War Story

Part I

When the war came we all left home. Some of us joined the army and went to Vietnam. Some of us stayed in college and went to law school. Some of us went to Canada or stayed hidden away in the cracks. Most of us came back, but we were not the same as before. Some of us left and never came back. The war changed everything for all of us. Along the way we found out that the dead don’t change.

My friend Ira and I dreamt of glory and death while we played war. When we were six, seven years old we saved the world from under the dining room table. I carried the Republican flag south of Teruel; he died in a hail of Franco’s fascist fire. No Passerans! we said to anyone who would listen.

Ira and I held the line in the snow at Bastogne; we stormed ashore at Tarawa, died inside at the gates of Buchenwald. We rode with Stonewall Jackson at Fredericksburg and Teddy Roosevelt on San Juan Hill.

We died with glory; we killed for peace. We were American sons of American fathers who had taught us what we needed to know. We made the world safe for democracy, safe for truth, justice and the American Way in 1953.

I was playing pool in an upstate bar — Swat’s, it was called — when an old man started in on me about the hair and the beads and the music. Grow up boy, it’s a man’s world, that’s the way it is, that’s the way it always has been, always would be…men go to war, and just who the hell was I to think I had the right to change that.

I felt like I always felt in those days, like I was nowhere, like I was no one who mattered much. Like I was just so much cannon fodder.

“Eight ball in the side pocket,” I said.

I saw Ira again in March of 1968. We were on a green Army bus at 5 a.m. We were on our way to Fort Hamilton to take our draft physicals. The draft call was 68,000 that month, the largest of the Vietnam war. The bus was crowded, but we recognized each other. We didn’t speak. There wasn’t much to say. No one was saying much of anything.

It was the first day of the rest of our lives.

Ira and I went through the physical together. We shared a laugh at the absurd quality of it, the glimpse of things to come. There were the screamers and the raving fags, the fierce warriors ready to die for God and country. These were the same guys who were sharing piss for the urine test because they couldn’t piss in public.

A platoon of sergeants carried us forward, yelling, berating, full of disgust, hurrying us from station to station so we could stand in line. After the first couple of hours most everyone was talking about the war and how this physical really sucked.

Some were ready to fight because that’s what you did or their fathers did or because the Judge said so. Most of us were there because our time had run out. Before anything else could happen in our lives, we needed to deal with this thing; with this long, dreaded, morning.

We were odd companions, full of false pride and bravado. We didn’t know it at the time but we were very young and very scared. Six hours later we got back on the bus.

Ira and I got off the bus in front of the Draft Board and stood in the freezing rain. After awhile, we shrugged and said good luck. He got into a yellow Valiant and drove west along Flushing Boulevard. It was 11 a.m.

I went home and packed my things. I called Susie Hoffman, a college friend who was living in the city. We got together and started to drink. Eventually, we tried to have sex. She was uncertain, almost unwilling, like she always was with me. I was too drunk to care. We drank until there was no more whiskey, no more cocaine, no more time. We were not friends when we said goodbye.

I left for Canada in the morning. I planned on staying there a short time and taking things as they came. Thirty-three years later I came home.

Part II

I was in Washington last Christmas Week and I made it a point to go to the Vietnam Memorial at sunrise. I thought it would bring some resolution, some closure. Maybe I was looking for absolution.

Red was patrolling the Wall when I got there. “Name is Red on account of I got all this red hair, you see,” he said when he introduced himself. He was nearly bald, but he could smile.

We started talking.

He told me he would have gone to Canada…too.

Instead, he did three tours in-country. Now he has PTSD and is a retired firefighter in treatment.

Could he help me find what I was looking for, he asked?

I told him I was counting off 12 weeks of basic, then maybe a couple of weeks of leave and then some time to get assigned in-country, say, October ’68. Then I added in 13 months, the standard Vietnam tour of duty. I told him how I had started counting the names in each month, how I was doing my own personal body count. I wanted to see how many there were, figuring, just for the hell of it, what my chances might have been, checking out whether or not I would have been my own childhood hero.

“Pretty sick?” I said.

“I’ve seen worse,” he said. “See anybody you know?”

Ira died in the Ashau Valley, in March of ’69. Outside of Currahee Ta Ba. We were 23.

Red and I walked over to the “Linc”, as he called it. The sunrise through the mist made it seem…holy. The Lincoln Memorial stood quietly in the rising light, its weathered stone bearing witness to its majesty.

Red said goodbye and wished me luck. He strode back to the Wall, walking point, it seemed to me. I went up the long steps, past the signs that said it was closed, over to the wall where Lincoln’s words “With malice toward none, and charity for all…” were bare, stark in the low light.

I had seen them first as a 6-year-old, and many times since, although not for many years. “With malice toward none…” said I, out loud.  The words echoed through the empty memorial, down the broken years to those days so long ago.

Then came tears and later, silence.

Part III

No more made-up heroes for me. I came down to these nowhere hills near Brown Grass, Texas to start over. Childhood is long gone now and much of what came after drifted away in the smoke of lost rooms, in a parade of uncertain mornings on the Northwest rain coast.

I have done what I’ve done. I’ve run for cover until the skies rained down blood, lived as if I were Death, walking in Dante’s eternal cold. Somewhere over the rainbow, they say, it’s always paradise. I say if you’re looking for paradise, ask any junkie.

I have become who I am, who I set out to be when I started down the road to meet my fate — or was I looking to find my destiny? It doesn’t really matter I suppose. When I think of that six-year-old’s dreams of doing right, of how they went so wrong, I know now that they are better left under an ancient gate-leg table. I still have the table and sometimes, when I’m not looking, I have the dreams.

Photo Credits

“Crack troops of the Vietnamese Army in combat operations against the Communist Viet Cong guerillas.”

“Fort Hamilton, Nov 2, 2008” fonchis @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

“Vietnam Memorial”, Tommy Canu Hearme, The Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, The Wall-USA

“Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool” Wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License