A Rumor of War: Chapter Two Summary & Analysis

Philip Caputo’s first command is a rifle platoon in a battalion of the 3rd Marine Division. After graduating from Basic School and taking a month’s leave in San Francisco, he joins the platoon of forty men on Okinawa. He recalls a partial list of his men, while the others are “just names without faces or faces without names.” Still, Caputo can generalize all of them as “idealistic, insolent, generous, direct, violent, and provincial in the sense that they believed the ground they stood on was now forever a part of the United States simply because they stood on it.” They all come from slums, dirt farms, and Appalachian mining towns. Many have never finished high school, and some have no relationship with their fathers.

Caputo arrives on Okinawa in January 1965; the rest of the battalion has been at Camp Schwab since September, waiting for something to happen. To keep themselves busy, they go to nearby Heneko, a town with “a squalid collection of honky-tonks” where the marines “get hustled by the bowlegged bar girls, and drink in the heavy, reckless way of young GIs overseas for the first time.” The rest of their time is spent in the routine of garrison life: waking, roll call, exercise, breakfast, working parties in mid-morning and afternoon, drills, dinner, liberty call, taps, and sleep. For Caputo, it is a bleak existence with no resemblance to his romantic fantasies.

The company’s first sergeant, Fred Wagoner, instructs Caputo on the formalities of the Marine Corps, including signing forms only with black ink. Caputo spends his first few weeks overseas learning such formalities, signing more blank forms with black ink, and drinking coffee with other platoon commanders. He quickly becomes restless. Caputo also feels like an outsider, due to the ranks being filled with enlisted men who went to boot camp together and other lieutenants who graduated from Quantico in the same year. Having done everything together and gone everywhere together, they share the same experiences and hardships and have, thus, developed close comradeship. As a result, Caputo feels like a guest in an exclusive men’s club.

Caputo is assigned to One-Three, or the first battalion of the 3rd Marines, for ninety days and, after this time expires, will probably be recalled to the company headquarters to do desk work. However, he learns that this could be postponed or avoided altogether if he successfully demonstrates leadership of the battalion and earns their respect. This would not be easy. The other platoon commanders in Charley Company, including Glen Lemmon, Bruce Tester, and Murph McCloy, have one to two years’ of experience, while Caputo has none. As a result, he is nicknamed “boot brown-bar,” which is slang for a very fresh second lieutenant.

Rumors float around about a possible deployment to Vietnam. Delta Company is first sent to Da Nang to furnish internal security for the American compound there. Three weeks go by and nothing happens. Caputo wonders if he will ever see action. In February, the company goes to the Northern Training Area, a jungled and mountainous region, for counter-guerrilla-warfare exercises. Caputo, afraid of making the smallest mistake, initially botches this first test in the field. He gives his platoon confusing orders and nearly gets lost several times in the Okinawan jungles. While the platoon waits to move to the jump-off point, Sergeant Campbell lights the smoking lamp. Seeing him do this, Caputo figures it’s fine to have a cigarette and gets bawled out by Campbell in front of the troops for doing something that would surely draw fire in Vietnam.

Later, Joe Feeley lectures Caputo about being more competent and assuming leadership from Sergeant Campbell. Looking back, Caputo determines that much of his behavior in Vietnam was determined by this lecture. It instills in him a hunger for praise. Fitness reports describe him as “fearless in the face of an enemy,” eager to succeed but impulsive. By the time the battalion leaves for Vietnam, he is ready to die “for a few favorable marks in a fitness report.”

When the company completes training and returns to Camp Schwab, they learn the Viet Cong have attacked the American air base at Pleiku, killing or wounding seventy airmen. In retaliation, U.S. planes drop bombs on the North in a campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder. The Pleiku raid revives rumors about “going South.” Then, the One-Three battalion is notified that they will go to Da Nang on February 24th. Everyone is enthusiastic, except for Sergeant Campbell, who is ready to retire.

The 24th arrives, and the operation to Da Nang is called off. It is then repeatedly postponed through March. Rumor has it that the battalion will remain on Okinawa until April 8th, when it will then sail for the Philippines. The bargirls in Heneko, however, are certain that the GIs will leave, and an article in the island’s English-language newspaper reports that sixty prostitutes have migrated from Saigon to Da Nang “in anticipation of a rumored landing of U.S. Marines.”