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When We Walked Above the Clouds: A Memoir of Vietnam
The mythology of the Green Berets, of their clandestine, special operations, has been celebrated in story and song. The reality, however, could be quite different. This story of one soldier's experience, the day-to-day loss and drudgery of Green Beret H. Lee Barnes, reveals the daily grind and quiet desperation behind polished-for-public-consumption accounts of military heroics. In When We Walked Above the Clouds, Barnes tells what it was like to be a Green Beret, first in the Dominican Republic during the civil war of 1965 and then at A-107, Tra Bong, Vietnam, where he eventually served as adviser to a combat recon platoon consisting chiefly of Montagnard irregulars. Though “nothing extraordinary,” as Barnes saw it, his months of simply doing what the mission demanded make for sobering the mundane business of killing rats, cleaning guns, and building bunkers renders the intensity of patrols and attacks all the more harrowing.
More than anything, however, Barnes' story is one of loss - of morale lost to alcoholism, teammates lost to friendly fire, missions aborted, and missions endlessly and futilely repeated. And yet against this dark background, Barnes graciously honors the quiet professionals whose service, overshadowed by the outsized story of Vietnam, nonetheless carried the day.
More than anything, however, Barnes' story is one of loss - of morale lost to alcoholism, teammates lost to friendly fire, missions aborted, and missions endlessly and futilely repeated. And yet against this dark background, Barnes graciously honors the quiet professionals whose service, overshadowed by the outsized story of Vietnam, nonetheless carried the day.
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First published September 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 4, 2011
This smallish book is the author's memoirs of his time in service with the US Army Special Forces. He was first deployed to the Dominican Republic during the civil war there in 1965 and then shortly after he volunteered during the Vietnam War to be a member of a US Army Special Forces training team. He was subsequently posted to a team based in Tra Bong, situated in Quang Ngai province. His main role in Tra Bong was to help train and serve with soldiers of the Civil Irregular Defence Group (CIDG) made up of Vietnamese and Montagnard soldiers.
Don't expect daring-do accounts of combat with massive enemy forces, last ditch stands in a Firebase, etc. Nope, this book is about life and surviving in Vietnam, digging trenches, burning human shit, working with local forces, picking off leeches, killing rats, searching for lost and dead teammates and the every day grind of an unrelenting war.
This is an excellent story and I found it hard to put the book down, it’s written well and is laced with humour and sadness and I think if you really want to know what these men went through then this would be the book to read.
Here is one example of the author’s style of writing as he introduces the M-16 rifle to the reader:
“The 5.56mm M-16. Plastic stocks, techno gun. Bangs like a toy, little recoil. You can tell it’s Mattel, it’s swell. The slug was another matter entirely. Evil. Its velocity, after spiralling out of five lands and groves, was nothing short of amazing. Brought smoke, as we would say. In the open, barring high wind, it was effective up to two hundred meters, deadly at anything less. The projectile tumbled after penetration, found a pathway, be it fat, sinew, or bone, and tore through its target. Its shock waves liquefied organ tissue. Heart, lung, kidney, spleen, liver made mush.
But its velocity was so fast that a twig could alter its trajectory.
In a jungle thick with leaf, branch, and truck were a million pockets of deflection every square mile. Men disguised as bushes, twig men, awaited us. Obscured behind green clumps and dense shadows, they settled in to ambush us. Charlie, come out and play, I thought. Pop up in the open like a silhouette target where this deadly toy I hold can do its deadly wonder. But Charlie wasn’t so stupid. He hid where the copper-coated lead missile was readily deflected.”
Don't expect daring-do accounts of combat with massive enemy forces, last ditch stands in a Firebase, etc. Nope, this book is about life and surviving in Vietnam, digging trenches, burning human shit, working with local forces, picking off leeches, killing rats, searching for lost and dead teammates and the every day grind of an unrelenting war.
This is an excellent story and I found it hard to put the book down, it’s written well and is laced with humour and sadness and I think if you really want to know what these men went through then this would be the book to read.
Here is one example of the author’s style of writing as he introduces the M-16 rifle to the reader:
“The 5.56mm M-16. Plastic stocks, techno gun. Bangs like a toy, little recoil. You can tell it’s Mattel, it’s swell. The slug was another matter entirely. Evil. Its velocity, after spiralling out of five lands and groves, was nothing short of amazing. Brought smoke, as we would say. In the open, barring high wind, it was effective up to two hundred meters, deadly at anything less. The projectile tumbled after penetration, found a pathway, be it fat, sinew, or bone, and tore through its target. Its shock waves liquefied organ tissue. Heart, lung, kidney, spleen, liver made mush.
