Book review: Marine veterans remember time in Vietnam
Published: Sunday, October 6, 2013 at 5:28 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, October 6, 2013 at 5:28 p.m.
When you want to know how things really were and what really happened in the Vietnam War, the very best way is to hear from someone who fought on the front lines.
Hendersonville author Nicholas Warr and dozens of his fellow Marines served in the legendary Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines. Now, about 40 years after the conclusion of this war, their first-person recollections of the battlefield are as vivid as if the bullets and mortar shells were still flying around them today.
Warr's book “Charlie One Five (A Marine Company's Vietnam War)” does not argue whether this war should have been fought. Nick Warr and his fellow Marines just fought it. He left the argument to politicians and news reporters who would fly to a secure base location for a couple of days and return to the States to write their expert analysis and personal opinions.
The book's collective portrayals of the battles they fought are not glamorized. They were all proud Marines, but there is no attempt to make them appear to be anything they were not. There are no comments on or comparisons to other branches of the military.
South Vietnam is described as a beautiful country whose inhabitants were largely appreciative of the efforts of the U.S. military to rid them of the North Vietnamese Army invaders and their Viet Cong sympathizers. The Marines hated scarring the country and seeing its citizens suffering. However, scars and suffering accompany war.
The surviving veterans who wrote of their personal experiences about 45 years ago in Vietnam admitted that there were occasions when they experienced abject fear, hopelessness, anger or frustration. None reported feeling heroic or invincible.
Their battlefield reports were graphic but were not exaggerated. Sentences that explain how a Marine was “shot through the neck” or “had the back of his head blown off” were needed if the reality of battle was to be conveyed. There was deep sadness when a fellow Marine lost his life. The names of the deceased were shared to honor them. Some of those who died did so within hours of initially joining the company on the field of battle. Others fought for years and, while they may have suffered injury, lived to return home. Real war is ugly and unpredictable for its combatants.
Casualties and end-oftour rotation meant the team- and relationshipbuilding never stopped. The high frequency of casualties among the officer ranks necessitated the adjustment to a new leader whose leadership style could be quite different for that of the officer they replaced. Some of the new grunts and officers came with limited training or training that did not fit with a combat rifle company. Those got a quick dose of on-the-job training, which could be called a real “baptism under fire.”
There were several factors that made the various battles fought by Charlie One Five more difficult for them. A few of those things caused causalities that might have been avoided. One of those was the replacement of the M14 with the M16. The early version of the M16 frequently jammed in combat. The result was that the riflemen had to un-jam and clean their faulty rifles during a firefight. Some lost their lives when they were unable to defend themselves. An improved version of the M16 finally arrived in the field, but it was too late to prevent some casualties.
Another problem had to do with the inadequate number of functional radios and the absence of coordinated unit-to-unit communication, even when the radios were available. Misreading of maps can complicate safe troop movement. A battlefield can be a chaotic scene. With communication issues, it can become even worse. Miscommunication can and did result in friendly-fire casualties.
War is tough to fight when your enemy breaks a truce it sought. This enemy also proved willing to sacrifice its own soldiers by putting them in individual “spider holes” with little hope of rejoining their own forces.
U.S. forces fought by the rules of war. They did not purposely kill civilians, dress in civilian clothing or abandon wounded and dead comrades in the field of battle. They spent time and resources helping the citizens who were suffering.
The book uses an abundance of military terms, abbreviations and slang that could make it a challenge to read for those who have no related experience. However, reading quickly through them does not detract from a reader's understanding of the events being described. A glossary of military terms could have helped the reader.
The Vietnam War was fought by U.S. armed forces from 1961 until withdrawal in 1972. It was hell for those who fought there. This book makes that very clear.
This book is worth a reading for those who never knew about Vietnam or would simply like to put their memories aside.
Bill Ramsey, a member of the Bookfest Steering Committee, recently published “Now That I Think About It.” Blue Ridge Bookfest 2014 will be April 25-26 at Blue Ridge Community College. For more info, visit, www.blueridgebookfest.org.