cover image The Offering

The Offering

Tom Carhart. William Morrow & Company, $17.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-688-05753-4

Carhart, a 1966 West Point graduate, was fighting in Vietnam the following year and like many of his fellow servicemen felt it was a patriotic duty to risk his life for his country. In combat he discovered not only the horrors of jungle warfare but also the dangers of being given orders by superiors unfamiliar with a situation on the battlefield (he was branded a coward for pointing out that a certain tactic would bring heavy casualties). He was briefly in Saigon, where he had a romance, then was an adviser in the Mekong Delta, where he went on what he terms ""search-and-avoid'' missions, allegedly to find Vietcong but actually designed not to encounter the enemy. Carhart's re-creation is not as significant as other personal works on the Vietnam War, but he nonetheless produces a rounded picture of the futility of the struggle. (March 25)