War Stories Shooting 'Em Up in 'Nam

1970, 480 pp. $7.95.

"BRINGING the war home" is more than a rallying slogan for street-fighting and anti-war actions. The phrase also suggests the flow of information through the media which familiarizes the American people with the realities of the war. TV correspondents call Vietnam the "living room war" since a bloody picture on the home TV screen is much more powerful than a printed story or casualty list in the daily newspaper.

Other media, too, have their impact. Our arrogant, power-oriented military leadership grew up learning about United States military glory from books and movies. The massacre of American Indians by soldiers in the late 1800s became "the Winning of the West" as novelists and then filmmakers throughout the next century popularized the killing. In the last 25 years, countless stories about individual acts of American heroism in World War II have emerged as glorified tales in novels and movies. War makes good copy for dramatic adventures, and it is interesting to conjecture about the effect such stories have on attitudes and thinking about war. Who is more American than its war heroes? What is more honorable than to fight for one's country?

There have also been of course, expressions of anti-war sentiment in the media. Johnny Got His Gun, for example, is a brilliantly emotional anti-war novel written after World War I. Now, in the face of the continuing Indochina War, New Left novelists sense a receptive audience and the antiwar literature is growing. Pacifist and radical filmmakers, too, have been busy. though their products do not reach a large audience. Only one major American film. The Ballad of the Green Berets, has been made about the Vietnam war, and its message follows the traditional shoot-em-up outline of cowboy and Indian movies.

THE WAR of the Innocents is another such war-glory story. Charles Flood spent a year in Vietnam, flying around with American Army units and doing some occasional fighting, and now tells his story. But Flood's year in Vietnam was in 1967, when American troop levels were still increasing, which suggests how outdated this book is; and although the names in the book do coincide with Vietnamese geography, the war is barely recognizable in the story, which suggests how near-sighted Flood is.

Flood tells his story from the point of view of an observer watching the Americans in action. Considering the nature of this war, that is a rather curious perspective: Flood sees lots of napalm-he even flies on the fighter planes that drop it-but there is not one word about the burning flesh, the terror, and the grotesque horror of a napalm explosion. Oh no, Flood instead rhapsodizes about the sleek shiny pointed bomb casing the napalm is dropped in. A book about the Vietnam war might be expected to include a little discussion of the National Liberation Front, or something about Vietnamese history, or maybe a sketch of hamlet life. No again-Flood prefers to discuss army routine, women, and particularly food: Saigon bouillabaisse is not as good as in Marseille, but the C-rations are much better than they were in World War II.

The War of the Innocents might have been harmless, though inane, war-time storytelling, except that Flood cannot resist editorializing. This is 1967, remember, and Flood's prescription for ending the war is to increase troop levels to two million American soldiers in Vietnam and thereby "pacify" the countryside. The only officer Flood meets who advocates American withdrawal is a Harvard graduate, as is Flood, so Flood takes a fraternal interest in showing the officer the flaws in his argument. Flood gets along better, however, with yet another Harvard officer, who explains that "the survival of our civilization is ultimately a function of the military power of the United States." Flood confesses:

It was an unusual Harvard reunion, the only two Harvard men in Phu Yen, and neither of us feeling those dovish things that many of our fellow alumni felt in such abundance.

PERHAPS a novel should not be judged solely on the basis of an ideological critique, so it is worth noting that this book is dreadfully lacking in style, too. Flood apologizes halfway through the book: "How do you write a beautifully constructed book about a completely formless situation?" Flood never answers that question, which might be excused if it demonstrated a purpose in the novel-showing that the war was indeed formless-but Flood's picture of the war is so incomplete that any conclusion would be laughable.

Why is this book so bad? Actually it's not any worse than the war-story thrillers that I used to read in the grammar school library about soldiers fighting Geronimo and the Apaches in the southwest. The American troops-young, obedient and brave, always ex-Union Army troops, fresh from victory over the rebels at home. Riding out in neat cavalry file with shiny boots and new automatic rifles to face the Indians. The Indians-brave. but crafty and cruel. with old single-bolt rifles. The soldiers always had families and sweethearts at home, the Indians never did; but the Indians always fought, and they always died. Oh yes-wars and war heroes make good stories.