Goodbye Vietnam

This collection of fictional remembrances of a Marine during the Vietnam conflict is told in a series of short pieces that describe the particular horrors of this war through one man's eyes. From "The Gift," a story about boot camp and his love-hate for the drill sergeant, to "Zelda Waiting," which finds him leaving Vietnam "packed in the back of a truck with all our paraphernalia and our travel brochures," these vignettes take the reader into the dark world of this war. The absurdity of this time is profiled in "Today's Spectators," in which an argument between two South Vietnamese factions plays out like a football game while the Americans eat peanuts and popcorn and watch a fighter plane strafe a convoy of trucks and tanks: "This is a movie. I knew it, I knew it all along." Reminiscent of Apocalypse Now in its treatment of meaninglessness and truthfulness, this book puts the reader square in the middle of a time and a place that even now remains controversial.