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Close Quarters
Close Quarters Heinemann, Larry
356 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
60 people are currently reading
853 people want to read
About the author
Larry Heinemann
17 books24 followersLarry Heinemann (1944-2019) was an American novelist born and raised in Chicago. His body of work is primarily concerned with the Vietnam War. Mr. Heinemann served a combat tour in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968 with the 25th Infantry Division, and has described himself as the most ordinary of soldiers. Mr. Heinemann's military experience is documented in his most recent work, Black Virgin Mountain (2005), his only nonfiction piece. Black Virgin Mountain also chronicles his return trips to Vietnam and his blunt personal and political views concerning the country and the war. He has often referred to his books about Vietnam as an accidental trilogy.
While serving in Vietnam, Mr. Heinemann fought in a battle near the Cambodian border in which filmmaker Oliver Stone also participated. Mr. Heinemann writes of the battle in his first novel, Close Quarters (1977), and in Black Virgin Mountain, and it also forms the basis for the climactic battle scene in Stone's Platoon.
His fictional prose style is uncompromisingly harsh and honest, and reflects his working class background. His second and critically acclaimed novel is Paco's Story (1986), which won the 1987 National Book Award for Fiction, topping Toni Morrison's Beloved in a decision that some thought controversial.[1] At the time, Mr. Heinemann's only response to the controversy was that the prize, a check for $10,000, was already cashed, and that the Louise Nevelson sculpture, a gift from the National Book Foundation, was not likely to be returned. Paco's Story relates the quasi-picaresque postwar experiences of its titular protagonist, who is haunted by the ghosts of his dead comrades from the war. These ghosts provide the novel's narrative voice. The story deals with the role of the American GI as both victim and victimizer. It is interesting to note that ghost stories are common in both American and Vietnamese literature about the war.
His third novel, Cooler by the Lake (1992), departed from the topic of Vietnam and was not very successful, either critically and commercially.
Mr. Heinemann's short stories and non-fiction have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, GRAPHIS, Harper’s, Penthouse, Playboy, and Tri-Quarterly magazines, as well as Van Nghe, the Vietnam Writers Association Journal of Arts and Letters in Hanoi, and numerous anthologies including The Other Side of Heaven, Writing Between the Lines, Vietnam Anthology, Best of the Tri-Quarterly, Lesebuch der Wilden Manner, The Vintage Book of War Stories, and most recently Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace edited by Maxine Hong Kingston. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
Heinemann learned the craft of writing at Columbia College, Chicago which he attended from 1968 to 1971. In 1971 he began teaching creative writing at Columbia, a position he held until 1986, the year Paco's Story was published.
He has received literature fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2002-03 Mr. Heinemann was granted a Fulbright Scholarship to research Vietnamese folklore, legends, and mythology at Hue University.
Mr. Heinemann served as the Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Texas A&M University until 2015.
He died December 11, 2019, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
While serving in Vietnam, Mr. Heinemann fought in a battle near the Cambodian border in which filmmaker Oliver Stone also participated. Mr. Heinemann writes of the battle in his first novel, Close Quarters (1977), and in Black Virgin Mountain, and it also forms the basis for the climactic battle scene in Stone's Platoon.
His fictional prose style is uncompromisingly harsh and honest, and reflects his working class background. His second and critically acclaimed novel is Paco's Story (1986), which won the 1987 National Book Award for Fiction, topping Toni Morrison's Beloved in a decision that some thought controversial.[1] At the time, Mr. Heinemann's only response to the controversy was that the prize, a check for $10,000, was already cashed, and that the Louise Nevelson sculpture, a gift from the National Book Foundation, was not likely to be returned. Paco's Story relates the quasi-picaresque postwar experiences of its titular protagonist, who is haunted by the ghosts of his dead comrades from the war. These ghosts provide the novel's narrative voice. The story deals with the role of the American GI as both victim and victimizer. It is interesting to note that ghost stories are common in both American and Vietnamese literature about the war.
His third novel, Cooler by the Lake (1992), departed from the topic of Vietnam and was not very successful, either critically and commercially.
