A Rumor of War A Rumor of War is a 1977 memoir by Philip Caputo about his service in the United States Marine Corps ( USMC ) in the early years of the Vietnam War . Summary . In the foreword , the author states his purpose for writing this book . He makes clear this is not a history book , nor is it a historical accusation . The author states that his book is a story about war , based on a personal experience . The book is divided into three parts . The first section , " The Splendid Little War " , describes Lieutenant Philip Caputo ' s personal reasons for joining the USMC , the training that followed , and his eventual arrival to Vietnam . Lt . Caputo was a member of the 9th Expeditionary Brigade of the USMC , the first American regular troops unit sent to take part in the Vietnam War . He arrived on March 8 , 1965 , and his early experiences reminded him of the colonial wars portrayed by Rudyard Kipling . The 9th Expeditionary Brigade was deployed to Da Nang , formerly Tourane , on a " merely defensive " condition , primarily to set a perimeter around an airstrip that ensured arrival and departure of military goods and personnel . The first skirmishes against the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong made it clear to Lt . Caputo and his comrades that their earlier impression about Vietnam war as small and unimportant are all wrong . In the second part of the book , " The Officer in Charge of the Dead " , Lt . Caputo is reassigned from his rifle company to a desk job documenting casualties . His new position in the Joint Staff of the brigade was a change that did not suit him , because he was proud of his rifle company duties and had a certain desire to return to basic infantry command . This distance from the Main Line of Resistance gave Lt . Caputo a different perspective of the conflict . Lt . Caputo described senior officers as being more worried about trivial matters than strategy . For example : movies being played in the open at night , risking potentially devastating mortar attacks . Lt . Caputo also witnessed enemy corpses being treasured as hunting trophies , and shown off to generals . He also describes American corpses carrying evidence of Viet Cong torture . In the third part , " In Death ' s Grey Land , " Lt . Caputo is reassigned to a rifle company . He describes the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong as fierce and skilled fighters and as having earned the grudging respect of American soldiers . Lt . Caputo describes his fellow Marines as having stopped wishing for epic , World War II - style battles ; they had learned to detect boobytrap s , to counter - snipe , and to comb the jungle in search of enemy bunkers and their rations . Lt . Caputo took part in these operations , until troops under his command miscarried orders and shot two suspects deliberately . Lt . Caputo assumed full responsibility for the incident and faced a court - martial . Eventually , he was relieved of his command and the charges were dropped . Lt . Caputo was then reassigned to a training camp in North Carolina and eventually received an honorable discharge from the service . In the Epilogue , almost ten years after the end of his tour of duty , Philip Caputo returned to Vietnam as a war journalist for a newspaper . Old memories of his war experiences and his comrades flood his mind as he witnesses the fall of Saigon to the troops of North Vietnam . Caputo left Vietnam on April 29 , 1975 . A postscript published in 1996 details some of the anxieties Caputo experienced while writing the memoir , and the difficulties he had handling his fame and notoriety after its publication . 1980 TV Miniseries . Caputo ' s book was filmed as " A Rumor of War " at Camp Pendleton and Churubusco Studios , Mexico with a cast featuring Brad Davis , Brian Dennehy , Keith Carradine , Michael O ' Keefe , and Christopher Mitchum . Praise For Book . “ Caputo ’ s troubled , searching meditations on the love and hate of war , on fear , and the ambivalent discord warfare can create in the hearts of decent men , are among the most eloquent I have read in modern literature . ” — William Styron , The New York Review of Books