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Summary: A gut wrenching book about the soul of America.
Review: One of the most insightfull and touching books I've ever read. One section at the beginning of the book highlights the history of the protagonist, Lt. Hodges, and his lineage. It reverently cuts to the heart of the terrible sacrifices made by American fighting men/women on the field of battle and how quickly those sacrifices are forgotten. I had tears in my eyes as I read the words over again and again.
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Summary: Electrifying, Graphic and Depressing
Review: "Fields of Fire" is a story of a Marine infantry platoon, whose characters are simply unlucky and cursed by fate. Most of the characters in the novel, with the exception of Lt. Hodges, stumble into the Marine Corps, and in effect, combat by accident. They are kids from all over America seeking to get away from the harsh and grim reality of the streets--with the exception of Goodrich/"Senator" and Hodges--by enlisting in the Corps.
The novel evolves around the lives of each Marine in the grunt platoon, but the author gives his perspective of what it was like in the battlefield through the central characters Hodges, Snake, Goodrich and Dan the Defector.
Hodges, the Webb-like platoon leader, mirrors the author in that he volunteers for a service in Vietnam, seeking the honor and glory of dying in combat like his forefathers. He, like the former Marine Captain Webb, is a descendant of warriors and the "last of the American Samurai." He is a natural warrior in the battlefield, and becomes something of a big brother brother to the Marines in his platoon. He and Snake are like peas and carrots. He turns down a recreation officer billet in Okinawa, because he misses the action in the boonies, and out of a duty to take care of his Marines. Perhaps his sense of duty for his Marines brought the misfortune onto himself. He caught a bullet in his face, while evacuating his wounded Marines from a hell called Go Noi Island.
Snake is a nineteen year old-misfit, who after being fired from his janitorial job, decides to enlist in the Corps. He finds home in the Marine Corps, and decides to make a career there. In the streets at home he is a misfit, but in the boonies you depend on his bush smarts and leadership. He is disdainful of the career NCOs and officers--his squad "fragged" the first Platoon Sergeant--but he looks up to Lt. Hodges like a demigod. He does not like the cowardly Goodrich, but looks after him anyhow even after he turns in the entire platoon for summarily executing a Vietnamese "couple" suspected of taking part in executing two of his Marines. His midsection was torn apart by a stream of NVA machinegun fire, as he evacuated the wounded Goodrich. His mother waits for the posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor his company commander recommended, but the award never materialized due to the incident involving a Vietnamese "couple."
Dan the Defector, is a former Viet Cong-turned-American collaborator.He is fatalistic, for views everything as a "nature of things." When his brother died fighting the Marines, he is conscripted into the ranks of Viet Cong as a propagandist. He does not like fighting, nor the draconian discipline of the Viet Cong. When he defects to the American Marines, his family is massacred by the Communists. The loss of his family makes him a fierce, fanatical anti-Communist fighter. But being a fatalist that he is, he surrenders himself to the North Vietnamese in a South Vietnamese campaign in Laos known as "Lam Son 701."
Goodrich is a Harvard undergraduate, who blunders into the Marines after being rejected by the Peace Corps. He hopes to join the Marine Band, but in the scheme of things, he winds up in a Marine rifle platoon in Vietnam. He is in the platoon, but does not feel a part of it. He is resentful of, repulsed by the barbaric nature of his fellow platoonmates. When a Marine is wounded, he refuses to help him, causing him to bleed to death. He reads philosophy books to maintain sanity. He hopes to pull himself out of Vietnam by faking an infection. When his platoonmates summarily execute the Vietnamese "couple" in retaliation, he turns them in.