Mr. Heinemann's short stories and non-fiction have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, GRAPHIS, Harper’s, Penthouse, Playboy, and Tri-Quarterly magazines, as well as Van Nghe, the Vietnam Writers Association Journal of Arts and Letters in Hanoi, and numerous anthologies including The Other Side of Heaven, Writing Between the Lines, Vietnam Anthology, Best of the Tri-Quarterly, Lesebuch der Wilden Manner, The Vintage Book of War Stories, and most recently Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace edited by Maxine Hong Kingston. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
Heinemann learned the craft of writing at Columbia College, Chicago which he attended from 1968 to 1971. In 1971 he began teaching creative writing at Columbia, a position he held until 1986, the year Paco's Story was published.
He has received literature fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2002-03 Mr. Heinemann was granted a Fulbright Scholarship to research Vietnamese folklore, legends, and mythology at Hue University.
Mr. Heinemann served as the Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Texas A&M University until 2015.
He died December 11, 2019, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
February 17, 2022
Damn Fine Killers
It’s easy to get lost in Heinemann’s detailed descriptions of lethal equipment, Vietnamese road maps, and soldierly recreations like dope, beer, and sex with the local prostitutes. Initially he provides explanations about the military terms, acronyms and patois that his protagonist Dozier/Deadeye/Flip deciphers as a raw replacement learning the trade. But gradually the explanations disappear as Dozier is absorbed into the culture of the American War in VietNam (there is however an appended glossary, apparently directed at those who were t around in the 1960’s).
This attenuation of explanation is part of Heinemann’s technique. The narrative moves from description to confession. The transformation begins slowly. Dosier is a member of a group of modern dragoons, mounted soldiers who can dismount and fight as infantry. He drives an Armored Personnel Carrier, a vehicle only nominally designed for human transportation and certainly not for creaturely comfort. The driver suffers the worst in his cramped space as he steers the rattling hulk by pulling on brake handles. The blisters, cuts, and pain start in his finger tips and progressively move throughout his entire body.
And with the physical changes produced by the job, the spiritual changes occur apace. The mixture of an alien culture, constant threat, drugs, the sudden death of comrades, and the procedural insanity of military life, re-shapes Dosier’s psyche. He documents the increments of what is essentially his re-programming in increasingly long paragraphs of existential vomit. As his body becomes accustomed to the vehicle, his soul becomes oriented to the job, which is simply survival.
The turning point is subtly signalled when Dosier takes leave of his homeward bound mentor, Cross. Cross gives Dosier his unofficial, unauthorised pump shotgun in exchange for Dosier’s standard M16. The shotgun is a far more primitive weapon than the automatic rifle. And that’s the point. Dosier has lost the habits of civilised life. He has become a journeyman of war, a murderer and torturer. The shotgun doesn’t kill as effectively as an M16 but it maims in a much more satisfying way. It’s victim suffers a great deal more before it dies. Receipt of the gun is a sign of his descent into savagery.
Dosier has learned how to hate. He hates the enemy of course. But he also hates the country of VietNam and all of its people, even the children. They’re all gooks, potential killers. He hates the housecats, the admin soldiers who never go outside the wire, have a cushy life, and make his a misery. He hates lifers, that os, career enlisted men as well as officers. He hates his black colleagues because the other white boys do. He hates the Army as an institution for putting him in a situation he can’t comprehend. By extension he hates the government that initiated the violent mess and the country that tolerates its continuation. Hate is his fuel. He runs on it. It keeps him alive. It helps to dim the horror of the “collage of death poses” after a big shoot out.
There is a cost however - Dosier has also learned to hate himself. He is largely unaware of his hate and the ghastliness of the dreams and fantasies it generates. He only sees it clearly in his comrades. Hatred is banal, squalid, and ugly, as well as casually violent. It constitutes a sort of self-immolation. Consumed by hatred, Dosier is effective. This is what it takes to make what the general calls “damn fine killers.”
Then the killers go home.
It’s easy to get lost in Heinemann’s detailed descriptions of lethal equipment, Vietnamese road maps, and soldierly recreations like dope, beer, and sex with the local prostitutes. Initially he provides explanations about the military terms, acronyms and patois that his protagonist Dozier/Deadeye/Flip deciphers as a raw replacement learning the trade. But gradually the explanations disappear as Dozier is absorbed into the culture of the American War in VietNam (there is however an appended glossary, apparently directed at those who were t around in the 1960’s).
