Customer Reviews

Circle of Helmets: Poetry and Letters of the Vietnam War

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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From fallen comrades to gorilla tactics this surrealistic juxtaposition of guts and gum keeps the reader spellbound amid the characture like expo-say of the Vietnam War's artistic soft under belly.

I couldn't put this book down once I started reading it. I became totally enthralled by the ups and downs experienced by the author. There are no winners in war & this book is a very timely piece with all that's going on right now with Iraq. Great Book!!!

Reading this book was truly an "Amazing Adventure". The letters portrayed a young officer's emotions and views of the war from the beginning of his tour to his final days "in country". He started off full of excitement and enthusiasm and ended up just wanting to get home. This should be made into a movie!

If you're in the right spot, war is strangely academic:
headquarters planning sections marking sector overlays
morph on cue into slick sales teams at press conferences
in Saigon,crisp of uniform and of certainty that the war
is won; the poor devils can't hold out much longer: just
look at this chart....

Rick St John walked the walk in a different Vietnam,
and his class (West Point.'66) and the soldiers they
led, paid a butcher's bill. This is war in the field,
war at the sharp end. You eat out of cans, your only
shelter a poncho that doubles as a burial shroud and
you're the one who knows it, a young lieutenant, but
very quickly, a commander, "the old man," that these
others, these brave, scared, doomed teenagers, look
to for salvation. And you can't ever tell them the
doubts that assail you; the weariness; the aching sense
of loss.
Read this book and you will know.