TIM O’BRIEN
If I Die in a Combat Zone

Copyright

HarperPress An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition published in 2006

Published by Flamingo in 1995

and reprinted five times

Previously published in paperback by Paladin 1989

and by Grafton Books 1980

Reprinted twice

First published in Great Britain by Calder and Boyars Ltd 1973

Copyright © Tim O’Brien 1969, 1970, 1972, 1973

PS Section © Travis Elborough 2006

PS ™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

Tim O’Brien asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Portions of this book appeared inPlayboy, the Washington Post, the Minneapolis Tribune and Worthington Daily Globe

Excerpts from ‘Laches’ from The Dialogues of Plato translated by Benjamin Jowett © Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1953. Used by permission of the publisher.

Excerpt from ‘The Waste Land’ from Collected Poems 1909–62 by T.S. Eliot. Used by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc and Faber & Faber.

Lines from ‘Homeward Bound’ by Paul Simon

© 1966 by Paul Simon. Used by permission of Charing Cross Music, Inc.

Excerpt from ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberly – IV’ from Personae by Ezra Pound. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation and Faber & Faber Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Dedication

For my family

Names and physical characteristics

of persons depicted in this book

have been changed.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

1 Days

2 Pro Patria

3 Beginning

4 Nights

5 Under the Mountain

6 Escape

7 Arrival

8 Alpha Company

9 Ambush

10 The Man at the Well

11 Assault

12 Mori

13 My Lai in May

14 Step Lightly

15 Centurion

16 Wise Endurance

17 July

18 The Lagoon

19 Dulce et Decorum

20 Another War

21 Hearts and Minds

22 Courage Is a Certain Kind of Preserving

23 Don’t I Know You?

Keep Reading

P.S. Ideas, Interviews & Features …

About the author

Relying on Memory and Imagination: Tim O’Brien talks to Travis Elborough

About the book

What the Papers Said

Box Me Up and Send Me Home: A Timeline

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About the Publisher

Epigraph

lo maggior don che Dio per sua

larghezza/fesse creando …/

… fu de la volontà la libertate

THE DIVINE COMEDY

Par. V, 19 ff.

1 Days

‘It’s incredible, it really is, isn’t it? Ever think you’d be humping along some crazy-ass trail like this one, jumping up and down out of the dirt, jumping like a goddamn bullfrog, dodging bullets all day? Don’t know about you, but I sure as hell never thought I’d ever be going on all day like this. Back in Cleveland I’d still be asleep.’ Barney smiled. ‘Jesus, you ever see anything like this?’

‘Yesterday,’ I said.

‘Yesterday? Shit, yesterday wasn’t nothing like this.’

‘Snipers yesterday, snipers today. What’s the difference?’

‘Guess so,’ he said. ‘They’ll put holes in your ass either way, right? But shit, yesterday wasn’t nothing like this.’

‘Snipers yesterday, snipers today,’ I said again.

Barney laughed. ‘You don’t like snipers, do you? Yesterday there were snipers, a few of them, but Jesus, today that’s all there is. Can’t wait ’til tonight. My God, tonight will be lovely. They’ll really give us hell. I’m digging me a foxhole like a basement.’

We lay next to each other until the volley of bullets stopped. We didn’t bother to raise our rifles. We didn’t know which way to shoot, and it was all over anyway.

Barney picked up his helmet and took out a pencil and put a mark on it. ‘See,’ he said, grinning and showing me ten marks, ‘that’s ten times today. Count them – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN! Ever been shot at ten times in one day?’

‘Yesterday,’ I said. ‘And the day before that and the day before that.’

‘Oh, it’s been worse today.’

‘Did you count yesterday?’

‘No. Didn’t think of it until today. That proves today’s worse.’

‘Well, you should have counted yesterday.’

‘Jesus,’ Barney said. ‘Get off your ass, let’s get going. Company’s moving out.’ Barney put his pencil away and jumped up like a jumping jack, a little kid on a pogo stick, then he pulled me by the hand.

I walked a few steps in back of him. ‘You’re the optimistic sort, aren’t you, Barney? This crap doesn’t get you down.’

‘Can’t let it get you down,’ he said. ‘That’s how GIs get wasted.’

‘What time is it?’

‘I guess about four, judging by the sun.’

‘Good.’

‘What’s good about four, you getting tired? I’ll carry some of that stuff for you.’

‘No, it’s okay. We should stop soon. I’ll help you dig that basement.’

A shrill sound, like a woman shrieking, sizzled past our ears, carried on a waft of the day’s air.

‘Jesus Christ almighty,’ Barney shouted, already flat on his belly.

‘Jesus Christ almighty,’ I said, kneeling beside him.

‘You okay?’

‘I guess. You okay?’

‘Yeah. They were aiming at us that time, I swear. You and me.’

‘They know who’s after them,’ I said. ‘You and me.’

He giggled. ‘Sure, we’d give ’em hell, wouldn’t we. Strangle the little pricks.’

‘Let’s go, that wasn’t worth stopping for.’

The trail linked a cluster of hamlets together, little villages to the north and west of the Bantangan Peninsula. It was a fairly wide and flat trail, but it made dangerous slow curves and was flanked by impenetrable brush. Because two squads moved through the tangle on either side of us, protecting the flanks from close-in ambushes, the company moved slowly.

‘Captain says we’re gonna search one more ville today,’ Barney said.

‘What’s he expect to find? Whoever’s there will be gone long before we come.’

Barney shrugged, walking steadily and not looking back.

‘Well, what does he expect to find? Christ, Charlie knows where we are, he’s been shooting us up all day.’

‘Don’t know,’ Barney said. ‘Maybe we’ll surprise him.’

‘Who?’

‘Charlie. Maybe we’ll surprise him this time.’

‘Are you kidding me, Barney?’

He shrugged and chuckled. ‘I don’t know. I’m getting tired myself. Maybe we’ll surprise Charlie because he’s getting tired, too.’

‘Tired,’ I muttered. Wear the yellow bastards down, right?

‘Actually, this trail seems pretty good. Don’t you think? Been on it all day and not a single mine, not a sign of one.’

‘Good reason to get the hell off it,’ I said.

‘What’s the matter, you want to be the one to find a mine?’

‘No, I didn’t mean that.’

‘Well, it’s a damn good trail around here if you don’t hit a mine.’

‘It means we’ll find one sooner or later. Especially with Charlie all over the place.’

The company stopped moving. The captain walked to the front of the column, talked with a lieutenant and moved back. He asked for the radio handset, and I listened while he called battalion headquarters and told them we’d found the village and were about to cordon and search it. Then the platoons separated into their own little columns and walked into the brush.

‘What’s the name of this goddamn place?’ Barney asked.

‘I don’t know. I never thought of that. Nobody thinks of the names for these places.’

‘I know. It’s funny, isn’t it? Somebody’s gonna ask me someday where the hell I was over here, where the bad fighting was, and, shit, what will I say?’

‘Tell them St Vith,’ I said.

‘What? That’s the name of this fucking place?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s the name of it. It’s here on the map. Do you want to look at it?’

He grinned. ‘What’s the difference, huh? You say St Vith, I guess that’s it. I’ll never remember. How long’s it gonna take me to forget your name?’

The captain walked over and sat down with us, and we smoked and waited for the platoons to fan out around the village.

‘This gonna take long, sir?’ Barney asked.

Captain Johansen said he didn’t think so.

‘Don’t expect to find anything – right, sir?’ Barney said.

Johansen grinned. ‘I doubt it.’

‘That’s what O’Brien was saying. But like I told him, there’s always the chance we can surprise the gooks.’

‘My God, Barney, they were shooting at us all day. How the hell are you going to surprise them?’ I was indignant. Searching the ville, the whole hot day, was utterly and certainly futile.

The platoon finished the cordon, tied it up neatly, then we joined the first platoon and carefully tiptoed through the little hamlet, nudging over a jug of rice here and there, watching where we walked, careful of mines, hoping to find nothing. But we did find some tunnels, three openings behind three different huts.

‘Well, should we search them?’ a lieutenant asked.

‘Not me, sir. I been shot at too much today, no more luck left in me,’ Chip said.

‘Nobody asked you to go down.’

‘Well, don’t ask me either, sir,’ another soldier said.

Everyone moved quietly away from the lieutenant, leaving him standing alone by the cluster of tunnels. He peered at them, kicked a little dirt into them and turned away.

‘Getting too dark to go around searching tunnels,’ he said. ‘Somebody throw a grenade into each of the holes. Make sure they cave in all the way.’ He walked over to the captain and they had a short conference together. The sun was setting. Already it was impossible to make out the colour in their faces and uniforms. The two officers stood together, heads down, planning.

