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Vietnam Vignettes: Tales of an Infantryman

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I loved this book. It's short, fast-paced, and it really grabbed me. It is neither pro- nor anti-war, does not idealize war, and does not demonize the Viet Cong. It just tells it like it was. It shows you the action or the pathos or the humor, letting it hit you the way it hit the author at the time. I recommend it to everyone who wants to know what it was like to participate in the Vietnam War. As a female college student without any friends or relatives fighting in the war, I didn't read a lot about the war when it was happening. Of course, I saw the unsettling pictures of the fighting in magazines and on the TV news, and I attended many war "teach-ins" and discussions on campus. But it wasn't until reading this book that I really understood what the soldiers experienced over there. Everyone should read it. I'll be sending copies of it as Christmas gifts this year.

For those of us who served and the families of those who served, Mr. Basnar's vivid, factual, and emotional accounts of the dailey life of infantrymen in Vietnam will capture the imigination of all who read this outstanding book. "Vietnam Vignettes" will seize your attention with not only the life and death struggles of those in combat but will also share with you the tough, reasoned decisions of a rifle company commander who is entrusted with the lives of the American soldier.

Simply put, this is a great book. A facinating account that is so well written one section flows seamlessly into the next - and you can't put it down. This is a great diet book: you don't want to put it down long enough to eat lunch and taking a time-out to fix supper is out of the question.

Without realizing it you're taken effortlessly to a place and a time during the Vietnam war. By the time you've reached the last page, you have been there ... and what is left of your day is colored by the place you've visited.

As one of the men who followed Lee Basnar in Charlie Company as an infantryman, I can attest to the accuracy of Lee's book. The book is right on the mark in its telling of Charlie Company's battles, time in the field near Landing Zone Stinson, and its trials under fire in a war that was one of the nations most unpopular. You will feel Basnar's emotion as you read the book and you will find it hard to put down. You will rage at the decisions of higher ranking commanders who tried to mico manage Basnar's battle field from a helicopter at 2,000 ft. until they realized that Basnar didn't need them.

Basnar brings back, in vivid detail, the company's encounters with the enemy and his reaction to those encounters as Charlie Company's commander.

From the jungles of the high ground and Tra Bong river, Basnar takes his readers through the dangerous missions he led and personally fought in. You will visit infamous places like the rocket pocket, the jungled mountain ridges west of Chu Lia, near the Laos border, and the lowland area known by the troops as Dodge City, a place where Lee earned his nick name, "The Marshal of Dodge City. " It was a terrible area for American troops, near Mia Lia 1,2 and 3, where the hedge rows were full of booby traps and the snipers were everywhere. But Basnar earned his reputation by dealing efficiently in that environment. Our Kit Carson scout, Kim, an X-Viet Cong who came over to our side, once told me in broken English, as we set up our camp , "They know who Basnar is. They are afraid of him. He is smart." "They" were the Viet Cong. Kim had many relatives on the other side. He often communicated with females in his family who kept him posted on his other relatives, a very dangerous group of men, who like Kim, had been fighting for over a dozen years. You don't earn the respect of men like that unless you are good at what you do, very good.

When you read Basnar's prose, you will realize it is the prose of a professional infantryman, a man that deserves the Combat Infantrymen's Badge as much as any man. He knew his job and you will understand just how well he knew it after reading the book. He was a smart, straight shooting commanding officer who expected as much of himself as he did from us.

I was reminded by reading the book how he turned our demoralized company around, and, after the change, how proud I was to serve under him as a young point man and later as a squad leader. If you read the book, you will see why the black scarfed men of Charlie Co. 1/52nd Infantry Battalion would have followed Basnar anywhere. They new he cared about them as well as the mission, and that made all the difference because it made him one of us. Even today, as our hair greys and our memories of many things fade. The memory of Basnar is still strong in our minds.

This book is so descriptive of infantry combat that you can smell it, feel it, and fear it. I spent two tours in Vietnam, and this book is the best description I have ever read of what an infantryman experienced day and night. The author's apt descriptions of an infantryman's life left me thinking of the vivid scenes long after I laid the book aside. Without a single reservation, I don't think that any author has written a more accurate description of a "grunt" fighting the war in Vietnam. You'll perceive their anxiety, sense the danger, and feel their hidden emotions as anguished young men face disfigurement or death in the rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam.

