Guns Up!: A Firsthand Account of the Vietnam War

Guns Up! is a red-blooded war memoir by a Marine machine gunner. Clark's war was ugly: arriving in-country just after the Tet offensive, he marched through minefields, terrible weather, and endless jungle and mountain patrols. The big M60 that he carried was a life-saver for the squad, but the stream of orange tracers guaranteed return fire, and machine gunners reportedly had a 7.5 second life expectancy in combat (I want to know which RAND analyst figured that out, and who told the grunts.) There's battles, ambushes, and all the stock characters of war. Do the Marines issue giant guys named Red, taciturn Indians, and Boston snobs at a rate of one per platoon? What makes Guns Up! exceptional is the friendship between Clark and his show more alphabetical buddy since bootcamp, Richard Chan, a brilliant and devout Chinese-American who serves as a kind of moral center in an amoral universe.

This isn't Dispatches or Where the Rivers Ran Backward, and Clark tells his story directly. One thing that stands out is that combat troops were used hard: Clark is either in the field or in the hospital. He lost 40 pounds in six months, from marching, stress, and bad food. His interactions with the country were entirely through gunsights. Friends die or are seriously injured and replaced with boots, and the squad keeps going on after objectives that don't change the course of the war. Authority, such as it is, are corporals and rumors over the radio net about what the rest of the battalion is up to.

This book is also robustly Christian, and Clark is very upfront that Jesus saved his life; page 58 is where his Bible stops a shard of shrapnel from hitting his heart. This leads him to censor some of the language, but not the stories. Sam the Blooper Man carves numbers into NVA dead and carries a dried ear on his helmet. ARVN break under a night assault and get gunned down by the Marines. The squad almost gang rapes a dying NVA nurse. Somehow, the macho Christianity works. show less

Johnnie Clark's memoir of his time as a marine heavy gunner in Vietnam, a job that he is told has a life expectancy of seven seconds once a fire-fight begins. The book covers the period from his first arrival in country to the time he is shipped back to the world. My edition also included a new epilogue where Johnnie discusses what happened to his squad mates (the ones he was able to track down) after the war.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the writing. Clark has a very smooth and natural writing style that gives the feeling of reading a page turner. Yet it never feels like he is skimping on the details. He is very good at working facts in to the narrative, so you never feel lost even if you know nothing about the Vietnam war. It show more helps that it starts with Johnnie as a 'boot' just arrived from boot camp.We learn the ropes along with him.

The author is a very religious man, which resulted in a couple of... I don't know... quirks I guess. First, the book has been scrubbed of cursing. There is some 'rough language' in the book, but nothing that couldn't pass in a PG movie. It was strange never to hear marines swear, but it didn't in any way harm the book. He did use the word 'fag' a lot, which I disliked, but after all, it is his memoir and it was a different time. I won't knock the book for it.

The book also had quite a bit of proselytizing. Johnnie is a Christian, so a bit was to be expected, but there were a couple of times where it intruded on the narrative. If this were a fiction book, that would be a fault, but since this is a non-fiction, first person account I can let it slide.

I do give Johnnie credit for not whitewashing his own actions in Nam. He was willing to admit when he was scared and fesses up to some embarrassing actions that it would have been just as easy to cover up. These admissions make everything else much more believable and made him a more trustworthy narrator to me.

Also, though I mentioned that the language was sanitized, nothing else is. He describes the violence and gore of the war in a plain, straight-forward manner. He is not trying to glorify war or the horrors the soldiers on both sides endured. Not everything the soldiers did over there was honorable and he doesn't shy away from that. He describes in detail the unbearable heat, the jungle diseases, the tension of laying in the mud, preparing an ambush, only to have a snake slide across your neck right when you should fire.

This book is a required read in some schools and I can see why. I got from it what I was hoping: a detailed account of a grunt marine's time in Vietnam. That it was well written and engaging was a pleasant surprise. show less

A book which I hadn't heard of beforehand but was well written and told a fast paced story of a 17yr old's Vietnam tour of duty. Humorous, tragic and detailed with excellent dialogue, this book about US Marines in I Corp is somewhat jargon filled but there is a glossary at the end. I've learned a lot about Life from Vietnam memoirs. This is a good one. Clark was an infantryman carrying an M-60 machine gun. Not enamored with the Green Berets or the rear echelon troops, or the 101st, Clark does not hold back on the Marine culture either. I wanted the book to be longer but it was sad enough at its current length. There was an interesting squad member of Clark's named Chan who provides a biblical perspective on life and war. This is unusual show more for a Vietnam memoir. show less

A gritty, page turner that follows Clark on his tour with the 5th Marines as an M60 machine gunner. He fought through he 1968 Tet Offensive and was wounded three times. Told when he first arrived that he would survive as a gunner for 7 and a half seconds in his first fire fight because gunners were prime targets for the enemy, he managed to make it through many such moments.

First rate story of a young man's encounter with war and how it changes him.

Guns up!" was the battle cry that sent machine gunners racing forward with their M60s to mow down the enemy, hoping that this wasn't the day they would meet their deaths. Marine Johnnie Clark heard that the life expectancy of a machine gunner in Vietnam was seven to ten seconds after a firefight began. Johnnie was only eighteen when he got there, at the height of the bloody Tet Offensive at Hue, and he quickly realized the grim statistic held a chilling truth.

The Marines who fought and bled and died were ordinary men, many still teenagers, but the selfless bravery they showed day after day in a nightmarish jungle war made them true heroes. This new edition of Guns Up!, filled with photographs and updated information about those show more harrowing battles, also contains the real names of these extraordinary warriors and details of their lives after the war. The book's continuing success is a tribute to the raw courage and sacrifice of the United States Marines. show less