Grunts: the American Combat Soldier in Vietnam (review)

Grunts is historian Longley's first book on the Vietnam War. The focus is on the 300,000 to 500,000 infantrymen in Vietnam ("grunts"). It describes the effects of Vietnam service, including homesickness, boredom, fear, heroism, brutality, and homecoming, on the soldiers and their families. Masculinity, race, and class are organizing principles. Grunts includes experiences of soldiers from various ethnic groups and geographical areas. Similarities of experiences are stressed in order to give continuity. A major goal is to stimulate more research on various topics that are presently underdeveloped in the literature. According to Longley, time is a precious commodity in this research as the Vietnam veteran generation ages and dies.

Longley offers broad coverage, including chapters on the decisions soldiers made to enter the military, induction and recruit training, American infantrymen in Vietnam during the periods 1961-1968 and 1968-1975, and reintegration into society and the public memory of American infantrymen.

While the draft provided an increasing percentage of combat soldiers over time, popular support for it decreased until 1973, when the all-volunteer army was instituted. Eventually most who served were draftees or those who had enlisted to avoid the draft. Various social forces pulled and pushed young men into the military. In recruit training, drill instructors worked tirelessly to manufacture conformity, cooperation, and discipline. Americans arrived convinced they would quickly triumph over the Viet Cong. By the time they left many had doubts about the nobility of their mission. Soldiers often wondered why the Vietnamese Communists (VC) fought harder than their South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) allies. The perception was the ARVN were unwilling to fight, while the VC seemed unwilling to end the fight. The longer the war continued, the more controversial it became. As racial problems and the drug culture became evident in the United States, so too did American soldiers bring these issues with them to Vietnam. Military discipline and cohesiveness diminished as the war continued. Idealism and optimism were supplanted by the desire to survive. Often veterans returned to a country where they were sometimes underappreciated and at other times ignored. Most veterans reintegrated themselves into civilian life without difficulties. In Grunts, it is those who did not who are emphasized, as their stories of activism, abusiveness, and suicide are the more compelling narratives.

The author has a solid familiarity with the secondary sources. Longley acknowledges the challenges inherent in using oral histories and memoirs as source material. Some stories are hard to believe (a human head kicked until it exploded, a man shot 74 times before being rescued). Some accounts are erroneous (Cam Lo is referred to incorrectly as a coastal area; Chu Lai, on the coast, is referred to as being at higher altitude; it took one month, not "months," to expel the enemy from Hue). Longley includes the account of one person who was exposed as a liar and phony by B. G. Burkett in Stolen Valor (1998). The author uses provocative statistics on the number of soldiers who died on their first (997) and last days of service (1,448) in Vietnam. His source, a website, indicates the statistics are unconfirmed. In these and other cases the author seems too willing to uncritically accept the veracity of his sources.

Grunts deals with non-grunts as well as grunts: it details the experiences of the American soldiers in Vietnam, from how the boys were raised to become soldiers to the impact of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. It contains extensive footnotes and a comprehensive bibliography. It would have benefited from the inclusion of maps. The scholarly format makes it suitable for classroom use while the author's engaging style makes it appealing to general readers.