But its velocity was so fast that a twig could alter its trajectory.
In a jungle thick with leaf, branch, and truck were a million pockets of deflection every square mile. Men disguised as bushes, twig men, awaited us. Obscured behind green clumps and dense shadows, they settled in to ambush us. Charlie, come out and play, I thought. Pop up in the open like a silhouette target where this deadly toy I hold can do its deadly wonder. But Charlie wasn’t so stupid. He hid where the copper-coated lead missile was readily deflected.”
February 4, 2012
Author is mainly a fiction writer. Mentions that for many years he hesitated to write this non-fiction chronicle about his Vietnam War experiences. Former compatriots, though, urged him on. Though his experiences weren’t dramatic, they no doubt reflect the mundanity that many others who served there experienced. Although trained as a Green Beret, at first he was assigned to routine camp cleanup duties. He bemoans incompetence in command, lack of orders to do what he was trained for, and miseries of residing in a muddy, moldy, mosquito and rat-infested bunker. Some officers enjoyed commanding men; they’d talk, listen and laugh when laughter was called for. But for another particular officer, team members would fabricate a reason to excuse themselves whenever he entered the team house. Later in his tour he participated in adventuresome patrols through the mountains. From these he recounts primitive emotions related to survival.
September 22, 2011
A word from a subsequent commander of the Special Forces unit assigned to Tra Bong. Author H. Lee Barnes, former Special Forces demolition sergeant, recounts his sejour a a team member of "A Team" A-107, Tra Bong Vietnam. Forget "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong." Want to know what it was like to be a grunt Green Beret in Viet Nam, most specifically at Tra Bong? Read Barnes and skip the middle class intellectual bullshit of 99% of what has been written to date about America's misadventure in the beautiful but sad land that was America's Vietnam.
May 31, 2013
Mr. Barnes has written a gutsy, harshly-readable but finely crafted book about a war that still polarizes many. Even today Vietnam is not yet a country but still a war, such was its influence on our political and social discourse lo these fifty years past. Barnes was a member of the exclusive Army Special Forces, known to civilians and one singer/songwriter Barry Sadler as the Green Berets. These troops didn't stay green very long, those who survived. Based at a remote encampment somewhere near Da Nang, but in much rougher country, Barnes itches to get into the weeds and engage in a dustup with Victor Charles, the VC, or hard-core North Viet regulars, the NVA. His year-long tour is disappointing at best, characterized more for its on-base political intrigues than the opportunities for Barnes to do what he's trained for, to kill the enemy. Yanked from an early patrol, his replacement is killed, and this event marks him for the duration, perhaps even still. It's the classic question among combat soldiers: why him and not me?
When We Walked is war without the Hollywood glitter, and not for the squeamish. In the middle of Barnes's tour he even meets a would-be warrior, the pure Hollywood caricature of action hero himself, Charlton Heston. Mr. Barnes is not impressed. Indeed, no one impresses him except those who know the vicissitudes of war and how it is supposed to be waged. Taking 'walks' with his fellows, he quickly sorts out who is and who is not competent. Many lifers and long-term military troopers don't make the cut in this newfangled war without front lines or popular support.
There are very few weaknesses in this exceptionally well-crafted book. I was confused at the title. Though beautifully alliterative, the words themselves weren't referenced in the text. The title likely refers to the 'walks' the troops make on patrol for the enemy, and probably was, but it might have been used more effectively. The cover art is instantly reminiscent of a Vietnam scenario, the ubiquitous Huey cruising across a mountain backdrop, but Barnes had little interaction with Hueys, so it seems a better image could have been employed. Lastly, since this is memoir, political cant is best avoided, I suppose, and the book contains little of it. But it would be interesting to hear Mr. Barnes's opinion, however tangential, of the war itself, and especially to the seeming indifference at the time of the ARVN, our partners in war. When We Walked Above the Clouds is a good book, very well written, that is itself proof that Vietnam and its memory haunts us still.
When We Walked is war without the Hollywood glitter, and not for the squeamish. In the middle of Barnes's tour he even meets a would-be warrior, the pure Hollywood caricature of action hero himself, Charlton Heston. Mr. Barnes is not impressed. Indeed, no one impresses him except those who know the vicissitudes of war and how it is supposed to be waged. Taking 'walks' with his fellows, he quickly sorts out who is and who is not competent. Many lifers and long-term military troopers don't make the cut in this newfangled war without front lines or popular support.
