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andrew_russell's review against another edition
3.0
It's difficult to review this without comparing it to the only similar book which I've read; The Long Gray Line. This is a classic book in the pantheon of Vietnam non-fiction literature. The Boys of '67 strives to match this and while it is a satisfying enough read, it never quite reaches the same standard.
What it does pretty well is capture the atmosphere of battle in war-torn Vietnam, the daily danger presented by booby traps or sudden ambushes and the effect of battle fatigue and ultimately PTSD on US troops. There were moments when my heart was in my mouth and I almost felt as though I was there, fighting alongside those guys. Charlie Company had a hellish roller-coaster ride of a tour in 1967 and every time one of them got taken down by the VC or a booby trap, I gritted my teeth and my inner voice screamed 'Goddammit!' It's not every book that manages to get this conveyed to the reader, to project with stunning clarity what the experience of your average infantryman actually was.
These positives were watered down though, by a relentless catalogue of names, a poorly conceived structure and battle sequences which sometimes weren't all that clear. Maybe the confusion of battle is reflected in the latter point raised, but in any case it isn't a positive in my eyes. Wiest documents numerous individuals who followed the pattern below:
1) met a girl
2) married girl
3) got girl pregnant
4) waved girl goodbye at station platform before departing US for Vietnam
5) was KIA in Vietnam
Each of these cases is related one after the other, like a conveyor belt of misery, with no differentiation between any of the soldiers. Their key characteristics are only ever defined at the most basic level, preventing the reader from gaining a sense of closeness to them. Their failure to make it back reads therefore like a history book, rather than the personal testimony to Charlie Company's journey through Vietnam which I think Wiest may have been trying to achieve.
Wiest also burdens the narrative with too many names. You never know which ones to focus on. It's only with the end in sight that I realised that I wasn't actually able to focus on any of them to any great extent. Their story was like fleshless, sun bleached bones; bare. If Wiest had picked out maybe ten or a dozen individuals whose stories were a reflection of that of the Company as a whole, I think it would have resulted in a far more moving and personal testament to the individuals concerned.
This could have been better but also could have been worse. I liked it but didn't love it and felt slightly let down by the lack of personal closeness I felt to those who fought in Charlie Company.
What it does pretty well is capture the atmosphere of battle in war-torn Vietnam, the daily danger presented by booby traps or sudden ambushes and the effect of battle fatigue and ultimately PTSD on US troops. There were moments when my heart was in my mouth and I almost felt as though I was there, fighting alongside those guys. Charlie Company had a hellish roller-coaster ride of a tour in 1967 and every time one of them got taken down by the VC or a booby trap, I gritted my teeth and my inner voice screamed 'Goddammit!' It's not every book that manages to get this conveyed to the reader, to project with stunning clarity what the experience of your average infantryman actually was.
These positives were watered down though, by a relentless catalogue of names, a poorly conceived structure and battle sequences which sometimes weren't all that clear. Maybe the confusion of battle is reflected in the latter point raised, but in any case it isn't a positive in my eyes. Wiest documents numerous individuals who followed the pattern below:
1) met a girl
2) married girl
3) got girl pregnant
4) waved girl goodbye at station platform before departing US for Vietnam
5) was KIA in Vietnam
Each of these cases is related one after the other, like a conveyor belt of misery, with no differentiation between any of the soldiers. Their key characteristics are only ever defined at the most basic level, preventing the reader from gaining a sense of closeness to them. Their failure to make it back reads therefore like a history book, rather than the personal testimony to Charlie Company's journey through Vietnam which I think Wiest may have been trying to achieve.
Wiest also burdens the narrative with too many names. You never know which ones to focus on. It's only with the end in sight that I realised that I wasn't actually able to focus on any of them to any great extent. Their story was like fleshless, sun bleached bones; bare. If Wiest had picked out maybe ten or a dozen individuals whose stories were a reflection of that of the Company as a whole, I think it would have resulted in a far more moving and personal testament to the individuals concerned.
This could have been better but also could have been worse. I liked it but didn't love it and felt slightly let down by the lack of personal closeness I felt to those who fought in Charlie Company.
