Description
The REMF Returns by David Willson
ISBN 978-0930773212
For every infantry solider who was actually fighting in Vietnam, there were at least five to six other rear-area personnel to support him. After all, soldiers have to be processed in, fed, housed, supplied and resupplied, medically looked after, counselled (spiritually and legally), paid, entertained, and damn near anything and everything else by someone else in uniform to keep the war rolling.
These rear-area soldiers were know as REMFs; which meant they were Rear Echelon Mother Fu…eh, you get the point. Their fight was often against such enemies as boredom, tedium, petty bureaucracy, and the many absurdities that made up the other side of the war.
Reviews
“Please welcome back David Willson’s REMF, an altogether different kind of war story character. In ‘The REMF Returns,’ Willson continues his story of the office-based soldier who never fires a shot in anger–and whose days are pervaded by the moral and spiritual twilight of life in the rear echelon of a shooting war. Willson’s sly humor and carefully stylized minutiae of daily life in the Army join to make this book an important document in an area rarely confronted in our literature of Vietnam.”
—Richard Currey, author of Fatal Light and The Wars of Heaven
‘REMF Diary’ and ‘The REMF Returns’ are well calculated and crafted looks at the other Vietnam; the kind where Willson’s subtle and biting humor makes you think long after he makes you laugh!”
—Kregg P.J. Jorgenson, author of Acceptable Loss: An Infantryman’s Perspective of Vietnam, and Inches to Live, Seconds to Die
The sequel to REMF Diary (1988–not reviewed): an account of the last days of an Army clerk’s Vietnam tour-of-duty from July 5 through October 23, 1967. Both books claim to be novels, but if you’re looking for intense combat scenes or romantic interludes back in Hawaii, you’ll be disappointed. The fate of Western democracies is not decided here. The point is comic, although in a way cautionary: this is the tale of a clerk in the rear areas of Saigon and the plush base at Long Binh, and the truth is that it is at least as representative of the enlisted man’s Vietnam war as are tales of combat by Larry Heinemann, Gustav Hasford, or John M. Del Vecchio. Willson’s diary entries are detailed and often annoying accounts of: how little work he can do in a day, the books he reads (mostly mysteries), what was served at the mess hall, the TV shows he watched, and the rock songs he listened to. Characters emerge–such as the officer who seems to have a vendetta against him; several buddies; and some prostitutes–but Wilson appears to have drawn almost verbatim from his diary at the time. He sets no scenes and for the most part does not even reproduce dialogue, but nonetheless the minuteness of his account causes the rear echelon war to emerge, in its droning, hot, meaningless stupidity. We see Willson planning for his R & R in Hong Kong and then enjoying it; his naivet‚ and unwitting irony are a delight and irritation at once. He starts from the point of view that none of what is going on around him makes sense, and neither do the objections to it. Maybe it’s not so different from “the world” itself, where the first object is to survive, and the second is to enjoy oneself. With all the agony we have come to associate with the Vietnam War, many young men had the time of their lives, and will never enjoy themselves so much again. Whether these two diaries are novels begs the question– there’s a narrative here, and a sly wit at work. — Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
—Kirkus Reviews, 03/01/92
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