Lair, Meredith H.

OUR SYNOPSIS: Meredith H. Lair reframes the Vietnam War by focusing on how “the U.S. military built an Americanized world for its soldiers to inhabit, while the high-tech nature of American warfare and a sophisticated logistics effort to care for the troops guaranteed that a majority of soldiers—perhaps 75 to 90 percent, depending on when they served—labored in supporting roles, out of danger and in relative comfort. Material satisfaction displaced national interest as the animating war goal for many individuals because military authorities sought to encourage soldiers’ compliant service with a high standard of living, relative to earlier wars, to Vietnamese poverty, and especially to the troops’ expectations.” (4-5) She decenters combat from the Vietnam War, emphasizing how non-combat experiences reflected consumerism and the military industrial complex. Extensive resources and highly effective logistical supply lines provided many American soldiers with an unprecedented level of comfort at war. However, she is sure to reiterate that some Vietnam veterans experienced traumatic and heroic events in Vietnam and that non-combat experiences must not take away from this. She compares military base camps to American cities, with a wide variety of occupations and services. By presenting case studies of particular camps, she recreates their day-to-day happenings. She also emphasizes that combat troops generally passed through these camps on their way to and from both the U.S. and their combat action in Vietnam. Combat soldiers got a sense of the lifestyle of non-combat troops as a result, leading to tensions between these groups. These differential experiences also reflected socio-economic class discrepancies, for example with less formally educated troops more likely to serve combat roles.