Late Thoughts on an Old War: The Legacy of Vietnam Hardcover – May 6, 2004

Philip D. Beidler served in Vietnam from May 1, 1969 to April 30, 1970 in an armored cavalry unit, first as a platoon leader, then as executive officer. Upon his return to civilian life he went on to graduate school and an academic career at the University of Alabama. After fifteen or so years trying to forget about Vietnam, he realized that that was impossible, and he resigned himself to being one of those "who lives with the war every minute of our lives" and, in addition to his academic specialty of early American literature, he became "a critic and interpreter of literary and popular-culture representations of the war."

LATE THOUGHTS ON AN OLD WAR, which was published in 2004, is a collection of essays from the two or three years on each side of the turn of the millennium. They are worth listing individually:
* "The Language of the Nam" - The in-country vocabulary for virtually everything, from "gook" to "short" to "uniform tango" to "the LBJ" to "VPCOD".
* "Solatium" -- U.S. military compensation paid to Vietnamese citizens to alleviate grief for the death of a family member; the going rate for someone fifteen or older was $35, under fifteen was $14.40.
* "Just Like in the Movies" - Nixon gets inspiration from the movie "Patton".
* "How I Flunked Race in Vietnam" - The racial meltdown in the U.S. Army.
* "Late Thoughts on `Platoon'" - Viewing the movie thirty years after leaving Vietnam and fifteen years after the movie's release.
* "The Music of the Nam"--The "first rock `n' roll war" and its signature songs, especially "We Gotta Get Out of this Place".
* "Viet Pulp" - Paperbacks about Vietnam, most of which - whether nominally first-person memoirs or fiction -- follow a common narrative pattern.
* "Sorry, Mr. McNamara" - The author's reactions to McNamara's apology of sorts in "In Retrospect": "Sorry, Mr. McNamara, but dead is dead, and sorry don't mean s***."
* "Calley's Ghost" - My Lai.
* "Wanting to Be John Balaban" - One American young man's principled alternative response to the conflict in Vietnam.
* "The Years" - The long view and cultural memory; a summation of sorts.

There is some repetition or overlap among the essays, which makes for my only niggling criticism of the book. Of course, not all of the essays are equally strong, but they all are solid. The last four are the best; they might even be deemed essential reading. Although Beidler is a college professor, the writing is far from academic. Indeed, it is top-notch.

Although I didn't serve in Vietnam, I empathize (to the extent possible) with those who did. Still, the war was a terrible mistake, an unforgivably arrogant, stupid, and deceitful escapade of our leaders. We no longer deprecate the service of Vietnam veterans, but, at least in popular culture, we seem to have gone too far in the opposite direction towards rationalizing, romanticizing, and sanitizing our excursion in Vietnam. And, as always, we virtually ignore the three to four million Vietnamese we killed, as well as the tens of thousands we maimed. LATE THOUGHTS ON AN OLD WAR is a valuable corrective. It is one of the more important, and one of the more honest, books I know of in the endeavor to make sense of the biggest event in the lives of my generation of Americans.

I was recently in Angel Fire, New Mexico in the company of the fellow Amazon reviewer who recommended this book. We visited the memorial to Vietnam War veterans, now a state park, the only such one designated in their honor in the entire United States. It is a touching tribute, the result of the single-minded effort of the father of a Marine who was killed near Con Thien, once a "strategic" place that, well, is most difficult to locate on a map today. In the parking lot were numerous folks on motorcycles, many with some sort of military patch or decal. That very uneasy feeling came back to me, based on over 40 years of experience: if past is prologue, as they say, over half of these riders were never in the military, the smaller sub-set that were, many were never in Vietnam, and the majority of those that were in Vietnam, as the expression had it, were REMF's, never missing their hot meal or hot shower.

No question, Philip D. Beidler was there, and he was in the field (never "the front," as some actually would claim). He was a lieutenant in a tank unit, in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, "way down south," operating often between Saigon and the sea, including the place where the few ARVN that would fight made their "last stand": Xuan Loc. We were briefly in Vietnam together, during the same time, the summer of 1969, though in different "Corps," mine having one less Roman numeral. And we were both in tank units. He commanded a unit comprised of the lighter 551 Sheridan tank, which he says is "...distinguished for its incessant mechanical malfunctions and its terrifying vulnerability to rocket-propelled grenades." I can assure him that "...the M-48 main battle tank, a fifty-ton behemoth..." had the identical problems, particularly if you include, in addition to RPG's... B-40 rockets.

