by Tim O'Brien
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Product Description
Before writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong. Beautifully written and searingly heartfelt, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a masterwork of its genre.
Amazon.com Review
Over time, Tim O'Brien has used both art and artifice to shape his fictional accounts of Vietnam. Award-winning novels such as Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried offer up a surreal view of the war: a soldier who decides to walk to Paris, leaving only a trail of M&M's in his wake; a young man who imports his high-school girlfriend to his base camp high in the jungled mountains, only to lose her to a shadowy squad of Special Forces Green Berets and to "that mix of unnamed terror and unnamed pleasure" that was Vietnam. O'Brien's first account of the war, however, was written in the raw, unfiltered months following his return from Southeast Asia in 1969. If I Die in a Combat Zone has all of the eloquence and attention to language and detail that are a mark of the author's work; what is different about it is its straightforward, unembellished depiction of his personal experience of hell. "When you are ordered to march through areas such as Pinkville--GI slang for Song My, parent village of My Lai ... you do some thinking. You hallucinate. You look ahead a few paces and wonder what your legs will resemble if there is more to the earth in that spot than silicates and nitrogen. Will the pain be unbearable? Will you scream or fall silent? Will you be afraid to look at your own body, afraid of the sight of your own red flesh and white bone? You wonder if the medic remembered his morphine." O'Brien paints an unvarnished portrait of the infantry soldier's life that is at once mundane and terrifying--the endless days of patrolling punctuated by firefights that end as suddenly and inconclusively as they begin; the mind-numbing brutality of burned villages and trampled rice patties; the terror of tunnels, minefields, and the ever-present threat of death. Powerful as these scenes are, perhaps the most memorable chapter in the book concerns his decision to desert just a few weeks before he was sent to Vietnam. "The AWOL bag was ready to go, but I wasn't.... I burned the letters to my family. I read the others and burned them, too. It was over. I simply couldn't bring myself to flee. Family, the home town, friends, history, tradition, fear, confusion, exile: I could not run." Tim O'Brien went into the war opposing it and came out knowing exactly why. If I Die in a Combat Zone is more than just a memoir of a disastrous war; it is also a meditation on heroism and cowardice, on the mutability of truth and morality in a war zone and, most of all, on the simple, human capacity to endure the unendurable. --Alix Wilber
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Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Stark memories of an insane asylum, 2008-12-31
This, the first of O'Brien's books on his experiences in the Vietnam War is, in some ways, his best. While The things They Carried has received more accolades, If I Die In a Combat Zone seems more real. It is a presentation of madness that encompassed a year in Vietnam while still fresh in O'Brien's mind. It feels more honest in that respect. The scenes are tragic and almost fantastical. As always, O'Brien writes with a sharpness that is so well done.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Gripping and Intense, 2008-09-05
In this memoir Tim O'Brien recounts the testing of his moral principles and the continuing broadening of his understanding of the concepts of courage and bravery. The author successfully presents the reader with compelling insights into the moral dilemmas encountered by a young man dealing with the entirety of serving as an American soldier in Vietnam, including, the draft, the expectations of family and a small mid-western town versus his views on being a part to an immoral war. Throughout the book he struggles with what it means to be courageous and brave. Mr. O'Brien imposes the time line of his experience over these struggles with his internal demons, and sets those struggles against real combat and real casualties. He captures the daily tedium, punctuated by brief episodes of terror with the matter-of-fact style of Solzhenitsyn's "One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich." He is skillful in capturing the reader in the milieu of complex ethical uncertainties and the brutality that was Vietnam. This is apparent by Chapter 10, where he rocks the reader back on his heals with a very direct and simply-written two-page chapter.
Though it was written by a 21-year-old, this book may be the seminal Vietnam Era corollary of Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage," written when Crane was 24.
Chip Auger - 7th Marines, RSVN 1967-68
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 numb, 2008-08-29
More or less everything I know about the Vietnam War I have taken from American movies. This, I accept, is not the ideal grounding on the subject. If there is a decent Vietnamese account, on celluloid or in print, then I have never come across it. Not that I have been looking that hard.
Tim O'Brien's book is the first piece of non-fiction I have read about the conflict. Written in 1968 as the grunt's eye view, I am sure it was hard-hitting and thought provoking at the time. Now, if I am being really honest, it seems a little tame. Perhaps the movies have numbed me when it comes to Vietnam. Maybe I have just grown up in a world where far worse things happen. I am sure the failing is all mine.
It is a well-written book, I just couldn't connect to it in the way I have done with his fiction. I loved July, July and would happily recommend it to just about anyone. If I Die In A Combat Zone has perhaps become less shocking as the years have gone by. But it might just be me that thinks that.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Stunning and moving, 2008-07-17
Tim O'Brien fan and have not read this book? You will not be disappointed. Never read O'Brien? Get ready for a mind trip that will leave you addicted to what great literature is all about.
Stunning and moving memoir of O'Brien's Vietnam years. It will move you. Period. If it does not, then you are not human.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Reluctant Participant, 2008-06-05
Being much more familiar with Tim O'Brien's fiction, one may not know what to expect in his memoir about his tour of duty in Vietnam. Written in the same style with a wry sense of humor, O'Brien challenges the war in a way few have.
Courage and morality are continuing themes that O'Brien explores through his actions as well as literary quotes. It is very clear that O'Brien was uncomfortable with the war even before being drafted. He even contemplates going AWOL. In a paradox, he lacks the courage to go to war or escape going to war. Nothing is more powerful than the last chapter. Going beyond patroitism and rituals, O'Brien is numbed as he returns home. The war has left a mark that is difficult to fathom.
Tim O'Brien does not flinch at the brutality of the war nor the American soldiers. Major Callicles seems straight out of Catch 22, yet he is all too real. The cruelty to a blind civilian has the ability to disgust. While making a statement, O'Brien's writing is both enlightening and entertaining. It is a remarkable perspective on a disastrous war.
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