Vietnam Zippos

"We are the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful" --from an engraving on a Vietnam-era Zippo lighter. In 1965, journalist Morley Safer followed the United States Marines on a search and destroy mission into Cam Ne. When the Marines he accompanied reached the village, they ordered the civilians there to evacuate their homes--grass huts whose thatched roofs they set ablaze with Zippo lighters. Safer's report on the event soon aired on CBS and was among the first to paint a harrowing portrait of the war in Vietnam. LBJ responded to the segment furiously, accusing Safer of having "shat on the American flag." For the first time since World War II, American boys in uniform had been portrayed as murderers instead of liberators. Our perception of the war--and the Zippo lighter--would never be the same. But as this stunning book attests, the Zippo was far more than an instrument of death and destruction.