‘Blow the goddamn tunnels up,’ someone said. ‘Christ, let’s blow them up before somebody decides to search the damn things.’

‘Fire-in-the-hole!’ Three explosions, dulled by dirt and sand, and the tunnels were blocked, ‘Fire-in-the-hole!’ Three more explosions, even duller. Two grenades to each tunnel.

‘Nobody’s gonna be searching those tunnels now.’

Everyone laughed.

‘Wouldn’t find anything, anyway. A bag of rice, maybe a few rounds of ammo.’

‘And maybe a goddamn mine. Right?’

‘Not worth it. Not worth my ass, damn sure.’

‘Well, no worry now. Nothing to worry about. No way anybody’s going to go into those three tunnels.’

‘Ex-tunnels.’

Another explosion, fifty yards away.

‘Jesus, goddamn you guys,’ the captain shouted. ‘Cut all the damn grenade action.’

Then a succession of explosions, tearing apart huts; then yellow flashes, white spears of sound, came out of the hedgerows around the village. Automatic rifle fire, short and incredibly close rifle cracks.

‘See,’ Barney said, lying beside me, ‘we did find them.’

‘Surprised them,’ I said. ‘Faked them right out of their shoes.’

‘Incoming!’

‘Incoming!’

‘Jesus,’ Barney said. ‘As if we didn’t know. Incoming, my ass.’ He looked over at me. ‘INCOMING!’

‘Nice hollering.’

Thanks. You hurt? I guess not.’

‘No. But I’d guess someone is hurt. That was a lot of shit.’

The company, the men on the perimeter of the village, returned fire for several minutes, spraying M-16 and M-70 and M-14 and M-60 fire down the trail, in the direction of the enemy fire, in the direction from which we’d just come.

‘Why don’t they stop shooting?’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘Well, for God’s sake, they aren’t going to hit anything.’

‘CEASE FIRE,’ Captain Johansen shouted. ‘Cease fire, what’s wrong with you guys? Stop wasting the goddamn ammo. CEASE FIRE!’

‘Cease fire,’ the lieutenants hollered.

‘Cease fire,’ the platoon sergeants hollered.

‘Cease the goddamn fire,’ shouted the squad leaders.

‘That,’ I told Barney, ‘is the chain of command.’

Bates, one of our buddies, ran over and asked how we were. ‘Somebody had to get messed up during all that,’ he said. He peered down at us. He held his helmet in his hands.

‘We better look over there,’ I said. ‘That’s where the grenades came in.’

‘Grenades?’ Bates looked at me. ‘You sure you’re not a sailor?’

‘Not altogether.’

‘Not altogether, what?’

‘Not altogether sure I’m not a sailor, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Damn straight, not altogether,’ Bates said. ‘Those were mortar rounds coming down on us. Eighty-two-millimetre mortar rounds.’

‘You sure?’ Barney always asked people that question.

‘Well, pretty sure,’ Bates said. ‘I mean, I was a mortar man before they made me a grunt. Those were mortar rounds.’

‘It’s gonna be a nice night,’ Barney muttered, smiling like a child. His face had the smooth complexion of a baby brother. ‘Just as I was saying before. We aren’t gonna get much sleep.’

We walked to where the mortar rounds had exploded. Some soldiers from the third platoon were standing there, in the wreckage of huts and torn-down trees, looking at four holes in the dirt. ‘Nobody’s hurt over here,’ one of them said. ‘Lucky thing. We were all sitting down, resting. Anybody standing when that stuff came in would be dead. I mean really dead.’ The soldier sat on his pack and opened a can of peaches.

The captain ran over to us and asked for casualties, and the same soldier told him there were none. ‘We were all sitting down, sir. Resting. Pretty lucky for us. We should rest more – right, sir?’

‘Okay, that’s good,’ Captain Johansen said. He told me to call battalion headquarters. ‘Just inform them that we’re heading off for our night position, not a word about the little fight just now. I don’t want to spend time playing with gunships, and that’s what they’ll make us do.’

We hefted our packs and guns and straggled in a long line out of the village. It was only a two-hundred-metre walk to the little wooded hill where we made our night position, but by the time the foxholes were dug and we’d eaten cold C rations, it had been dark for a long time. The night was not as frightening as other nights. Sometimes there was the awful feeling in the air that people would die at their foxholes or in their sleep, but that night everyone talked softly and bravely. No one doubted that we would be hit, yet in the certainty of a fight to come there was no real terror. We hadn’t lost anyone that day, even after eight hours of sniping and harassment, and the presence of the enemy and his failure during the day made the night hours easier. We simply waited. Taking turns at guard, being careful not to light cigarettes, we waited until nearly daybreak. And then only a half-dozen mortar rounds came down, none of them inside our circle of foxholes.

When it was light Bates and Barney and I cooked C rations together.

‘You need a shave,’ Bates told Barney.

‘I need R & R. And a woman; a lay’s what I need. She can take me with or without whiskers.’

‘You haven’t got whiskers,’ Bates laughed.

Barney rubbed his face, feeling for hair. ‘Well, Jesus, why do you say I need a shave?’

‘Do you ever shave?’

‘Not often.’ Barney stirred his bubbling ham and eggs.

Slowly, the camp came alive. The heat was what woke us up, cooking through the poncho liners. Then flies. Everyone stirred slowly, lay on their backs for long minutes, talked in little groups. At that hour no one really kept guard. A look out into the brush now and then, that was all. A cursory feign. It was like waking up in a cancer ward, no one ambitious to get on with the day, no one with obligations, or dreams for the daylight.

‘That wasn’t a bad night, really,’ Barney said. ‘I was looking for the Red Army to come thunking down on us. A few measly mortar rounds.’

‘Maybe they’re out of ammo,’ Bates said.

‘Could be.’ Barney looked at him, wondering if it were a joke.

‘Sure, we just put their little town in siege and wore them down. A war of fucking attrition, what.’

Barney stared at him. ‘Well, they probably got some ammo left.’

‘Probably.’

‘Did you sleep last night?’ I asked Barney.

‘Sure, I guess so. You know, you get tired walking the whole damn day, so not even the Red Army could keep me from my Zs. You sleep? You looked like you were sleeping; I saw you on guard.’

‘What? I wasn’t sleeping on guard.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ Barney said, feeling good about inadvertently drawing some blood. ‘I mean while I was on guard. I saw you sleeping pretty well.’

‘Until two hours ago. Something woke me up, sounded like someone trying to kill me.’

‘Must have been a dream.’ Bates turned away.

‘Ah, that wasn’t anything,’ Barney said. ‘They’ll go away soon. We better get saddled up, Johansen looks like he’s fixing to move out.’

We gathered up our gear, stuffed it inside green packs and found our places in the single-file line of march off the hill and into the first village of the day.

2 Pro Patria

I grew out of one war and into another. My father came from leaden ships of sea, from the Pacific theatre; my mother wore the uniform of the WAVES. I was the wrinkled, swollen, bloody offspring of the great campaign against the tyrants of the 1940s, one explosion in the Baby Boom, one of millions of new human beings come to replace those who had just died. My bawling came with the first throaty note of a new army in spawning. I was bred with the haste and dispatch and careless muscle-flexing of a rejuvenated, splendidly triumphant nation giving bridle to its own good fortune and success. I was fed by the spoils of 1945 victory.

I learned to read and write on the prairies of southern Minnesota, in towns peering like corpses’ eyeballs from out of the corn.

Along the route used by settlers to people South Dakota and the flatlands of Nebraska and northern Iowa, in the cold winters, I learned to use ice skates.

My teàchers were brittle old ladies, classroom football coaches, flushed veterans of the war, pretty girls in sixth grade, memories of hot-blooded valour.

In patches of weed and clouds of imagination, I learned to play army games. Friends introduced me to the Army Surplus Store off main street. We bought dented relics of our fathers’ history, rusted canteens and olive-scented, scarred helmet liners. Then we were our fathers, taking on the Japs and Krauts along the shores of Lake Okabena, on the flat fairways of the golf course, writhing insensible under barrages of shore batteries positioned under camouflage across the lake. I rubbed my fingers across my father’s war decorations, stole a tiny battle star off one of them and carried it in my pocket.

Baseball was for the summertime, when school ended. My father loved baseball. I was holding a bleached Louisville Slugger when I was six. I played a desperate shortstop for the Rural Electric Association Little League team; my father coached us, and he is still coaching, still able to tick off the starting line-up of the great Brooklyn Dodgers teams of the 1950s.