This attenuation of explanation is part of Heinemann’s technique. The narrative moves from description to confession. The transformation begins slowly. Dosier is a member of a group of modern dragoons, mounted soldiers who can dismount and fight as infantry. He drives an Armored Personnel Carrier, a vehicle only nominally designed for human transportation and certainly not for creaturely comfort. The driver suffers the worst in his cramped space as he steers the rattling hulk by pulling on brake handles. The blisters, cuts, and pain start in his finger tips and progressively move throughout his entire body.
And with the physical changes produced by the job, the spiritual changes occur apace. The mixture of an alien culture, constant threat, drugs, the sudden death of comrades, and the procedural insanity of military life, re-shapes Dosier’s psyche. He documents the increments of what is essentially his re-programming in increasingly long paragraphs of existential vomit. As his body becomes accustomed to the vehicle, his soul becomes oriented to the job, which is simply survival.
The turning point is subtly signalled when Dosier takes leave of his homeward bound mentor, Cross. Cross gives Dosier his unofficial, unauthorised pump shotgun in exchange for Dosier’s standard M16. The shotgun is a far more primitive weapon than the automatic rifle. And that’s the point. Dosier has lost the habits of civilised life. He has become a journeyman of war, a murderer and torturer. The shotgun doesn’t kill as effectively as an M16 but it maims in a much more satisfying way. It’s victim suffers a great deal more before it dies. Receipt of the gun is a sign of his descent into savagery.
Dosier has learned how to hate. He hates the enemy of course. But he also hates the country of VietNam and all of its people, even the children. They’re all gooks, potential killers. He hates the housecats, the admin soldiers who never go outside the wire, have a cushy life, and make his a misery. He hates lifers, that os, career enlisted men as well as officers. He hates his black colleagues because the other white boys do. He hates the Army as an institution for putting him in a situation he can’t comprehend. By extension he hates the government that initiated the violent mess and the country that tolerates its continuation. Hate is his fuel. He runs on it. It keeps him alive. It helps to dim the horror of the “collage of death poses” after a big shoot out.
There is a cost however - Dosier has also learned to hate himself. He is largely unaware of his hate and the ghastliness of the dreams and fantasies it generates. He only sees it clearly in his comrades. Hatred is banal, squalid, and ugly, as well as casually violent. It constitutes a sort of self-immolation. Consumed by hatred, Dosier is effective. This is what it takes to make what the general calls “damn fine killers.”
Then the killers go home.
March 12, 2009
This is not a book for the faint-hearted. If you don't like graphic violence, the f-word, and ethnic slurs, lots of brutal and mind-numbing sex, you should leave right now. Categorized as a novel, I suspect many of the incidents in this book reflected Heinemann's personal experiences in "the Nam." This book brings new meaning to the "pornography of violence." One feels almost like voyeur, feeling slightly dirty while reading.
There is one scene that I think particularly illustrates the frustrations of the troops. The protagonist has been assigned to a half-track and one job was to patrol up and down ambush and mine laden highways. After one ambush, the pull off the road, back up, and call in an airstrike. Two Phantoms, one strafing, the other napalming, obliterate the enemy's position. After the strike, they pull 14 charred remnants of the enemy. One of the men goes berserk, smashing one of the dead enemy with the butt of his rifle, over and over again. The lieutenant, walks to the front of the "track" so he can honestly report he saw nothing. The soldier continues to vent his rage until the dead soldier has been smashed to a pulp. They leave the bodies lined up on the road. When they return the following day, they are all gone.
I've been reading this in concert (perhaps a poor choice of words) with Word of Honor, The Cat from Hue A Vietnam War, Story, and Black Virgin Mountain A Return to Vietnam. I've read a lot of Vietnam books, but these four together provide a whole that I find startling in its tragedy.
Additional pertinent title: And a Hard Rain Fell A GI's True Story of the War in Vietnam
There is one scene that I think particularly illustrates the frustrations of the troops. The protagonist has been assigned to a half-track and one job was to patrol up and down ambush and mine laden highways. After one ambush, the pull off the road, back up, and call in an airstrike. Two Phantoms, one strafing, the other napalming, obliterate the enemy's position. After the strike, they pull 14 charred remnants of the enemy. One of the men goes berserk, smashing one of the dead enemy with the butt of his rifle, over and over again. The lieutenant, walks to the front of the "track" so he can honestly report he saw nothing. The soldier continues to vent his rage until the dead soldier has been smashed to a pulp. They leave the bodies lined up on the road. When they return the following day, they are all gone.
