Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War

“I’d never been to Europe, but in Mỹ Tho I could almost imagine myself there. And that was the whole point. The French had made the town like this so they could imagine themselves in France. The illusion was just about perfect, except for all the Vietnamese.”

The town is an interesting symbol in the novel, and this is in part why—it functions as a representation of colonial power in the area. There is something fundamentally interesting about taking control of a country only to try to make it look like your own.

“All of [the Vietnamese officers] were political intriguers; they had to be in order to receive promotion and command. Their wages were too low to live on because it was assumed they’d be stealing, so they stole. They were punished for losing men in battle, therefore they avoided battle.”

Wolff frequently returns to notions of truth, and here he questions the way such truths are fulfilled. In this case, the officers are expected to misbehave, so they do, which reinforces the expectation.

“Your version of reality might not tally with the stats or the map or the after-action report, but it was the reality you lived in, that would live on in you through the years ahead, and become the story by which you remembered all that you had seen, and done, and been.”

As with the above, Wolff questions the official view of the war compared to his experience on the ground. The history of war since the era of the photograph has been one of competition for narrative. This instance is one small way in which that manifests for those involved in the battle.