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The Phantom Blooper

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I discovered this novel the same day I found that Gustav Hasford, "unreconstructed Vietnam veteran" and author of "The Short-Timers" (the basis for Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket") died in 1993 in a Greek motel, forgotten except by few friends and - even if he never knew it - by me. The inescapable sense of sadness and loss almost became anger when I realised that "The Phantom Blooper" was in every way as good as "Short-Timers" - if not better. I'll spell it differently: it's masterpiece, one of the most amazing piece of war literature ever written. Briefly released in 1990 by Bantam - just to be killed by a nervous publishers - this novel is "The Short-Timers" (and thus "Full Metal Jacket "!) sequel, even if written before FMJ was filmed, and as its predecessor it's divided in three parts.

The first ("The Winter Soldiers") finds Joker on Khe Shan, in the very last day of the combat base's life. Most of his friends are dead, back in the US or missing, maybe captured by The Phantom Blooper, a legendary Marine who has defected to the VC. Even if all the events are apparently compressed in less than 24 hours, as usual in Hasford's narrative there's a lot of overlapping violence (including the rough welcome to a New Guy). I'll not spoil anything, but you'll be treated with one of the most original, visceral, epic descriptions of a war action ever committed to paper. It's a sequence that begs to be filmed - but I can't really figure out who could do it.

Some American reader will be outraged by part two ("Travels with Charlie") but it's really here that Hasford raw genius does shine. Joker is captured by the NVA: instead of being shipped to the Hanoi Hilton, is brought back to a VC village "near Laos". It could have been easy for Hasford to transform Joker stay with the enemy into a cardboard horror story or in the Vietnam version of "Dance with the Wolves". But he (somehow working with the Viets, thus becoming "the white front fighter" - and The Phantom Blooper!) becomes a detached, but almost sympathetic observer of the village's life and the combat routine in the NVA. He even comes to look at a Green Berets compound "with the eyes of an attacker". He's not converted ("Communism is boring and doesn't work", he observes, too disillusioned to fall from a political claptrap to another one) but he's deeply affected: if you give the enemy a face, it ceases to be the enemy. The balance with which Hasford invest Joker's reaction to what he sees is superb, and Joker sharp humour never disappears. "Travels with Charlie" is packed of great vignettes, including a paradoxical moment of voyeurism, the strangest reference to Dale Canergie in the annals of literature and the description of an Arclight bombing run from the receiver's end that will give you shudders. The shocking violence typical of Hasford's prose is still here, and some graphic detail will repel the squeamish. But reality was never meant to be a Barbara Cartland romance...

Finally Joker is "rescued" and sent back to the US. "The Proud Flesh" (the third part) may be Hasford unheralded finest moment - a nearly flawless recapitulation of Joker/James Davis (his real name, not incidentally the name of America's first casualty in Vietnam) return to humanity and reality. It's not an happy return - it couldn't be, as Joker finally realise how war can be more real than peace, and how he feels a POW even in his house. But again Hasford elegantly avoid what could have been a collection of clichés, and gives to Joker's trajectory back home a poetry of anger and contempt that is both powerful and engrossing - but wonderfully simple and effective. The final image of the book is the last thing you would expect from the man who wrote "The Short-Timers", but is marvellous.

"The Phantom Blooper" is "Short-Timers" sequel, but is not "Short-Timers II". There's a greater sense of humanity, a greater focus and a maddening rage against a world gone awry. This "unmaking of a soldier" (as someone perceptively had described it) is oozing the frustration of those that really went through all the fight, and didn't choose to forget. "Once a marine, always a marine": Joker doesn't revert to simple pacifism (militarism's twin brother) but he recognises that soldiers, people who had the unenviable privilege to see history's most unpalatable truths, are the only ones who know really "how things are". The walked the walk so they can talk the talk. "Firepower to the people" as Black John Wayne (grunt, squad leader and head of the "Black Confederacy", one of the book's most intriguing inventions) would put it. And he means it. The irony of a Marxist speech from someone who's bound to fight a Marxist enemy isn't lost on Hasford.

The fact that such an amazing novel isn't available to the public since a decade is a deep shame. The full text of the book is available on Gustav Hasford memorial web site, but "The Phantom Blooper" MUST be read on paper. Try to find one copy on the used book circuit, and let's hope someone in the future will give to Gustav Hasford's talent its due, maybe re-publishing "The Short-Timers" and this together, as it should be. Too late, unfortunately. How sad.

