of his politics, he seems more of a plain-spoken man with good intentions than the average politician.
The recent article on Jim Webb in the New York Review of Books sparked my interest in his writing, and I recently finished Fields of Fire. Webb, a highly decorated combat Marine in Vietnam, wrote Fields of Fire in 1979 as a fictionalized account of the real war that was fought by men dying for nameless hills in endless jungle only to give them up a day or two later.
In the excerpt below, a newly arrived Lieutenant Hodges (a central character) is being briefed by a battle-scarred Major prior to his deployment to his troops in the bush. I think it both gives the flavor of Webb’s writing and a synopsis of his view of the war:
The Major offered Hodges a small, challenging smile. “They go wild, Lieutenant. And there’s nothing you can do about it. You’ll go wild, too. Wild as hell. You spend a month in the bush and you’re not a Marine anymore. Hell. You’re not even a goddamn person. There’s no tents, no barbed wire, no hot food, no jeeps or trucks, no clean clothes. Nothing. You’re an animal. It gets so that it’s natural to squat when you take a shit. You get ringworm and hookworm and gooksores. You roll around in your own filth. You forget how bad you smell. Dead people, guts in the goddamn dirt, miserable civilians, it all gets sort of boring. You cry when your friends are killed, but a new friend comes in on the helicopter a few days later, and the dead friend becomes enshrined, a martyr to friendship. You teach the new friend about him, and you all remember him. It’s very romantic.”
“It doesn’t sound romantic.” [replied Hodges]
“That’s after a month. Or two. But Lieutenant. When you do it for six, or nine, or even longer, by Christ, you’ll never shake it. The bush gets in your blood and you hate anyone who hasn’t fermented in his own stench for months, or stood inside a dirt hole all night, waiting to kill a man who’s trying to kill him first.”
Major Otto scrutinized Hodges. “Oh, yeah. I’ve done a lot of thinking about it. That’s something a grunt isn’t supposed to do.” He chuckled again, a sort of dry bark. “But what else can a man do in An Hoa? Oh. And An Hoa. It becomes an oasis. You like An Hoa, Lieutenant?”
“I hate it.”
“You’ll like it when you get back to it from the bush, I guarantee. So. What kind of person can take it, for months on end?”
Hodges felt uneasy. He had expected the Major to wave the flag and talk about Iwo Jima, then send him aboard a resupply helicopter with fire in his heart.
“Someone who is very dedicated, sir. Either that or someone who is very crazy.”
“Well, there you are. That’s it in a nutshell. You just hit the nail on the goddamn head.”
Fields of Fire has been well reviewed by critics and grunts for its detailed account of a story told many times over. As one may expect in a book about the US Marines by a US Marine, the book does fail to offer a realistic picture of the Vietnamese as a people fighting colonialism and occupation. But I’ve seen many of the Hollywood movies, read a handful of books, and heard my share of Vietnam War stories. If I was going to recommend one book or movie about the American war in Viet Nam, it would be Fields of Fire.
books & foreign affairs posted by: dan @ 18 Jun 2008 22:36