Sparkers and the forbidden cherry bomb were for the Fourth of July: a baseball game, a picnic, a day in the city park, listening to the high school band playing ‘Anchors Aweigh’, a speech, watching a parade of American Legionnaires. At night, sometimes after nine o’clock, fireworks erupted over the lake, reflections.

It had been Indian land. Ninety miles from Sioux City, sixty miles from Sioux Falls, eighty miles from Cherokee, forty miles from Spirit Lake and the site of a celebrated massacre. To the north was Pipestone and the annual Hiawatha Pageant. To the west was Luverne and Indian burial mounds.

Norwegians and Swedes, a few Dutch and Germans – Giants in the Earth – had taken the plains from the Sioux. The settlers must have seen endless plains and eased their bones and said, ‘here as well as anywhere, it’s all the same.’

The town became a place for wage earners. It is a place for wage earners today – not very spirited people, not very philosophic people.

Among these people I learned about the Second World War, hearing it from men in front of the courthouse, from men who had fought it. The talk was tough. Nothing to do with causes or reason; the war was right, they muttered when asked, it had to be fought. The talk was about bellies filled with German lead, about the long hike from Normandy to Berlin, about close calls and about the origins of scars just visible on hairy arms. Growing up, I learned about another war, a peninsular war in Korea, a grey war fought by the town’s Lutherans and Baptists. I learned about that war when the town hero came home, riding in a convertible, sitting straight-backed and quiet, an ex-POW.

The town called itself Turkey Capital of the World. In September the governor and some congressmen came to town. People shut down their businesses and came in from their farms. Together we watched trombones and crêpe-paper floats move on a blitzkrieg down main street. The bands and floats represented Lismore, Sheldon, Tyler, Sibley, and Jackson.

Turkey Day climaxed when the farmers herded a billion strutting, stinking, beady-eyed birds down the centre of town, past the old Gobbler Café, past Wool-worth’s and the Ben Franklin store and the Standard Oil service station. Feathers and droppings and popcorn mixed together in tribute to the town and prairie. We were young. We stood on the kerb and blasted the animals with ammunition from our peashooters.

We listened to Nelson Rockefeller and Harold Stassen and the commander of the Minnesota VFW, trying to make sense out of their words, then we went for twenty-five-cent rides on the Octopus and Tilt-A-Whirl.

I couldn’t hit a baseball. Too small for football, but I stuck it out through junior high, hoping something would change. When nothing happened, I began to read. I read Plato and Erich Fromm, the Hardy boys and enough Aristotle to make me prefer Plato. The town’s library was quiet and not a very lively place – nothing like the football field on an October evening and not a very good substitute – nothing like screaming for blood, nothing like aching with filial pride, nothing like hearty masculine well-being.

I watched the athletes from the stands and cheered them at pep rallies, wishing I were with them. I went to homecoming dances, learned to drive an automobile, joined the debate team, took girls to drive-in theatres and afterwards to the A & W root-beer stand.

I took up an interest in politics. One evening I put on a suit and drove down to the League of Women Voters meeting, embarrassing myself and some candidates and most of the women voters by asking questions that had no answers.

I tried going to Democratic party meetings. I’d read it was the liberal party. But it was futile. I could not make out the difference between the people there and the people down the street boosting Nixon and Cabot Lodge. The essential thing about the prairie, I learned, was that one part of it is like any other part.

At night I sometimes walked about the town. ‘God is both transcendent and imminent. That’s Tillich’s position.’ When I walked, I chose the darkest streets, away from the street lights. ‘But is there a God? I mean, is there a God like there’s a tree or an apple? Is God a being?’ I usually ended up walking towards the lake. ‘God is Being-Itself.’ The lake, Lake Okabena, reflected the town-itself, bouncing off a black-and-white pattern identical to the whole desolate prairie: flat, tepid, small, strangled by algae, shut in by middle-class houses, lassoed by a ring of doctors, lawyers, CPAs, dentists, drugstore owners, and proprietors of department stores. ‘Being-Itself? Then is this town God? It exists, doesn’t it?’ I walked past where the pretty girls lived, stopping long enough to look at their houses, all the lights off and the curtains drawn. ‘Jesus,’ I muttered, ‘I hope not. Maybe I’m an atheist.’

One day in May the high school held graduation ceremonies. Then I went away to college, and the town did not miss me much.

3 Beginning

The summer of 1968, the summer I turned into a soldier, was a good time for talking about war and peace. Eugene McCarthy was bringing quiet thought to the subject. He was winning votes in the primaries. College students were listening to him, and some of us tried to help out. Lyndon Johnson was almost forgotten, no longer forbidding or feared; Robert Kennedy was dead but not quite forgotten; Richard Nixon looked like a loser. With all the tragedy and change that summer, it was fine weather for discussion.

And, with all of this, there was an induction notice tucked into a corner of my billfold.

So with friends and acquaintances and townspeople, I spent the summer in Fred’s antiseptic café, drinking coffee and mapping out arguments on Fred’s napkins. Or I sat in Chic’s tavern, drinking beer with kids from the farms. I played some golf and tore up the pool table down at the bowling alley, keeping an eye open for likely-looking high school girls.

Late at night, the town deserted, two or three of us would drive a car around and around the town’s lake, talking about the war, very seriously, moving with care from one argument to the next, trying to make it a dialogue and not a debate. We covered all the big questions: justice, tyranny, self-determination, conscience and the state, God and war and love.

College friends came to visit: ‘Too bad, I hear you’re drafted. What will you do?’

I said I didn’t know, that I’d let time decide. Maybe something would change, maybe the war would end. Then we’d turn to discuss the matter, talking long, trying out the questions, sleeping late in the mornings.

The summer conversations, spiked with plenty of references to the philosophers and academicians of war, were thoughtful and long and complex and careful. But, in the end, careful and precise argumentation hurt me. It was painful to tread deliberately over all the axioms and assumptions and corollaries when the people on the town’s draft board were calling me to duty, smiling so nicely.

‘It won’t be bad at all,’ they said. ‘Stop in and see us when it’s over.’

So to bring the conversation to a focus and also to try out in real words my secret fears, I argued for running away.

I was persuaded then, and I remain persuaded now, that the war was wrong. And since it was wrong and since people were dying as a result of it, it was evil. Doubts, of course, hedged all this: I had neither the expertise nor the wisdom to synthesize answers; most of the facts were clouded, and there was no certainty as to the kind of government that would follow a North Vietnamese victory or, for that matter, an American victory, and the specifics of the conflict were hidden away – partly in men’s minds, partly in the archives of government, and partly in buried, irretrievable history. The war, I thought, was wrongly conceived and poorly justified. But perhaps I was mistaken, and who really knew, anyway?

Piled on top of this was the town, my family, my teachers, a whole history of the prairie. Like magnets, these things pulled in one direction or the other, almost physical forces weighting the problem, so that, in the end, it was less reason and more gravity that was the final influence.

My family was careful that summer. The decision was mine and it was not talked about. The town lay there, spread out in the corn and watching me, the mouths of old women and Country Club men poised in a kind of eternal readiness to find fault. It was not a town, not a Minneapolis or New York, where the son of a father can sometimes escape scrutiny. More, I owed the prairie something. For twenty-one years I’d lived under its laws, accepted its education, eaten its food, wasted and guzzled its water, slept well at night, driven across its highways, dirtied and breathed its air, wallowed in its luxuries. I’d played on its Little League teams. I remembered Plato’s Crito, when Socrates, facing certain death – execution, not war – had the chance to escape. But he reminded himself that he had seventy years in which he could have left the country, if he were not satisfied or felt the agreements he’d made with it were unfair. He had not chosen Sparta or Crete. And, I reminded myself, I hadn’t thought much about Canada until that summer.

The summer passed this way. Gold afternoons on the golf course, a comforting feeling that the matter of war would never touch me, nights in the pool hall or drug store, talking with townsfolk, turning the questions over and over, being a philosopher.

Near the end of that summer the time came to go to the war. The family indulged in a cautious sort of Last Supper together, and afterwards my father, who is brave, said it was time to report at the bus depot. I moped down to my bedroom and looked the place over, feeling quite stupid, thinking that my mother would come in there in a day or two and probably cry a little. I trudged back up to the kitchen and put my satchel down. Everyone gathered around, saying so long and good health and write and let us know if you want anything. My father took up the induction papers, checking on times and dates and all the last-minute things, and when I pecked my mother’s face and grabbed the satchel for comfort, he told me to put it down, that I wasn’t supposed to report until tomorrow.

After laughing about the mistake, after a flush of red colour and a flood of ribbing and a wave of relief had come and gone, I took a long drive around the lake, looking again at the place. Sunset Park, with its picnic table and little beach and a brown wood shelter and some families swimming. The Crippled Children’s School, Slater Park, more kids. A long string of split level houses, painted every colour.

