Fields of Fire: A Novel

Great Book to read!!!

Finished reading Jim Webb's "Fields of Fire", 1977, a few days ago. The experience haunts me. I wish Jim Webb, a hearty, "Welcome home".My review Fields of Fire (1977)James “Jim” WebbYes, the author is “that” Jim Webb, the Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, the 1968 Annapolis graduate, the Democratic Senator from Virginia. Why I owned no previous knowledge of this book remains a mystery to me. "Fields of Fire", an epic novel serves as an introduction to what Webb calls, “My Marines”.Webb’s Marines are complex and nuanced characters, far from the stereotypes that so many held for our “grunts” during those times when we first became so divided over Vietnam. Webb writes with precision and accuracy, often more accurately than the artillery fire which rained in 1969.The stories of the 2.5 million Americans who served in Vietnam covering the entire involvement from 1959 through 1975, differ markedly based on time and place. Yet, so many in the US. In 1969, the total numbers for Americans serving in the military were:1969Army = 1,512,169Navy = 775,869Marines = 309,771Air Force = 862,353Total = 3,460,162Source: http://historyinpieces.com/…/us-military-personnel-1954-2014Of that 3.46 M total, 549,500, or approximately 1 in 7, served in Vietnam.Webb’s experiences and mine both took place in 1969. However, we served in markedly different places. Webb served in I Corps, the farthest northern region of the Republic of Vietnam. My First Cavalry Division experiences took place in III Corps, about 50 miles northwest of Saigon. Distance over 300 miles.The Vietnam experience was a complex, confusing, dangerous, terrifying, dirty business. All our technology, all our training, all our spirit, were tested and matched by a devout, determined, willing enemy. Our leaders made bad decisions, backed corrupt South Vietnamese dictators. Our military faced an impossible task. Even today, I hear many people, including veterans attempt to oversimplify the enormity of the task with thoughts like we should have bombed them into the Stone Age. Well parts of Vietnam, were still in the Stone Age, both Paleolithic variety (hunter-gatherers, who became some of our staunchest allies, see Montagnards, and Neolithic variety raising their own food, though they really remained living within a few miles of their village. The Vietnamese had been digging tunnels since fight Japan in WW2 and the French during the forties and fifties. We poured more ordnance on Vietnam than the whole of WW2. We bombed and fired artillery every day.Much of the literature of Vietnam War tells the stories up to 1968, as if the war ends in that watershed year. However, 1969 continued a brutal war and the second most number of Americans to die in a year was the year 1969.Webb’s war, chronicles insight into the continuance in the Marine Corps Area of Operations (AO). Webb’s main character, a platoon leader, like Webb, suffered debilitating injuries which first required MEDEVAC to Okinawa, operations and lengthy rehabilitation. Webb and his character choose to return to the field. Webb saw 51 of his Marines become KIAs, a terrifying number to comprehend from a single company in the space of less than a single calendar year.But Webb takes the reader beyond the Vietnam combat scene. In addition to training, transit, and R&R, Webb recounts who the men were before becoming Marines. Plus, he shares survivors and their saga following the combat experience, zeroing in with one character who returns to college. That man is recruited to speak at an anti-war rally, but disappoints the anti-war leaders and inflames the crowd because he speaks of the authentic experience of combat camaraderie, the building of brothers.This novel would make the Great American Vietnam War movie, though I read that the Pentagon vetoed that proposal.It is not light reading. Be prepared to descend into the muddy hell of firing positions, call for medic, carry your dying brother, and loading your KIA brother onto a Medevac. If you can take it, be sure to read this incredible story.

After reading "The Nightingale Song", which covers Webb's career at Annapolis and Washington, I was compelled to read this book. A conservative person who fought valiantly but underwent a metamorphis after the war and became more liberal, this book was clearly a method to exorcise the pain of the war for Webb.Unfortunately, I was traveling when I read this and read in many short periods. I became extremely engrossed in the battle tales but failed to connect with the characters as well as I would have liked. Irrespective, I would agree that this sounds like the most realistic book describing what it was like to be in the field in Vietnam. But Webb covered much more than just a platoon that suffers heavy casualties. A brief part of the book covers a young officer in Okinawaw who develops a love interest with a young Japanese girl with the relevant cultural issues that arise when he proposes.The battle scenes are mezmerizing like the three men sent outside the perimeter stupidly by command who are terribly overrun and must lay wounded in the midst of the enemy all night. In many respects this book seemed to closely parallel the movie Platoon.But the most unexpected part of the book was the dialog from the Vietnamese scout who was a former Viet Cong who defects only to have his family killed. This was great perspective on what was going on in the minds of the Vietnamese people who generally hated the Americans for their brutal treatment.In summary, I think this is a very important book by a very decorated and brave individual that shows the mental conflicts and pain of war. I encourage you to read this if you want to learn of the brutality of war. But this is not a light read and will challenge your feelings of the war.

This is hard to put into words. This is probably one of the best novels of our Vietnam experience I have ever read. The book pulls you in and not only puts you into the terror of combat but places you into all of the characters involved. Not only should it be read by anyone ready to enter such an environment, but by those who put our best in that situation. As a veteran who served during this conflict but not in Vietnam, Fields of Fire touched me deeply.

This book was a gift for my husband and he loves it. The story is captivating and intriguing, easy to get into and hard to put the book down.

Having just missed the Nam myself, drafted but not deployed, this accurate and stark depiction justifies my prayers of thanksgiving for having missed it. Riveting in its action. Mind numbing in the detail of character development. It has all the jive and hustle of the real thing. A Masterful rendition of being there. Thank you for your service.

very good read

I first read this book many years ago and I wanted to read it again. It is written by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and his personal knowledge of that ultimately wasteful, destructive and divisive war shines through. A sad and moving book.

Wer sich für eine realistische Darstellung des Vietnamkrieges interessiert, hier ist sie. Ohne Pathos, ohne retrospektive Erkenntnisse, ehrlich und sehr gut lesbar.

I've never been in war but I would imagine how it would be, from joy to despair, courage to cowardice, compassion to hatred, empathy to blind anger in fact, pretty much every emotion, feeling or act known to man, from one extreme to the other and everything in between, is the closest I will ever get without being there .

An evocative and frustrating fictionalised account of the author’s own experience in Vietnam. It is easy to be lost in the apparent maturity of the protagonists until you remember they are in their late teens and early 20s.One of those stories where you root for supposed bad guy in the unit, and dislike the one on the moral high ground. The author gets across the combination of terror, frustration, anger and boredom, as well as the specific futility of this particular war.Up there with the other classics of the Vietnam war, highly recommended.