On Point

by Roger Hayes

Book by Hayes, Roger

Genres: History

424 pages, Hardcover

First published December 9, 2001

Reviews

[Timothy Roger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had this book sat on various bookshelves in various houses for the last 20+ years, for some reason I never bothered giving it a read - until last week. Roger based his memoir off of 50 odd letters that he wrote home, that he suddenly had access to decades later; augmented by his own recollections, he used these to recount his story - which sounds really feasible. I sometimes wonder how some people could write a detailed war memoir decades later without it becoming semi-fictious, but with this author - I'll give him a pass on that one.
The narrative is well related. He seemed like a capable and likeable kid - and I use the word "kid" purposefully. One shocking thing about Vietnam, was that the average age of a soldier their was 19, as that was the draft age. In previous conflicts, such as the world wars, the call-up age ranged between 18 to 43 (I believe) so you had a wide range of ages; and whilst there, barely turned 20, he became a sergeant - so even the NCO's were that young! This pointless war was a tragedy in itself, but more so considering how the USA threw so many of its youth into that hell.
Roger worked as 'tunnel rat' and as 'point man' (guy in the front of a patrol) during his tour there. He was wounded various times. He relates everything in a matter-of-fact way, without much sentimentality - and yet the stories he relates are often deeply sad.

I do wonder what happened to Tran, his girlfriend - I hope there was some future happiness in her life.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book chronicles the combat tour of Roger Hayes. He served in Vietnam in the late 60's, and was a infantryman assigned to a mechanized unit. This book was much different that many that I have read previously on Vietnam, due to him being in a standard infantry unit and not some Recon or special operations unit. Overall it was good, but I wish he would have gone into more detail regarding some of the things that happened. They mostly briefly touched on the action he saw, but it seemed more as a distant photograph than an up close video. He may have written this many years after having served, and couldn’t remember a lot of the details. I didn’t get as caught up into the story as I have with others, but overall it was good, and gave a different perspective that I haven’t experienced. He also does a FABULOUS job at the beginning of the book explaining why we, the US, even went to Vietnam in the first place. He did a lot of research and reading and has put together a very concise reason based upon historical facts.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I've read about war from the point of view of a low ranking rifleman.

I find it amazing and disheartening that so few people are interested in an honest and interesting account of the Viet Nam war.

A dozen Literary frauds have been written by people who never went to Viet Nam,
but because those books have lurid accounts of misbehavior by US soldiers,
gullible people lap them up.

The mass of men are aren't so much desperate,
as gullible.

Diogenes had it wrong,
the problem isn't finding an honest man,
it's finding one who can think for himself.

See Stolen Valor for an excellent account of the Literary frauds that abound.

[Julian Rivera · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think that on point was a great book it had lots of facts about the Vietnam war and what it was like to be there. This book was written through the authors perspective and what he had to go through when he was in Vietnam.