The war and my person seemed like twins as I went around the town’s lake. Twins grafted together and forever together, as if a separation would kill them both.

The thought made me angry.

In the basement of my house I found some scraps of cardboard and paper. With devilish flair, I printed obscene words on them, declaring my intention to have no part of Vietnam. With a delightful viciousness, a secret will, I declared the war evil, the draft board evil, the town evil in its lethargic acceptance of it all. For many minutes, making up the signs, making up my mind, I was outside the town. I was outside the law, all my old ties to my loves and family broken by the old crayon in my hand. I imagined strutting up and down the sidewalks outside the depot, the bus waiting and the driver blaring his horn, the Daily Globe photographer trying to push me into line with the other draftees, the frantic telephone calls, my head buzzing at the deed.

On the cardboard, my strokes of bright red were big and ferocious looking. The language was clear and certain and burned with a hard, defiant, criminal, blasphemous sound. I tried reading it aloud.

Later in the evening I tore the signs into pieces and put the shreds in the garbage can outside, clanging the grey cover down and trapping the messages inside. I went back into the basement. I slipped the crayons into their box, the same stubs of colour I’d used a long time before to chalk in reds and greens on Roy Rogers’s cowboy boots.

I’d never been a demonstrator, except in the loose sense. True, I’d taken a stand in the school newspaper on the war, trying to show why it seemed wrong. But, mostly, I’d just listened.

‘No war is worth losing your life for,’ a college acquaintance used to argue. ‘The issue isn’t a moral one. It’s a matter of efficiency: what’s the most efficient way to stay alive when your nation is at war? That’s the issue.’

But others argued that no war is worth losing your country for, and when asked about the case when a country fights a wrong war, those people just shrugged.

Most of my college friends found easy paths away from the problem, all to their credit. Deferments for this and that. Letters from doctors or chaplains. It was hard to find people who had to think much about the problem. Counsel came from two main quarters, pacifists and veterans of foreign wars.

But neither camp had much to offer. It wasn’t a matter of peace, as the pacifists argued, but rather a matter of when and when not to join others in making war. And it wasn’t a matter of listening to an ex-lieutenant colonel talk about serving in a right war, when the question was whether to serve in what seemed a wrong one.

On 13 August, I went to the bus depot. A Worthington Daily Globe photographer took my picture standing by a rail fence with four other draftees.

Then the bus took us through corn fields, to little towns along the way – Lismore and Rushmore and Adrian – where other recruits came aboard. With some of the tough guys drinking beer and howling in the back seats, brandishing their empty cans and calling one another ‘scum’ and ‘trainee’ and ‘GI Joe’, with all this noise and hearty farewelling, we went to Sioux Falls. We spent the night in a YMCA. I went out alone for a beer, drank it in a corner booth, then I bought a book and read it in my room.

By noon the next day our hands were in the air, even the tough guys. We recited the proper words, some of us loudly and daringly and others in bewilderment. It was a brightly lighted room, wood panelled. A flag gave the place the right colours, there was some smoke in the air. We said the words, and we were soldiers.

I’d never been much of a fighter. I was afraid of bullies. Their ripe muscles made me angry: a frustrated anger. Still, I deferred to no one. Positively lorded myself over inferiors. And on top of that was the matter of conscience and conviction, uncertain and surface-deep but pure none the less: I was a confirmed liberal, not a pacifist; but I would have cast my ballot to end the Vietnam war immediately, I would have voted for Eugene McCarthy, hoping he would make peace. I was not soldier material, that was certain.

But I submitted. All the personal history, all the midnight conversations and books and beliefs and learning, were crumpled by abstention, extinguished by forfeiture, for lack of oxygen, by a sort of sleepwalking default. It was no decision, no chain of ideas or reasons, that steered me into the war.

It was an intellectual and physical stand-off, and I did not have the energy to see it to an end. I did not want to be a soldier, not even an observer to war. But neither did I want to upset a peculiar balance between the order I knew, the people I knew, and my own private world. It was not that I valued that order. But I feared its opposite, inevitable chaos, censure, embarrassment, the end of everything that had happened in my life, the end of it all.

And the stand-off is still there. I would wish this book could take the form of a plea for everlasting peace, a plea from one who knows, from one who’s been there and come back, an old soldier looking back at a dying war.

That would be good. It would be fine to integrate it all to persuade my younger brother and perhaps some others to say no to wars and other battles.

Or it would be fine to confirm the odd beliefs about war: it’s horrible, but it’s a crucible of men and events and, in the end, it makes more of a man out of you.

But, still, none of these notions seems right. Men are killed, dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell different in Vietnam, soldiers are afraid and often brave, drill sergeants are boors, some men think the war is proper and just and others don’t and most don’t care. Is that the stuff for a morality lesson, even for a theme?

Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyse them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

4 Nights

‘Incoming,’ the lieutenant shouted.

We dived for a foxhole. I was first in, the ground taking care of my belly, then the lieutenant and some others were in, stacked on my back.

Grenades burst around the perimeter, a few rifle shots.

‘Wow, like a sandwich,’ I said. ‘Just stay where you are.’

‘Yep, we’re nothing but sandbags for O’Brien,’ Mad Mark said, peering up to watch the explosions go off.

‘Protect the College Joe,’ Barney said, nestled down by my feet.

It didn’t last long.

A blond-headed soldier ran over when the shooting ended. ‘Jesus, I got me a hunk of grenade shrapnel in my fuckin’ hand,’ he said. He sucked the wound. It didn’t seem bad.

Mad Mark inspected the cut under a flashlight. ‘Will it kill you before morning?’

‘Nope, I guess not. Have to get a tetanus shot, I suppose. Christ, those tetanus shots hurt don’t they? I don’t want a fuckin’ tetanus shot.’

As it turned out, the first fight had not been a fire fight. The blond soldier and a few others had been bored. Bored all day. Bored that night. So they’d synchronized watches, set a time, agreed to toss hand grenades outside our little perimeter at 2200 sharp, and when 2200 came, they did it, staging the battle. They shouted and squealed and fired their weapons and threw hand grenades and had a good time, making noise, scaring hell out of everyone. Something to talk about in the morning.

‘Great little spat,’ they said the next day, slyly.

‘Great?’ I couldn’t believe it.

‘Ah, you know. Little action livens up everything, right? Gets the ol’ blood boiling.’ ‘You crazy?’ ‘Mad as a hatter.’

‘You like getting shot, for God’s sake? You like Charlie trying to chuck grenades into your foxhole? You like that stuff?’

‘Some got it, some don’t. Me, I’m mad as a hatter.’

‘Don’t let him shit you,’ Chip said. ‘That whole thing last night was a fake. They planned it, beginning to end.’

‘Except for old Turnip Head getting a piece of his own grenade,’ Bates said. ‘They didn’t plan that.’ Bates walked along beside me, the platoon straggled out across a wide rice paddy. ‘Turnip Head threw his grenade and it hit a tree and bounced right back at him. Lucky he didn’t blow his head off.’

Chip shook his head, a short, skinny soldier from Orlando, Florida, a black guy. ‘Me, I don’t take chances like that. You’re right, they’re nutty,’ he said.

We walked along. Forward with the left leg, plant the foot, lock the knee, arch the ankle. Push the leg into the paddy, stiffen the spine. Let the war rest there atop the left leg: the rucksack, the radio, the hand grenades, the magazines of golden bullets, the rifle, the steel helmet, the jingling dogtags, the body’s own fat and water and meat, the whole contingent of warring artifacts and flesh. Let it all perch there, rocking on top of that left leg, fastened and tied and anchored by latches and zippers and snaps and nylon cord.

Packhorse for the soul. The left leg does it all. Scolded and trained. The left leg stretches with magnificent energy, long muscle. Lumbers ahead. It’s the strongest leg, the pivot. The right leg comes along, too, but only a companion. The right leg unfolds, swings out, and the right foot touches the ground for a moment, just quickly enough to keep pace with the left, then it weakens and raises on the soil a pattern of desolation.

Arms move about, taking up the rhythm.

Eyes sweep the rice paddy. Don’t walk there, too soft. Not there, dangerous, mines. Step there and there and there, not there, step there and there and there, careful, careful, watch. Green ahead. Green lights, go. Eyes roll in the sockets. Protect the legs, no chances, watch for the fuckin’ snipers, watch for ambushes and punji pits. Eyes roll about, looking for mines and pieces of stray cloth and bombs and threads and things. Never blink the eyes, tape them open.

The stomach burns on simmer, low flame. Fire down inside, down in the pit, just above the balls.

