Father, Soldier, Son: Memoir of a Platoon Leader In Vietnam

by Nathaniel Tripp

"Father, Soldier, Son will stand as one of the finest soldier memoirs of the Vietnam War . . . If all that has been written about the war in Vietnam, in fiction and nonfiction, has made it a familiar story to some, Tripp overcomes cliché by individualizing every well-known fact." -- The Boston GlobeNATHANIEL TRIPP GREW UP fatherless in a house full of women and he arrived in Vietnam as a just-promoted second lieutenant in the summer of 1968 with no memory of a man’s example to guide and sustain him. The father missing from Tripp’s life had gone off to war as well, in the Navy in World War II, but the terrors were too much for him, he disgraced himself, and after the war ended he could not bring himself to return to his wife and young son. In "some of the best prose this side of Tim O’Brien or Tobias Wolff" (Military History Quarterly), Tripp tells of how he learned as a platoon leader to become something of a father to the men in his care, how he came to understand the strange trajectory of his own mentally unbalanced father’s life, and how the lessons he learned under fire helped him in the raising of his own sons."Not since Michael Herr’s Dispatches has there been anything quite as vivid, gripping and soul-searing," raved the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune said "the description of combat in the jungles of Vietnam are authentic and terrifying, as good as any I have read in fact or fiction."

Genres: Memoir, War, Military Fiction

278 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 15, 1997

Reviews

[Mel Ostrov · Rating 5 out of 5]

FATHER SOLDIER SON
By
Nathanial Tripp
Published 1998
Lest we Forget
Book Review by Mel Ostrov

Like true-crime literature, this book proved to be a disturbingly satisfying and valuable learning experience. However, this opinion may not be shared by many if they forget that this is a memoir, not a novel. Don't be misled by the title and the blurbs, expecting just a neatly chronological action account of a soldier's year of survival in Vietnam and his relationship with his father before and after his tour of duty. It's far more than that. Soon after starting, you will realize that there are many more dimensions to this work than anticipated. The allusions to "father" and "son" prove to be metaphors not only for the author's personal relationships (within and outside the Army), but also that of War, The Military Establishment in general, and Government:

“Vietnam was, more than anything else, a place of betrayal. Vietnam was where fathers betrayed sons, and sons betrayed fathers.”

And rarely in the past have we been treated so incisively and credibly to the real attitudes pervading our fighting forces in Vietnam:

“I hated Saigon, the bile rising inside of me. It was noisy and filthy, overflowing with REMFS and hucksters of all sorts. The population had increased tenfold because of the war, and the very foundations of the city were exploitation of one sort or another, East meeting West at its very worst. The air was heavy with exhaust fumes and the constant hustle of survival, the great open market of Mammon beside heartbreaking slums. Everything was for sale: drugs, weapons, people, principles, the past, the future. We brought Walmart to Saigon, with blowjobs and televisions offered side by side, while beggars with their legs blown off, with puffy napalm scars and white, unseeing eyes, fought for scraps.”

The book is replete with poignant enlightening anecdotes such as the following documentation of the Vietnamese population's attitude towards Our War:

“We soon came abreast of the cause of the delay. A young man on a motorcycle had been struck and killed. He lay there in the road in the kind of impossible position that only the dead can assume, and what was causing the delay was not so much his death as the subsequent pillaging. A crowd had gathered and was stripping his corpse of everything, watch, ballpoint pens, shirt, while others stripped his mashed motorcycle. Tu was silent for a long time after we passed, and continued on down the long, straight, open highway into the delta. Then at last he said, “So now you see what your war has done to my country.”

The relationship between the Americans and the French in Vietnam may be a revelation to many of us. This is the way history should be taught:

“We had, after all, grown up amid the glorifying mythology of the Second World War, and naively expected the French to welcome us again, showering us with champagne and kisses from beautiful girls as we marched toward Loc Ninh, driving the evil communists before us. It had been disillusioning to find that the French in Vietnam disliked us more than they seemed to dislike the Viet Cong themselves. We could not understand that the French had been goaded, cajoled, even bribed into going to war in Vietnam by the United States in the first place.”

In addition to its historical reporting, perceptions and philosophies, this book is also notable for its exceptional style of presentation. Although the almost-poetic prose sometimes seemed affected, and occasionally a bit
incongruous with the context, for the most part the rhetoric was another unanticipated windfall. Nathaniel Tripp has produced an important and memorable record of what it really was like and what it all meant. In the
next edition a glossary, especially of the military terms and abbreviations, and at least one map of the locale would be desirable.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times it seems like every Vietnam War platoon leader has written a memoir. Tripp has written a better than average one, elevated by literary ambitions and simultaneously expanded and tangled up by an attempt to link this peak experience of his life to his father and his son.

When this book is on, it is extremely on. Tripp writes about the feeling of being plugged into the war with an electric vividness, of the organic wholeness of his 'Mike Division' platoon moving like a superorganism through the jungle, alive with vibrations and hiding signs, trying to tune in on the Viet Cong and knowing they were trying to do the same to you, and that failing in this ESP test meant ambush and death. He get almost as close describing the waste and brutality of the American war, the armored and flying death machines, bulldozers, arbitrary destructiveness, top to bottom hypocrisy, the cowardice of the REMFs, and the secret separate peace the Michelin company cut with the Viet Cong to keep their rubber plantations safe. But Tripp's main emotion is love, even love for his enemies, and the necessary hatred is just out of his reach. The stories are true war stories, as poet-laureate of the war Tim O'Brien would put it, and while there is little actual combat, there is lots of slipstream weirdness around combat, a kind of nightmare-turned-real aspect that really works.

