Summary Of A Rumor Of War By Philip Caputo

In the memoir A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo, Caputo enlists in the United States Marine Corps after he graduates college in the hopes to end his dreary days of comfort living in a small, suburban town in Westchester, Illinois. Growing up in the secure, comfortable, and peaceful environment his whole adolescence, Caputo hungered for danger, challenges and violence. He was eager to prove to the others around him of the fact indeed he was coming into his independent manhood, as well as the confidence about that the war should not last so long. War is always attractive to those who knows nothing about it. Due to John F. Kennedy who awakened missionary idealism among the youthful innocent Americans, the war in their minds were full of illusions

Caputo states it was not the high alertness and pressure the soldiers experienced difficulties against the opponents, but the “toughest battle that night was waged against Vietnam’s insect life.” (p. 57) The hot and moist climate in the East Asia, right before the monsoon passes the continent, becomes a great environment for the insects to thrive in. The raw and fresh platoons who never experienced such ferociousness of a weather, immediately feels discomfort and their anxiety toward war intensifies. The battles against the Viet Cong were as if they were fighting phantoms; the snipers snuck around the marines at night without causing major casualties and guerillas disappeared in matter of seconds after combats. The infantries’ fantasies of battle fields quickly dispersed as they began living in a constant unsettling fear and caution, realizing that they are not magnificently defeating the communists. “Dust, filth, and mosquitoes filled [their] hooches at night” causing restless nights; perhaps, the marines were fighting the insects among the humid climate more than the perceived enemy for a