Goodrich/"Senator" is perhaps the most complex character of the novel. Goodrich is the product of Webb's bitterness toward his lawschool classmates whose antiwar attitude was nothing but a product of cowardice. While he holds his platoonmates in contempt, he nonetheless seeks their approval, especially Snake's. Towards the conclusion of the novel, he undergoes a gradual personality change; he sympathizes with the emotions of his platoonmates, and no longer holds them in contempt. In the midst of an ongoing investigation for the murder incident, his blunder in combat costs him a leg, Snake and Hodges. He comes out of the war feeling guilty for the casualties in the platoon. This is articulated in the conclusion of the novel, as he professes to his father his guilt, and again when he gives his antiwar speech. In his speech, he indicts the upper middleclass protesters for having copped out of cowardice, while leaving the lowerclass kids hanging to dry in Vietnam. That was Webb's bitter voice echoing through Goodrich.
The characters in the novel are unlucky and cursed, not only in the battlefield, but also by their own people they swore to defend. The longer they stay in the boonies and watch their comrades become casualties, the less humane and sane they become. In the end, they all become casualties, either killed or maimed.
This is one of the most brutal, electrifying and depressing combat writing I've ever read. I was deeply touched by it.<b
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Summary: I have read it five times..and every time is like the first.
Review: Having lost my father(First Force Recon-1968) in Vietnan and being a Marine myself, I have read many books about the Corp and the Vietnam experience But, Fields of Fire is, without question, the best book, about both subjects, that I have ever read. It is one of those books that you hope is never ending and it will be forever on my bookshelf...
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Summary: One of the best books about the Viet Nam War
Review: One of the best books about the Viet Nam War. The book unites unnique prespectives on the conflict from all different view points. Excellent reading.
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Summary: One of the finest Vietnam novels
Review: Fields of Fire was the first of many Vietnam novels I have read. It was the first because I picked it up at a bookstore one day, and realized Jim Webb and I were in the same unit in Vietnam.
Webb writes from the gut, and he writes true. I know from personal experience his descriptions are both accurate and all too real at times. In Fields of Fire he captures the day to day existence in a Marine infantry platoon in Vietnam. He captures the madness, the love, and the indelible mark that Vietnam has left on all those that experienced it.
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Summary: Dire Fields indeed!
Review: Having been through the thick of it, and survived I reluctantly read "yet another Nam book" this one hit me. What a great piece of writing! I lent it to a friend, who was also in country and he never gave it back. So I picked up another copy for the shelf. I still read it from time to time. Whew! Took me back. I could feel the sweat dripping and the searing heat and cool flights at altitude back to base. I even tasted the red grit again. Alright I'll quit trying to pump it up... just read it. Highly recommended if you weren't there... it will take you there.
Rating: 
Summary: Did he try to cover too much?
Review: After reading "The Nightingale Song", which covers Webb's career at Annapolis and Washington, I was compelled to read this book. A conservative person who fought valiantly but underwent a metamorphis after the war and became more liberal, this book was clearly a method to exorcise the pain of the war for Webb. Unfortunately, I was traveling when I read this and read in many short periods. I became extremely engrossed in the battle tales but failed to connect with the characters as well as I would have liked. Irrespective, I would agree that this sounds like the most realistic book describing what it was like to be in the field in Vietnam. But Webb covered much more than just a platoon that suffers heavy casualties. A brief part of the book covers a young officer in Okinawaw who develops a love interest with a young Japanese girl with the relevant cultural issues that arise when he proposes. The battle scenes are mezmerizing like the three men sent outside the perimeter stupidly by command who are terribly overrun and must lay wounded in the midst of the enemy all night. In many respects this book seemed to closely parallel the movie Platoon. But the most unexpected part of the book was the dialog from the Vietnamese scout who was a former Viet Cong who defects only to have his family killed. This was great perspective on what was going on in the minds of the Vietnamese people who generally hated the Americans for their brutal treatment. In summary, I think this is a very important book by a very decorated and brave individual that shows the mental conflicts and pain of war. I encourage you to read this if you want to learn of the brutality of war. But this is not a light read and will challenge your feelings of the war.
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Summary: War is hell.
