Neil Sheehan's Brilliant "An American Soldier in Vietnam II - A Set-Piece Battle"

Neil Sheehan (Photo by Brendan Hoffman)

Yesterday, The New York Times reported the death of Neil Sheehan, author of one of the great Vietnam War chronicles – A Bright and Shining Lie (1988). Parts of this book originally appeared in The New Yorker: see “An American Soldier in Vietnam I - The Rooster and the Tiger” (June 20, 1988); “An American Soldier in Vietnam II – A Set-Piece Battle” (June 27, 1988); “An American Soldier in Vietnam III – An All-Round Man” (July 4, 1988); and “An American Soldier in Vietnam IV – The Civilian General” (July 11, 1988). 

I remember reading these excerpts as they came out. The second part, “A Set-Piece Battle,” is one of the most extraordinary New Yorker pieces I’ve ever read. It’s an incredibly intense, detailed account of the battle of Ap Bac that puts you squarely there, pinned in a rice paddy with three downed choppers and a rifle company under withering Viet Cong fire. Here’s a sample: 

Sgt. 1st Class Arnold Bowers, twenty-nine years old, from a Minnesota dairy farm and the 101st Airborne Division, heard the bullwhip crack of the first bullet burst through the aluminum skin of the helicopter while the machine was still fifty feet in the air. Bowers’s helicopter was the second in the flight. Vietnam was his first war. During his previous eight and a half months in the country he had experienced no combat beyond a few skirmishes with snipers. The whip cracked again and again over the din of the H-21’s engines before the wheels of the machine settled into the paddy and Bowers jumped out into the knee-high water with a squad of infantry and the ARVN first lieutenant commanding the company.

And another:

The tree line crashed with the opening volley. Bowers did not pause, and Mays controlled his nerves and stayed right behind him despite the cracks of the incoming bullets. Cho’s .50 caliber and heavy machine gun on the other M-113 slammed like jackhammers in response to the guerrillas’ fire. Mays could make out amid the din the answering drumrolls of defiance from the Viet Cong machine gunner at the right-hand corner of the irrigation dike.

One more:

The driver of the second M-113 began to back up. Scanlon saw that this crew was abandoning one of their infantrymen who had fallen wounded into the paddy. He shouted and waved his arms. The driver of the other vehicle heard him and pulled forward again, but no one would get out to pick up the wounded soldier. Scanlon sprang over the side of his M-113 and ran to the man. As he reached him, one of the infantrymen from the second M-113, braver than the rest, reached him too and helped Scanlon to pick him up and carry him in through the rear hatch and lay him on the floor. While they were rescuing this wounded soldier, yet another infantryman who was still in the paddy was hit and a BAR man on this second M-113 was struck. The .50 caliber gunner on the second M-113 had also lost his nerve and was cowering in the hatch and perforating the sky. After they had carried in the other wounded soldier, Scanlon pulled and yelled at this gunner too until he had him up and trying to aim the machine gun. “Shoot at the bottom of the tree line,” Scanlon shouted.

The prose isn’t fancy; you don’t want it to be. You want it terse and to the bone – no fucking around. That’s what Sheehan delivered in this brilliant piece of war reportage.