Sergeant Dickinson

This is one of the very best novels to come out of Vietnam. Its combination of humor and horror makes an acid trip look like a polite cocktail party.

This book is a must-read if you are interested in the inside-the-head experience of a soldier in Vietnam. It is a fantastic, stunning, awe-inspiring and troubling book. I could not put it down once I started and I suspect I will read it again soon.

The war in Vietnam has been over for 25 years. The US embassy in Saigon has been torn down and the city renamed. Vietnam's young capitalists are running battlefield tours for aging veterans. Jerome Gold's Sergeant Dickinson (first published in 1988 as The Negligence of Death and republished in 1999 under the current title) brings it back with stunning immediacy. This book is the perfect cure for nostalgia. Whether you are a young reader new to Vietnam or one who has been there and read that, Sergeant Dickinson is a must.

This book says it all with perfect pitch. It captures the visual imagery, dialogue, and complex psychology of the combat experience in a way that is unlikely to be equalled. The radio operator is the perfect observation post for a vietnam novel and Gold clearly knows that role. The sit reps from other outposts are simply brilliant. The elephant bombing, unkown americans entering the perimeter etc. These things really happen. They are not, as I read in a literary journal review, simply a metaphorical device through which the author describes the absurdity of war. The creative reach presented here in a short work is incredible. The wounding and hospital scenes, the inevitable stateside disconnection with civilians followed by the death wish return to the people and circumstances you know. I thought that Micheal Herr's Dispatches had realistic dialogue but he was a journalist not a soldier. If you could leave on any heliocopter, you could never tell the whole story. I have always hoped that someone who fought in the war would get it right. This is it.

I could not put Sergeant Dickinson down. This from a guy who has a house full of partially read books. This is a book for those who were there. And especially a book for those in Special Forces. Jerome Gold's first two sentences took me back to Vietnam. To the grinding of latterite dust in my teeth. To the stench of the dead. To the fear as I had known it. This is a miracle of hard work done by a tough but sensitive man. Gold has captured the raw edges of those things that will be with us forever.