‘Watch where you sit, now,’ the squad leader said. We stopped for shade. ‘Eat up quick, we’re stopping for five minutes, no more.’

‘Five minutes? My lord, it’s ninety degrees. Where’s the whips and chains?’ Bates picked a piece of ground to sit on.

‘Look,’ the squad leader sighed. ‘Don’t get smart ass. I take orders, you know. Sooner we get to the night position, sooner we get resupplied, sooner we get to sleep, sooner we get this day over with. Sooner everything.’ The squad leader cleaned his face with a rag, rubbed his neck with it.

Barney sat down. ‘Why we stopping now?’

‘Good,’ the squad leader said. ‘Someone here understands it’s better to keep moving.’

Bates laughed, an aristocrat. ‘I don’t know about Buddy Barney, but actually, I was dreaming on the march. I was right in the middle of one. Daughter of this famous politician and me. Had her undressed on a beach down in the Bahamas. Jesus.’ He gestured vaguely, trying to make us see, sweeping away the heat-fog with his hand. ‘Had her undressed, see? Her feet were just in the water, these luscious waves lapping up all around her toes and through the cracks between them, and she had this beach towel under her. The only thing she was wearing was sunglasses.’

‘You really think about politicians’ daughters out here?’ Barney asked.

‘Lovely,’ Bates said. He closed his eyes.

We ate our noon C rations, then walked up a trail until the end of day.

We dug foxholes and laid our ponchos out for when it was time to sleep.

‘Look at this,’ Barney said. ‘It’s a starlight scope. Mad Mark gave it to me to hump. Must weigh twenty-five pounds, lift the damn thing.’

It weighed twenty-five pounds, counting the black case with its silver handle.

‘We’ll try it out tonight,’ Barney said. ‘Damn thing better work for twenty-five pounds.’

‘You look like a New York businessman on the way to work,’ Bates muttered. ‘Looks like a briefcase or something.’

‘What you got?’ Chip sat with us.

‘Starlight scope.’

‘Something to look at stars through, right? Good idea.’ Chip wore a bush hat in place of a helmet; claimed he didn’t take a good picture in a helmet.

‘How does it work?’

‘Fucking kaleidoscope or something,’ Barney said. ‘Damned if I know.’

‘Supposed to let you see in the dark. They mentioned the thing back in boot camp, but that’s the last I heard of it till now.’ Bates squatted down, opened the case, and hefted the starlight scope out of its black box.

‘Star light, star bright,’ Chip chanted, ‘first star I see tonight.’

‘Look at the size of this mother! What’s the dial for? Need a law degree and two Ph.D.s to figure out how to work the thing.’ Bates fiddled with the dial. He took the rubber protective cap off the lens, put the starlight scope to his eyes.

‘Wish I may, wish I might,’ Chip chanted, ‘have the wish I wish tonight.’

‘Shit,’ Bates said.

Barney put his hand before the lens. ‘What do you see?’

Bates giggled. He scanned the sky.

‘What the hell you see there, Bates?’

‘Wow, it’s a peep show, man.’

‘Dream on, dream on.’

‘Here, let me look,’ Chip said. Bates handed it over. Chip played with the scope. ‘Dancing soul sisters,’ he said. He giggled and stared into the machine. ‘Star light, star bright.’

Barney tried it. ‘Christ, you can’t see a thing.’

‘Certainly not, it’s not dark yet. No stars. You need stars for a starlight scope.’

We waited until dark, then tried it again. Tinkering with the dial, Bates got the scope to work.

The machine’s insides were secret, but the principle seemed simple enough: use the night’s orphan light – stars, moonglow, reflections, faraway fires – to turn night into day. It contained a heavy battery, somehow juicing up the starlight, magically exposing form and giving sight.

‘Fairytale land,’ Chip murmured. ‘I see at night.’

‘Any gooks?’

‘I see a circus,’ Chip whispered. ‘Like the colours in a jet plane at night, up in the cockpit where the instrument panel is kind of shimmering green. All the rocks and trees out there is green at night. I didn’t know that.’

‘You aren’t supposed to see the night,’ Bates said, taking his turn. ‘Trees, you can see them. The hooches over there, just as quiet as can be, not a movement. God, everything’s dead through this thing.’

We sat on the lip of a foxhole, using the starlight scope.

‘Really,’ Bates said softly, ‘you aren’t supposed to see the night. It’s unnatural. I don’t trust this thing.’ He gave it to me.

‘Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.’ Chip went to sleep.

I looked out at the green, dancing night.

‘I wish for peace,’ Bates said.

‘Me, too.’

‘What do you see?’

‘A green fire. The countryside is on fire at night.’

‘Anything moving?’

‘Nope.’ I pointed the scope at a thicket outside our perimeter. The bushes sparkled in strange, luminous colour. I pointed it at the stars. ‘I can see the clouds,’ I said. ‘They’re moving, you can see them moving, bright as day.’

‘Well, for God’s sake, you’re not supposed to stare at the damn stars with that thing,’ Bates said. ‘You’re supposed to look for Charlie.’

Mad Mark came over. ‘Hey, shut the hell up, you two.’ He left.

‘Here, I’ll take the first watch,’ Bates said. I gave him the starlight scope, but he put it aside and cradled his rifle in his arms and peered out at the dark. ‘Night,’ he said.

5 Under the Mountain

To understand what happens to the GI among the mine fields of My Lai, you must know something about what happens in America. You must understand Fort Lewis, Washington. You must understand a thing called basic training. A college graduate in May 1968, I was at Fort Lewis in mid-August. One hundred of us came. We watched one another’s hair fall, we learned the word ‘sir’, we learned to react to ‘To duh rear, HARCH!’ Above us the sixty-mile-distant mountain stood to the sky, white and shivering cold. The mountain was named Rainier, and it stood for freedom.

I made a friend, Erik, and together he and I stumbled like galley slaves through the first months of army life.

I was not looking for friendship at Fort Lewis. The place was too much the apotheosis of all nightmares about army life; the people were boors, a whole horde of boors – trainees and drill sergeants and officers, no difference in kind. In that jungle of robots there could be no hope of finding friendship; no one could understand the brutality of the place. I did not want a friend, that was how it stood in the end. If the savages had captured me, they would not drag me into compatibility with their kind. Laughing and talking of hometowns and drag races and twin-cammed racing engines – all this was for the others. I did not like them, and there was no reason to like them. For the other trainees, it came too easy. They did more than adjust well; they thrived on basic training, thinking they were becoming men, joking at the bullyism, getting the drill sergeants to joke along with them. I held my own, not a whisper more. I hated my fellows, my bunk mates and cell mates. I hated the trainees even more than the captors. I learned to march, but I learned alone. I gaped at the neat package of stupidity and arrogance at Fort Lewis. I was superior. I made no apologies for believing it. Without sympathy or compassion, I instructed my intellect and eyes: ignore the horde. I kept vigil against intrusion into my private life. I maintained a distance suitable to the black and white distinction between me and the unconscious, genuflecting herd.

I mouthed the words, shaping my lips and tongue just so, perfect deception. But no noise came out. The failure to bellow ‘Yes, Drill Sergeant!’ was a fist in the bastard’s face. A point for the soul. Standing in formation after chow, I learned to smoke. It was a private pleasure. I needed my lungs and my personal taste buds and my own hands and thoughts. I seemed older, wiser, removed, more confident.

I maintained silence. I thought about a girl. After thinking, she became a woman, only months too late. I spent time comparing her hair to the colour of sand just at dusk. That sort of thing.

I counted the number of soldiers I would trade for her. I memorized. I memorized details of her smell, knowing that without the work the details would be lost.

I memorized her letters, whole letters. Memorizing was a way to remember and a way to forget, a way to remain a stranger, only a visitor at Fort Lewis. I memorized a poem she sent me. It was a poem by Auden, and marching for shots and haircuts and clothing issue, I recited the poem, forging Auden’s words with thoughts I pretended to be hers. I lied about her, pretending that she wrote the poem herself, for me. I compared her to characters out of books by Hemingway and Maugham. Without ever knowing her – she would have me make the qualification boldly – I imagined she was made of the hardness of Lady Brett, of the fickle and spiritual in Rosy, and of the earthiness of Adams’ girl in the mountains. In her letters she claimed I created her out of the mind. The mind, she said, can make wonderful changes in the real stuff. So I hid from the drill sergeants, turned my back on the barracks, and wrote back to her.

I thought a little about Canada, I thought about refusing to carry a rifle.

I grew tired of independence.

