Philip Caputo's A Rumor Of War

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Phillip Caputo was only twenty-two when he enlisted in the Marine Corps in the hopes of leaving his small rural town of Westchester, Illinois. Caputo had always dreamt of being an honorable war hero for a short period of time, then coming back to the states and telling tales of his heroic war stories. However, Caputo is confronted with a rude awakening with the truths of the war which he writes about in his novel, A Rumor of War. Caputo faced extremes as he entered the Vietnam War in January of 1965. Throughout the novel, one can tell his personal identity transitioned from a hopeful young soldier to a man who is broken—mentally, physically, and psychologically. He gives many examples to lead into his overall opposition of the Vietnam War. …show more content…
Was it truly necessary for us to lose thousands of good men to help stop the spread of communism in a small Asian country? In 1967, Caputo left Vietnam with his men on honorable discharge. Through the suffering and pain, watching their friends die, and everything that came out of their two years there, it was like they weren’t even there. All their hard work amounted to nothing. Other than thousands of Americans dead and more traumatized, it was just like when Caputo and his men had got there in January of ’65. Ten years after he had left, Caputo had returned to Vietnam as a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. He had heard rumors of the conclusion of the war and felt an overwhelming need to experience first-hand. From a young relentless Marine, to a traumatized soldier counting casualties, to a war protestor, to a correspondent covering the end of the war, Caputo has watched the war from all angles and is still left with the same question America has: was this worth the death of all those lives, both American and Vietnamese? Because of the overall questioning of America’s involvement in the war, the psychological trauma, and the poor conditions of Vietnam, Caputo transitions from being an eager soldier, to oppose the Vietnam War and our involvement. Caputo addressed his main theme in the Prologue of his novel and continued it into the throughout the essay—we should not be fooled by the romance of war. War is death. War is a cancer, yet the world will make this mistake
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