Summary Of Philip Caputo's A Rumor Of War

"As wretched, awful and savage as any war can get, all wars have this element of thrill and excitement in them,” Caputo said, in an interview with CNN. A Rumor of War was just that, it discussed everything from gruesome encounters with the Viet Cong to descriptions of the horrible weather. Philip Caputo's, the author of A Rumor of War, use of vivid language made the book come alive, as if it were a movie. Philip Caputo was not only an amazing Marine Lieutenant, but he was also a very talented writer. This book was the first book that dealt with Vietnam reasonably and it gave people a sense of what the war was like. I enjoyed this book. I found Caputo’s words to paint a very explicit picture. His style of writing revealed the emotions he must

A poem of Owen’s which wasn’t referenced by Caputo was called “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” which roughly translated means, “It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country.” It was a poem about chemical warfare, but it was also a warning against the patriotic fervor and empty rhetoric of war advocates. That poem came to my mind as I read about Caputo’s first helicopter drop into a combat zone. Caputo was “happy,” while Sergeant Colby, who had already seen combat, was more serious and reflective. He told Caputo about a time when he and his men, “got their asses waxed.” Colby was attempting to warn the young Lieutenant of what he was in for, and that’s when an important Owen quote was used. “‘All the poet can do today is warn,’ Owen wrote. Colby and other platoon sergeants were certainly not poets, but that is what they had been trying to do the night before—warn me, warn all of us. They had already been where we were going, to that frontier between life and death, but none of us wanted to listen to them. 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