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In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War
by Tobias Wolff
Wolff is one of the acknowledged masters of American short fiction, an award winning author and professor of creative writing, so it is unlikely that his memoir of Vietnam would be anything but good. And it is very good.
Wolff went to war because he had run out of options in civilian life, but out of options in a genteel kind of 1960s way. He was expelled from an elite boarding school in his final semester, signed up a as merchant sailor and then missed his boat, and the Army always needed bodies. Even as a youth, he harbored ambitions of being a writer, and the authors he admired most, especially Norman Mailer and Hemingway, had all served. His grifter father's dereliction during the Second World War provided another example. War would make him a man, one way or another.
Wolff thrived in military life, going from basic to paratrooper training to officer candidate school. He trained as an artilleryman and was mediocre at it, finishing last in his class. In one of the best lines of the book, he describes how he was kept on because OCS at Fort Sill ended with humorous skits and songs, and he was the only one in his training company who could write and organize a play. The Army made him an officer to literally produce a farce. Then it was off to language school to learn Vietnamese, living as a civilian in Washington DC for a year, while undergoing an intense romance with a madwoman named Vera, and finally Vietnam.
Wolff's war was an odd one. He was assigned as an advisor to an ARVN artillery unit outside My Tho, in the Delta. Through 1967 as the war heated up, My Tho existed in a charmed circle of peace. Wolff and his single American comrade, Sergeant Benet, an African-American lifer, set up a comfortable nest trading counterfeit VC items to a nearby American unit for steaks, liquor, and electronics. The artillery unit rarely patrolled. Of course, it was still war, with death by mine, sniper, or accident, but it was as safe a war as one could get.
The Tet Offensive changed everything. Wolff's artillery unit attacked My Tho, punishing guerrillas and civilians alike. The fear, and the massive devastation changed everything. What had once been an oasis of peace was now a charnal house. The American war machine could not save, it could only destroy.
Wolff is a master of short form fiction, and this book excels in brief literary sketches of encounters between Wolff and the illusions of mastery and heroism. Here's Wolff deciding to save a puppy an ARVN sergeant is going to make into stew. Here's Wolff letting a clumsy new Captain wreck a shantytown with helicopter downdraft. Here's Wolff meeting people in Washington DC, San Francisco, and Vietnam, and realizing that above all else, he doesn't want to die in a combat zone.
Wolff lacks the raw intensity of A Rumor of War, Where The Rivers Ran Backwards, or even Tim O'Brien's work. This is war as filtered though the MFA workshop. It's very well crafted, but it's also craft.
Wolff went to war because he had run out of options in civilian life, but out of options in a genteel kind of 1960s way. He was expelled from an elite boarding school in his final semester, signed up a as merchant sailor and then missed his boat, and the Army always needed bodies. Even as a youth, he harbored ambitions of being a writer, and the authors he admired most, especially Norman Mailer and Hemingway, had all served. His grifter father's dereliction during the Second World War provided another example. War would make him a man, one way or another.
Wolff thrived in military life, going from basic to paratrooper training to officer candidate school. He trained as an artilleryman and was mediocre at it, finishing last in his class. In one of the best lines of the book, he describes how he was kept on because OCS at Fort Sill ended with humorous skits and songs, and he was the only one in his training company who could write and organize a play. The Army made him an officer to literally produce a farce. Then it was off to language school to learn Vietnamese, living as a civilian in Washington DC for a year, while undergoing an intense romance with a madwoman named Vera, and finally Vietnam.
Wolff's war was an odd one. He was assigned as an advisor to an ARVN artillery unit outside My Tho, in the Delta. Through 1967 as the war heated up, My Tho existed in a charmed circle of peace. Wolff and his single American comrade, Sergeant Benet, an African-American lifer, set up a comfortable nest trading counterfeit VC items to a nearby American unit for steaks, liquor, and electronics. The artillery unit rarely patrolled. Of course, it was still war, with death by mine, sniper, or accident, but it was as safe a war as one could get.
The Tet Offensive changed everything. Wolff's artillery unit attacked My Tho, punishing guerrillas and civilians alike. The fear, and the massive devastation changed everything. What had once been an oasis of peace was now a charnal house. The American war machine could not save, it could only destroy.
Wolff is a master of short form fiction, and this book excels in brief literary sketches of encounters between Wolff and the illusions of mastery and heroism. Here's Wolff deciding to save a puppy an ARVN sergeant is going to make into stew. Here's Wolff letting a clumsy new Captain wreck a shantytown with helicopter downdraft. Here's Wolff meeting people in Washington DC, San Francisco, and Vietnam, and realizing that above all else, he doesn't want to die in a combat zone.
Wolff lacks the raw intensity of A Rumor of War, Where The Rivers Ran Backwards, or even Tim O'Brien's work. This is war as filtered though the MFA workshop. It's very well crafted, but it's also craft.