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Where the Rivers Ran Backward
The author relates his own observations of and experiences during the Vietnam War, recalling the sights and sounds, the mood from one day to the next and the terror and absurdities of the war
291 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 8, 2012
Some times it seems like everybody who went to Vietnam wrote a book about it; Merritt's book deserves our attention.
His memoir of a tour of duty as an engineer with the 25th Infantry Division in 1968 is brilliantly realized. The book is a series of vignettes punctuated by rock lyrics and headlines, like the memories of a generation blown apart by hate and lust and dope and killing. Merritt writes without bravado or the false perspective of history, speaking in the authentic voice of the grunts as he describes the insanity and the strange beauty of the war.
My copy has a blurb from Tim O'Brien ("The Things They Carried", "Going After Cacciato") on the back, but if you want my opinion, Merritt is the best of them.
His memoir of a tour of duty as an engineer with the 25th Infantry Division in 1968 is brilliantly realized. The book is a series of vignettes punctuated by rock lyrics and headlines, like the memories of a generation blown apart by hate and lust and dope and killing. Merritt writes without bravado or the false perspective of history, speaking in the authentic voice of the grunts as he describes the insanity and the strange beauty of the war.
My copy has a blurb from Tim O'Brien ("The Things They Carried", "Going After Cacciato") on the back, but if you want my opinion, Merritt is the best of them.
December 19, 2025
“Garbage detail was available, and I got that. A big, drab dump truck picked us up. The first stop, ashes. From bullet boxes. The packaging of the stuff of war. We went to the place where people loaded magazines for M16s. We never saw the bullets, just the ashes of the boxes they came in. Somewhere yesterday's magazines were stacked like paperbacks in a used book store.
The loading was done by permanent volunteers, we just had to clean the place. I wondered which job was worse. Then mountains of food turned to waist. Food that had been harvest, assembled, processed, packaged, shipped across an ocean, stored, opened, cooked, served, ignored, thrown away, and dumped into our truck. Batteries of chicken had hatched, lived, and died just to become garbage in that truck. Families of Mexicans had stopped in the sun so we could have food sliding around under our feet. On the day it was harvested, that food was good. While it had waited in the garbage cans it had often still been good, and this country was filled with people who would have eaten it then gladly if only our wire hadn’t kept them away. It had still been edible when it first lay in the truck. But the bullet boxes ended that. Now mixed with the ashes, nobody was so hungry that they could eat it then. Gray filth disgraced our truck. We could have done the pick up differently, the food could have been on the top of the pile. We would have slid a good breakfast - riding a load of trash - to people who now starved. Next came the club. The EM Club. Barrels of beer cans. Bags of beer cans. Boxes of beer cans and loose pull tabs shining in the sun like silvery fish scales around a cleaning table. Then the other club. The Officers’ Club. Cans. Glass: busted liquor bottles. I was never invited so I didn’t know how the bottles broke. I like to think the officers got into fights and threw things, but more likely they just thought broken glass was the army way. Garbage. More poison to add to the food.“
The loading was done by permanent volunteers, we just had to clean the place. I wondered which job was worse. Then mountains of food turned to waist. Food that had been harvest, assembled, processed, packaged, shipped across an ocean, stored, opened, cooked, served, ignored, thrown away, and dumped into our truck. Batteries of chicken had hatched, lived, and died just to become garbage in that truck. Families of Mexicans had stopped in the sun so we could have food sliding around under our feet. On the day it was harvested, that food was good. While it had waited in the garbage cans it had often still been good, and this country was filled with people who would have eaten it then gladly if only our wire hadn’t kept them away. It had still been edible when it first lay in the truck. But the bullet boxes ended that. Now mixed with the ashes, nobody was so hungry that they could eat it then. Gray filth disgraced our truck. We could have done the pick up differently, the food could have been on the top of the pile. We would have slid a good breakfast - riding a load of trash - to people who now starved. Next came the club. The EM Club. Barrels of beer cans. Bags of beer cans. Boxes of beer cans and loose pull tabs shining in the sun like silvery fish scales around a cleaning table. Then the other club. The Officers’ Club. Cans. Glass: busted liquor bottles. I was never invited so I didn’t know how the bottles broke. I like to think the officers got into fights and threw things, but more likely they just thought broken glass was the army way. Garbage. More poison to add to the food.“
August 9, 2025
I love mémoires, especially from artistic people. Excellent prose with a unique book layout. It's also nice to read a book about the average kind of guy, not some crazy Navy Seal who goes on risky missions saving the damsel in distress every night. Most people don't live that life.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews