Customer Reviews

Highway One: A Vietnam War Story

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Highway One was an incredible Vietnam War story. It was well-written and couldn't have been much better. It isn't too tough a read, yet it is descriptive and keeps the reader involved. It is a definate must-read if you are at all interested in this type of book.

Written by a Vietnam veteran who spent 1968 as an infantry platoon leader in the Central Highlands and as an advisor to the South Vietnamese Popular Forces, James E. Davison's Highway One: A Vietnam War Story is a revealing, sometimes disturbing, sometimes thrilling, always deeply personal novel. Set in the year that America tried to "Vietnamize" the war and turn the fighting over to the South Vietnamese, supplying them with weapons, material, and advisors, Highway One follows the path of one such Army lieutenant advisor and his last fourteen days in Vietnam. Caught in a complex tangle of conflicting opinions, deadly danger, and the affections of a beautiful local woman, his seemingly simple mission becomes all but lost in the jostle of powerful agendas about him. Highway One is gripping, complex, fascinating read from beginning to end.

This story is not your typical Vietnam War story. It follows the last fourteen days of a young Army lieutenant's tour of duty in Vietnam as he struggles with the bureaucracy of the American military machine and his own self-doubts about the usefulness of the American effort. At another level, it is a satire of American military advisors in cultural conflict with the people they were sent to help. This "war story" about "Vietnamization" should hopefully serve as a cautionary reminder to U.S. policy-makers as we enter this "new war", and become slowly entangled in a long-term commitment of our young men and women in a culture so unlike our own.