Robert A. Anderson s first Vietnam

War novel, Cooks and Bakers, was

described as "a tough-minded report from

hell." With the publication of Service for

the Dead, Anderson, a former Marine lieu-

tenant who served at Hue during the Tet

Offensive, demonstrates once again that

he is a compelling narrator of men at war.

On his way home from Vietnam after

having been wounded, and newly immersed

in a civilian reality that seems trivial, marine

Pfc. Mike Allison tries to make sense of

his Vietnam nightmare. In the back seat of

his parents car he drifts in and out of

memories of the war: the terror of random

death; endless patrols; the booby-trapped

landscape; seemingly friendly Vietnamese

who harbor Viet Cong; memories...dreams

...nightmares.

Mike and the men in his platoon make

dream and reality interchangeable as the

only way to make sense of the senseless,

cryptic war. In a desperate attempt to con-

trol what is beyond their control, they

create alternate realities of everything

around them. Their company headquarters

becomes the Fort, the no-man s land they

patrol--and die in--Frontierland, their

two sharp-shooting adversaries Zorro and

the Cisco Kid--and the war itself a movie

in which they are actors.

But Mike and his platoon mates also

create alternate realities of themselves.

Longo, their fire team leader, gives each of

them a nickname that mirrors in a cockeyed

way their true selves: Pogo, the court jester,

speaks wisdom foolishly; Candid Camera,

the voyeur, delights in photographing every-

thing, including the dead; the Professor,