One evening I asked Erik what he was reading. His shoes were shined, and he had his footlocker straight, and with half an hour before lights out, he was on his back looking at a book. Erik. Skinny, a deep voice, dressed in olive drab, calm. He said it was The Mint. ‘T. E. Lawrence. You know – Lawrence of Arabia. He went through something like this. You know, something like basic training. It’s a sort of how-to-do-it book.’ He said he was just paging through it, that he’d read the whole thing before, and he gave it to me. With The Mint I became a soldier, knew I was a soldier. I succumbed. Without a backward glance at privacy, I gave in to soldiering. I took on a friend, betraying in a sense my wonderful suffering.

Erik talked about poetry and philosophy and travel. But he talked about soldiering, too. We formed a coalition. It was mostly a coalition against the army, but we aimed also at the other trainees. The idea, loosely, was to preserve ourselves. It was a two-man war of survival, and we fought like guerrillas, jabbing in the lance, drawing a trickle of army blood, running like rabbits. We hid in the masses. Right under their bloodshot eyes. We exposed them, even if they were blind and deaf to it. We’d let them die of anaemia, a little blood at a time. It was a war of resistance; the objective was to save our souls. Sometimes it meant hiding the remnants of conscience and consciousness behind battle cries, pretended servility, bare, clench-fisted obedience. Our private conversations were the cornerstone of the resistance, perhaps because talking about basic training in careful, honest words was by itself an insult to army education. Simply to think and talk and try to understand was evidence that we were not cattle or machines.

Erik pretended sometimes that he lacked the fundamental courage of the men of poetry and philosophy whom he read during the first nights in Fort Lewis.

‘I was in Denmark when they drafted me. I did not want to come back. I wanted to become a European and write some books. There was even a chance for romance over there. But I come from a small town, my parents know everyone, and I couldn’t hurt and embarrass them. And, of course, I was afraid.’

Perhaps it was cowardice and perhaps it was good sense. Anyway, Erik and I rarely brought our war into the offensive stage, and when we were so stupid as to try, we were massacred like mice. One morning Erik cornered the company drill sergeant, a man named Blyton, and demanded an appointment, a private talk. Blyton hustled Erik through a door.

Erik informed him of his opposition to the Vietnam war. Erik explained that he believed the war was without just reason, that life ought not to be forfeited unless certain and fundamental principles are at stake, and not unless those principles stand in certain danger.

Erik did not talk to me about the episode for a week or more. And when he did talk, he only said that Blyton laughed at him and then yelled and called him a coward.

‘He said I was a pansy. It’s hard to argue, I suppose. I’m not just intellectually opposed to violence, I’m absolutely frightened by it. It’s impossible to separate in my mind the gut fear from pure reason. I’m really afraid that all the hard, sober arguments I have against this war are nothing but an intellectual adjustment to my horror at the thought of bleeding to death in some rice paddy.’

Blyton did not forget Erik, and we had to take the guerrilla war to the mountain for a while. We were good boys, good soldiers. We assumed a perfect, tranquil mediocrity. We returned to our detached, personal struggle.

We found a private place to talk, out behind the barracks. There was a log there. It was twice the thickness of an ordinary telephone pole and perhaps a fourth of its length, and on an afternoon in September Erik and I were sitting on that log, polishing boots, cleaning out M-14s and talking poetry. It was a fine log, and useful. We used it for a podium and as a soapbox. It was a confessional and a shoeshine stand. It was scarred. A hundred waves of men had passed through the training company before us; no reason to doubt that a hundred waves would follow.

On that September afternoon Erik smeared black polish on the log, marking it with our presence, and absently he rubbed at the stain, talking about poems. He explained (and he’ll forgive my imprecise memory as I quote him now): ‘Frost, by just about any standard, is the finest of a good bunch of American poets. People who deprecate American poetry need to return to Robert Frost. Then, as I rank them – let’s see – Marianne Moore and Robinson. And if you count Pound as an American, he has written the truest of poems. For all his mistakes, despite his wartime words on the radio, that man sees through ideology like you and I look through glass. If you don’t believe, just listen.’

Erik became Ezra Pound. Seriously, slowly, he recited a portion of ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberly’

These fought in any case,

and some believing,

pro domo, in any case …

Some quick to arm,

some for adventure,

some from fear of weakness,

some from fear of censure,

some for love of slaughter, in imagination.

learning later …

some in fear, learning love of slaughter;

Died some, pro patria,

non ‘dulce’ non ‘et decor’ …

‘Pound is right,’ Erik said. ‘Look into your own history. Here we are. Mama has been kissed good-bye, we’ve grabbed our rifles, we’re ready for extinction. All this not because of conviction, not for ideology; rather it’s from fear of society’s censure, just as Pound claims. Rather from fear of weakness, afraid that to avoid war is to avoid manhood. We come to Fort Lewis afraid to admit we are not Achilles, that we are not brave, not heroes. Here we are, thrust to the opposite and absurd antipode of what we think is good. And tomorrow we’ll be out of bed at three o’clock in the pitch-black morning.’

‘Up, up, up!’ the squad leader shouts. He has been in the army for two weeks, same as the rest of us. But he is big and he is strong and he is in charge. He loves the new power. ‘Out of the sack! Out!’

‘Ya damn lifer!’ It is Harry the Montanan, head under a sheet, pointing a thick middle finger at the squad leader’s back. ‘Lifer! Ya hear me? Take yer damn army an’ shove it. Use it fer grade-Z fertilizer!’ Harry pauses. The squad leader hits the lights, glaring and cold and excruciating bright lights. Harry shoves his face into the pillow. ‘Two-bit goddamn lifer!’

The squad leader orders Harry to scrub the commodes. Harry threatens to use the squad leader’s head as a scrub brush.

The squad leader is chastened but still in charge. ‘Okay, who’s gonna wax the floor?’ He checks his duty roster, finds a name.

Mousy whines. ‘Well, for Pete’s sake, they got the buffer downstairs. What the hell ya want? Want me to polish the damn thing with a sock?’

‘Use yer brown nose,’ the Montanan drawls, head still tucked into a pillow.

White paddles over to the shower. You hear him singing about Idaho. He was married two days before induction.

Mornings are the worst time. It is the most hopeless, most despairing time. The darkness of Fort Lewis mornings is choked off by brazen lights, the shrieks of angry men and frightened, homesick boys. The bones and muscles and brain are not ready for three-o’clock mornings, not ready for duties and harsh voices. The petty urgencies of the mornings physically hurt. The same hopeless feeling that overwhelmed inmates of Treblinka; prisoners of other human beings, caught up in a political marsh, unmotivated to escape and still unwilling to acquiesce, no one to help, no words to speak silently in consolation. The complete, certain reality of the morning kills any words. In the mornings at Fort Lewis comes a powerful want for privacy. You pledge yourself to finding an island someday. Or a bolted, sealed, air-conditioned hotel room. No lights, no admittance, no friends, not even your girl, and not even Erik or your starving grandmother.

The men search out cheer. The North Dakotan bellows out that we may be going to the PX that night.

‘Yeah, maybe!’ Harry rolls on to the floor. ‘Second Platoon went last night. That makes it our turn, damn right. Christ, I’ll buy me a million wads o’ chewin’ tobacco. An’ a case o’ Coke. Y’all gotta help me smuggle the stuff in here, right? Hide it in the footlockers.’

We make up the bunks. Taut, creases at a forty-five-degree angle. Tempers flare, ebb into despair.

‘KLINE!’ someone hollers. ‘Kline, you’re a goddamn moron! A goddamn, blubbering moron. You know that? Kline, you hear me? You’re a moron!’

Kline stands by his bunk. His tiny head goes rigid. His hands fidget. His eyes shift to the floor, to the walls, to a footlocker. He whimpers. He quivers. Kline is fat. Bewildered and timid and sensitive. No one knows.

‘Kline, you got two left boots on your feet. You see that? Look down, just look down once, will ya? You see your feet? You got two left boots on again. You see? Look down, for Christ’s sake! Stop starin’ around like you got caught snitchin’ the lieutenant’s pussy. There, ya see? Two left boots.’

Kline grins and sits on his bunk. The problem isn’t serious.

We make the bunks, dust the windows, tie up laundry bags, the strings anchored just so. The barracks have a high ceiling, criss-crossed by rafters and two-by-fours with no function except to give work. They have to be cleaned. The seventeen-year-olds, most agile and awed, do the climbing and balancing. The squad leader directs them: a peer and a sellout. Sweep and mop and wax the floor. Polish doorknobs, rub the army’s Brasso into the metal.

The squad leader glances at his watch, frenzied. ‘Jeez, you guys, it’s four-thirty already. Let’s go, damn it.’

We align footgear into neat rows, shave, polish our brass, buff-buff-buff that floor.

Outside it is Monday morning, raining again. Fort Lewis.

