The Phantom Blooper

Capital Punishment for Library Voloations!

Bernie Weisz's review of "The Phantom Blooper" by Gustav Hasford 10/15/10 BernWei1@aol.com

In reading Gustav Hansford's "The Phantom Blooper", as a historian my gist was to extract any parallels to reality that occurred in the quaqmire of America's debacle in Vietnam. While finding that out and much more, I also discovered how much of an enigma Hustav Hansford truly was. Born November 28th, 1947 in Russellville, Alabama, Hansford was a U.S. Marine and served as a combat correspondent in Vietnam. He wrote a semi-autobiographical novel after the war The Short-Timers which was later made into a best selling movie Full Metal Jacket. Authored by director Stanley Kubrick , and writer Michael Herr, who wrote "Dispatches" as well as Hansford, it was nominated for an Academy Award. Ultimately, Hansford's contributions became a point of contention between the three, and Hasford abstained from attending the Oscar Awards.

Two years before Hasford authored "The Phantom Blooper", he was arrested in San Luis Obispo, California for stealing almost 800 books across the U.S. and Great Britain. He was accused of having "bibliophilia", an obsessive-compulsive disorder that centers on the collecting and acquiring of books to the point where social relations are ignored and health declines. Books are pursued by the sufferer of this psychological condition to the point where they are not to be admired or read, but simply to be obsessively possessed. Hansford's defense at his trial, costing over $20,000, was that he had "borrowed" the missing books to serve as the basis for an ultimately never published book on the U.S. Civil War. He was sentenced to half a year in jail, of which he served 90 days and vowed to pay fines derived from the royalties that resulted from future sales of "The Phantom Blooper", published in February, 1990.

Hansford did write a final novel, "A Gypsy Good Time" which was a detective story set in Los Angeles and was published in 1992. This book was barely noticed and with Hasford's health rapidly declining from the debilitating effects of diabetes, he moved to Aegina, a small island off the coast of Greece where he eventually died of heart failure on January 29, 1993.

Where Hasford 's first book was semi-autobiographical and centered on the "making of an American soldier", the second one, "The Phantom Blooper" showed the reverse, e.g. "the unmaking". It followed a theme of defection from the U.S. Military, capture by the Viet Cong, assimilation and ultimately identification with the enemy, which actually occurred in the celebrated case of Robert Garwood. It also concluded with alienation, depersonalization and P.T.S.D., which commonly most Vietnam Vets faced upon returning from S.E. Asia. See Herbert Hendin's "Wounds of War: The Psychological Aftermath of Combat in Vietnam"

The book is clearly against the war, as in Hasford's dedication he pulled no punches and dedicated it to "the 3 million veterans of the Vietnam War who were betrayed by their country". Hasford also made many allegations within the pages, as in the beginning he wrote that the 40,000 Communist attackers of the besieged and later abandoned base at Khe Sanh were able to do "human wave" kamikaze charges against the Americans because they were "opium crazed". Hasford also validly pointed out that during the Vietnam War, the U.S. ruled the land, but "when the day turns black and the sun goes down, everything beyond our wire is overrun by the Viet Cong. Every time the sun goes down, we lose the war". Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There Hasford wrote the chilling comment about combat there as: "In Viet Nam nice guys do not finish at all and monsters live forever"

As with most memoirs, all U.S. troops in the field served a 1 year tour, and it was the "F.N.G" (the new guy") that seasoned troops were leery of. 365 Days Hasford wrote of them: "You've got to keep New Guys alive until they realize that we're not going to win this war, which usually takes about a week." Hasford also touched on corruption, prostitution and the black market that went on during the war, especially with the the paradigm of a G.I. trading a truck full of hand grenades for heroin. Before the capture of the protagonist of his story, "Joker", Hasford clearly maintained in the storyline about the enemy: "We can kill them, sometimes, but we are never going to beat them. All Viet Cong farmers are press-ganged at the point of a gun, brainwashed and shot full of heroin. The V.C. have magic powers which allow them to sink into the soil and disappear. Hasford had an interesting way of explaining why the war was not winnable. After "the Tet Offensive", 1969 brought the highest "death toll" of U.S. combat troops in a single year. R.F.K. and Martin Luther King were assassinated, L.B.J. declined to run again for a 2nd term and the American public lost their patience with the nightly K.I.A tallies and unfulfilled promises of there being "light at the end of the tunnel" for a successful conclusion to the war in S.E. Asia. In "The Phantom Blooper", after his protagonist was captured by the V.C. and planned his escape, Hasford wrote of "Joker" in trying to feign assimilation into the V.C. and plot his escape back to U.S. forces: ""In the jungle, without weapons or food, I'll die. I must wait patiently to be a genuine defector or they will ship me away to the Hanoi Hilton. If I've learned anything from these people, it is the power of patience." Clearly, the false perception of winning the Vietnam War through enemy attrition would never work, according to Hasford. Ultimately, this proved to be on target. Unlike the Oriental mentality, Western patience with American involvement in Vietnam was at it's end.

Hasford concluded this book with very painful issues, such as America's attempt to deny "Vietnam Veterans Against The War" the right to express their indignation of this country's conduct in the war, their sense of betrayal, and how in some cases Vets were seen as drug crazed baby killers and psychopaths. Issues such as losing one's family, unemployment, and disgust at insincere "K.I.A. condolence letters" written to family members of the deceased are all addressed. It is interesting to note that as this was true in many cases, Gustav's protagonist was embarrassed to be home after military separation, considered himself a killer, and was homesick for the adrenalin that only the rush of Vietnan would provide and cure. It is interesting that Hansford has "Joker" assert at the end of the book: "I'm not even 21 years old and I've killed more than Billy the Kid". Clearly, this novel is a book that between the covers will teach the reader more about what went on in Vietnam over 40 years ago than most history books combined will inculcate.