Fields of Fire

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Review ------ "Few writers since Stephen Crane have portrayed men at war with such a ring of steely truth."--The Houston Post "In swift, flexible prose that does everything he asks of it--including a whiff of hilarious farce just to show he can do it--Webb gives us an extraordinary range of acutely observed people, not one a stereotype, and as many different ways of looking at that miserable war . . . Fields of Fire is a stunner."--Newsweek "James Webb has rehabilitated the idea of the American hero--not John Wayne, to be sure, but every man, caught up in circumstances beyond his control, surviving the blood, dreck, and absurdity with dignity and even a certain elan. Fields of Fire is an antiwar book, yes, but not naively, dumbly anti-soldier or anti-American . . . Webb pulls off the scabs and looks directly, unflinchingly on the open wounds of the Sixties."--Philadelphia Inquirer "Webb's book has the unmistakable sound of truth acquired the hard way. His men hate the war; it is a lethal fact cut adrift from personal sense. Yet they understand that its profound insanity, its blood and oblivion, have in some way made them fall in love with battle and with each other."--Time "A novel of such fullness and impact, one is tempted to compare it to Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead."--The Oregonian "In my opinion, the finest of the Vietnam novels."--Tom Wolfe Synopsis -------- The story of a platoon of Marines fighting in Vietnam evokes the ambiguous and gruesome character of the war and contrasts man's realization of war's dangers with his attraction to war as the ultimate test of survival.