It is dark, and we are shadows double-timing to the parade ground for reveille. Someone pushes Kline into place at the end of the rank. ‘Good God, it’s freezin’.’ Kline practises coming to attention. Christ, he tries.

We shiver, stamping blood into our feet. Erik stands next to me. He is quiet, smoking, calm, ready.

Smells twist through the rain. Someone in the back rank cusses; forgot to lock his footlocker. KP is penalty. Someone asks for a smoke.

‘Fall in! Re-port!’

Afterwards Drill Sergeant Blyton struts his sleek, black, airborne body up and down the ranks. We hate Blyton. It is dark and it is gushing rain, and with our heads rammed straight ahead, Blyton is only a smudge of a Smokey-the-Bear hat, a set of gleaming teeth. He teases, threatens, humiliates. It is supposed to be an inspection. But it is much more than that, nearly life and death, and Blyton is the judge. It is supposed to be a part of the training. Discipline. Blyton is supposed to play a role, to make himself hated. But for Blyton it is much more. He is evil. He does not personify the tough drill sergeant; rather he is the army, a reflecting pool of inhumanity. Erik mutters that we’ll get the bastard someday, words will kill him.

Blyton finds Kline. The poor boy, towering above the drill sergeant and shifting his eyes to the left and right, up and down, whimpers. Kline is terrified. He shifts from one foot to the other. Blyton peers at him, at his belt buckle, at his feet. At his two left boots.

Blyton has Kline hang on to his left foot for an hour.

During the days of basic training and during the nights, we march. And sing. There are a thousand songs.

Around her hair

She wore a yellow bonnet.

She wore it in the springtime,

In the merry month of May.

And if

You ask

Her

Why the hell she wore it:

She wore it for her soldie

Who was far, far away.

You write beautifully, a girl says in her letters. You make it all so terrible and real for me … I am going to Europe next summer, she writes, and I’ll see a lot of places for you. As ever …

If I had a low IQ,

I could be a Lifer, too!

And if I didn’t have a brain,

I would learn to love the rain.

Am I right or wrong?

Am I goin’ strong?

Sound off!

Sound off!

One, two, three, four …

Sound Off!

We march to the night infiltration course. They use machine guns on us, firing overhead while Erik and Harry and White and Kline crawl alongside me, under barbed wire, red tracers everywhere, down into ditches, across the finish line. In the rain. Then in dead night we march back to the barracks.

Viet-nam

Viet-nam

Every night while you’re sleepin’

Charlie Cong comes a creepin’

All around.

We march to the Quick-Kill rifle range. We learn to snap off our shots, quickly, rapidly, without conscious aim. Without any thought at all. Quick-Kill.

We march to the obstacle course, and Blyton shoves Kline through the manoeuvres.

We march back to the barracks, and we are always singing.

If I die in a combat zone,

Box me up and ship me home.

An’ if I die on the Russian front,

Bury me with a Russian cunt.

Sound Off!

We march to the bayonet course, marching through green forests, through the ever-rain and through smells of rich loam and leaves and pine and every fine scent of nature, marching like toys under the free, white mountain, Rainier.

Blyton teaches us and taunts us. Standing with his legs spread wide on an elevated platform, he gives us our lesson on the bayonet. Left elbow locked, left hand on wood just below weapon’s sights, right hand on small of stock, right forearm pressed tightly along the upper stock, lunge with left leg, slice up with the steel. Again and again we thrust into mid-air imagined bellies, sometimes towards throats. ‘Dinks are little shits,’ Blyton yells out. ‘If you want their guts, you gotta go low. Crouch and dig.

‘Soldiers! Tell me! What is the spirit of the bayonet?’ He screams the question, rolling it like Sandburg’s poetry, thundering.

Raise your rifle, blade affixed, raise it high over your head, wave it like a flag or trophy, wave it in love, and bellow till you’re hoarse: ‘Drill Sergeant, the spirit of the bayonet is to kill! To kill!’

I know a girl, name is Jill,

She won’t do it, but her sister will.

Honey, oh, Baby-Doll.

I know a girl, dressed in black,

Makes her living on her back.

Honey, oh, Baby-Doll.

I know a girl, dressed in red,

Makes her living in a bed.

Honey, oh, Baby-Doll.

There is no thing named love in the world. Women are dinks. Women are villains. They are creatures akin to Communists and yellow-skinned people and hippies. We march off to learn about hand-to-hand combat. Blyton grins and teases and hollers out his nursery rhyme: ‘If ya wanta live, ya gotta be ag-ile, mo-bile, and hos-tile.’ We chant the words: ag-ile, mobile, hos-tile. We make it all rhyme. We march away, singing.

I don’t know, but I been told,

Eskimo pussy is mighty cold.

Am I goin’ strong?

Am I right or wrong?

Sound Off!

The company forms up for inspection. The battalion commander comes by in his dark glasses, and Blyton and the others are firm and mellow. We’ve been given instructions to say ‘No, sir’ when the colonel asks if we have any problems or any complaints or any needs. When he asks if there’s enough food and if we get enough sleep, we’re supposed to say ‘Yes, sir’. ‘No, sir’. ‘Yes, sir’.

They stuff us into the barracks at ten o’clock. The squad leader gears us up for night-time cleaning. He promises to allow an extra half-hour of sleep in the morning, and we know he’s lying, but the floor gets waxed and our shoes get shined and the lockers get wiped.

Blyton comes in and cusses and crams the light off and by eleven o’clock all the boors and frightened men snort their way to sleep. It is a cattle pen. Seething and stirring in their sleep or on their way to sleep, the men are animals, restless and caged. A giant rhythm takes up the barracks, a swelling and murmuring of human hearts and lungs; the wooden planks seem to move, in and out. You fight to hold to the minutes. Sleep is an enemy. Sleep puts you with the rest of them, the great, public, hopeless zoo. You battle hard complaint from the body. Then you sleep; dark, uneasy hum in your ears, as if you are in a beehive.

In the deep, red heart of the sleep, you are awakened. Fire watch. You sit on the darkened stairs between the two tiers of bunks, and you smoke. Fire watch is a good duty. You lose sleep at it, but the silence and letter-writing time and privacy make up for it, and you are free for an hour. The rain is falling, and you feel comfortable. You listen, smiling and smoking. Will you go to war? You think of Socrates; you see him beside you, stepping through basic training as your friend. He would be a joke in short hair and fatigues. He would not succumb. Certainly he would march through the days and nights in his white robes, with a white beard, and certainly Blyton would never break him. Socrates had fought for Athens: it could not have been a perfectly just war. What had he thought? Socrates, it has been told, was a brave soldier. You wonder if he had been a reluctant hero. Had he been brave out of a spirit of righteousness or necessity? Or resignation? You wonder how he felt, not how he thought, as a soldier on a night like this one, with the rain falling with just this temperature and sound. Then you think of him as an old man, you remember his fate, you think of him peering through iron bars as his ship sailed in, the final cue, only extinction ahead; his country, for which he had been a hero, ending the most certain of good lives. Nothing recorded about his weeping. But Plato may have missed something. Certainly, he must have missed something. You think about other heroes. John Kennedy, Audie Murphy, Sergeant York, T. E. Lawrence. You write letters to blonde girls from middle America, calm and poetic and filled with ironies and self-pity, then you smoke, then you rouse out Kline for the watch, and you go back to your bunk wondering what the fat man will think about for his hour.

Erik and I were discussing these things on that September afternoon, sitting behind the barracks and separating ourselves from everyone and putting polish on our boots, when Blyton saw us alone. He screamed and told us to get our asses over to him pronto.

‘A couple of college pussies,’ he said when we got there. ‘Out behind them barracks hiding from everyone and making some love, huh?’ He looked at Erik. ‘You’re a pussy, huh? You afraid to be in the war, a goddamn pussy, a goddamn lezzie? You know what we do with pussies, huh? We fuck ’em. In the army we just fuck ’em and straighten ’em out. You two college pussies out there hidin’ and sneakin’ a little pussy. Maybe I’ll just stick you two puss in the same bunk tonight, let you get plenty of pussy so tomorrow you can’t piss.’ Blyton grinned and shook his head and said ‘shit’ and called another drill sergeant over and told him he had a couple of pussies and wanted to know what to do. ‘They was out there behind the barracks suckin’ in some pussy. What the hell we do with puss in the army? We fuck ’em. don’t we? Huh? College puss almost ain’t good enough for good fuckin’.’

