Beyond the wire are the Vietnamese, alien and ominous in their passivity. There's the usual obtuse brass (though again, well-delineated individuals rather than stereotypes), a thoroughly sinister rogue platoon commander, and of course an array of grunts, convincingly human. There's a WASP from a rich New York family whose college girlfriend ditches him for an anti-war professor there's a Jewish striver from Georgia who finds himself commanding a rifle company as he begins to glimpse the appalling dimensions of the endeavor he has committed to. It's more character study than stirring military adventure, with nicely drawn portraits that avoid stereotypes. (This is a fictionalized unit in a fictionalized Ia Drang campaign, not the real-life Ia Drang battle depicted in We Were Soldiers). The novel focuses mainly on the officers of a battalion of the Seventh Cavalry, following them from stateside to the Ia Drang valley, where things do not go well. Groom served a tour as an infantry officer in Vietnam, so presumably he knows whereof he speaks. This is the debut novel by Winston Groom, best known for writing Forrest Gump.
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