The Huffington Post

January 14, 1967 / Saigon

Dear Alicia,

This war in Vietnam is very confusing not only to old war watchers but to people at home who read and try to understand. It is mainly difficult because of our preconceptions accumulated over several thousand years. This war is not like any we have ever been involved in. I’ll try to tell you some of the points of difference as I have observed them.

It was easy to report wars of movement, places taken and held or lost, lines established and clear, troops confronting each other in force and fighting until one side or the other lost. Big battles are conceivable, can be reported like a bullfight. You could see if only on a map all previous wars—on one side of a line our friends, on the other our enemies. Vietnam is not like that at all and I wonder whether it can be described. Maybe the inability to communicate its quality is the reason for the discontent and frustration of the press corps here. Many of the fine reporters here understand this war, but their readers don’t and often their editors demand the kind of war they are used to and comfortable with.

Maybe I can’t tell you what it is like, Alicia, but I’m going to try so you can feel it. It’s a feeling war with no fronts and no rear. It is every where like a thin ever-present gas. I am writing this in a comfortable hotel room in Saigon, which was once a beautiful city and now has a worn and sagging look like a worn-out suit that once was well tailored. And the war is here—in the street below, on the roofs, always present. When I leave my wife here and go out to the hard-bitten sandbag redoubts in the countryside, she is in as much danger as I am and per haps in more because I am armed with alertness while she, walking in a civilized street to post a letter, may run into a murderous exchange of fire.

—John Steinbeck’s Letter From Vietnam