365 Days

 书架：《越南和越南战争》（Vietnam-and-the-Vietnam-war

罗纳德-J-格拉瑟（Ronald J. Glasser）是一名被派往日本陆军医院的美国儿科医生，他在书中讲述了作为一名美国士兵在越南作战的真实情况。他的书是我读过的最真实、最无保留的军事回忆录。

格拉瑟的叙述的与众不同之处在于，他是从病人和伤员的角度来讲述的。在越南服役的个人故事往往会美化战斗，特别是如果它们是由指挥官写的。不过，像格拉瑟在书中所写的故事，让读者打消了认为战斗有什么光荣和英雄的错误想法。作者对病人的情况进行了生动、令人作呕的描述。当外科医生不得不把不到18岁的美国年轻人从流血致死中救出来时，他们常常站在那里想，是先把被打得流血的脾脏取出来，再去找被撕裂的肝脏，然后夹住撕裂的腔静脉，还是从肾动脉上的洞开始。

然而，数以千计的健康年轻人以身体残缺的方式返回家园，这并不是最大的悲剧。更具破坏性的是士兵们广泛的、几乎是普遍的、与之斗争的战斗疲劳。与第二次世界大战等早期冲突不同的是，当时一位战斗精神病学家承担着15000名士兵的不可能的责任，而在越南，战斗疲劳的存在被承认了。然而，它所造成的巨大伤害却被忽视了。据格拉瑟说，他治疗的许多人都患有严重的战斗疲劳症，导致他们产生幻觉和暴力行为。正如作者所坚持的那样，主要是那些被迫在这种不正常的精神状态下作战的士兵，通常要对美军的残暴行为负责。在医院的短暂停留结束后，他们被送回越南，在那里他们的病情加重，而他们的行为没有受到监控。没有人关心他们的战斗疲劳是否驱使他们杀害平民或犯下其他暴行，或者终身损害他们的心灵。

格拉瑟的叙述还强调了MACV所接受的战争策略的普遍无效性。美国在越南的努力被定为依靠直升机作战，但正如躺在作者工作的日本医院里的部队人员所讲，直升机虽然在开阔的地形上威力巨大，但在越南丛林中却在射杀树叶和树枝而不是敌人。此外，指挥官们特别喜欢派遣游骑兵小队去寻找越共--这种毫无结果的努力，其结果不过是增加了美国人的伤亡人数。所谓的游骑兵，由于不熟悉丛林，成为敌人伏击的受害者。

在美国战略家中似乎存在着一种错误的观念，即要伏击一个团体，你必须紧靠着它。不过，无论越共的人装备多么简陋，他们都不是用弓箭射击。他们的AK-47的射程令人印象深刻--1500米，精度600米。这就是为什么臭名昭著的旨在让敌人在半径300米范围内无处藏身的除草计划没有产生任何积极的结果，而是杀死了更多的美国男孩。

Shelves: vietnam-and-the-vietnam-war

In his book, Ronald J. Glasser, an American pediatrician assigned to an Army hospital in Japan, tells stories of what it was really like to be an American soldier fighting in Vietnam. His is the most realistic, no-holds-barred military memoir I have ever read.

What distinguishes Glasser's account is that he tells it from the perspective of the sick and the wounded. Personal stories of combat service in Vietnam tend to glorify fighting, especially if they are written by commanders. Stories like the ones Glasser has included in his book, though, disabuse the reader of the false idea that there is something glorious and heroic about it. The author provides graphic, stomach-churning descriptions of the patients' condition. When surgeons had to save young Americans, hardly eighteen, from bleeding to death, they often stood wondering whether first to take out the battered and bleeding spleen, go after the lacerated liver, and clamp the torn vena cava, or start with the hole in the renal artery. 

Yet the fact that healthy young men returned home as physical cripples by the thousands was not the greatest tragedy. Far more damaging was the widespread, nearly universal, combat fatigue the soldiers struggled with. Unlike in earlier conflicts such as the Second World War, when one combat psychiatrist had the impossible responsibility of 15,000 soldiers, in Vietnam the existence of combat fatigue was acknowledged. However, the enormous damage it did was ignored. According to Glasser, many of the men he treated suffered from severe combat fatigue that caused them to hallucinate and behave violently. As the authors insists, it was mainly soldiers that were forced to fight in this abnormal state of mind that were usually responsible for the brutalities of the American Army. After their brief stay at the hospital ended, they were sent back to Vietnam, where their condition aggravated, and their behavior was not monitored. No one cared whether their combat fatigue drove them to killing civilians or committing other atrocities, or damaged their minds for life.

Glasser's narrative also underscores the general ineffectiveness of the warfare strategy that the MACV had embraced. The American effort in Vietnam was made to depend on helicopter warfare, but as troopers lying in the Japanese hospital where the author worked told, the helicopters, while powerful in open terrain, in the Vietnamese jungle were shooting at leaves and branches instead of at the enemy. Furthermore, commanders were exceptionally fond of dispatching ranger squads to look for the Viet Cong – a fruitless effort that resulted in little more than an addition to the number of American casualties. The so called rangers, unfamiliar with the jungle, fell victim to enemy ambushes. 

There seems to have existed an erroneous notion among American strategists that to ambush a group you have to be in immediate proximity to it. No matter how primitively equipped the Viet Cong men were, though, they were not shooting with bows and arrows. Their AK-47s had an impressive range – 1500 meters with 600 meters accuracy. This is why the notorious defoliation program that was meant to leave the enemy with nowhere to hide in a radius of 300 meters did not produce any positive results, but killed yet more American boys. 

