This is a wise, dryly humorous, and perfectly conceived novel about a man during the years of the Vietnam War.

The protagonist leaves college to enlist in the army and is sent to Southeast Asia. He is a man curiously beset by small cares. He worries about his teeth. Venereal disease may cost him his combat tour, so he endures it in silence. His stoicism rewarded, he is like a passive observer in the mire of Vietnam, in bureaucracy and battle, in the depths of callousness and fear.

When sent on a mission at last, he commits the most barbarous (or the most honorable) act possible in the war. War: games? honor? duty? reality? The answers he finds—surprising even to himself—are revealed in a succession of events which force him toward a crisis of decision. His response to the crisis may well be a definitive comment on the modern situation.