There are very few weaknesses in this exceptionally well-crafted book. I was confused at the title. Though beautifully alliterative, the words themselves weren't referenced in the text. The title likely refers to the 'walks' the troops make on patrol for the enemy, and probably was, but it might have been used more effectively. The cover art is instantly reminiscent of a Vietnam scenario, the ubiquitous Huey cruising across a mountain backdrop, but Barnes had little interaction with Hueys, so it seems a better image could have been employed. Lastly, since this is memoir, political cant is best avoided, I suppose, and the book contains little of it. But it would be interesting to hear Mr. Barnes's opinion, however tangential, of the war itself, and especially to the seeming indifference at the time of the ARVN, our partners in war. When We Walked Above the Clouds is a good book, very well written, that is itself proof that Vietnam and its memory haunts us still.
March 25, 2014
When We Walked Above the Clouds is the story of H. Lee Barnes's experiences that led to and included his time in the Green Beret American Special Forces during the Vietnam conflict. He was stationed in one location for his time there. If you are looking for exciting moments of bravery and battle, you may be disappointed. In fact, he seems somewhat matter-of-fact when it comes to the battles he was a part of. He does paint a vivid portrait of the stress and drudgery that alternatively preoccupy his time in camp. He is a naive kid when he starts his service and it seems that he is truly born-again hard when he leaves. He has good commanders and bad commanders, he questions his role in the war and the war itself. Some of it seems like hind sight, but what do you expect from a work written many years after the event.
I read the book in just two days and it move quickly with a certain flair that makes the chapters fly by. He is the hero of the novel and those people he liked are strong characters and those he does not are very weak, superficial almost, some become even nameless. The only thing that troubled me was the way death seemed so easy, from the torturing of rats to the death of the Vietnamese "strikers", who were confederates of theirs, they seemed to not matter. His friends death caused him great pain, otherwise the suffering of other things seemed insignificant. That is war however, and this tells us a lot about the thought process of a person placed under the duress of such events.
If you are interested in the Vietnam conflict, he offers some facts and insight that I did not know before. Perhaps, also, a validating look back at a man's participation in one of the sore spots of American history.
I read the book in just two days and it move quickly with a certain flair that makes the chapters fly by. He is the hero of the novel and those people he liked are strong characters and those he does not are very weak, superficial almost, some become even nameless. The only thing that troubled me was the way death seemed so easy, from the torturing of rats to the death of the Vietnamese "strikers", who were confederates of theirs, they seemed to not matter. His friends death caused him great pain, otherwise the suffering of other things seemed insignificant. That is war however, and this tells us a lot about the thought process of a person placed under the duress of such events.
If you are interested in the Vietnam conflict, he offers some facts and insight that I did not know before. Perhaps, also, a validating look back at a man's participation in one of the sore spots of American history.
December 30, 2012
An honest account of the Vietnam war, this work is tightly focused on the author's individual experience - on the war he saw, the war he fought, while a member of a Special Forces team in A107 Tra Bong. This narrow focus and the author's simple but graphic style give this work an authenticity that truly puts the reader back into that time and place, physically and emotionally - and places him there with real people. The author's descriptions of the men with whom he served, both American and Vietnamese, the flawed and the heroic, are masterful; the individuals unforgettable. And the work is completely free of any political agenda, free of any partisan interpretation. It is simply an objective account of a tiny piece of the war - the experience of one man on the ground in 1966 - at a time when both the war and the author were young. As such, it is also the Bildungsroman of a remarkably sensitive individual, one of the many quiet heroes of that war. I recommend it highly for anyone wanting to feel the Vietnam War, to smell it, to taste it, to know what fear is - especially for anyone who wants to know the significance of the term 'brothers-in-arms'.
January 25, 2016
When We Walked Above the Clouds: A Memoir of Vietnam by H. Lee Barnes (University of Nebraska Press 2011)(959.704) is an exceptionally well-written memoir of one man's experiences during the Vietnam war. The author acknowledges that he was in a rural backwater in the field and does not claim to have participated in any famous battles, but that makes his story all the more real and appealing. This book is a must read for students of history and war. My rating: 7.5/10, finished 5/26/12.
March 9, 2012
Not bad. Very mundane but I believe that was the author's intent, to show the other side of serving in Nam, that not every second was bullets flying. Well written.
March 11, 2012
I enjoyed this book. I believe the author painted a truer picture of the real Vietnam conflict.
February 5, 2014
Very good first-person book on the Vietnam War. Explained things well without getting to preachy.
September 16, 2016
Boring, no action
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews