Wasted
In January of 1961,
President Kennedy challenged the youth of America to “ask not what your country
can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” One young man in particular took that
statement to heart and enlisted in the Marines, ready to fight for his country
and return home a hero. Little did he
know how the next sixteen months of his life would transform him from an
innocent boy to an accused murderer, only to return home opposed to war
altogether. A Rumor of War is the factual memoir of the author, Philip Caputo,
and his experience in the Vietnam War.
The reader will see how Caputo struggled with the war and the meaning of
it all. He began by explaining he will
not apologize for his acts of war, but cannot condone it either. With the details to follow, the reader would
understand why.
From the start, Caputo’s
style of writing effectively draws the reader directly into battle with him. Told in first person, one can readily
identify with the up and down feelings of Caputo. He uses details which appeal to every sense,
drawing the reader into the jungle and every battle alongside him. He described the stifling heat, the non-stop
insects, the monsoon, the fatigue coupled with the constant fear of instant
death. With the first casualty of Sullivan
in their troop, they were all hit with the reality of death and their own
mortality. Later, Caputo summed it up so
well when he discusses how thousands of people died each week in the war, and
the sum of all of their deaths did not make a difference. The war went on without them, as it could go
on without Caputo. His own death would
not change a thing. He wrote he could
not remember having felt an emotion more sublime or liberating than the
indifference towards his own death. Even
away from battle in a different position, death took on a uniform look in his
number crunching of the dead each day.
Every person looked alike, just a number. After three men from his company were
reported dead, Caputo saw himself as the Officer of the Dead. Others were dying, being killed, killing
themselves, and he just kept adding the numbers. In the field, anxiety, depression, and fear became
the additional enemy. Men’s loyalty to
their country became loyalty to their men.
He described several times the “lack of release” they felt and the anger
that accompanied it. As a reader with a
family member who served in combat, they may better understand why that person
behaves as they do because of now knowing what they may have been through.
The book quickly became
dark around Chapter 3 when characters were introduced and the deaths began. One of the main themes of the memoir is how the
characters, along with Caputo, are desperately trying to learn who they
are. Caputo was just a boy when he
enlisted, yet yearns to be the hero of the war in the end. What he learns is that the few years he
spends at war will change who he is forever. They didn’t express that they had fought in
the war, they had shed blood, and they had become men. Instead, in a way they could not express,
they were aware something significant had happened to them. Had they truly become men because of their
experience, or had they been psychologically damaged for the rest of their
lives? Would they hear artillery fire
with every thunder crack? Could they
ever enjoy the rain on their faces again?
As they were losing the war, they were also losing their innocence, their
morals, and their sanity. They were
learning to hate. They were in a place
where ordinary men could become crazed killers under extreme conditions. Where dead men only meant a gap in the line
that needed to be filled. Where it was
quickly forgotten that each pool of blood meant a person, a real person had
died; a person who had a mother and father, who would be missed, and who was
gone forever. The word “wasted” was the
term used for someone who was killed, and how fittingly it was. A life was wasted, all that it had been and
all that it could have been.
The book was written
two years after the end of the war, while events and emotions were still fresh
in the mind of Caputo. He wrote it as he
lived it. It makes one wonder how many
others sunk within themselves, forever attempting to bury the memories, how
many other stories and experiences will never be told. Whereas Veterans were not treated well upon
their return home from a war considered a loss, Caputo’s book helped change the
mind of many Americans by illustrating just what they were put through while
defending those critical of them. It is
definitely recommended for any reader who knows anyone who has served in the
armed forces. It certainly reveals an
inside world one would never want to experience, but can better understand
those who have.
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