A Rumor of War: Prologue Summary & Analysis

Philip Caputo asserts that his book is not an historical account, but that it is simply about war—what men do during war and what happens to them as a result of war. Caputo goes to Da Nang, Vietnam on March 8, 1965 “as a young infantry officer” with “the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, the first combat unit sent to Indochina.” He returns to Vietnam in April 1975 as a newspaper correspondent and witnesses the fall of Saigon. He notes how he was “among the first Americans to fight in Vietnam” and “among the last to be evacuated,” a few hours after the North Vietnamese Army enters the capital.

War, Caputo writes, is attractive to young men who know nothing about it. He recalls how he was swayed by Kennedy’s Camelot and the fallen president’s challenge to “ask what you can do for your country.” America, at that time, had never lost a war. Like late-eighteenth century French soldiers, Caputo believed that the U.S. was “destined to triumph.” He quickly realized how much he and his fellow soldiers had underestimated the skill and determination of the Viet Cong fighters.

Caputo recalls how much of the war was tedious—there were no epic clashes like Gettysburg or D-Day at Normandy. Occasionally, there was “a large-scale search-and-destroy operation” via helicopter, which would be followed by “more of the same hot walking […] while an invisible enemy shot at [them] from distant tree lines.” None of these encounters achieved anything politically. However, they taught the young soldiers lessons about fear, cowardice, courage, suffering, cruelty, and comradeship. Most importantly, they learned about death at an age at which people usually think they are immortal.

Caputo returns to the United States in early July 1966 and works as the commanding officer of an infantry training company in North Carolina. He is then honorably discharged from the Marines. As happy as he is to escape death in Vietnam, he also feels nostalgic for the war. The civilian world seems alien to him and he begins to think that he belongs more to the world of the battlefield than to civilian life. Caputo soon gets involved in the antiwar movement but leaves when he realizes that he can never hate the war as much as his friends in the movement.

What distinguishes Vietnam from other conflicts, Caputo notes, is “its absolute savagery.” He uses himself and other young men as examples of how the war aroused “a psychopathic violence in men of seemingly normal impulses.” He expresses skepticism at the notion that My Lai was merely the result of racism or the “frontier-heritage” of the American soldier. These theories ignore the barbarous treatment that the Viet Cong and the ARVN inflicted on their own people, as well as crimes committed by the South Koreans and the French during the first Indochina War.

This book is not a protest, for Caputo does not believe that it has the ability to change things. Furthermore, it is pointless to protest a war that is now over. He hopes that his memoir can play a role in “[preventing] the next generation from being crucified in the next war,” but he is doubtful of even that.