Fallen Angels

A powerful piece of writing which seems to lack any kind of literary artifice, it tells the story of one soldier from his arrival in Vietnam by plane to his departure, wounded and accompanied by the caskets of other soldiers. In between he becomes part of a squad, tightly bound by experience, especially the shared experience of fear and horrors. There are ironies, the bureaucratic errors that allow him to be sent to Vietnam, the repeated assertions of peace on the way although we know, in hindsight, how long the war drags on for. This is the modern realisation of Wilfred Owen's 'horror of war'.