SAND IN THE WIND

by Robert Roth ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 1973

A first novel relating the experiences of a Marine Corps nile squad in Vietnam beginning with a group which considers itself kind of an elite -- all the men went to college. Presumably this raises the articulation level a few notches but it has no effect at all on the fatality factor. There is Chalice who is in the war to write a book; Lieut. Kramer, who thought it might be one way to commit suicide; Forsythe, drug dropout, former Berkeley protester, whose presence accounts for another point of view; and assorted ""lifers"" -- officers and enlisted men, who have made their own pact with the Marine Corps. But the book has more to do with incidents than with character: the Parris Island indoctrination -- ""It's not the greatest war but it's the only one we've got;"" the tortuous patrols in search of Vietcong, the pot parties, atrocities (cannibalism), the day by day actualities of killing or of being killed. How much this adds to anyone's understanding of the war America would rather forget is questionable. Roth's treatment reads as if he had kept a diary of every soggy footstep he took through the rice paddies. And the bush. And of every cursed benediction bestowed upon a C-ration. If you can accept that then the book has a certain numbing kind of fascination.

Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown--A.M.P.

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1973

Categories: FICTION