Gus Hasford's first novel, The Short-Timers, was the basis for Full Metal Jacket, and this is its sequel. More powerful and personal than its predecessor, The Phantom Blooper takes readers into the world of the NVA when Private Joker becomes a prisoner of war. It is a haunting portrayal of a previously faceless enemy. If you've only read The Short-Timers or seen the movie version, you don't know the whole story!

In reading Gustav Hansford's "The Phantom Blooper", as a historian my gist was to extract any parallels to reality that occurred in the quaqmire of America's debacle in Vietnam. While finding that out and much more, I also discovered how much of an enigma Hustav Hansford truly was. Born November 28th, 1947 in Russellville, Alabama, Hansford was a U.S. Marine and served as a combat correspondent in Vietnam. He wrote a semi-autobiographical novel after the war entitled "The Short Timers," which was later made into a best selling movie. Full Metal Jacket. Authored by director Stanley Kubrick and writer Michael Herr, as well as Hansford, it was nominated for an Academy Award. Ultimately, Hansford's contributions became a point of contention between the three, and Hasford abstained from attending the Oscar Awards.


Two years before Hasford authored "The Phantom Blooper", he was arrested in San Luis Obispo, California for stealing almost 800 books across the U.S. and Great Britain. He was accused of having "bibliophilia", an obsessive-compulsive disorder that centers on the collecting and acquiring of books to the point where social relations are ignored and health declines. NAM: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There Books are pursued by the sufferer of this psychological condition to the point where they are not to be admired or read, but simply to be obsessively possessed. Hansford's defense at his trial, costing over $20,000, was that he had "borrowed" the missing books to serve as the basis for an ultimately never published book on the U.S. Civil War. He was sentenced to half a year in jail, of which he served 90 days and vowed to pay fines derived from the royalties that resulted from future sales of "The Phantom Blooper", published in February, 1990.


Hansford did write a final novel, "A Gypsy Good Time" which was a detective story set in Los Angeles and was published in 1992. This book was barely noticed and with Hasford's health rapidly declining from the debilitating effects of diabetes, he moved to Aegina, a small island off the coast of Greece where he eventually died of heart failure on January 29, 1993. Where Hasford 's first book was semi-autobiographical and centered on the "making of an American soldier", the second one, "The Phantom Blooper" showed the reverse, e.g. "the unmaking". Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War It followed a theme of defection from the U.S. Military, capture by the Viet Cong, assimilation and ultimately identification with the enemy, which actually occurred in the celebrated case of Robert Garwood. Conversations With the Enemy: The Story of PFC Robert Garwood It also concluded with alienation, depersonalization and P.T.S.D., which commonly most Vietnam Vets faced upon returning from S.E. Asia.


The book is clearly against the war, as in Hasford's dedication he pulled no punches and dedicated it to "the 3 million veterans of the Vietnam War who were betrayed by their country". Hasford also made many allegations within the pages, as in the beginning he wrote that the 40,000 Communist attackers of the besieged and later abandoned base at Khe Sanh were able to do "human wave" kamikaze charges against the Americans because they were "opium crazed". Hasford also validly pointed out that during the Vietnam War, the U.S. ruled the land, but "when the day turns black and the sun goes down, everything beyond our wire is overrun by the Viet Cong. Every time the sun goes down, we lose the war." Hasford wrote the chilling comment about combat there as: "In Viet Nam nice guys do not finish at all and monsters live forever."


As with most memoirs, all U.S. troops in the field served a 1 year tour, and it was the "F.N.G" (the new guy") that seasoned troops were leery of. Hasford wrote of them: "You've got to keep New Guys alive until they realize that we're not going to win this war, which usually takes about a week." A Rumor of War Hasford also touched on corruption, prostitution and the black market that went on during the war, especially with the the paradigm of a G.I. trading a truck full of hand grenades for heroin. Warriors: An Infantryman's Memoir of Vietnam Before the capture of the protagonist of his story, "Joker", Hasford clearly maintained in the storyline about the enemy: "We can kill them, sometimes, but we are never going to beat them. All Viet Cong farmers are press-ganged at the point of a gun, brainwashed and shot full of heroin. The V.C. have magic powers which allow them to sink into the soil and disappear.