Tripp also tries to place himself in some kind of chain of being, from his harsh Yankee patriarch of a grandfather, to his half-mad failure of a father, and to the hope for peace for his own children. The psychodrama doesn't quite hold together, too reserved and too open at once, though a passage on coming to grips with the trauma of war with his fellow veterans did.

This is a solid memoir, with parts that rise to greatness, but it lacks the unitary perfection of a classic.

[John McNair · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable book. The only book from this author, I believe, and written around 1988 or so. Twenty years after the events of 1968. First, I must say that the prologue, or introduction, is fantastic. Called "The Dream" the author paints a vivid picture of himself standing unconcernedly in a field at his Vermont farm, then faintly hearing a noise which deepens and becomes a flight of five "Huey" helicopters approaching low over a tree line, to eventually land, pick him up and take him - we think - back to his time in Vietnam, back to his beloved platoon. The emotions portrayed, the author's ability to engage the reader's senses (sight, sound and - above all - smell), are quite something. The book had me there! There are the descriptions one would expect to read in a book written by a US Army platoon leader in the post-Tet offensive Vietnam, but there is a lot more. His lack of self-confidence, his fear, elation, occasional good luck, occasional bad luck, all spelled out for us. Some will find the author's back-and-forth concerning the lifelong struggle with his father (himself a War Two vet) distracting or even annoying, but i urge you to have a broader feeling and understanding of their lives, and that period of overwhelming turmoil concerning Vietnam, the war and America. Prosaic and at times rambling, but gripping nevertheless. And a rare talent in folding in the senses - I cannot recall anyone describing smells as well as this author, and it is smells that most imprint on our memory (my opinion). Well worth a read!

[Koen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Father, Soldier, Son: Memoir of a Platoon Leader In Vietnam a book By Nathaniel Trip. Is a Memoir about a true event in history about the Vietnam War that started in 1955 and ended in 1975. The author uses a fictional character to represent him his name is Tobias Wolf a Platoon Leader for his section in the Vietnamese War. The book goes through his story through a flashback in time or in real medical terms his PTSD that you would typically get if you were to experience a traumatizing event. This book goes through some of the more detail history that one person experienced through this war than a simplified version of what people get today like in school. There are some cultural differences from Vietnam and the US that explains through the book example of this is language.

The author uses religion and Vietnamese culture to explain his story and how the events take place.
I would only recommend this book to people who like History and want to learn more about a specific time in history and who like to learn about other cultures and diversity's between countries.

[Mikealbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautiful, terrifying, aching experience. This memoir of being a platoon leader in the Vietnam War is the closest i have come to understanding that war. The layers of mistrust and doubt, the reprehensible violence on the Vietnamese people, the corruption and collusion, the dangerous jungles, the treacherous land mines, the stealthy Viet Cong, the sudden obliteration of a friend in front of you. This is a story from the front lines, depicting the solders (often poor, working class, latino, Black) for a war that is one of the first unanswered question marks of my childhood. It is sometimes overwritten, but in a way Tripps experience needs to be that -- as he remembers (maybe to a fault) his tour of duty - as a platoon leader of the Mike Division on "ambush" in remote areas. I will always remember, now, the Shitpile, the Rome Plow, the REMFS, the claymores. "Male anger rises like the clouds, malevolently, cruising above the seascape, spitting lightning."

[Nick Ueber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outstanding Read

This is a really,really good book. So well written, such beautiful prose, such deep soul searching, such honesty. It is both a war memoir and a personal journey of relationships both militarily and familial. Mr.Tripp has a moving way of describing himself, his experiences and the people and places around him.

This is the perfect melding of a war story with it’s inherent fears, gore, frustrations and love of fellows soldiers and the personal grappling of father and son relationships and the joy and love of father and son relationships.

I do hope Mr. Tripp has finally found the peace and serenity he so desperately deserves.

[Edward L · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Review

I could relate to some of this book having gone through Army OCS. I experienced some of the same disappointment and disillusion with Army life having served during the Vietnam conflict. However the wasted lives of the American soldiers and their Vietnamese counterparts I find abhorrent.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish so much I could have read this book when my husband & I became married. The insight from Nathaniel Tripp is so valuable. To be able to know & understand what our soldiers & theirs went through I wish I had known. The world needs to understand what war is & does. Thank you Nathaniel Tripp for writing an honest & fully articulate story of the Vietnam war. Well done!

[Ronald K. Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book, but…

Great book but if you can read it and not be depressed at the end you are a better man than I am.

[Phil Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir of a platoon leader in Vietnam was bought as research for the second draft of the novel I wrote last year as part of NaNoWriMo. Tripp’s experience as a platoon commander in Vietnam is intertwined with reflections on fatherhood and his relationship with his own father, who was scarred by World War Two. This is a clever juxtaposition and lends weight and depth to the memoir.

Tripp recounts his experience in the war clearly and intelligently, honest about the feelings he experienced. He provides great insight into the way the war was fought by the infantry and tracks the gradual destruction of discipline and morale within US forces, although he holds his own platoon together with his charisma and leadership.

[Tod Bellrichard · Rating 3 out of 5]

good book on his Vietnam experience but his father relationship was a confusing distraction