A Rumor of War Essay

Joe Lee                                                                                                              AP U.S. History II

A Rumor of War By Philip Caputo Essay

        The question of whether the “evil was inherent not in the men but in the circumstances of war” was explicated throughout the entire memoir.  Caputo implies that the evil was not inherent in the men but in the war itself.  Ever since he started training for the war he felt as if the war was perverting his conscience.  Throughout his deployment to Vietnam he experienced a change that many of the men felt as well, a feeling of their former selves being slowly erased.  Through Caputo’s point of view of what happened during the war one can see that the evil was ingrained not in the men themselves but in the events of the war.

        The first malevolent factor of the war Caputo mentions is the environment in Vietnam where the soldiers are fighting. Caputo states that the training was necessary to gain familiarity to the jungle environment.  The trainees had to become used to a multitude of miseries such as “leeches, mosquitos, constant dampness, the claustral effect created by dense forests that dimmed the brightest noon and turned midnight into the absolute blackness known by the blind.” (Caputo 35).  One can see from these factors that the trainees had to be fit mentally and physically to deal with these foreign conditions.  The soldiers’ becoming used to jungle warfare took two whole weeks.  The trainees had to learn that Vietnam was going to be nothing like home and that it was a completely different playing field.  The soldiers also had to endure scorn and diatribe from their superior officers while being trained.  One senior officer yells, “EYES FRONT! DON’T LOOK AT ME NUMBNUTS! EYES FRONT! SQUARE YOUR PIECE!” (Caputo 9).  Had the marines in training not signed up for the army they would not be toughened by all the abuse handed down to them by their senior officers. The training was meant to grill in the mind of a soldier at war, to change the men completely so that they would be fit to vanquish the enemy.

        When Caputo and his battalion are finally deployed to Vietnam, he states that he feels that “the war and the Viet Cong were here all right: waiting for us” (Caputo 58).  This indicates something ominous and underscores the fact that Caputo believes that the evil was in the war not the men themselves.  After a couple weeks the men experience their first severe casualty, a marine named Gonzalez.  The marines grieved for their fellow comrade but were told by their senior officers that they were now in a war zone and that they would have to become used to casualties.  They stated, “Gonzalez, though the first, would surely not be the last.” (Caputo 63).  This shows that during war the men would have to leave their feelings of compassion for their comrades behind and look past their deaths.  Caputo states later that the men felt “a constant expectancy, feeling that something was going to happen, waiting for it to happen, wishing it would happen so that the tension would be relieved” (Caput 85). This is an indication of the change they are going through because of the war and how every moment was filled with anticipation and anxiety.

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