I've been reading this in concert (perhaps a poor choice of words) with Word of Honor, The Cat from Hue A Vietnam War, Story, and Black Virgin Mountain A Return to Vietnam. I've read a lot of Vietnam books, but these four together provide a whole that I find startling in its tragedy.
Additional pertinent title: And a Hard Rain Fell A GI's True Story of the War in Vietnam
February 19, 2025
I first got hold of this book by accident. I'd ordered Close Quarters, published by Faber and Faber. The book that arrived was indeed Close Quarters, published by Faber and Faber. The only difference was the author was an American named Larry Heinemann, not William Golding.
The cover featured a tank driver - visible only from the nose upwards - covered in grit, wearing a battered helmet. The picture was apt for this is not a novel about the glory of war, the rush of combat, cheap nationalism, and so on. It's about the day-to-day reality of fighting a war without clear battle lines.
The novel is unglamorous and realistic to a fault. The smell of a GI camp is 'the smell of a junkyard in a driving rainstorm.' Tanks are covered in dents, kill marks, and ‘scrapes as wonderful and brutal as fingernails dragged across a nap of velvet.'
One of the novel’s wonders is how it exposes you to the American vernacular at full blast. Each phrase or slang word filters the soldiers’ fears, hopes and, above all, their colossal disdain for the big shots in charge. Though the novel supplies a glossary, you don't really need it. In fact, it’s interesting to note just how much of the GI’s lingo - click, dust-off, DMZ, FNG, fragged, back in the world - has passed into popular usage.
I can’t help wondering if Heinemann’s obscenity and truth-telling explain this novel’s relative neglect. They are precisely why it should be read.
The cover featured a tank driver - visible only from the nose upwards - covered in grit, wearing a battered helmet. The picture was apt for this is not a novel about the glory of war, the rush of combat, cheap nationalism, and so on. It's about the day-to-day reality of fighting a war without clear battle lines.
The novel is unglamorous and realistic to a fault. The smell of a GI camp is 'the smell of a junkyard in a driving rainstorm.' Tanks are covered in dents, kill marks, and ‘scrapes as wonderful and brutal as fingernails dragged across a nap of velvet.'
One of the novel’s wonders is how it exposes you to the American vernacular at full blast. Each phrase or slang word filters the soldiers’ fears, hopes and, above all, their colossal disdain for the big shots in charge. Though the novel supplies a glossary, you don't really need it. In fact, it’s interesting to note just how much of the GI’s lingo - click, dust-off, DMZ, FNG, fragged, back in the world - has passed into popular usage.
I can’t help wondering if Heinemann’s obscenity and truth-telling explain this novel’s relative neglect. They are precisely why it should be read.
June 15, 2016
This book that I experienced in the audible format was just too crude and disgusting for me. Was this how war really made men into? Fuck this and fuck that? Killing innocent and not so innocent gooks? All the intensity of bloodlust? The quality of the reading captured all the horror and hate. But it was way too much for me and I just didn't want to believe it was really like that.
January 21, 2022
Definitely the rawest book on war I’ve ever read.
January 10, 2020
Viet Nam
As good as any of several books about actual experiences in the war that I have read since 1970. This is gritty, harrowing and realistic in every action these men take--from battle to sex to getting stoned. A nightmare of service and a nightmare of a read. We are indebted far more than we realize.
As good as any of several books about actual experiences in the war that I have read since 1970. This is gritty, harrowing and realistic in every action these men take--from battle to sex to getting stoned. A nightmare of service and a nightmare of a read. We are indebted far more than we realize.
June 21, 2018
This book looks at war and Vietnam through the eyes of a young man who should have been at home loving life and not entrenched in war in a far away country.
Read
August 22, 2023Deserved all that accolades it received. A powerful novel.
February 16, 2013
I just reread this and all of the things I thought about it the first time held up through a revisit. Larry Heinemann has an incredibly strong and evocative narrative style, and his fictionalized past self is equal parts horrifying and sympathetic. Probably one of the best books about the Vietnam War that I have ever read, this is right up there with Gustav Hasford's The Short-Timers and Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War, but it's less cartoony than the former and grittier than the latter. I can't recommend it more highly.
March 15, 2022
Reality
The real thing of the hell of war. Not for the faint of heart. Took me back to that time.
