Fragments

Without the intensity or vividness of much Vietnam fiction (e.g., Tiger the Lurp Dog, p. 837; Meditations in Green, p. 843), this short, episodic novel follows narrator Bill Morgan - young, college-educated, but a willing draftee from a conservative background - through training, combat, and homecoming. At first, Morgan takes a passive "grunt"-dike approach to the pressures and dangers of infantry duty: "We were in the army, the Green Machine, and we were heading for the green, primal jungles. Between the two of them, there was nothing for a soldier to decide. He only did what he had to do." But then, after two new buddies are killed during a meaningless mission, "All at once it seemed to me that the Green Machine was a lie." So Morgan volunteers for the more aggressive, focused duties of a "Blue Team," teaming up again with his training chum and fellow NCO: Jim Neumann, a charismatic, forceful, friendly guy who plays jazz flute - and "accepted responsibility for every damned thing he did. Neumann's way was the blues, the tones and sequences he dragged out from within himself, the cadences of his own heart." Not only is Neumann heroic in the scattered missions that follow. He also spends all his free time in a nearby village - befriending the Vietnamese, falling in love with lovely Tuyet, leading the villagers in reconstruction projects. (" 'It's just that we have to leave them something,' he said.") Why, then, does Neumann end up killing Tuyet and her entire family during a village battle against the NVC? That's the question that troubles Morgan, even after he comes home, thoroughly disillusioned, to his proud parents. So there's a final, rather limp confrontation between Morgan and Neumann - with explanations, revelations, guilt, pain, and a predictable fade-out. ("And if I wept at all, it was not for the dead.") Unfortunately, in fact, the novel's one distinctive thread - the melodrama around Neumann - is thin and somewhat romanticized throughout. Fuller's prose, too, frequently strains for eloquence - with hollow, sentimental results. And though there are some solid evocations of now-familiar Vietnam sights and combat-feelings in this modest, decent novel, it has neither the commanding credibility nor the poetic fervor of front-rank Vietnam fiction. (Kirkus Reviews)