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Reading Athena's Dance Card: Men Against Fire in Vietnam

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I read "Reading Athena's Dance Card: Men Against Fire in Vietnam" expecting a well reasoned, well written study of American soldiers and Marines in Vietnam but found much more. This book delivers alot more than the jacket comments promise. It contains the expected analysis of Americans under fire in Vietnam and compares findings with the earlier landmark study by S.L.A. Marshall, but doesn't stop there. The book examines core issues using examples taken from historical depth and geographic/national breadth. Comments taken from surveys of American Vietnam veterans are used as a cordon bleu chef uses fine seasonings, with the ultimate result that the human factor, the face of the soldier under fire, is always to the fore. The book also gives great attention to factors such as training and rotation policy, among other things, essentially leaving no stone unturned in this thorough, well paced work. I highly recommend this book for students of military history in general, and those with an interest in Vietnam in particular.

It's 1968; you are 18 years old, fresh out of high school and decide to join the army because you know you'll be drafted anyways. During the Fall and Winter you complete your basic and advance infantry training. You have never handled a gun before so your trips to the shooting range were nerve-racking. After two weeks leave you're shipped off to Viet Nam. From the frigid mid-west you arrive to a steamy tropical jungle full of dangers: human and non-human. You are assigned to a platoon. Being the FNG (f****** new guy) with no survival skills no one wants to associate with you; troops assume you have very bad karma and are a bullet magnet. Soon after arriving you are part of a patrol sent into enemy territory. There is a noise in the jungle; a whoosh and the other guys hit the dirt. A muzzle flash in the bushes or in the trees means the enemy is firing on the platoon. What the solider does next is the subject of this book.

Our imaginary solider could return fire, freeze with his face in the sand, or remain standing and become causality. The Army would like to believe that stateside training produces warriors but that was not always the case. Some soldiers shot their weapons indiscriminately giving away their position or in a panic even shot their mates. Some refused to fire. Some went crazy. Combat does very strange things to people and the effects are cumulative over time.

Using surveys and interviews the author endeavors to finds answers to the conundrum of turning young men from normal American households into killers of fellow human beings. I am not anti-military or anti-war but we have to state exactly what is going on after all the euphemisms are removed.

This book, published by the Navel Institute Press, is a scholarly work complete with an index, notes, bibliography and 29 tables and charts of survey statistics. The author for the most part avoids military jargon and writes for the general reader and not for fellow academics. Those with an interest in the Viet Nam War and how men perform and react, or don't react, when in combat will find this book interesting and useful.