Philip+Caputo


 * = [[image:http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/02/18/timestopics/caputo-190.jpg align="right"]]

Philip Caputo ||~  ||= A Rumor of War

Philip Caputo was born June 10th 1941 in Westchester,Illnois. In 1965, when he was only 24 years old he joined the United States Marine Corps and was soon deployed to Vietnam. In Vietnam, Caputo was member of the 9th Expeditionary Brigade: the first group of troops to fight in the Vietnam War. Caputo and the rest of the 9th Expeditionary Brigade were deployed to Da Nang and given the task of establishing a premiter around an airstrip. After some time in Da Nang, Caputo was reassigned to a desk job recording the casualties of the war. He was then sent back out into the jungles of Vietnam as a rifleman. After weeks of fighting the Viet Cong, two of Caputo's men killed two inocent bistanders. Caputo faced a court-marshal, but was acquitted of all charges. Althouht the charges were droped, soon after the incident Caputo was reassigned to a training camp in North Carolina, where he served in until he was honorably discharged. After life in the military, Philip Caputo became an author and journalist. ||


 * 1. "But such abuse was also designed to destroy each man's sense of self-worth, to make him feel worthless until he proved himself equal to the Corps' exacting standards"(10). || While in training camp, Caputo takes note of the almost dehumanizing tactics the officers use to transform ordinary men into Marines. Only when the men have forgotten their homes, family, and feelings can they become the killing machines that the United States Military wants them to be. There were no laws, no rules, only the demands of the officers. Those who could bare the cruel and unnecessary requests would become Marines. Those who could not would become "unsats". It was that simple. ||
 * 2."I don't know if this series of countermanded orders was a planned deception or simply an example of the confusion that precedes most major military operations"(38). || Althought the military is very structured and strict, Caputo through exsprience relizes that the military is somewhat unorganized. He is puzzeled by this. Unable to determin whether it is an intentional attempt to hide the true meaning of the orders from the common foot soldier or mere lack of organization on the commanding officers parts, Caputo is forced to acept the way things are and move on. ||
 * 3."So I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war, to endure the same old experiences, suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own"(81). || Caputo realizes that no matter how many times hisotry reapeats its shelf every generation must learn the same lessons. For example, every generation must got to war so they can learn to come together as a nation. N o how much this world chages two things will stay the same: wars will be fought and brothers will be lost. ||
 * 4."It was the same feeling we had experienced on the first operation, a sense of being marooned on a hostile shore from which there was no certainty of return"(113). || After some time in Vietnam, Philip caputo began to feel trapped. vietnam was a cruel place, full of violence and death. As you would guess, Caputo wanted to return to the United states as he could. But after many long days and nights of bombs and bullets he began to feel he would be trapped in this hell forever, and the only way to escape it was in a coffin. ||
 * 5."None of us was a hero"(337). || Philip Caputo knew that when he returned to the United states he would be treated as a hero. He felt that this was a title he did not deserve because of the horribel and grusome acts he was forced to committ in Vietnam. Althought violent actions such as killing another human were necessary for his survival, he felt that some who had killed should not be called a hero, should not be held as a brave and honable man for young boys to look up to. ||
 * 6."But for all our present troubles, the nation has pulled far back from the brink it was edging toward twenty-five years ago, when the only language of argument was the radical's bomb, the cop's club and tear gas, the National Guardsmen's rifle fire at Kent State"(354). || Caputo is acknowledgeing a shift it the United States tactics. At one point, every problem or question was answered with one thing: violence. Luckly America has begun to shift away from its viloent ways. ||


 * **__Works Cited__** ||
 * Caputo, Philip. __A Rumor of War__. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997 ||
 * Overall I learned alot from this project. Before reading Philip Caputo's //A Rumor of War,// I thought all Marines were manly men hungry for blood. Caputo chaged my view of the miltary. I saw that he was just a normal guy like me. He thoguht the death and violence in Vietnam was just as grusome as I did. I also left this book somewhay shocked at what war truely was. It was not the glorious battle scene depicted in movies. It was pure hell, that no man no matter how terrible deserves to endure. ||