Gustav Hasford's novel The Short-Timers (1979) is a violent, often savage account of the early days of the Tet Offensive and later of the embattled marine forces at Khe sanh, near the Laotian border. The events are narrated by an enlisted marine named Joker (most of the characters are referred to by their nicknames), whose story begins with a detailed description of the marine boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. The aim of boot camp is to turn the raw recruits into killing machines; an important part of that process is to have the recruit "fall in love with his weapon." This section concludes with an incident illustrating the tragic consequences of such training. The novel proper begins with Tet attacks on January 31. Joker, already a seasoned veteran, is assigned as a combat correspondent for the official marine paper to a squad fighting in the street-by-street battle for the recovery of Hue, which had been lost in the first night of the offensive.

In a grippingly realistic, emblematic scene, a North Vietnamese sniper fires on the squad from a group of abandoned buildings. The marines enlist the aid of a nearby tank, which proceeds to demolish the buildings, while the squad searches in the rubble for the sniper. Joker runs across the sniper and, in a split-second recognition, sees that she is a young girl, about 15, but "with the eyes of a grunt." (Grunt is respectful military slang for a seasoned combat soldier of any army.) She is immediately shot by the squad, and as she lays dying in agony, Joker kills her out of pity. But the mercy killing sets off a chain reaction among the squad, as each one, vying for the title of "most hard," proceeds to dismember the body. The scene gruesomely recapitulates the entire Vietnam experience: the enormous overkill, using massive, destructive weaponry on small targets; the laying waste of a once beautiful place (Hue had been the ancient capital of the country, the site of the old imperial palace with priceless treasures); and the dehumanizing impact on those involved in the fighting.

Dehumanization, in fact, is the major focus of the novel. As Joker explains when asked for advice by a close buddy, "That sounds like a personal problem to me, Cowboy. I can't tell you what to do. If I was a human being instead of a marine, maybe I'd know." This quotation offers a fair sampling of the complex, comedic character of Joker. In many of his actions, he is just a "marine," a killing machine--referring to the napalmed bodies in Hue as "crispy critters," killing an old Vietnamese farmer because the man looked at him sympathetically. He is a true grunt, but he is also someone struggling to make sense of what happens to him. His is the controlling consciousness of the novel, and in his awareness of who he is, we come to see him as a victim of Vietnam. The term short-timers refers to those who have only a short time to serve before being rotated back home. Most of the members of Joker's squad are short-timers, but he realizes that "home won't be there anymore and we won't be there either. Upon each of us the war has lodged itself, a black crab feeding."

In 1987, Stanley Kubrick adapted the novel for the screen, with a screenplay by Hasford, Kubrick, and Michael Herr. The result, Full Metal Jacket, is generally regarded as among the finest films of the Vietnam War.

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