The real thing of the hell of war. Not for the faint of heart. Took me back to that time.
July 5, 2024
It's been too long since I read it to write a very good review...but, if you're like me, and you read E. B. Sledge's "With the Old Breed", Gayle Rivers' "Five Fingers,: James Webb's "Fields of Fire" and McDonough's "Platoon Leader", among the many other "fictional" war novels and books (there is NOTHING fictional about Sledge and everyone who aspires to be a soldier, Marine, sailor or serve in one of the armed forces should read it), anything by Larry Heinemann is worth reading. I'm also that same guy that can't get away from combat poetry...in all its ages, from Homer on up to our present day OIF/OEF war poets. In any event, this book is no different - great character development, story line, and and I could not put it down. "Paco's Story" is another wonderful work by this genuine and well-writing author...it was a National Book Award winner, so there you have it.
I'll can rightly be accused of being a "5 Star" dispenser...more often than not...guilty, as charged. But, in the interest of time, I do considerable research before I undertake to read a book (I'm a naturally sllloooowwww reader), so when I pick 'em, they are usually very good based on someone else's high regard. There's no shame in that. All that "selection criteria" and process aside...to say, this one is worth it.
On my list to read in this wonderful genre is "Sympathy for the Devil" by Ken Anderson.
I'll can rightly be accused of being a "5 Star" dispenser...more often than not...guilty, as charged. But, in the interest of time, I do considerable research before I undertake to read a book (I'm a naturally sllloooowwww reader), so when I pick 'em, they are usually very good based on someone else's high regard. There's no shame in that. All that "selection criteria" and process aside...to say, this one is worth it.
On my list to read in this wonderful genre is "Sympathy for the Devil" by Ken Anderson.
January 3, 2018
In one of the most disturbing accounts of war I’ve ever read, Heinemann employs Phillip Dosier as a stand-in to relay a fictionalized account of his own experiences in the Vietnam War. Dosier is a draftee assigned to an armored recon unit that drive M113 half-tracks, scouting for ambushes and patrolling dangerous, mine-laden roadways. He enters combat as a kid who has never touched marijuana and refuses the services of prostitutes. He leaves an enthusiastic killer who tries his best to stay high and drunk, and participates in debauchery many would consider rape.
Dosier’s actions are abhorrent, but we also see a sympathetic side, glimpses of the decent young man he was back in the world. These two sides play off each other to show how the American war in Vietnam could morph young men toward malevolence and evil: the emphasis of body counts instead of tangible objectives, the “lifer” officers and NCOs treating the enlisted men like meat, the terror of sitting in ambushes night after night, the merciless conditions, the confusion and frustration of a guerilla enemy. All of it is set against the each man’s desire to just do his time and get home. The tragedy is no one goes home, even if they do. They are irrevocably changed.
The writing, from Dosier’s point of view, is deftly detailed and evocative, but plain and straightforward at the same time.
Dosier’s actions are abhorrent, but we also see a sympathetic side, glimpses of the decent young man he was back in the world. These two sides play off each other to show how the American war in Vietnam could morph young men toward malevolence and evil: the emphasis of body counts instead of tangible objectives, the “lifer” officers and NCOs treating the enlisted men like meat, the terror of sitting in ambushes night after night, the merciless conditions, the confusion and frustration of a guerilla enemy. All of it is set against the each man’s desire to just do his time and get home. The tragedy is no one goes home, even if they do. They are irrevocably changed.
The writing, from Dosier’s point of view, is deftly detailed and evocative, but plain and straightforward at the same time.
January 3, 2025
**Close Enough**
This story evoked strong emotions in me. The author provides vivid details of close combat involving U.S. forces in Vietnam. Based on his experiences, the narrative captivates your attention from the first page to the end.
Reflecting on my experience during the Vietnam era stirred up memories of my service. Stationed at Andrews A.F.B., our reserve medical unit operated a casualty receiving station on the flight line. Attached to the base hospital, we managed the care of these men until they could be sent to their local base hospital the following day. The evacuation flights from Vietnam, which included stops at base hospitals in Germany, brought in the most severe casualties as well as basic injuries our men encountered in the field.
When the author describes the condition of the soldiers—the blood-splattered uniforms caked in mud and the smell of jungle rot—I am transported back to my own memories. I remember it all, especially the distinct smell of the jungle. I witnessed it firsthand.
