Each war is different, and yet they are all the same. Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War is a account of how the war in Vietnam was the same as every other war and how it was also a set of very specific experiences that only those who were there shared. His book lays out, in language that is precise and measured and yet also passionate, what it was like to be in Vietnam in the early days of substantial American involvement in that conflict. It is very specifically about Vietnam - about the insects and the heat and booby traps - and about wars since the beginning of time. It manages at the same time to be about the terrible waste of war, about its essential stupidity and sordidness, and yet also about glory.
Few things bound people together like the shared experience of facing death, and the soldiers to whom Caputo introduces us are far more intimate than most families. They would die for each other. They would kill for each other. And often enough they do both of these things. They learn to see themselves not so much as a part of the larger formal military units to which they belong but as part of a community defined by the chance that at any moment their blood might be splashed together.
The way in which war unites men is different from other potentially fatal experiences. Those who survive natural disasters or sinking ships are linked forever simply by being survivors. But they lack something that these and all other soldiers have, which is a common enemy. The soldiers in this book stand with each other in no small part because they stand against the same people. A shared enemy can be a very useful thing in helping to create a shared identity.
And then there is the fact that this is a world almost entirely without women - or without women who might be considered equals. There are the women in the villagers, but these are barely human, and there are prostitutes, but these are even less human. The world of the soldier is not only ...