Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War

Sergeant Benet is Wolff’s second-in-command and more or less his only companion while in Vietnam, as the pair is stationed with a Vietnamese battalion while most of the American troops are up the road at Dong Tam. Benet is an experienced soldier, for which Wolff is immensely grateful given his own inadequacies; Wolff recognizes that despite his own higher rank, he would not have gotten through his time in Vietnam without Benet’s aid and expertise. Aside from this expertise, Benet is a consummate professional—he defers to Wolff even when he knows better, and he maintains professional distance, understanding the necessity of it given their roles, even though Wolff tries to build a friendship with him.

Pierce is a friend Wolff makes while going through training; the two are from the same area and share a nihilistic, jocular sensibility about their experiences. They grow close very quickly; however, Pierce is shipped off to Vietnam before Wolff’s tour and dies in action, which Wolff learns while in D.C. for language school. Wolff closes the book by memorializing Pierce, acknowledging that he often thinks about his friend in terms of what he was never able to do and attempts to reflect upon Pierce as he had been in life. 

This is another friend of Wolff’s from training. Both Hoffman and Wolff share a love of literature and want to become writers following the war. However, Hoffman’s father is a powerful, well-known engineer who vehemently disapproves of the war. On the day they are meant to ship out, Hoffman deserts. 

Wolff meets Landon, a Foreign Service Officer, during language training school. Landon is a few years older, highly educated, and well-to-do; as Wolff describes him, he was learning Vietnamese poetry while everyone else was struggling to make sense of the grammar. The two stay in touch, and Wolff frequently visits Landon at his villa in Saigon, looking up to him and enjoying the time they spend together. However, it becomes clear that Landon’s charisma masks his desire to wield his station over people; the two fall out after Landon tries to get Wolff transferred to the North (so he can see some real fighting) without bothering to clear it with Wolff first. 

Wolff’s father—referred to only once as Duke late in the book—is largely estranged from him throughout this narrative. However, Duke plays a significant role in Wolff’s life, as Wolff constantly rethinks his relationship with his father and enters the military in part to avoid ending up like him—a con man who, at the start of the book, is serving a prison sentence in California. Wolff visits his father prior to leaving for Vietnam, but the meeting doesn’t go well, in part because of their uncertainty about one another and their own insecurities. When he returns from Vietnam, though, he spends some time living with his father, and they are able to get along better.