Please remember these men for their stoic bravery and sacrifice. They received very few accolades upon returning home. "Close Quarters" is a powerful and straightforward account that is worth every word.
This story evoked strong emotions in me. The author provides vivid details of close combat involving U.S. forces in Vietnam. Based on his experiences, the narrative captivates your attention from the first page to the end.
Reflecting on my experience during the Vietnam era stirred up memories of my service. Stationed at Andrews A.F.B., our reserve medical unit operated a casualty receiving station on the flight line. Attached to the base hospital, we managed the care of these men until they could be sent to their local base hospital the following day. The evacuation flights from Vietnam, which included stops at base hospitals in Germany, brought in the most severe casualties as well as basic injuries our men encountered in the field.
When the author describes the condition of the soldiers—the blood-splattered uniforms caked in mud and the smell of jungle rot—I am transported back to my own memories. I remember it all, especially the distinct smell of the jungle. I witnessed it firsthand.
Please remember these men for their stoic bravery and sacrifice. They received very few accolades upon returning home. "Close Quarters" is a powerful and straightforward account that is worth every word.
February 20, 2018
This is a very authentic narrative, there are many things about this book that are just so incisive and revealing. Although it is based upon the Vietnam war, many of the small details, observations and vignettes are still quite relevant, even today. It is the most unflinching & raw account of combat I have read, and to that end, it is not cosy or comfortable. The narrator isn't the benign 'everyman' used as a lens for the reader to approach the horrors of combat. The narrator is at times cruel & criminal. There are very pornographic sections. The writing is unapologetic.
The only passages that didn't ring true to me were the few passages relating to the protagonist's leave in Japan. The first few paragraphs seem contrived and 'writerly'...almost a slight mimicry of beat literature. Likewise, some of the monologues by the character Quinn. These few sections felt out of place in the rest of the novel.
Aside from these small sections the novel is one of the stronger pieces of military literature I've read.
The only passages that didn't ring true to me were the few passages relating to the protagonist's leave in Japan. The first few paragraphs seem contrived and 'writerly'...almost a slight mimicry of beat literature. Likewise, some of the monologues by the character Quinn. These few sections felt out of place in the rest of the novel.
Aside from these small sections the novel is one of the stronger pieces of military literature I've read.
March 11, 2023
Dirty, intense, real, often funny, occasionally beautiful and so jarringly devastating I had to put in down on two occasions when no other book has forced me to do that. One of the greatest books to come out of Vietnam. Heinemann has the most unique writing style of all of the warrior poets and his book deserves to stand with the likes of The Thin Red Line, The Naked and the Dead and A Farewell to Arms.
Interesting tidbit, Heinnemann was in a mechanised unit of the same division at the same time as Oliver Stone in Vietnam, who was with a line unit, Stone’s Platoon and Heinemann’s Close Quarters are thus great companion pieces and often mirror each other, both culminating with that same night at Suoi Cut, from different perspectives, a night Oliver Stone had thought he’d only dreamt.
Interesting tidbit, Heinnemann was in a mechanised unit of the same division at the same time as Oliver Stone in Vietnam, who was with a line unit, Stone’s Platoon and Heinemann’s Close Quarters are thus great companion pieces and often mirror each other, both culminating with that same night at Suoi Cut, from different perspectives, a night Oliver Stone had thought he’d only dreamt.
July 13, 2023
It's a grunt year in Vietnam, first person, start to finish and a bit of the aftermath. It's unvarnished, horrifying and honest, including about the rampant abuse, racism and sexism that seemed to tinge everything then. It's about the unraveling of humanity that occurs in war. I picked up this battered paperback I inherited from my uncle, who never went to that or any war, because Heinemann's Paco's Story really impacted me hard when I read it over thirty years ago. He read that book just about to tatters, and I thought I'd be the last to read this copy since some pages are bug-eaten. But it'll stand one more reader, and so gets passed upstairs at my house.
July 13, 2019
To be honest, I can't tell you what I just read. I know it was about the Vietnam war. And to be completely honest, I'm not sure how this won awards.
The first 70 pages, I had no idea what was going on in the book. I was confused and it made no sense. As I read on I started understanding things and I knew of the different characters that were being named.
I felt no connection to the story or any of the characters. Maybe that was a point that the author was trying to make, but I'm not sure.
