A plea
to book
cover
designers: Could
we not
put a
helicopter on
the cover
of every
single book?
It is
getting boring.
I mean,
I don't
recall transport helicopters playing much of a role in Fields of Fire, or in Marine operations generally -- but here
you are.
This is no knock on the books
themselves. One of my favorites, The
American Culture of War, by Adrian Lewis, features no fewer than 15
helicopters on its cover. Maybe that's why that book is so damn expensive.
While I'm on the subject of
Vietnam books: Why are there so many oral histories of the Vietnam War, in
which veterans and others tell the story of what they saw and did? I counted at
least 15 at a Marine library the other day. I suspect it is because we are
still trying to understand that damn war.
And while I'm bellyaching about
the Vietnam War: It is amazing to me how
naïve academic historians often seem to be about government memos. I've
been reading a bunch of books that I have come to think of as "memo histories."
Basically, these claim to offer new insight into the Vietnam War by some poor
guy who has waded through thousands of pages of memoranda, reports, and other
government documents. Generally these hard-working but perhaps innocent
historians accept these documents at face value, as accurate and true records.
But in my experience of covering the national security establishment for two
decades, memos sometimes are written not to clarify the record but to obscure
it. A lot of them are written for the files to show future historians that, "I
lost in the meeting but will record here why I still think I was right." Sometimes
I think they are produced also to revise what actually was said in
meetings-sort of to "correct the record."
Government memos frequently are
most significant, I suspect, for what is said between the lines, as part of
bureaucratic infighting. For example, a Pentagon memo that emphatically states,
"We pledge to give our total, unqualified support to State Department points 1
and 3" might mean, But we will fight you
to the death on point 2. But that seems to be lost on the revisionist
academic historian who triumphantly concludes, "Contrary to the conventional
wisdom that the secretaries of State and Defense were in bitter opposition on
this important issue, the documentary record shows that the Pentagon gave its 'total,
unqualified support' to most of the Secretary of State's proposals." Likewise, when
Westmoreland states that he really supports "pacification," he may not be
defining pacification as you or I might. As in, Them B-52 Arc Light strikes sure pacified the hell out of that corner
of the southwestern corner of the province.
And to finish off my current pet
peeves: I am amazed at how often "Ridgway" and "DePuy" are misspelled in books,
even in indexes. It is not
"Ridgeway," "William Depuy," or "William Dupuy." My book researcher, Mr.
Gregory McGowan, the Big
Poppy of documents, even found an instance where the Government Printing
Office apparently confused Gen. William DePuy with Col. Trevor Dupuy, who
confusingly testified in the same set of December 1990 hearings of the House
Armed Services Committee.
While I'm at it, I also think
baseball writers need to lay off the word "iconic."
Now I feel better.
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