Cecil O. Carlile
LTC, U.S. Army (Retired)

When I read Vietnam Vignettes, I was transported back to my own two humanitarian trips to Vietnam in recent years. But what a difference! Though my friends and I were met with nothing but warm welcomes and shows of generosity, we tried to imagine what it must have been like thirty years before. Through the pages of Lee Basnar's book, I learned of the fear, the distrust, the misery, the bonding and the loneliness experienced by our young men and women in a land so far from home and loved ones. The book gave me a much better understanding of today's troops in foreign lands and of the scars left by such events.

In Vietnam Vignettes, Lee Basnar paints War with broad strokes, a War that could have occurred over a hundred years ago in our own South, or today in the MidEast. The horrors, fear and anxiety remain the same. Loneliness, wet feet, wounded friends, heavy packs, cookies from home. Scenes we all have experienced second-hand in movies and books.

Yet across those broad strokes, Basnar paints finely detailed vignettes we have not seen, portraits of many moods. Facing the hatred in the eyes of a widow holding the bullet-riddled body of her husband as she contemplates grim life without him, and murmuring a heartfelt, "I'm sorry". Reading the message from a bounding deer that stopped and peered over her shoulder, a danger alert which allowed him to kill the skilled enemy who had been booby-trapping his men. Tapping his boot to dislodge any intruders, yet finding a new ant colony when he plunged his foot in, resulting in a one-legged dance his men found hilarious.

From those portraits we conjure up the soul of a man who is not only a citizen of the world, accepting the best and the worst humans have to offer, but the spirit of a man who is part of the universe around him. Basnar allows us into the mind of a man that every woman wants to protect her, and maybe love her. But she will settle for having him lead her sons through safely and send them home.

It was good to have some memories of Vietnam revived. Lee revived them without causing harm. Whether the reader was in Vietnam or not, this book offers a perspective on daily life in the war zone without saddling the reader with the a requirement to relive the politics. You can read this book without risk. Lee Basnar should be honored and thanked both for his service in Vietnam and for writing this book.

Vietnam Vignettes: Tales of an Infantryman by Lee Basnar is an exceptional book written from the heart. With staccato-like shifts of scenes, Basner's book resembles Vietnam War television news clips. However, Mr. Basnar's reporting goes far beyond the 1960's news clips. With his spare prose style, Mr. Basnar not only describes war scenes and events, he also evokes the physical sensation of the war, the incessant noise and the extreme physical discomforts, as well as "the odors. . .the heat, and the soil of Vietnam." The descriptions of violence are never gratuitous. Each vignette serves as a focal point for a particular feeling or experience that creates, for the reader, a mosaic of the entire war experience.

Despite the severe hardships of the war, Mr. Basnar never loses sight of the beauty of the landscape and laments, at one point, that, in the lull of the war's infernal noise, he does not hear the song of a bird. Most importantly, Mr. Basnar conveys the human feelings he experienced as the commander of Charlie Company.

The author's straightforward presentation and acceptance of his feelings puts a humanitarian face on the sometimes graphic war scenes. He describes the intense loyalty of his comrades and his troops' courage and toughness. He touches candidly on the futility of the war and explains the will to survive, not simply a sense of patriotism, as the primary motivation for himself and his troops to fulfill their duties. True victory was staying alive to return home to cherished families. He describes his feelings of fear in battle and the guilt, anguish and sense of failure when any of his men died or were wounded. At times he experienced these same feelings when he witnessed or was responsible for the deaths of the enemy. Despite the trauma and intensity of emotional hurt in the war, Mr. Basnar does not neglect the lighter moments of humor in the Vietnam experience, for example, being the honored guest of a Vietnamese family celebrating Tet.

Mr. Basnar has dedicated his book to his troops whom he decribes as "true warriors." He also seems to be making peace with the ghosts of the past that still haunt him. Vietnam Vignettes is a valuable book, not only for readers with a special interest in understanding the Vietnam War, but for any reader who has suffered any severe trauma. Mr. Basnar, I salute you. I, for one, am looking forward to your next book.