The first 70 pages, I had no idea what was going on in the book. I was confused and it made no sense. As I read on I started understanding things and I knew of the different characters that were being named.
I felt no connection to the story or any of the characters. Maybe that was a point that the author was trying to make, but I'm not sure.
February 20, 2022
This is a perplexing book. It reads like a memoir, although it is a novel, even though it is based supposedly on the author’s experiences. There isn’t much of a plot, just a depiction of the protagonist’s experiences during the fighting in Vietnam. The fighting and the soldiers’ behavior are both pretty appalling, But the book left me wondering what it really is about. Is it about what happens to soldiers during war? If so, I would have welcomed More of an explanation about what these soldiers were feeling instead of a flat chronology of what happened.
March 1, 2022
I read Matterhorn which was amazing and was on a bit of a Vietnam War historical fiction rabbit hole and someone recommended this book. I didn’t enjoy it, it rambled on and starts out jumping right into the warfront… make it hard to understand who was who. I stuck with it, and I was hoping it was going to be more of a memoir-like story. It wasn’t a page turner but gives you a first eye view of a soldier’s experience.
November 25, 2017
Visceral, unflinching portrayal of a typical grunt's experience in Vietnam. Published in 1977, I can see how it would have been lauded in the tradition of Mailer and James Jones at the time, but has been overshadowed by the more postmodern Vietnam fiction by Tim O'Brien and even Heinemann's later work.
May 15, 2019
Some beautiful turns of phrase which deliver you to an M113 in the Vietnam war, a sordid, murderous, racist, f*cked up place to be. Like the author, you’ll be sullied and changed by the experience, no matter how many war accounts and novels you’ve read. It’s unsparingly unflattering and bleak.
December 28, 2019
Not that bad of a book, but the writing style was almost stream of conscience and I have a hard time reading that. It makes it hard for me to follow the story. Brutal time in our history and that is portrayed, just hard for me to read.
January 21, 2023
heinemann writes very well. Story of VietNam conflict told by one of our soldiers. I had to stop reading at page 86: too hard to read what these men endured. I needed to stop these images in my head.
February 7, 2018
It was okay, not one of the better books about the Vietnam Experience, but still good.
December 14, 2019
Pretty good. Feels repetitive at times. The final two were the best. I’d like more stories about the transition home.
March 8, 2020
Good book on Vietnam. Does not rise above being a good genre piece, like some books about Vietnam, but still worth reading if you are interested in the subject.
March 18, 2020
Good but not great. Has a detached, dreamlike feel about it - not big on action if that’s what you’re looking for. Well written though.
November 16, 2021
Hard to follow. I had trouble following when author was sliding in and out of stories from different periods.
There was little detail behind missions, activities the authors unit was involved in.
There was little detail behind missions, activities the authors unit was involved in.
September 19, 2022
Excellent war novel/memoir. A gritty and unflinching look at what our combat vets endured in Vietnam. All honor to them.
February 2, 2017
Not as moving as Tim O'Brien's personal account of his experiences from being drafted, going through training camp, fighting overseas and the return home, though Heinemann follows the same chronological sequence more or less in this semi autobiographical novel. The depiction is matter-of-fact, as one would expect from a foot soldier grunt's point of view - patrols, firefights, debauchery, cruelty, pure terror. These are all mixed in but come across as blase after the initial bits. There is a unique aspect to this specific account, which is that the author/protagonist hailed from a mechanized infantry unit, i.e. mounted in M113 armored personal carriers. These guys did not have long foot patrols deep in the bush, but plowed through the countryside in their thundering tracked vehicles quite near to home base, often fighting from the vehicles themselves using mounted heavy weaponry. There is that separation from the brutalities of the jungle environment that the standard foot infantry had to face. Further, a third of the book is non-combat, including a very detailed chapter about R&R with a female consort, and another two on the long journey back home to a 'normality' that could never be regained.
I would only recommend this book if you are interested in how a mech infantry unit operated during the Vietnam war. Gory and traumatizing though many of the passages were, the writer somehow lacked the eloquence of his peers in the genre to make this a real classic, IMO.
I would only recommend this book if you are interested in how a mech infantry unit operated during the Vietnam war. Gory and traumatizing though many of the passages were, the writer somehow lacked the eloquence of his peers in the genre to make this a real classic, IMO.
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