Customer Reviews

Welcome to Vietnam, Macho Man: Reflections of a Khe Sanh Vet

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My husband is a combat veteran who served as a sergeant in the Marine Corps during the 77-Day Siege of the Khe Sanh Combat Base in Vietnam. Ernest Spencer's book gave me the opportunity to learn more about what my husband experienced during that terrible siege.

Welcome to Vietnam, Macho Man put me right there at the Khe Sanh Combat Base. I was on patrol, in the bunkers, and suffering the losses. The language is a bit rough but the message is pure. Ernest Spencer chronicles his experiences as a Marine Corps captain living and dying with our husbands, brothers and sons.

If you ever wondered what life was really like and I mean truthfully, Spencer's book gives an account of daily life in the business of war--sometimes funny, sometimes frustrating, and many times heart breaking. Spencer tells us what they saw, how they felt and how they managed a reality that was so totally different from their expectations

Certainly, Welcome to Vietnam, Macho Man--Reflections of a Vietnam Vet is the author's personal catharsis erupting from the stupidity and senseless loss of so many young Marines. As I read the book, I knew it was the real deal. No exaggerated heroics or glamorized fiction fabricated to enhance the author's persona.

I highly recommend this book to any family member of a combat vet seeking the truth about the war in Vietnam or the siege of the Khe Sanh Combat Base.

If you really want to know what the toughest fighting in Vietnam was like and how it felt to the commander of a Company of Marines take a ride with the Macho Man. All of the insanity, horror and humor that are combined in the experience of combat are brilliantly displayed in Ernie Spencer's book.
Spencer was a Commander that others looked to for the tough combat jobs and we need to thank him, and his Marines, for that, but also for this great book.
Don't miss it.

Ernie Spencer is undoubtedly a Marine's Marine. Semper Fi...do or die...a lean, mean, green killing machine. On that note, "Welcome to Vietnam, Macho Man: Reflections of a Khe Sanh Vet," is an extremely painful confessional of a Marine grunt lost in the darkness of death. As much as Spencer boasts of his "Macho," makeup...one thing is perfectly clear in the last 95 pages of this sleek compact book...Marines were totally trapped in Khe Sahn for 77-days with terrifying emotional consequences.

"Skipper," as his enlisted Marines call him writes an unsanitized account of his 1967-68 tour of duty in Vietnam as Commanding Officer of Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment. His language is no-nonsense Marine Corps vernacular. Some of you will certainly consider it obscene...but do not let it scare you off...this book is filled with powerful descriptions of violence and pain...and in time...you will be numb to the profanity.

Essentially, this book is about a stoic, brave, irreverent, combat Marine who is the supreme "Macho." Ultimately however, the reader will discover that being "Macho," is also about being afraid and testing the limits of raw human suffering. Overall this book is essential reading for all interested in understanding the Marine warrior mentality during a dark period of the Vietnam War. Additionally, it is a comprehensive accounting of the day-to-day combat experience of the Marine Corps infantry grunt. On the downside, this book could use a good map to aid in understanding important events in the narrative. Highly recommended.

Bert Ruiz

A friend and fellow veteran sent me this book from his own collection. I get a lot of books about Viet Nam from people, and I confess that I read few of them--it's hard to revisit the era at this point in my life. So I opened this book, expecting to give it a cursory glance, then slip it into my bookshelf.

Instead, I skimmed the first page, and was hooked.

It wasn't the plot that caught me up--it's non-fiction, and, like war itself, lacks the arc and climax of a novel. It was the hard, irreverent tone; the words absolutely crackled. It felt closer than the standard memoir; Spencer has let the reader crawl into his head, into his skin, to see through his eyes how a man goes to fight and what he finds--what turns him on; the complexity of his machismo; how war wears him down even as it tightens him up. It's a foul-mouthed, brilliantly written and at times blackly humorous primer on the willing warrior.

I would recommend this book for anybody who needs to understand what war really is. For anyone who is trying to deal with a loved one who has returned from war changed in ways a civilian desperately needs help to understand. And finally, for anyone who's Been There, and needs confirmation and support. Given our current wars and the soldiers who are returning from them, haunted and alienated, it's a pity that Welcome to Viet Nam is out of print. It's an important book because of Ernest Spencer's profound honesty, and his willingness to bare his own psyche without flinching.

Susan O'Neill, author, Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam