Monday, Nov. 23, 1970

Duncan's Viet Nam

Thanks to TV, no war in history has become so commonplace, so visually familiar as the Viet Nam War. To the living-room audience, the war is green (jungle, helicopters, uniforms) and red (blood). It is endless patrols by faceless men up numberless hills. The enemy are small, expressionless men crouching on the ground with their elbows tied behind their backs or shrunken heaps of black rags lying motionless on the ground. It would seem that there is nothing more to learn from another look at the warnothing, that is, until a first-rate photographer puts together a collection of black and white pictures.

Photographer David Douglas Duncan, whose War Without Heroes was published last week (Harper & Row; 252 pages; $14.95), has managed to recapture the war in all its grisly tedium. Looking deceptively like a cocktail-table art book, Duncan's gloom-shrouded pictures of American fighting men are packed more with fatigue than fight. There are no heroic actions; men shave, take muddy baths, clean up after shellbursts, write letters, stare vacantly at absolutely nothing while waiting for the next pointless action. The photographs have the stink of death, the feel of futility and, on any cocktail table, far surpass alcohol as a depressant.

Duncan, who was with the Marines in World War II and later covered the Korean War for LIFE, says in his foreword: "I wanted to show what war does to a man . . . I wanted to tell a story of war, as war has always been for men. Only their weapons, the terrain, the causes have changed." Duncan is not sure about just what cause the U.S. is pursuing in Viet Nam, but he considers the conflict to be "the greatest American tragedy since the Civil War." He salutes the individual American fighting men for their courage, generosity, simplicity of language and "responsibility to their comrades, convictions and pride."

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