Veteran-authors differed significantly from average combat GIs when it came to how they joined the military, for only seven out of fifty-one were draftees. As for why the authors joined the military, almost half signed up before the war had even started, so Vietnam played no part in their decision. Those who did join during the war, however, were also dissimilar to regular combat troops because many cited intensely personal reasons for volunteering. A few, such as W. D. Ehrhart, signed up specifically to fight Communism. A true believer who wanted to help South Vietnam in its moment of peril, he forsook college to join the Marine Corps.64 Many more said they joined out of a general sense of patriotism, to prove their manhood, carry on family traditions, or to fulfill some other noble goal or desire. Michael Norman volunteered for the marines in 1966 because “history was unfolding and [he] had an urge to be a part of it.”65 Charles R. Anderson told his parents he enlisted because he wanted to repay his country for all the freedoms it had given him.66
Several memoirists say that the draft factored into their decision to enlist, but most attest that other more profound reasons also propelled them. Rod Kane enlisted because a recruiter convinced him not to wait to be drafted, but he also wanted to emulate his Korean War veteran uncle.67 Nathaniel Tripp says in his memoir, Father, Soldier, Son, that the “draft board was closing in” at the time of his enlistment. But he also “burned for a new adventure” and was inspired to volunteer after a friend was killed in Vietnam.68
Now that it is clear what types of Americans fought in Vietnam, what was combat like for these troops? The Vietnam conflict was famously a war without frontlines, so it was possible for any American in South Vietnam to fall victim to an enemy attack. The Vietcong ambushed infantry platoons in the jungle, but they also lobbed mortar shells onto airbases and planted explosives in jeeps parked outside restaurants. During the 1968 Tet Offensive, Vietcong fighters attacked American forces throughout South Vietnam, including troops stationed in Saigon, the supposedly safe capital city.69 Van Devanter, who served as a nurse in an army hospital, was told on her first day in Vietnam, to her shock, that the Vietcong considered all Americans legitimate targets, including women.70
Even if all US personnel in Vietnam were theoretically at risk of being attacked, most lived and worked in relatively safe areas referred to as “the rear” by GIs. Clerks, truck drivers, and other support troops, labeled “REMFs” (“rear echelon mother fuckers”) by resentful infantrymen, were needed to maintain America’s massive military machine. Approximately 75 percent of US military personnel in Vietnam served in noncombat positions. Most memoirists, however, saw heavy combat. Veteran narratives, consequently, along with movies and novels, suggest that average Vietnam tours mostly consisted of patrols in Vietcong-infested jungles or days-long battles with the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). Many GIs did live lives of danger and hardship, but most were provided with a level of “comfort unparalleled in military history.”71 Thus, it is the so-called REMFs who experienced the most typical Vietnam tour.72
Unlike the majority of GIs in Vietnam, however, most memoirists directly participated in the fighting. That being said, how do their battlefield experiences compare to those of ordinary combat troops? The importance of this information is highlighted by the massive post-1990 output of cheap paperback Vietnam War novels, biographies, and memoirs that focused on the exploits of elite combat outfits. If readers got all of their information about the war from these types of books they might think that practically every soldier in Vietnam belonged to a group like the Army Special Forces (“Green Berets”) or the Navy SEALs. Nothing could be further from the truth, however, since such soldiers represented only a miniscule percentage of combat personnel.73
A little under half of the fifty-one memoirists belonged to select units like the Green Berets, or were involved in other atypical combat activities, such as the veteran who worked as an advisor to US allies in a remote Vietnamese village.74 Nine of these atypical veterans were former combat pilots who flew bombing missions over North Vietnam. One of these ex-fliers, Arizona senator John McCain, notes the difference between air combat, which was “fought in short, violent bursts,” and the experiences of infantrymen who “slog[ged] through awful conditions and danger for months on end.”75 He and the other ten pilot-memoirists were also members of the tiny minority of American servicemen who were prisoners of war during the conflict.76 The war POWs lived through was certainly nightmarish, but it bore little resemblance to the ordeals faced by foot soldiers.
About half of the authors, on the other hand, fought as Army or Marine Corps infantrymen, and most served only one tour in Vietnam. Crucially, this group was composed exclusively of either low-ranking enlisted men or junior officers. Field and general-grade officers spent much of their time in the rear, with access to “air conditioned billets with movie theaters, swimming pools, and officer’s clubs.”77 Junior officers, conversely, served alongside their men, and had the high casualty rates to prove it.78 Two authors who fought as junior officers, Downs and Puller Jr., sustained major wounds while on patrol with their platoons. Downs’s arm was blown off when he stepped on a “Bouncing Betty” landmine,79 and Puller lost both legs when he triggered a buried, booby-trapped artillery shell planted by the Vietcong.80 Richard A. Gabriel and Paul L. Savage contend that officers “must be perceived as willing to share the risks and sacrifices of battle” to be effective leaders.81 Senior officers in Vietnam, in their opinion, utterly failed to meet this standard, but Puller, Downs, and many others like them demonstrated that the same cannot be said of junior officers.82
Just as important as what memoirists did in Vietnam is how long they served in the military, because there are major differences between the points of view of short-term soldiers and professionals. Enlisted men and officers who stay in the armed forces for a short amount of time are “citizen soldiers” who put their normal lives on hold while they serve their country. Despite the training and indoctrination necessary to transform a civilian into a capable soldier, the nonprofessional retains a civilian outlook on life.83 The career soldier chooses instead to become, as Samuel P. Huntington puts it, a specialist in “the management of violence.”84 In many ways, military men and women are like professionals in other fields, but their focus on warfare sets them apart from the civilian world. Military personnel follow particular codes of honor and traditions, usually live and work only with other soldiers, and often see their career as a “calling” or a “special mission.”85
Someone who enlisted in the armed forces during the Vietnam era generally signed up for a two- to four-year commitment; draftees had to serve at least two years. Most enlisted men did not choose to stay in the military beyond their first enlistment, which is no surprise since the ranks were filled with draftees and draft-motivated volunteers at that time.86 Officers were nearly as unwilling to pursue military careers as enlisted men. From 1966 to 1970, the number of army OCS officers who stayed on beyond their initial years of obligated service fell from 56 to 22 percent. In 1970, only 11 percent of ROTC officers signed up for additional years. At the beginning of the war, almost 100 percent of West Point graduates remained in the army after fulfilling their mandatory term of service. This figure dropped to 72 percent by war’s end.87
As usual, the fifteen enlisted memoirists resemble ordinary GIs, for none of them served any longer than four years in the military. The former senior officers joined the armed forces well before the war started and, in most cases, continued their military careers after coming home from Southeast Asia. Eleven (43 percent) of the junior officer memoirists stayed in the military after completing their combat tours. Taken as a whole, then, the authors consist of thirty veterans who were short-term soldiers and twenty-one who were career officers. This proportion of career soldiers is high since most GIs returned to civilian life shortly after finishing their Vietnam tours. Half of the veterans, nevertheless, no matter how long their military careers lasted, were low-ranking officers in Vietnam and shared the hardships of the enlisted men they commanded.
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A publishing company executive quoted in a Washington Post review of Kane’s 1990 memoir, Veteran’s Day, asserted that the book was important because it “filled a void that was societal as much as