Vietnam a Memoir

Want an uplifting account of one young Army officer's service in the Vietnam War? <I>Vietnam A Memoir: Saigon Cop</I> is not it. The focus of this book and of two later volumes in the series is war stripped of glory high purpose inspiration and easy but false patriotism. Instead the focus is on five Bs: booze babes boredom bureaucracy and occasionally battle. Heroes are few. Hyperbole is minimal. </P><P>Yet the tale is an unusual one. The author was an ROTC graduate with no long term Army commitment. After serving a year as a Military Police platoon leader in Saigon a period that is the subject of this first volume he stayed in Vietnam for another year and a half. His months as an infantry officer are covered in later volumes. </P><P>Military Police duty in Saigon in 1966-67 was a surreal combination of Army nitpicking on a stateside scale protecting U.S. facilities against Viet Cong terrorism and policing the large U.S. presence in the city. MPs lived worked and occasionally played in the middle of an Oriental metropolis of strange sights sounds and smells. Lengthy stretches of tedious humdrum activity were interrupted by sudden bursts of danger and fear. </P>