
Author: Doyle Glass
Year of Publication: 2014, 2023 (second edition)
Swift Sword by Doyle Glass is a gripping and immersive account of the Quế Sơn Valley skirmish during the Vietnam War. Modeled after Eugene Sledge's classic memoir, With the Old Breed, Glass aims to provide a similar tribute to Vietnam veterans, and he succeeds admirably. The book tracks the intense and deadly combat between American forces and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) in meticulous detail.
This nonfiction novel is drawn from extensive interviews with Marine veterans, their loved ones, after-action reports, and firsthand accounts. One of Glass’ most insightful decisions is to italicize the veterans’ quotes while providing his own description and fictionalized dialogue to fill in missing gaps, enhance the drama and image, and maintain a novelistic pace. The result captures the complete event in its full externality, less a photograph than a panorama like the one in the Gettysburg Museum.
Glass provides personality flavors of the Marines and avoids deep character analysis as he roots his portayals in the veterans’ interviews, eschewing the psychological analysis in which some writers would indulge. Swift Sword instead makes the portrayal and study of the event its focus. The narrative is one of constant action as different Marine units react to enemy engagements. Every dimension of combat in Vietnam is portrayed, from a helicopter rescue to a chaplain handing out gas masks. There is also an interesting chapter toward the book’s conclusion that gives the North Vietnamese perspective. Glass explains that many of the communists battling the Marines were from the South, usually from Quế Sơn, but they believed in the North’s cause while feeling no loyalty to a Southern government they viewed as illegitimate and propped up by Washington.
This is an excellent book on the Vietnam War. It is perfect in fulfilling its intent, which is to give as complete a portrayal of combat in that conflict as though the reader had themself experienced it. It is narrow in focus but holistic in execution. Hemingway wrote that “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.” Operation Swift Sword did happen, but this account blends memory with narrative so as to become literary truth. It is highly recommended for Vietnam veterans or buffs and is an excellent representation of that war within the historical fiction genre.
Comments