12140holmes's review against another edition
5.0
There are many books regarding Vietnam but this one stands by following Charlie company from civilians, through Vietnam, and back to civilians.
abdiel47's review against another edition
3.0
I’ve encountered a couple of broad overviews of the Vietnam war before. I picked this book up at the library because I was interested in the day to day experiences of a US soldier fighting in Vietnam. This book is about “Charlie Company” drafted right at the beginning of the Vietnam war. It goes through their experiences in basic training, the year or so they spent in Vietnam, and a quick overview of a few of the men’s family they left behind and their experiences after getting home from the war.
When you read about most wars they seem to have some sort of geographical goal. The strategists running things are trying to move the front forward with a final aim of conquering a something. In Vietnam soldiers were sent out to patrol specific areas, kill as many Viet Cong as possible and then come back to camp for a little R&R before going out again. Sometimes they would patrol the exact same area where that they had previously fought a bloody battle only a few months prior.
This aimlessness combined with the normal rigors of war seems to have horrible effects on morale. What is the point to fight and die in order to kill random people in a foreign country that doesn’t really want you there to begin with? Imagine if our police force was tasked, not with sustaining law and order, but with prowling around various neighborhoods and killing as many perceived criminals as possible. The emotional effect on both the police and the people being policed would be enormously traumatic.
The soldiers in Vietnam consequently spent lots of their free time drinking, doing drugs and availing themselves of prostitutes.
On the other hand there seems to be this emotional rush that comes with fighting for your life, and an intense sense of brotherhood for those with whom you fight that can’t be replicated anywhere else and that is extremely compelling. So much so that some men re-enlist because they can’t experience it anywhere else.
The book also describes the bouts with PTSD the soldiers experienced after coming home from the war. One man, once he was diagnosed with PTSD, was kicked out of the army. When he showed up at the VA for PTSD treatment, that same army told him that PTSD was not a recognized condition and therefore they couldn’t help him.
The quality of writing is merely sufficient, and it has a tendency toward being overly sentimental. Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating bit of history from the soldier's point of view.
When you read about most wars they seem to have some sort of geographical goal. The strategists running things are trying to move the front forward with a final aim of conquering a something. In Vietnam soldiers were sent out to patrol specific areas, kill as many Viet Cong as possible and then come back to camp for a little R&R before going out again. Sometimes they would patrol the exact same area where that they had previously fought a bloody battle only a few months prior.
This aimlessness combined with the normal rigors of war seems to have horrible effects on morale. What is the point to fight and die in order to kill random people in a foreign country that doesn’t really want you there to begin with? Imagine if our police force was tasked, not with sustaining law and order, but with prowling around various neighborhoods and killing as many perceived criminals as possible. The emotional effect on both the police and the people being policed would be enormously traumatic.
The soldiers in Vietnam consequently spent lots of their free time drinking, doing drugs and availing themselves of prostitutes.
On the other hand there seems to be this emotional rush that comes with fighting for your life, and an intense sense of brotherhood for those with whom you fight that can’t be replicated anywhere else and that is extremely compelling. So much so that some men re-enlist because they can’t experience it anywhere else.
The book also describes the bouts with PTSD the soldiers experienced after coming home from the war. One man, once he was diagnosed with PTSD, was kicked out of the army. When he showed up at the VA for PTSD treatment, that same army told him that PTSD was not a recognized condition and therefore they couldn’t help him.
The quality of writing is merely sufficient, and it has a tendency toward being overly sentimental. Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating bit of history from the soldier's point of view.
mburnamfink's review against another edition
5.0
Vietnam War memoirs have a pretty similar structure, imposed by the facts of history. Here's a young kid who doesn't know anything, basic training, a battle or two, becoming a hardened veteran, hijinks in a rear area that don't disguise the psychological wounds of war, a dissatisfying return home, and at some point a book. In this collective biography of the men of Charlie Company, Wiest elevates this story into the tale of a generation in the popular history vein of Stephen Ambrose.
This book is exceptional in depicting each of the men of Charlie Company as unique individuals; California surfers, Southern farmboys, Navajo shepherds, athletes and drag racers and factory workers and young fathers from across America. All of them were drafted (with the exception of one voluenteer) sometime in 1966, the course of their lives forever altered. In 1966 the Vietnam War was quiet news, something happening far away. Most people, if they thought of the war at all, thought that it was worth fighting and would be over soon. For the children of WW2 veterans, service when drafted was assumed.
