Fields of Fire | James Webb | Grandpa's review

Fields of Fire | James Webb | A bare bones look at war in this case Vietnam.

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Fields of Fire

	Fields of Fire James Webb Bantam, 2001 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 85 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

They each had their reasons for being a soldier.

They each had their illusions. Goodrich came from Harvard. Snake got the tattoo ? Death Before Dishonor ? before he got the uniform. And Hodges was haunted by the ghosts of family heroes.

They were three young men from different worlds plunged into a white-hot, murderous realm of jungle warfare as it was fought by one Marine platoon in the An Hoa Basin, 1969. They had no way of knowing what awaited them. Nothing could have prepared them for the madness to come. And in the heat and horror of battle they took on new identities, took on each other, and were each reborn in fields of fire....

Fields of Fire is James Webb?s classic, searing novel of the Vietnam War, a novel of poetic power, razor-sharp observation, and agonizing human truths seen through the prism of nonstop combat. Weaving together a cast of vivid characters, Fields of Fire captures the journey of unformed men through a man-made hell ? until each man finds his fate.

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Grandpa's review

James Webb is a straight shooter. It verbalizes the action, nonsense, self-serving behaviour of some officers and the bravery of others and the people who have to carry the orders out. I was in during the latter end of Korea so I did not see combat. This book goes hand in hand with Oliver Stone's movie "Platoon".

The book is visceral and true to all that I have learned about the Vietnam conflict. What a horible waste of life of young and old alike.

It seems that a country fighting for its life can not be subjugated forever whether we like its politics or not.

I have great respect for Jim Webb as an author and as a new Virginia Senator. I enjoyed his book very much.

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A bare bones look at war in this case Vietnam.

When I finished this book I felt that it was probably the closest I would ever come to know the senselessness and horror of war. It wasn't an easy book for me to read but I feel it's important to bear witness to those horrors that exist in our world if only to validate the sacrifices people make for my benefit.

Best Vietnam novel ever

"Fields of Fire" is the best novel of the Vietnam War, bar none. A few have run a very close second ("Body Count" by William Turner Huggett, for instance), but this one sets the standard for what a Vietnam novel should be. I'd place it in the Top 10 American novels of the second half of the 20th century.

The men who make up the unit in "FoF" are realistically depicted, and I'm sure they are based on men that the author led during his time there. The reader actually feels like a member of the unit, and he or she starts to empathize with, and even like, most of them. The combat scenes will have you on the edge of your seat, and you feel it when certain characters give their lives for their country and friends.

This has yet to be made into a movie. I believe any movie based on "FoF" would be superior to "Platoon," and other Vietnam flix, and would make a great bookend with "We Were Soldiers."

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Concise prose, a mastery of the subject matter, and a good story

Fields of Fire is not just an excellent novel about Vietnam. It's an excellent novel. The characters are believable and complex; the scenes are replete with meaning and context without being overbearing, and the story line keeps one's attention while it teaches some lessons about life and war--during combat, awaiting combat, and during moments of reflection. It has a rare combination of pragmatism and romanticism that I can only attribute to the author's views on life. Webb, himself a fearless ex-Vietnam vet doesn't disparage anyone--even he character "Harvard," a clueless Ivy-leaguer forced into combat. Rather than create a stereotypical 'egghead' type, Webb treats him with sympathy. He does the same for gung-ho combat freaks as well as for the average soldier who is just trying to stay alive. I might call the style something like 'Hemingway a la mode.' Webb's style is both denotative and expressive; but he does not work hard at the spare style Hemingway championed. There's some nice 'adornment' along the way. If anyone knows the Buffy Saint Marie song 'Until It's Time for You to Go', you will find it used here in the most sensitive and moving of scenes.

I also recommend another Webb novel, Missing Soldiers (or is it Lost Soldiers-sorry, forget), a book set many years later, in which an ex-Vietnam era Vet is called in to help solve a Vietnam War mystery: a different book, a different style, a different genre, but as good as or better than this one.

The style of the fiction writer Webb pretty much complements the politician/real-life Webb, now Senator of Virginia. He demonstrates fictionally in his novels that honest and thoughtful and critical examination of one's country comes from that deepest of places: from a patriot's heart who loves his/her country to the point of reverence and becomes rightly indignant when the values one cherishes are transgressed by those who claim to be upholding them. This might not be the place to mention it, but if you think I'm suggeting what Webb things of George W., you're right.

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Fields of Fiction

Of the many admirers that state this book is the sine qua non for understanding the Vietnam War, few are combat veterans. What troubles me is that several reviewers have expressed thoughts akin to worship, a phenomenon relished by authors and publishers ever since the making of Red Badge of Courage. In the 1970s, I met James Webb while working at the Naval Academy. Later, when I saw that he had published a novel about Vietnam, I got it and began to read. But I couldn't get far into the story. I tried several times but found its style and tone too poetic and storybook. The book tried desperately to expose me to a narrow set of fictional names, places, and events that were impossible to accept. I couldn't give up my own experiences in combat (1968-69), those inexplicable moments of survival with men that sacrificed their lives to save mine. The book didn't come to my defense but weakened my experiences with another story that wanted to decide the outcome of the war for me in words conforming to a style relished by publishers and book lovers only. I suspect this is the same for most veterans (soldiers and marines) that saw heavy combat in Vietnam. I'm troubled by the thought that war stories such as this one exploit with hyperbole and polemics mainly to make a profit. Suffice to say that Webb knew exactly what type of writing publishers were craving, and he wrote this story primarily to be published, making sure not to burn any bridges along the way. It is indeed fiction rather than history or autobiography. In this way, it was indeed a political statement, and those that think it is an anti-war novel are mistaken. There are no anti-war books or movies. They don't exist. A well known film historian recently said of the movie Paths of Glory, "Should the whole world watch this movie, there would be no more wars." This is a specious as saying that if we made everyone a cop, there would be no more crime. Books and movies about war, especially those with "searing truths" about combat, do not add to our understanding of war, nor do they prevent anyone from picking up a gun and going to war. In fact, the more searing the story, the more likely the readers or viewers will want to experience so-called truths for themselves, to watch others die, to kill others and be made heroes for it. Is there any wonder why we went to war in Iraq? For a nonconforming, nonprofit-oriented book about the Vietnam War, see "Traces of a Lost War" by Richard Barone. Independently published, it goes for broke in its denial of the "war story," fully admitting that its own words cannot touch or come close to the war they attempt to describe.

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