他们不能幸免的疟疾也是如此。我对指挥官们采取的不人道的疟疾政策感到无语。因为那些染上疾病的人都被疏散了，只有在士兵连续三天发烧到102或以上时，营里的外科医生才被允许做出疟疾的诊断。这样一来，士兵们就能保持直线，再战斗72小时。在110度的丛林热浪中度过他们生病的头三天，对他们的健康造成了影响。当他们被疏散并获得医疗服务时，他们在穿过医院大门的路上就倒下了。

格拉瑟向越南临时医院的医务人员表示敬意。他讲述了医生与美国士兵一起为越共士兵治疗的故事。正如一位医生向一位困惑的护士解释的那样，医院在村子里，而越共已经包围了村子。越共游击队可以占领它，但他们选择不这样做。这是一个无声的协议--在死亡、恐怖和破坏中，这是一个微小但重要的仁慈和相互理解的行为。正是像这样鼓舞人心的故事，帮助人们继续相信人。

作者还有效地把美国士兵在越南的战斗和牺牲中的英雄主义全部拿出来。他的书被命名为365天是有原因的--这是一个被征召者在回家之前必须服役的天数。每个士兵都知道这一点，他的所有行动都围绕着熬过这一年的最终目标。根据指挥官们的观察，这些士兵并不想打仗。他们对越南冲突不抱幻想。他们抽着草，很少交朋友。当我想到这一点时，他们与许多越共男子没有什么不同，他们是被渗入他们村庄的党员特工强行招募到民族解放阵线的队伍中的。也许唯一不同的是，越南人是为他们国家的独立而战，而美国人--他们是为了什么而杀戮和死亡？他们不知道。指挥官们指出，宣传对他们不起作用。

越南冲突有一张丑陋的脸。它到处都很丑陋--在南越的丛林和村庄，在医院，在后方。一个外国超级大国介入一场已经很悲惨的内战，并使其更加血腥、昂贵和悲惨，这不可能有什么光荣。在遥远的外国丛林中，士兵们为了一个他们自己、他们的上级、他们上级的上级都不清楚的事业而在精神上或身体上死去，这不可能有什么英雄主义。任何试图为双方的暴行辩解或粉饰的行为都会玷污那些在战场上丧生、在丛林中屈服于疟疾、在医院病床上死于伤口的人的记忆。

365天》以其扣人心弦的风格和骇人听闻的内容给我留下了深刻印象。格拉瑟在作品中倾注了他的心血，这让我深受感动。这本书应该成为所有负责宣战的人的必读书。它提醒我们，为什么战争是天启四骑士之一，为什么它具有如此大的破坏力。我强烈推荐这本书。(更少)

So did the malaria that they were not immune to. I was left speechless by the inhumane malaria policy that commanders had adopted. Because those who caught the disease were evacuated, the battalion surgeons were allowed to make the diagnosis of malaria only after a soldier had had a fever of 102 or above for three days. This way the men were kept straight and fighting for 72 more hours. Spending the first three days of their sickness in the 110-degree jungle heat took its toll on their health. By the time they were evacuated and given access to medical care, they collapsed on their way through the hospital's door. 

Glasser pays tribute to the medical personnel in the makeshift hospitals of Vietnam. He recounts stories of doctors treating Viet Cong men alongside American soldiers. As one doctor explained to a bewildered nurse, the hospital was inside the village, and the Viet Cong had surrounded the village. The Viet Cong guerrillas could take it, but they chose not to. It was a silent agreement – a small but significant act of kindness and mutual understanding amid death, terror, and destruction. It is inspiring stories like this that help one continue to believe in people. 

The author also effectively takes all the heroism out of the American soldiers' fighting and sacrifice in Vietnam. His book is titled 365 days for a reason – this was the number of days a draftee had to serve before he could return home. Each soldier knew this, and all his actions centered around the ultimate objective of making it through this one year. According to the observations of commanders, these soldiers did not want to fight. They had no illusions about the Vietnam conflict. They smoked grass and made few friends. As I think about it, they were no different from many Viet Cong men, who had been forcefully recruited into the ranks of the National Liberation Front by Party agents that infiltrated their villages. Maybe the only difference that mattered is that the Vietnamese were fighting for their country's independence, while the Americans – what were they killing and dying for? They did not know. Propaganda did not work on them, commanders noted.

The Vietnam conflict had an ugly face. It was ugly everywhere – in the jungles and villages of South Vietnam, in the hospitals, and on the home front. There could be nothing glorious about a foreign superpower intervening into an already tragic civil war and making it immensely more bloody, costly, and tragic. There could be nothing heroic about soldiers dying, mentally or physically, in the jungles of a faraway foreign country for a cause that was clear neither to them nor to their superiors, nor to the superiors of their superiors. Any attempt to justify or gloss over the atrocities committed by both sides tarnishes the memory of those who lost their lives on the battlefield, who succumbed to malaria in the jungle, and who died of wounds on the hospital bed. 

365 DAYS left a lasting impression on me with both its gripping style and horrifying content. Glasser has poured his heart into his work, which touched me deeply. This book should be required reading for all those in charge of declaring wars. It serves to remind us why war us one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, why it is so devastating. I highly recommend it. (less)