A Rumor of War: Chapter Eight Summary & Analysis

A thick fog rolls in around 2:00 A.M., the time at which the VC usually attacks. Blinded by the fog, the marines rely on their hearing. They hear drumming in the distance, which concerns them. The last two days of the operation are the same as the first: hours of boring walks interrupted by brief skirmishes with hidden snipers. On the afternoon of the fourth day, they pass through Giao-Tri. A few villagers are still there, searching for belongings among their burned homes. Their gazes remain flat and steady, registering the same indifference Caputo witnessed on the first day he entered the hamlet. He compares them to Americans who, he imagines, would do something about the destruction of their village. Caputo despises the villagers for their indifference and acceptance. Only later does he realize that their constant confrontations with disaster makes them able to endure what Americans would consider insufferable.

In the early evening, the marines reach a dirt road that runs past the “French fort,” an old French-Moroccan garrison that the Viet Minh supposedly wiped out in the early fifties. Caputo and the others see a line of peasant girls pass by, hurrying back to their village before curfew. The “rules of engagement” say that Vietnamese caught outside after dark are considered VC and must either be shot or captured. The convoy arrives shortly afterward and the marines mount trucks, happy to have a lift. Caputo rides with Corporal Mixon’s squad and a machine-gun team. The convoy stops in the bulldozed field that serves as an assembly area for companies. Gunnery Sergeant Marquand orders the men to get off the trucks and fall in line.

Caputo examines the marines and realizes that many of them are “not so decent or good.” He has not become critical of them, knowing that he is in no position to criticize. Rather, he sees them as ordinary men who sometimes perform extraordinary acts. They are capable of bravery as well as cruelty. Sergeant Colby has a different view, believing that a nineteen- year-old American boy is one of the world’s most brutal creatures. Caputo refuses to believe this, as he has shared too much with them to have such a negative view of them.

Officers and platoon sergeants go to headquarters the next morning for the captain’s daily briefing. First Sergeant Wagoner announces that ten percent of the battalion would be allowed “Cinderella liberty” in Da Nang, so called because it will end at midnight. Liberty call sounds that afternoon, and twenty-five enlisted men from C Company go to Da Nang in trucks. Caputo, McCloy, Peterson, and Sergeant Loker drive in the captain’s jeep. It is their job to ensure that the troops stay out of “serious trouble.” Caputo observes that Da Nang is “teeming with refugees from the countryside, armed soldiers in battle dress, whores, pimps, camp followers, and black marketeers.” There are thatched huts “clustered in dense squalor,” as well as shacks with rusted, sheet-metal roofs. Lance Corporal Reed stops in front of a row of bars with tacky names, and the convoy behind them also comes to a halt.

After six weeks of combat operations, the marines are excited to be released into bars where dark-haired prostitutes coo at the boys to buy them drinks. Outside, cyclo-drivers pimp on street corners, old women peddle black market cigarettes or cheaply made jackets with sayings like I’ve Served My Time in Hell sewn on the backs. Every now and again, a maimed Vietnamese veteran would hold out “a faded fatigue cap” and beg for change. Caputo gives a few coins to one of the beggars. Then, “a mob of small boys with very old eyes” accosts him, McCloy, and Loker. When the marines do not give them money, the children demand cigarettes. When the men still refuse, the children follow them and call them “cheap Charlie.”

The marines make their way to Simone’s, a bar named after its French-Cambodian-Thai owner. Loker starts talking to Simone right away and is taken with her, though he has no intention of taking her back home with him. McCloy then introduces Caputo to two girls from Simone’s “stable.” They are “plump, pleasant, and reasonable” women named Yum-Yum and Yip-Yap. Caputo is shy, however, about whoremongering in front of his soldiers. Marshall and Morrisson invite him over for a drink. Marshall bores Caputo with his car obsession and Caputo tires, too, of listening to Morrisson’s hare-brained military scheme. Caputo manages to get away from them and leaves the bar with McCloy.

McCloy takes Caputo to a Vietnamese restaurant and then to a brothel. The prostitutes are half-naked and bored. In one corner, he spies a bony woman of “indeterminable age,” lying on her back and staring at the ceiling “with opium-glazed eyes.” One of the women stands and shuffles toward them. Her mouth is smeared with lipstick and red circles of blush are painted “on her sallow cheeks.” She offers to perform sexual favors, but Caputo tells McCloy that he wants to leave. Just then, three marines from C Company come down the stairs laughing and tucking their shirts into their trousers. They stop when they see the officers. Caputo is embarrassed, but McCloy quickly covers for them, saying that he and Caputo were coming around to make sure the men are using condoms. The men assure him that they have. McCloy tells them to carry on, then he and Caputo leave.

