Phillip Caputo was a Marine Lieutenant during the first years of the Vietnam War. His story is personal, recounting the atrocities of war and the way they affected him and other he knew. Caputo witnesses the deaths of friends and enemies, and his youthful idealism is systematically broken down by the horrors he participates in and observes in Vietnam. The memoir centers around a frightening moment, during which Caputo allows his depressed, defeated, and wildly angry platoon to massacre a Vietnamese village without any provocation.(Web,1)
Philip Caputo's first quote was from the beginning of the war, when everything was "wonderful" and Americans had no doubts. The second quote was only a year later, but a lot can change in a year, and Caputo saw this first hand. The first quote was at a time when the American soldiers were told that A running Vietnamese was a fair target. no matter what. Even if they didn't have a weapon, they were to be shot at. This was hard for Caputo and others to understand at first, but they did what they had to do. During the beginning of the war, the American soldiers had this thought that nothing could bring them down; they were invisible, in their own eyes anyways.
The psychological pain seemed like it was worse then the actual physical pain they endured in the beginning. At night with all of the noises of the forest, the men did not know what or where things were coming from.
The day time did not seem much better. The sun and the thickness of the forest did not make things any easier for the men. Many of the causalities were not from the VC directly; they were from the booby traps and the mines. When they did encounter the VC, the snipers anyways, most of the time they couldn't tell where they were firing from. This in turn added to the psychological stress.
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