Review: After my Dad saw me reading "Band of Brothers," he loaned me this novel, saying it was one of his favorite books about Vietnam (my Dad was an A-4 pilot for the Marines during the war). And, wow, I have to say this book had a profound effect on me. I thought the "Battered Bastards of the Bastion of Bastogne" had it rough, I was just amazed and horrified by the conditions these Marines suffered through (Webb was a Marine in Vietnam himself and therefore knows of what he speaks). Not only that, but one of the plotlines of this novel was very disturbing, primarily because no matter how much thought I gave it, I honestly could understand both sides of the issue (a group of Marines are accused of murdering two Vietnamese civilians). Which is not to say I would have excused or condoned the Marines' behavior, but holy cow was that a horrific, confusing disaster of a war. I had a hard time blaming them for what happened, even while I knew it was wrong. But as one character pointed out, the line between combat and murder was just impossibly vague at times -- he says something like "You kill a man at 5:30 and it's murder; you kill him at 6, it's combat."
What a nightmare. This is a tremendous novel -- one I'd recommend to anyone who has ever been curious about what it was really like in Vietnam. It brings to life so many of the psychological complexities soldiers encountered in the jungle. It'll be a long time before I've shaken this one off.
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Summary: Has James Webb Dumped on His Own 1978 Classic?
Review: FEW CONTEMPORARY NOVELS ARE WORTH READING. FIELDS OF FIRE IS AN EXCEPTION.
But has James Webb of late dumped the core message of his 1978 classic?
In Fields of Fire, the homefront, both anti-war protesters, draft dodgers and deferments, Washington micromanagers whose sons stayed home or ran to Canada - ALL helped the USA lose the war POLITICALLY. At the end of the pipeline, the infantryman was abandoned. WE CIVILIANS LOST THE WAR AND WERE DUPED BY COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA.
Mr. Webb was right about Vietnam THEN and defended America's noble cause TODAY in his speeches.
Mr. Webb's Fields of Fire was the spark that rebuilt the soul of the Marine Corps. As secretary of the Navy, Mr. Webb ushered in the era of Commandant Grey who also restored the soul of the Marine Corps. WEBB IS A PIVOTAL COLD-WARRIOR OF THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION IN HELPING TO REBUILD AMERICAN MILITARY STRENGTH WHEN THE SOVIET UNION AMASSED MANY DIVISIONS AGAINST OUR FRIENDS AND HAD MISSILES AND SUBMARINES READY TO LAUNCH ON US!!!
Fields of Fire and America's cold war victory and supremacy are a testament to THE POWER OF A GREAT NOVEL!
I strongly disagree, however, with James Webb's recent attacks on President Bush's leadership on Operation Iraqi Freedom, for example, Webb's jazz about the Bush team's "conscious deception," and that Operation Iraqi Freedom was "ill-advised."
Are Webb's recent comments truly helpful to his fellow Marines and Marine families, now on the battlefield, or recovering at Walter Reed, or home on leave listening to the sniping at Bush?
True, CHARACTER (human emotions under war pressure) matters in arguing military policy. But how does Mr. Webb's harping about Vice President Cheney's draft deferment during the Vietnam war contribute to a rational discussion of foreign policy - THE CHICKENHAWK ARGUMENT IS PURELY EMOTIONAL. SHOULD REAR ECHELON SOLDIERS BE BRANDED AS MERE COWARDS TOO?
Less than two weeks after the original Shock and Awe, with troops not yet in Baghdad, Mr. Webb wrote an article in the Sunday New York Times predicting doom. "Welcome to Hell," he concluded.
Later in a speech to a bunch of Canadaian stock brokers, Mr. Webb blasted Operation Iraqi Freedom and then later on as well in a speech at a university in the Midwest!
For military and foreign policy, Mr. Webb STILL EARNS RESPECT. I AM ADMITTEDLY DISAPPOINTED, HOWEVER. But since I have been a life-long civilian and have never served in the military I may have a built-in bias in not understanding .
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Summary: Webb and Roth do it the best
Review: Webb's book and Robert Roth's Sand in the Wind are far and away the grittiest, most convincing, and best written novels about the Marines in Viet Nam.
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