Alpha One Sixteen: A Combat Infantryman’s Year in Vietnam

Clark’s detailed account of his day-to-day activities facing the enemy in triple-canopy jungle, rice paddies, and unfriendly villages is the heart of this workmanlike war memoir. He enlisted in the Army in 1965, itching to fight in Vietnam. After washing out of Officer Candidate School, he spent 11 months as a grunt based in Lai Khe, about 35 miles north of Saigon. Clark’s account starts slow, bogged down with nuts-and-bolts minutiae, but things pick up as he describes what befell him and his fellow infantrymen as they regularly experienced the worst that war can offer: countless patrols, ambushes, firefights, and sniper attacks. During his months in combat, many of Clark’s fellow soldiers were killed and wounded. Clark himself took “20 or so penetrating shrapnel wounds” in his right leg, which prematurely ended his tour of duty. More importantly, an almost-wordless encounter with a few indigenous Montagnard people, during which he perceived that they didn’t consider American culture particularly desirable or admirable, caused him to think that even though communism “wouldn’t sit well with the tribal people... we weren’t doing these folks any favors by being here, either.” By the end, Clark had lost his enthusiasm for the war. This tale may at times be overly detailed, but it’s a sincere document of the Vietnam War experience. [em](Sept.) [/em]