Shattered Youth: How the Vietnam War Changed a Generation

The Vietnam War is a conflict that was extremely polarizing to people in the United States and words such as ‘wasted’ or ‘quagmire’ are negative words associated with the war. In his book A Rumor of War, Philip Caputo provides a personal account of events that he experienced leading up to and during the war as a soldier in the United States Marine Corps. Caputo’s experiences transform his idealistic views of war when he is faced with the realities of combat, and ultimately the events cause him to change his opinion about the necessity of the war.

Like many other young men, Caputo states that he joined the marines because he was “swept up in the tide of the Kennedy era,” and also because he was seeking adventure instead of the uneventful life that he had led thus far (Caputo 4). He became an officer; much different from the majority of the young men who enlisted that would later be under his command. He trained hard and became disciplined in the way of the Corps. He believed in the Corps message quipping, “Napoleon once said that he could make men die for little pieces of ribbon. By the time the battalion left for Vietnam, I was ready to die for considerably less, for a few favorable remarks in a fitness report” (Caputo 35). By the end of his time in Vietnam, Caputo would have scoffed at the naivety of this statement. Before his battalion reached Vietnam, there were several delays and alternating rumors regarding the possibility of military action taking place.

Before the deployment, Caputo and his fellow marines profusely showed their immaturity. Nights of binge drinking and sex with prostitutes were common among Corps members, and Caputo was not immune to such behavior. All of this would change after the deployment to a land...

... middle of paper ...

...r and respect that he had learned while training had left him because of the way war is fought.

The Vietnam War changed the way Caputo viewed war. After fighting, he saw the realities of war and became disenchanted with it. Seeing the unnecessary deaths caused, human suffering, and the longevity of the war made Caputo skeptical about the war. He felt that the United States was losing blood and treasure for a lost cause. . Caputo states it best as he writes, “we had survived, and that was our only victory” (Caputo 337). The Vietnam War will always bring about polarizing opinions, but one thing is for sure. Vietnam took Caputo’s youth and the youth of a whole generation of young men. The youth became men, and like Caputo changed their idealistic views about war after seeing the reality of war.

Works Cited

Caputo, Philip. A Rumor of War. New York: Ballantine, 1978.