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by Patrick Mooney
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by Richard Harris
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by Renee Taylor
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by John Wesley Howard
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13th Valley, The
by John Del Vecchio
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Bantam (1984-11-01)
ISBN: 0553260200
EAN: 9780553260205
Dewy Decimal #: 813.54
Mass Market Paperback
Release Date: 1984-11-01
SKU: mon0000022728
Condition: Good
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
A work that has served as a literary cornerstone for the Vietnam generation, The 13th Valley follows the strange and terrifying Vietnam combat experiences of James Chelini, a telephone-systems installer who finds himself an infantryman in territory controlled by the North Vietnamese Army. Spiraling deeper and deeper into a world of conflict and darkness, this harrowing account of Chelini's plunge and immersion into jungle warfare traces his evolution from a semipacifist to an all-out warmonger.
The seminal novel on the Vietnam experience, The 13th Valley is a classic that illuminates the war in Southeast Asia like no other book.
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Customer Reviews
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A GI's Harrowing Baptism by Fire
Rating  (5)
Date: 2007-04-19
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I'm working on my next novel at the moment, to be based in Vietnam around Tet 1968. Part of the writing process requires reading everything you can find within the genre. I've amassed quite a stack of them so far, but this one was a standout. Move over Caputo and O'Brien; make room for John M. Del Vecchio!
This book sandwiches a profound lecture series on war and the nature of man inside the story of a young GI's baptism by fire as he is sent to Alpha Company, 7/402 (101st ABN) for Operation Texas Star in the Khe Ta Laou Valley (Aug 1970). Trained as a wireman, James 'Cherry' Chellini, is placed in an infantry rifleman slot as the platoon radio telephone operator--nice touch of realism there--classic army bureaucracy at work. Nevertheless he soon adapts to the needs of jungle warfare and proves himself to be a stand-up guy in the unit. Taking a newbie through 'school' as he did was a real stroke of genius on Del Vecchio's part. The reader benefits from an immense amount of detail about combat in Vietnam. There is so much detail that the book, though fiction, could have benefited from an index. I found myself sticky-noting page after page so I could retrieve the 'good stuff' later on.
The lecture series on the nature of man and war, though deft, was still a bit of a force-fit into the story. The usual best-practice of novelists is to camouflage the message within the storyline such that the reader is forced to decipher the meaning on his own. Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" is a fine example of that technique. Alas, that mainly works when the message can be reduced to a one-liner. When the message is complex, e.g., Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath", one or more of the characters has to resort to soap-boxing. Del Vecchio achieves this by having several members of the company assume intelligence, education, and introspective power way in excess of what one would normally encounter in a rifle company. The whispered conversations at the company CP seemed more the work of Alexis d'Toqueville and Benjamin Franklin than a bunch of boonierats suffering from sleep deprivation. Even though this was an obvious plot device, it was a forgivable one. There was enough material there for a fine non-fiction book, but the issue then is who would read it? Del Vecchio was targeting a less erudite crowd, the ones more likely to enlist rather than run for office, the future rifle bearers rather than the policy makers.
This is by no means to say that GIs are dumb. They have a pragmatic creative intelligence that exceeds that of the best academics. I'm still blown away by Egan's vichyssoise, beef béarnaise, and peaches over pound cake--all concocted with C-rations and a lump of C4. Brooks' jungle warfare tactics were also evidence of that intelligence. Small unit infantry tactics tend to be simple in the field manual, but they become complex in their field application, especially when under the duress of fatigue, dehydration, and the demoralizing pain of watching one's body rot away from leeches, mosquitoes, flies, ants, hostile plants and fungi. Then there's the realization that this is a high stakes game of 'keepsies'. When your buddy takes a round through the neck, he dies--there's no do-over.
This was a phenomenal story. I can easily see why reticent Vietnam vets refer their questioners to "The 13th Valley" for a true 'what-it-was-really-like' experience.
--Ejner Fulsang, author of "A Knavish Piece of Work", Aarhus Publishing, 2006
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Why I keep buying this book...
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-04-12
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
In 1989 when I was dating my husband who was a Vietnam Vet, I asked him what it was like in Vietnam. Like other vets from that war, he was very close-mouthed about the subject.
He thought a moment, then said: "If you really want to know what it was like to live through this war, you need to read THE 13th VALLEY by Del Vecchio. It is the best book (fiction or non-fiction) that describes the war. He was there."
I read it. I loaned it to my friends. I bought three copies for myself and many more for my friends.
If YOU want to understand what happened in Vietnam, you need to read this book
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Been there, did it, done it.
Rating  (4)
Date: 2006-10-01
3 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I read this book in 1986. The story take please only a short time after I returned home from Vietnam, 101st Airborne. Maybe I enjoyed this book more than others because the story took place in the area of operations where I also served as an infantry squad leader. I could see the trails, smell the jungle, and see the places he described as I read this book. I was misappointed with the ending, not everyone who served in Vietnam died there, some heroes did come home. I did feel the pain of Egan's death, or maybe I was just reliving the deaths of my friends who died in July 1970.
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War as it should be told
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-08-03
6 out of 8 customers found this reveiw helpful
I served in the army myself and although i haven't expirienced war myself i expirienced a lot during my service in the IDF.
This book takes you inside the heads and lives of the grunts who went through the hell of vietnam. The figures changes during the story and you learn more and more of them, feeling like you are walking in the jungles by them.
Someone told me this was a "hard book to read" and i didn't know what he'd meant until i finished it. this is one of my favorite books and almost the only one i've read more than once.
a must for anyone interested in the vietnam war.
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Moving . . . A novel that stays with you
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-07-20
14 out of 14 customers found this reveiw helpful
I have read many military fiction and non-fiction books and none I have encountered present a more poignant and lucid picture of war. The characters are wonderfully brought to life.
It does a fantastic job of illustrating the experience of jungle warfare (and all the horror it entails). The march of the "boonie-rats" through the valley is exciting and described in magnificent detail. You really feel that you are marching along with them. The battles are vivid and intense.
It is also a touching love story with keen insight on romantic relationships.
Most importantly, it attempts to answer the philosophical question of how and why familial/racial/global conflict happens. It does this in a brilliant way and comes up with some TRULY FASCINATING ideas.
Read James Webb's "Fields of Fire" for another illuminating account of the Vietnam war.
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