THE PHANTOM BLOOPER - written with such ferocious intensity, you don't read this novel as much as you live it, scene by scene. page by page.
Former US Marine Gustav Hasford wrote two classic novels about the Vietnam War. The Phantom Blooper begins where his The Short-Timers ends.
"But whatever name we use, we all know in our hearts the true identity
of the Phantom Blooper. He is the dark spirit of our collective bad
consciences made real and dangerous. He once was one of us, a Marine. He
knows what we think. He knows how we operate. He knows how Marines
fight and what Marines fear.
The Phantom Blooper is a Marine defector who deals in payback. Slack is one word the Phantom Blooper does not understand."
The Phantom Blooper starts off with a Dedication:
“This book is dedicated to the three million veterans of the Viet Nam
War, three million loyal men and women who were betrayed by their
country.”
Not exactly a tribute to the United States of America. I
suspect this is one prime reason Gustav Hasford's novel is no longer in
print.
Below his Dedication, Gustav Hasford includes an article from Newsweek
magazine, August 1968, citing that following a skirmish near Phu Bai,
US Marines discovered “Among the Viet Cong killed was the apparent
leader of the guerrilla band - a slender young Caucasian with long brown
hair.”
In the first section of the novel, the tale's narrator, a
US Marine by the name of Joker, exchanges ominous thoughts and feelings
with his fellow Marines revolving around the Phantom Blooper, a Marine
who has gone over to the other side, the side of the Viet Cong. The
Phantom Blooper is the stuff of myth; the Phantom Blooper is, by Joker's
reckoning, "the dark spirit of our collective bad consciences made real
and dangerous."
Talk is quickly replaced by action as the
Marines come under fierce attack just at the point when US forces are
taking steps to abandon Khe Sanh. In the aftermath of the battle, an
unconscious Joker is taken prisoner by the Viet Cong.
The second section, the heart and guts of the novel, Travels with Charlie
(blistering ironic spinoff of John Steinbeck's lyrical travelogue),
covers Joker's years as a prisoner of war in a small Vietnamese village.
Gustav
Hasford's words here are words of blood, sweat and fire. Thus, I'll tie
my comments to the following direct quotes taken from this section:
"When
I first came to the village over a year ago I said to myself: These are
not reservation Indians. These Viet Cong people are not Asian mutants
like the Vietnamese I saw as a Marine, not those sad, pathetic people
with a cloned culture and no self-respect, greedy and corrupt, ragged
shameless beggars and whores -Tijuana Mexicans. These Viet Cong people
are an entirely different race. They are proud, gentle, fearless,
ruthless, and painfully polite."
Initially, Joker spends his
days, dawn to dusk, in the backbreaking task of harvesting rice right
along side the women, men, children of the village.
"I'll never
escape from Hoa Binh until the Viet Cong trust me enough to allow me to
go on a combat mission. Until then, I must wait patiently and pretend to
be a genuine defector or they will ship my scrawny ass nonstop to a
broom closet in the Hanoi Hilton. If I've learned anything from these
people, it is the power of patience. Escape will take time because my
conversion must appear gradual and sincere.
There are no fools in this village."
Joker
comes to recognize the Viet Cong see Americans more clearly than
Americans see themselves, but Americans can't see the Viet Cong at all.
"As
a Combat Correspondent I was part of the vast gray machine that does
not dispense clean information. The American weakness is that we try to
rule the world with public relations, then end up believing our own con
jobs. We are adrift in a mythical ship which no longer touches land.
Americans
can't fight the Viet Cong because the Viet Cong are too real, too close
to the earth, and through American eyes what is real can only be a
shadow without substance."
Joker's words speak to his becoming assimilated into not only village life but the land itself.
"We
move through the black jungle as silent as ghosts. We don't fight
against the jungle the way foreigners do. The jungle is alive and the
jungle never dies. The jungle is the one thing you can't beat, and the
fighters know it.
To the Americans the jungle is a real and permanent
enemy. The jungle is undisciplined. The jungle does not respond to
subpoenas. The jungle definitely is not going along with the program."
Joker
is eventually taken on combat missions through the jungles with Viet
Cong guerrillas. Understandably, Joker experiences conflicting thoughts
and emotions (understatement) as he prepares to face off against US
troops. Joker senses he himself has now become the Phantom Blooper.
"Heavy boots crunch into dry scraps of rotten bamboo. Voices drift in on the wind, heavy voices, deep voices that talk slowly.
A
helmet covered with camouflage canvas emerges an inch at a time from a
wall of jungle that is a hundred shades of green. Half of a sweaty face
appears, eyes looking up for snipers and down for booby traps and
antipersonnel mines. Then a bulky sun-faded flak jacket. Then the black
barrel of an M-16.
The point man is a Marine snuffy, breaking trail with a machete.
I'm
not sure I can hack this shit. These are not Elephants, they're Black
Rifles- Marines. What am I supposed to do, shoot them or buy them a
beer?"
The drama builds and builds. What happens from this point forward is for every reader to discover.
The Phantom Blooper is available in its entirety online, free-of-charge via this link: https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/V...
American author Gustav Hasford, 1947-1993
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