Suspect that Beidler might have shared my unease in that Angel Fire parking lot. On page 134 he says: "VA hospitals now report an influx of Vietnam PTSD imitators touting an implausible history of multiple tours in specialized hunter-killer units, of claiming experience in multiple branches of service, coupled with numerous high-level combat decorations...The myth of the American soldier in Vietnam as stoned heavy killer has been around for a long time...walking the thin line between pathology and overheated imagination." Earlier, on page 132, he nailed another key point... of the 3.5 million who hold the "Vietnam Campaign ribbon," probably no more than 10% (possibly as high as 20% in my opinion) were in the field, and then the "literature" would lead you to believe they were all SEALs or LRRPs, in the First Cav. or 101st Airborne. Sitting around on a tank, for days on end, guarding a lonely stretch of road, or some remote fire base - the boredom - just doesn't make good "pot-boilers."

Beidler's late thoughts are an eclectic group, as one might suspect after so many years. There were the chapters devoted to the careful catalog of terms specific to the American military experience in Vietnam, as well as the music of the time, and the subsequent "pulp literature" devoted to the war. Even though I've read my share of the more serious literature on Vietnam, not to mention my personal experience, there were the chapters that supplied completely new information. Should I be embarrassed that I never heard of a "solatium," or should I chalk it up to four months in Binh Dinh province, where the CIA's Phoenix program was responsible for the estimated deaths of 50,000 civilians? More inspirationally was Beidler's introduction to John Balaban, who truly walked the walk for a conscientious objector, in Can Tho, and whose memoir Remembering Heaven's Face: A Story of Rescue in Wartime Vietnam merits a placement in the essential "to-be-read" category. For me, Beidler's excoriating chapter on Robert McNamara for his pseudo mea culpa was "preaching to the choir." Likewise, his chapter on the "goofy vacuity" of William Calley, though a tie-in with Neil Sheehan's assessment from A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (Modern Library) on aerial and artillery bombardments would have been appropriate. His chapter on Nixon's decision to invade Cambodia, and the movie Patton was enlightening. And I though his nuanced critique of the movie Platoon was spot-on.

With so much worthwhile material, I was stunned that Beidler would repeatedly cite Michael Herr, and in particular his work Dispatches (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) as not just an authority, but almost a "sacred text." Admittedly, when I first read Herr's work in the `70's, I thought it was an impressive account since it got the "lingo" right, and was sufficiently anti- "the 5 o'clock follies" et al. But on a re-read within the last few years, I realized that he alone is responsible for much of the "troubled Vietnam War Veteran" image. Specifically, on page 199, Herr says "...a picture of a Marine holding an ear or maybe two ears or, as in the case of a guy I knew near Pleiku, a whole necklace made of ears, `love beads' as its owner called them...half the combat troops in Vietnam had these things in their packs, snapshots were the least of what they took after a fight, at least pictures didn't rot." No less than HALF! Herr also claims that the American casualties in the Ia Drang battle were many times what were officially reported: 305 dead. And Herr wrote the screen play to Apocalypse Now! Herr IS the source for so much that walks "..the thin line between pathology and overheated imagination." And quoting the now discredited Stephen Ambrose is also not to the author's credit.

Normally I'd dock a star for significant lacuna in perceptions, such as Herr, but overall, it is a very worthwhile read. 5-stars.

An old friend recommended this when it first came out. I read a library copy with great satisfaction. Words and music of the people who were there. I won't tell you where. The softshell historians and generals supposedly write the definitive editions
of wars. Maybe. Mr. Beidler, thank you very much, is a hard-nosed man who was once a grunt. He wrote this book from that
perspective, which prompts me to say that any time you read a history of war--any war in any age--that pen is being pushed
through the blood of the grunts who lived it. And they are the definitive beasts of burden. Calling them heroes is far too
easy for a people swathed in, constantly enticed by comfort. Okay, call them that, but for God's sake just once in a while
take time to hear what they are calling out to you. Listen just a little. It'll hurt. It should. This book is a fine starting point.
PS: This is a signed copy. Where but Amazon could that possibly happen?