Hasford had an interesting way of explaining why the war was not winnable. After "the Tet Offensive", 1969 brought the highest "death toll" of U.S. combat troops in a single year. R.F.K. and Martin Luther King were assassinated, L.B.J. declined to run again for a 2nd term and the American public lost their patience with the nightly K.I.A tallies and unfulfilled promises of there being "light at the end of the tunnel" for a successful conclusion to the war in S.E. Asia. In "The Phantom Blooper", after his protagonist was captured by the V.C. and planned his escape, Hasford wrote of "Joker" in trying to feign assimilation into the V.C. and plot his escape back to U.S. forces: ""In the jungle, without weapons or food, I'll die. I must wait patiently to be a genuine defector or they will ship me away to the Hanoi Hilton. If I've learned anything from these people, it is the power of patience." Clearly, the false perception of winning the Vietnam War through enemy attrition would never work, according to Hasford. Ultimately, this proved to be on target. Unlike the Oriental mentality, Western patience with American involvement in Vietnam was at it's end.


Hasford concluded this book with very painful issues, such as America's attempt to deny "Vietnam Veterans Against The War" the right to express their indignation of this country's conduct in the war, their sense of betrayal, and how in some cases Vets were seen as drug crazed baby killers and psychopaths. Acceptable Loss Issues such as losing one's family, unemployment, and disgust at insincere "K.I.A. condolence letters" written to family members of the deceased are all addressed. It is interesting to note that as this was true in many cases, Gustav's protagonist was embarrassed to be home after military separation, considered himself a killer, and was homesick for the adrenalin that only the rush of Vietnan would provide and cure. It is interesting that Hansford has "Joker" assert at the end of the book: "I'm not even 21 years old and I've killed more than Billy the Kid". Clearly, this novel is a book that between the covers will teach the reader more about what went on in Vietnam over 40 years ago than most history books combined will inculcate.

What an odd, ambitious, and ultimately frustrating book. Like its predecessor, "The Short-Timers," The Phantom Blooper is comprised of three novellas, but each seem to have been written by a different author. The first, "The Winter Soldiers," is just as great as anything in "The Short-Timers;" the second, "Travels with Charlie," comes off like "Dances with Wolves" in Vietnam; and the third, "The Proud Flesh," almost reads like a political book, with long diatribes against the US government. In short, it's an unfocused novel that might not only grate readers with its unwillingness to be "The Short-Timers, Part Two," but also with its heavy anti-US politics sentiment.

What most frustrates me is that the first novella in the book is so promising. In fact, I enjoyed it more than anything in "The Short-Timers." Starting off with rumors and legends about the Phantom Blooper, it features an apocalyptic, night-time battle that is beyond any of the action in the previous novel. However, the second novella, "Travels with Charlie," abandons the characters and writing style Hasford previously employed, and instead, as another reviewer so accurately depicted it, comes off as Snow White with guns. Perhaps my main problem with this section of the novel is that I just don't buy it.

It's hard to believe that a village of Viet Cong would so readily accept a US Marine as one of their own. I can't recall reading about any real-world American POW's in the Vietnam war who experienced the idyllic, almost hippie-like existence Joker enjoys; it seems to me that most US prisoners were too busy being abused and tortured by their Viet Cong captors. And it also rubs me the wrong way that Hasford can have the VC commit atrocious acts, yet for them it's justified, whereas when he has US soldiers commit atrocities, it's just because they're basically inhuman. Hasford doesn't paint a very balanced picture, and though he dedicates this book to veterans of the war, he portrays the US soldiers as murdering, uncaring monsters. I can't imagine too many vets who would be flattered by their representation in this novel.

Another thing is that the Joker who narrates this novel is very different from the Joker we knew in "The Short-Timers." Gone is the stone-cold view of the world. Instead, the Joker of the Phantom Blooper is a caring guy, who seems to just want to live off the land for the rest of his life. This is totally against the grain of the blank-slate Joker in the previous book. It really seems to me, especially in the second and third novellas, that Hasford mostly just used Joker to promote his own opinions.

