A Rumor of War: Chapter Twelve Summary & Analysis

There is no heavy fighting around Da Nang for the rest of the summer. During the day, hardly anything happens; the war occurs at night. The five-millimeter guns start their regular shelling and the VC begin their sniping and mortaring. The enemy arrives in twos and threes and dies in twos and threes, as do the Marines’ own men. Caputo is twenty-four when the summer begins. He has only aged three months, though he feels three decades older. The men in his company do not die in great numbers, so he can recall them as individuals. Corporal Brian Gauthier is one example. A regimental HQ camp is named for him, due to his bravery in leading his men under an ambush, though he was mortally wounded. However, no such honor is given to a grenadier who died in the same ambush.

Caputo remembers Nick Pappas, too, and the rainy night when he went to the hospital to identify three marines from his old platoon, Devlin, Lockhart, and Bryce. All three were blown up in a listening-post bunker ahead of C Company’s lines. Corporal Gunderson says that he found and retrieved the bodies. Wet, muddy ponchos cover everything but their boots. The doctor pulls a poncho off of Devlin’s body, and Caputo identifies him. After watching the doctor examine the three men, Caputo gets back into the jeep, feeling dizzy. Kazmarack starts the engine. Just then, Murph McCloy pulls up in another jeep. He has arrived to ensure that the bodies arrived all right. Caputo asks if an accident caused their deaths; he needs to know for his report. McCloy says that an investigation will be done the next day, but Caputo does not think it will make much difference. 

That night, in a dream, Caputo is given command of a new platoon. Devlin, Bryce, and Lockhart are in the first of three ranks. Sullivan and Frank Reasoner, another deceased soldier, are there, too. In fact, everyone who stands in formation is dead. Caputo is, indeed, the Officer in Charge of the Dead. He wakes from this nightmare, afraid and soaking in his sweat. A mortar tube fires in the distance. He smokes a cigarette and falls into an uneasy sleep.

Caputo is not going crazy, but he witnesses others slowly losing their minds. Many are suffering from anxiety and depression. He, too, thinks about men like Sullivan and Reasoner and feels emptiness and a sense of futility. He hates going to the scoreboard and writing in new numbers. One Navy corpsman shoots himself in the foot to avoid going out on more patrols. Caputo also recalls the story of Olson and Harris, in which the latter marine kills the former due to what Caputo calls “combat madness”—a mixture of exhaustion, fury, being desensitized to violence, and hopelessness.

Operation Blast Out begins and ends in early August. Three thousand marines and ARVN soldiers, supported by a range of high-tech equipment, manage to kill twenty-four VC in three days. Some enemy soldiers and VC suspects are brought to HQ for questioning. They are going to be interrogated and then turned over to the South Vietnamese Army, who will probably kill them. A boy of eighteen knows this and starts to cry when his older comrade is led away for questioning. A marine tells him to keep his mouth shut. A sergeant harshly questions his older comrade and grabs his face when the VC refuses to look at him. The other suspects are blindfolded and marched down the road, single-file. They look ragged, underfed, and all under forty. An old man, the last in line, is having trouble keeping up.

The line stops, and the VC suspects are told to lie on their stomachs in a field. The guards tie them up or roll them over to search for documents. The documents are then placed in small piles and are examined by ARVN interpreters who ask the suspects questions. If everything is in order, the Vietnamese man is declared a civilian and released; if not, he is taken into a tent and interrogated by the sergeant who dealt with the stubborn older VC. A very old man searches through the piles for his papers and looks worried. Valid identification means the difference between life and death. Finally, he finds his papers and puts them in his shirt pocket. The ARVN soldier will look at him, see that he is a harmless old man, then see his documents and let him return to his village. The old man, for the moment, is spared becoming another casualty of war.