YEAR IN NAM

A detailed, almost passionless narrative of the author’s combat-heavy tour of duty in the Vietnam War. TeCube spent the 12 months beginning in January 1968 as an infantryman with the US Army’s American Division in Vietnam. His year in the war zone consisted of a steady, dangerous diet of combat assaults, search and destroy missions, night ambushes, reconnaissance patrols, helicopter landings in enemy territory, and countless mortar, sniper, and satchel charge attacks on his base camps. TeCube, a Jicarilla Apache from New Mexico, tells his Vietnam War story chronologically in a dry narrative style that is long on detail and short on reflection. TeCube seemingly leaves nothing out, offering at times almost minute-by-minute details on his war experiences, from the mundane to the adrenaline-charged. Even when he writes about the worst that war has to offer, TeCube rarely does little more than describe, almost dispassionately, what took place. Only occasionally does the author reflect on his upbringing on the reservation in New Mexico and on the Indian religious teachings that helped him through his year in combat. The one section in which TeCube gives more than a hint of analysis is when he describes his tangential involvement in the My Lai massacre. TeCube’s company acted as a blocking force at My Lai. He was not present at the killing and didn’t learn of the massacre until 16 months later. His company, though, was thoroughly familiar with the very dangerous area around My Lai. “I do not condone the killings. However,” he says, “I can understand why it happened.” After American forces’ suffering many killed and wounded in the area, the “situation was ripe for the animal to emerge. Unfortunately, at My Lai it appears that the animal completely took over not just one individual, but a whole unit.” A solid if largely unenlightening Vietnam War memoir.