While the men of Charlie Company were anybody and everybody, Charlie was a unique unit. It was part of the new 9th Division, which was being slated to fight in the populous Mekong Delta. Charlie was trained and deployed as a unit, unlike the stream of replacements which defined the American fighting experience, and the old hands were a closely knit band of brothers.
In the Delta, Charlie was part of the Mobile Riverine Force, Army troops deployed on small boats from floating bases on Navy transports. While close support from the Navy had some advantages, like showers and mess halls on base and close support from river monitors, WW2 era landing ships converted into a close support fire barges armed with everything from 105mm cannons to flamethrowers, by and large the terrain was awful. Patrols had to cut through leech infested channels and impassable mangrove swamps. Good routes on the tops of rice paddy dikes were sure to be mined.
The first few months were almost contactless patrols, 'walks in the sun' marked by attrition through mines and snipers, but soon Charlie walked into the nameless ambushes that characterized the war. In these battles, Charlie gave as good as it got, with small units suffering heavy casualties until American artillery and airpower suppressed Viet Cong bunkers, allowing one of the platoons to flank and destroy the enemy in close assault.
If there's a hitch to this book, it's that Wiest hasn't quite figured out how to write combat. I'm not sure how you get across the utter confusion of battle, but there's a level of historical dispassion to the combat that cuts at cross purposes to the rest of the book. But the final chapter, on the men's lives returning home and the post-1989 reunions save the book. This is about people, not war, and it works.
The ultimate tribute is that of the 134 original Charlie Company soldiers, only 14 returned stateside alive and unwounded.
This book is exceptional in depicting each of the men of Charlie Company as unique individuals; California surfers, Southern farmboys, Navajo shepherds, athletes and drag racers and factory workers and young fathers from across America. All of them were drafted (with the exception of one voluenteer) sometime in 1966, the course of their lives forever altered. In 1966 the Vietnam War was quiet news, something happening far away. Most people, if they thought of the war at all, thought that it was worth fighting and would be over soon. For the children of WW2 veterans, service when drafted was assumed.
While the men of Charlie Company were anybody and everybody, Charlie was a unique unit. It was part of the new 9th Division, which was being slated to fight in the populous Mekong Delta. Charlie was trained and deployed as a unit, unlike the stream of replacements which defined the American fighting experience, and the old hands were a closely knit band of brothers.
In the Delta, Charlie was part of the Mobile Riverine Force, Army troops deployed on small boats from floating bases on Navy transports. While close support from the Navy had some advantages, like showers and mess halls on base and close support from river monitors, WW2 era landing ships converted into a close support fire barges armed with everything from 105mm cannons to flamethrowers, by and large the terrain was awful. Patrols had to cut through leech infested channels and impassable mangrove swamps. Good routes on the tops of rice paddy dikes were sure to be mined.
The first few months were almost contactless patrols, 'walks in the sun' marked by attrition through mines and snipers, but soon Charlie walked into the nameless ambushes that characterized the war. In these battles, Charlie gave as good as it got, with small units suffering heavy casualties until American artillery and airpower suppressed Viet Cong bunkers, allowing one of the platoons to flank and destroy the enemy in close assault.
If there's a hitch to this book, it's that Wiest hasn't quite figured out how to write combat. I'm not sure how you get across the utter confusion of battle, but there's a level of historical dispassion to the combat that cuts at cross purposes to the rest of the book. But the final chapter, on the men's lives returning home and the post-1989 reunions save the book. This is about people, not war, and it works.
The ultimate tribute is that of the 134 original Charlie Company soldiers, only 14 returned stateside alive and unwounded.
zelanator's review against another edition
4.0
Great social history of combat soldiers during the Vietnam War. It's mostly narrative with some interesting threads about how these soldiers' attitudes toward the conflict evolved between enlistment and DEROs. The author has a tendency to become melodramatic when he describes various situations and when he speculates about what each soldier probably felt during and after combat situations. This book rests on a substantial amount of oral histories collected by the author after he invited a Vietnam veteran to his undergrad course. I only wish he would have used the soldiers' own words more frequently to convey the grit of combat and especially their emotions after battles.
It's also one of the few popular books that goes into detail on riverine combat in the Mekong Delta. Overall a good book, but I suspect it could have been condensed into a shorter volume.
It's also one of the few popular books that goes into detail on riverine combat in the Mekong Delta. Overall a good book, but I suspect it could have been condensed into a shorter volume.
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