cover image Firefight

Firefight

Joseph Ferrandino. Soho Press, $16.95 (196pp) ISBN 978-0-939149-09-4

When Corporal Amaro meets First Sgt. Henry Fluett of C Company, 101st Airborne, he knows he is in trouble. Amaro is a wise guy from Brooklyn, and Fluett is a hard-nosed ""lifer'' of the old school. This novel about combat in Vietnam should appeal to enlisted men who served in the Army during the '60s and early '70s. For one thing, the language is spot-on; two decades later, it's downright spooky to read about deuce-and-a-halfs, dust offs, hats-up and steel pots. More importantly, Ferrandino depicts both the official war between the Americans and ARVN and NVA/VC, and the unofficial conflict between the single-hitch enlisted men and the ``lifer'' cadre of career commissioned and noncommissioned officerswho all too often tried to disguise their incompetence with John Wayne rhetoric and ``discipline'' that amounted to hazing the troops. Ferrandino's version of the Vietnam War is a usefully astringent corrective to the current romantic Rambo cult. His narrative has the crude power of an attempt to exorcize a real-life nightmare. (September 3)