Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #147975 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

'Puts you there' better than any other account I've read
I've read probably more Vietnam memoirs than is healthy just lately and this one was perhaps the most enjoyable. The best thing about Helm's memoir is its sheer honesty and simplicity. It is a very personal account, told almost exclusively as an inner dialogue which is what gives it its great pathos and energy and makes it so engaging - even endearing. There is no great philosophy or soul searching in this book. It doesn't come across as a particularly cathartic process for the author, he doesn't stop to question the concept of war nor to muse on its tragic ironies and injustices. He does not dwell long on the fate of his comrades nor pause to consider the war from the point of view of his adversaries. There is no reflective postscript or epilogue.

What Helms does is give a detailed, often humorous and always discontented memoir of his journey through the US marine recruiting Depot at Parris Island and then his experiences as a 'grunt' in the field. He's a disgruntled grunt, going along with the entire venture with a grim resignation that he's in the Marines, he's in Vietnam, he'll probably get killed and there's nothing he can do about so he may as well just get on with it because, whatever thoughts he might have about the war and his personal situation, they ain't going to count for anything. Indeed, almost as a coping mechanism, he seems to delight in playing the role of the grumpy cynic - everything is summarized and dismissed with '....my ass', and, as far as he's concerned, just about everybody can shove just about everything 'up their ass'.

He writes more or less exactly what he hears inside his head as he's talking to himself and that way gives a great insight into the daily concerns, morbid fears and petty peeves that occupy 99.9% of his thoughts. In doing so he manages to provide an exceptional 'vicarious tour of duty' (as Phil Caputo, author of A Rumor of War, put it), he lets you know exactly what YOU, the average grunt would be thinking and feeling when faced with another miserable night on a Listening Post, or having to walk along a booby trapped trail...again, or enduring another mortar barrage. The final chapters describing his wounding and recovery are particularly harrowing and well written.