38 pages • 1-hour read
A Rumor of War
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The Marine Corps as Religion
Caputo describes his military experience in terms of monastic life. He compares life in the military with life in a monastery because both form unique cultures within which men live separated from the real world. However, the Marine Corps specializes in death, while the monastic life, at least in practice, offers the peace of meditation, companionship, and communion with God. The God of the Marine Corps, as Caputo comes to know it, is Death. Here he describes his early feelings for the Corps:
The monastic isolation was appropriate because the Marine Corps, as we quickly learned, was more than a branch of the armed services. It was a society unto itself, demanding total commitment to doctrines and values, rather like one of those quasi-religious military orders of ancient times, the Teutonic Knights or the Theban Band. We were novitiates, and the rigorous training, administered by high priests called drill instructors, was to be our ordeal of initiation. (p. 8)
Caputo finds himself transformed by his training: for example, he no longer sees a beautiful landscape but instead terrain that he must learn to exploit for his survival, and the survival of his men. At a Marine social event, Caputo recognizes the history and romance of the Marine Corps, as he and the other new officers are assimilated into military life through its particular rites of passage and special events: “Lit only by candles, it looked as dim and secretive as the dining hall in a monastery. . . Toasts were made and wineglasses raised, lowered, raised again, like chalices at some strange Mass” (22). Caputo is a proud, even arrogant, new monk of a battle-tested order.
Later, in Vietnam, Caputo still sees the Marines as members of a monastic order, but now burdened with his knowledge of war, the picture alters:
A squad of marines slogged up the track that led from the base camp to the front line. They walked slowly and in single file, heads down, long, hooded ponchos billowing in the wind. The stocks of their rifles, slung muzzle-down against the rain, bulged under the backs of the ponchos: hooded and bowed, the marines resembled a column of hunchbacked, penitent monks (233)
Significantly, these monks are “penitent”, suggesting the guilt they bear in relation to the many atrocities committed upon Viet Cong captives and Vietnamese citizens.
Heroes and the Romance of Battle
Caputo yearns for the glory of battle to be followed by accolades and rewards for his heroism. He constantly creates, in his imagination, a role for himself as a hero. For example, in relation to a Marine social event he says, “I thought it would be a night of beer swilling camaraderie, something like the gatherings of Beowulf’s warriors in the mead hall…” (23). As a member of an order, such as the Marines, Caputo vicariously shares in the glory of heroes past. In addition, Caputo frequently bases his actions on what might be seen by others as brave or heroic, particularly when leading his men in battle. He even chides himself for being dramatic and acting like he is a hero in a movie.
The Breakdown of Authority and Society
Authority, which is a central pillar of a soldier’s life, begins to break down during the companies’ isolation in the jungle, and the loyalty the soldiers have for one another is the only element of it that survives. Mirroring the relative lawlessness of a country at war, both Vietnamese society and the Marine’s own identities, as Marines and as Americans, change.
Due to the many indignities of their treatment and the conflicting, impossible roles assigned to them—for example, to kill as many VC as possible without civilian atrocities—the Marines begin to act only for their own survival, as they realize the futility of the war in which they are engaged. Survival remains the only possible victory, a point Caputo repeats at several points in the memoir.
Madness of War
The madness of war overtakes nearly all the men at one time or another, leading to the destruction of villages and the wholesale killing of civilians, particularly young Vietnamese men, all of whom are suspected of having ties to the Viet Cong. Living and fighting under the unimaginable physical and psychological stresses of terrible jungle heat and monsoon rains, the ever-present threat of land-mines or remote detonated mines, booby traps, and snipers, while never seeing the enemy clearly, the men lose their moral compasses. With orders to kill as many Viet Cong as they can, the line between atrocity and noble battle blurs. Caputo comments:
And then there was that inspiring order issued by General Greene: kill VC. In the patriotic fervor of the Kennedy years, we had asked, “What can we do for our country?” and our country answered, “Kill VC.” That was the strategy, the best our best military minds could come up with: organized butchery. But organized or not, butchery was butchery, so who was to speak of rules and ethics in a war that had none?” (230)
As Caputo points out, this attitude, expressed by their superiors and carried out by the marines on the ground, led to atrocities.
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