Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War

Wolff’s memoir opens with him and Sergeant Benet bearing down on what appears to be a bicycle accident on the road; despite honking his horn, the villagers remain in the middle of the road. Wolff does not slow down, so the villagers jump out of the way; he runs the bicycles over with his truck. Sergeant Benet tells him what a shame it was, and Wolff notes that while, months earlier, he would have stopped, no one stops anymore—between mines and snipers, soldiers drive fast and keep driving whenever possible.

Wolff has learned that, despite the U.S. Army’s insistence that “If you do everything right, you’ll make it home” (5), being a good soldier seemed to have little to do with whether someone dies. As a result, soldiers rely on luck and superstition, such as the pocket watch Wolff carries—given to him by his fiancée—or the sandbags he places on the truck’s floor before he drives anywhere.

Wolff is stationed in a relatively peaceful part of Vietnam: the Delta in the south. The north is where the heaviest fighting is taking place. Most of the enemies the Army soldiers face in the Delta are local guerillas who aim to terrorize the soldiers and pick off a few here or there rather than score big hits.