Whereas the previous novel had several interesting characters, with even more interesting names, The Phantom Blooper only features a few. In particular there's Black John Wayne, in "The Winter Soldiers," a black activist Marine who protests the war and refuses to fight. To tell the truth, I would've preferred to have seen more of this character than just about anything in either "Travels with Charlie" or "The Proud Flesh." Fans of the first novel may feel a bit let down that we barely get to see any of the characters from "The Short-Timers." Even Animal Mother, who most people know from his appearance in "Full Metal Jacket," only gets a small mention, in the beginning and end of the novel.

In short, I would say this book should be read by those who enjoyed "The Short-Timers." However, I wouldn't say that it's necessary for anyone else, unless you want to read an unusual novel about the Vietnam War, one that offers a very different message from any other.

The Phantom Blooper is the follow up to The Short Timers. Last time we left off, a recently demoted SGT Davis (Joker) is sent to a forward area in Khe Sanh for insubordination. Most of his old Lusthog Squad got wasted in an ambush(except Mother Animal, who only gets mentioned a couple of times in the book); in addition, he is still coming to terms with the death of his battle buddy, Cowboy. While at the outpost at Khe Sanh, Joker encounters some pretty colorful characters: a hypocritical platoon sergeant and a clique of Marines with a rebellious, revolutionary spirit called the "Black Confederacy," black Marines who were against the Vietnam War. The black Marines' perspective on the war would be the catalyst for Joker's unmaking as a cold-hearted Marine- and his odyssey and transformation into the fabled, notorious Phantom Blooper. Later Joker is held captive by the Viet Cong (he does not get tortured or interrogated), and he gets a perspective of the conflict from their side; not that Joker is converted to communism, but he sympathizes with their plight, though he had thoughts about escaping from their clutches before. Also, he will find that the America he left as a recruit was not the same America that greeted him on his return; protests, and old friends he knew way back becoming strangers. Those, and a few other things were confirm Joker's disillusionment with with the war and would change his whole view of America.

The Phantom Blooper essentially was a case for the likes of Gustav Hasford and other disenchanted Vietnam vets (he dedicates the book to them). In my opinion, Mr. Hasford's second book was a detoxification of James "Joker" Davis- the toxins being American racism and militarism against the Vietnamese. Also the other issues highlighted were the veteran's collective resentment of their mistreatment at an America who was indifferent to their needs. If you are of fan of Vietnam war and antiwar literature, I would recommend this book along with The Short-Timers!

Gustav is a bright flashing Hunter S. Thompson in Vietnam. Phantom Blooper is an awesome book, its the sequel to Short-Timers, which has more style, voice, and swagger than any book ever. Gustav is THE MAN. Phantom is a spectavular, well-finished, a thorough novel, but still with all the swag and color and humor Hasford has igniting in his mad head.

Gustav Hasford wrote three novels-"The Short-Timers, "The Phantom Blooper," and "Gypsy Good-Time"-before he died in obscurity in Greece, where he had exiled himself after being released from the California prison he had been sent to for stealing thousands of library books.

"Phantom Blooper," "Short-Timers" sequel, failed miserably both artistically and commercially. "Short-Timers" was granted some measure of retroactive acclaim after Stanley Kubrick used it as the template to create the film "Full Metal Jacket". No auteur came to the rescue of "Phantom Blooper" and it disappeared without a trace. Rightfully so, for this is not a good book. The dialogue mouthed by the stick-figure characters is cartoonish and glib. The plot is incoherent. All Americans are venal and corrupt and all Viet Cong are joyful and righteous. So bad are the Americans that the main character (Joker Davis aka the Phantom Blooper) can gleefully participate in the castration and crucifixion of one and blast others from the sky. (Toward the end of "Short-Timers" Joker murders his best friend, Hasford's way of satirizing the Marine Corps tradition of never leaving their dead or wounded on the battlefield.) So industrious are the Viet Cong that the scenes of village life resemble something from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". With guns. One bizarre analogy sympathetically compares the Viet Cong to the Confederate States of America, the "... first victim of the American Empire".

Any notion that "Phantom Blooper" was pulled because it was too controversial is just wrong. It was preceded by better, more elegant and equally controversial novels like "Paco's Story", by Larry Heinemann, and "Meditations in Green", by Stephen Wright. "Phantom Blooper" failed for all the right reasons-it is poorly written and dull.

At least the Short-Timers introduced some interesting characters, but the "Blooper" is just too dull. It also feeds the fire of misinformation about the war, the VC/NVA, and the typical GI.