McCloy and Caputo next go to the Blue Dahlia, a hangout for Australian advisers stationed in Da Nang. The Australians are “champion drinkers.” In the spirit of their alliance, the Australians pour McCloy and Caputo tumblers full of whiskey. Caputo later wakes up in the bedroom of one of the Chinese bargirls. He does not remember how he got there, and his uniform is strewn on the floor. The bargirl is lying naked beside him and offers to have sex with him in exchange for “four thousand piasters,” which is about thirty dollars. Caputo accepts the offer. When they finish, she walks him back across the street to the Blue Dahlia. An Australian warrant officer asks how she was. The young woman’s name is Lang. Caputo says that she was “fine, but expensive.” The Australian commiserates and says that the girls in the Blue Dahlia are “spoiled.”

Suddenly, there is pounding on the door. It is the MPs. The Australians order Caputo and McCloy to hide under a couch, as the bar is off-limits to Americans after a certain hour. The MPs search the room for a few minutes, then they leave. Caputo and McCloy thank the Australians for their hospitality and leave as well. They walk to the Grand Hotel where Peterson and Loker are drinking rum on the veranda with a Norwegian merchant sailor. Peterson is drunk. Caputo buys a round of drinks, then the Norwegian buys another. Then, MPs arrive and arrest all of the marines. Lance Corporal Reed is summoned to get the men and they are released. Everyone suffers from crippling hangovers the next day. Three days later, half of the liberty day celebrants find out that they have venereal disease and go to the aid station to get shots of penicillin.

These are Caputo’s memories of his last two weeks with this battalion. Once, he leads a platoon-sized patrol near Charlie Ridge. They hack their way through bamboo and elephant grass ten feet high. When they enter a swamp, Corporal Mixon falls into quicksand and is pulled out covered in mud and leeches. The eight-hundred-foot ridge requires the men to climb hand over hand, clutching at the roots of mahogany trees. Sometimes, someone falls and sends those behind him toppling backward. When they finally reach the crest, Caputo sees that they have only covered a little over half a mile. A few days later, Lemmon is wounded in an operation. A VC tosses a grenade at him, which bounces off of Lemmon’s chest, lands at his feet, then rolls into a hollow, where it explodes. Fragments strike Lemmon in the face and nearly knock over Sullivan, who is behind him.

The platoon rushes into the camp and finds no one, although they do find uniforms, equipment, and AK-47s. They destroy the weapons and gear, then they set fire to the camp. Lemmon escapes with minor scratches. Sullivan, who is now a sergeant and the father of a two-year-old boy, is left shaken. Lemmon, too, is traumatized, because he saw the VC throw the grenade at him. He confides that he initially thought he was going to die. When the grenade rolled between his legs, he thought it would castrate him. Then, he just watched it roll away and go off.

D Company, which covers C Company’s left flank, runs into trouble later in the day. They are shelled in a place that is appropriately named Mortar Valley. Six men are seriously wounded. In revenge, they kill five VC, including a North Vietnamese political officer. Caputo’s platoon is sent off on an all-night ambush, which is a miserable experience—not for its violence, but for the endless bites the men endure from ants and mosquitos. No one sleeps that night. When the men return to the battalion’s lines the next day, they hear that they are to leave in September and return to Okinawa. Some believe the rumor, buoyed by optimistic reports from higher headquarters or reports in Stars and Stripes. Caputo writes a letter home, expressing confidence that the VC are losing the war.

At the end of May, Caputo receives orders from his parent unit, Regimental Headquarters Company. After a week-long course in Yokosuka, Japan, he will be an administrative officer on his staff. Caputo does not want to leave the One-Three battalion and hates the idea of becoming nothing more than a clerk. He tries to get his assignment changed but to no avail. Lemmon, however, cannot understand Caputo’s disappointment. He envies Caputo’s ability to escape from the war front. Caputo packs his bag and says goodbye to the platoon. Campbell is the sorriest to see Caputo go, for he will now have to serve as both the platoon commander and the platoon sergeant.