Erik said we were just polishing boots and cleaning our guns, and Blyton grabbed a rifle, stopped grinning, and had us chant, pointing at the rifle and at our bodies, ‘This is a rifle and this is a gun, this is for shooting and this is for fun.’ Then he told us to report to him that night. ‘You two puss are gonna have a helluva time. You’re gonna get to pull guard together, all alone and in the dark, nobody watchin’. You two are gonna walk ‘round and ‘round the company area, holdin’ hands, and you can talk about politics and nooky all the goddamn night. Shit, I wish I had a goddamn camera.’

We reported to Blyton at 2100 hours, and he gave us a flashlight and black guard helmets and told us to get the hell out of his sight, he couldn’t stand to look at pussy, and he told us to be sure the barracks lights were out by 2230 hours and to report to him every hour.

We went out, and Erik said that the bastard didn’t have the guts to order us to hold hands.

We enjoyed walking guard duty. It was a good, dry night, and it was peaceful. We did not have to go through the night-time quarrels and noise in the barracks, and we could talk and enjoy the feeling of aloneness.

In two hours we found a trainee stealing an unauthorized phone call. We debated about the justice of turning the poor kid in to Blyton. We were getting tired and we knew his punishment would be to relieve us for the night. We gave Blyton the man’s name.

In twenty minutes, the trainee came out, asked for the flashlight and told us to go to bed.

Basic training nearly ended, we marched finally to a processing station. We heard our numbers called off, our new names. Some to go to transportation school – Erik. Some to repeat basic training – Kline. Some to become mechanics. Some to become clerks. And some to attend advanced infantry training, to become foot soldiers – Harry and the squad leader and I. Then we marched to graduation ceremonies, and then we marched back, singing.

I wanna go to Vietnam

Just to kill ol’ Charlie Cong.

Am I right or wrong?

Am I goin’ strong?

Buses – olive drab, with white painted numbers and driven by bored-looking Spec 4s – came to take us away. Erik and I stood by a window in the barracks and watched Blyton talk with parents of the new soldiers. He was smiling.

‘We’ll get the bastard,’ Erik said. We could pick off the man with one shot from an M-14, no problem. He’d taught us well. Erik laughed and shook his fist at the window. ‘Too easy to shoot him.

‘There’s not much I can say to you,’ Erik said. ‘I had this awful suspicion they’d screw you, make you a grunt. Maybe you can break a leg during advanced training; pretend you’re insane.’ Erik had decided at the beginning of basic to enlist for three years, tacking on an extra year as a soldier but escaping infantry duty. I had gambled, thinking they would use me for more than a pair of legs, certain that someone would see the value of my ass behind a typewriter or a Xerox machine. We’d joked about the gamble for two months.

I shook Erik’s hand in the latrine and walked with him to his bus and shook his hand again.

6 Escape

In advanced infantry training, the soldier learns new ways to kill people.

Claymore mines, booby traps, the M-60 machine gun, the M-70 grenade launcher. The old .45-calibre pistol. Drill sergeants give lessons on the M-16 automatic rifle, standard weapon in Vietnam.

On the outside, AIT looks like basic training. Lots of push-ups, lots of shoe-shining and firing ranges and midnight marches. But AIT is not basic training. The difference is inside the new soldier’s skull, locked to his brain, the certainty of being in a war, pending doom that comes in with each day’s light and stays with him all the day long.

The soldier in advanced infantry training is doomed, and he knows it and thinks about it. War, a real war. The drill sergeant said it when we formed up for our first inspection: every swingin’ dick in the company was now a foot soldier, a grunt in the United States Army, the infantry, Queen of Battle. Not a cook in the lot, not a clerk or mechanic among us. And in eight weeks, he said, we were all getting on a plane that would fly to a war.

The man who finds himself in AIT is doomed, and he knows it and thinks about it. There are no more hopes of being made into a rear-echelon trooper. The drill sergeant said it when we formed up for our first inspection: every swingin’ dick in the company was now a foot soldier, a grunt in the United States Army. Not a cook or typist in the lot. And in eight weeks, he said, we were all getting on a plane bound for Vietnam.

‘I don’t want you to mope around thinkin’ about Germany or London,’ he told us. ‘Don’t even think about it, ’cause there just ain’t no way. You’re leg men now, and we don’t need no infantry in Piccadilly or Southampton. Besides, Vietnam ain’t all that bad. I been over there twice now, and I’m alive and still screwin’ everything in sight. You troops pay attention to the trainin’ you get here, and every swingin’ dick will be back in one piece, believe me. Just pay attention, try to learn something. The Nam, it ain’t so bad, not if you got your shit together.’

One of the trainees asked him about rumours that said we would be shipped to Frankfurt.

‘Christ, you’ll hear that crap till it makes you puke. Every swingin’ dick is going to Nam, every big fat swingin’ dick.’

Someone raised his hand and asked when we’d get our first pass.

‘Okay,’ the drill sergeant said, acting like a sixth-grade schoolteacher. ‘You men are damn lucky. You got a square company commander. He knows what it’s like to get out of basic, and he told me to get you the hell out of here, fast. So, damn it, if you troops play right with me, there’ll be no problem. Get your gear into the barracks, sweep the place down, and you’ll be in Seattle in an hour.’

I went to the library in Tacoma. I found the Reader’s Guide and looked up the section on the United States Army. Under the heading ‘AWOL and Desertion’ I found the stuff I was looking for. Articles about soldiers who had crept away from the campfires, into Canada, Sweden, France, and Ireland. The librarian fetched out old copies of Newsweek and Time, and I went into a corner and made notes.

Most of the articles were nothing more than interviews with deserters, stories of their lives in Stockholm, where they lived openly, or in Paris, where they hid and used assumed names and grew beards. That was interesting reading – I was concerned with their psychology and with what compelled them to pack up and leave – but I needed something more concrete. I was after details, how-to-do-it stuff. I wanted to know the laws of the various nations, which countries would take deserters, and under what conditions. In one of the Time pieces I found a list of organizations in Sweden and Denmark and the name of a man in Holland, a member of Parliament, who ran a covert underground-railroad system, shipping disenchanted GIs to places where they would be free. I wrote down the names and addresses.

In another article, someone described the best routes into Canada, places where deserting GIs crossed. None of the NATO nations would accept US military deserters; some sort of a mutual extradition pact was in force. I knew Canada harboured draft dodgers, but I couldn’t find anything on their policy towards deserters, and I doubted our northern neighbours went that far. Sweden, despite all the problems of adjustment and employment, seemed the best bet.

I smiled at the librarian when I returned the magazines; then I went into the library’s lobby and called the bus depot. To be sure, I disguised my voice – perhaps they had some sort of tape-recording system – and asked about rates and time schedules for Vancouver. From Seattle, Vancouver was only a two-hour drive, the fellow said, and the rates were low and buses ran frequently, even during the night.

Then I called the Seattle airport and checked on rates to Dublin, Ireland. Playing it carefully, professionally, I inquired first with one of the large American firms, telling them I was a student and wanted to do research there. Then I called Air Canada, gave them the same story, and mentioned that I might want to leave from Vancouver. The man asked if I wanted one-way or round-trip fare. I was ready for that question, and, pausing for a realistic second or two, I said he might as well give me rates for both fares. I might be staying in Dublin for several months. And maybe longer.

Having done all these things, I went back to my corner in the library and, for the first time, persuaded myself that it was truly possible. No one would stop me at the Canadian border, not in a bus. A flight to Ireland would raise no suspicions. From Ireland it was only a day or two by boat to Sweden. There was no doubt that it could be done.

I wrote a letter to my parents, and in the middle of it I asked them to send my passport and immunization card. I’d been to Europe in the summer of 1967, back when travel was fun and not flight. I told them I needed the passport for R & R when I got to Vietnam. I said the shot card was necessary for my army health records.

I itemized the expenses. Five hundred dollars would pull it off. I was two hundred dollars short, but I could find a job in Vancouver and have the balance in two weeks. Or, if I didn’t want to waste the time, there were college people and old friends to borrow from. I wrote letters to a girl friend, crying some and hinting at what was up. I asked her to fly out for my Thanksgiving Day pass.

It was dark when I left the library. It was funny to think my first day of freedom since mid-August had been spent in a building full of books and old ladies. It was remarkable. Drill sergeants and company commanders would laugh at the thought of it, and I was chuckling myself, because that library and those words and those helpful old librarians were going to get me out of this.

Fort Lewis in the winter is sloppy and dirty. It’s wet and very cold, and those things together make your gloves freeze on the firing ranges. On bivouac your sleeping bag stiffens. It’s no fun to smoke – too much trouble to get the pack out, and because there’s no warm place to put your hands after you throw the butt into the slush. Better to stand and wiggle your fingers. After spending days trying to knock down targets with the black rifles, you ride back to the barracks in open cattle trucks, everyone bunched together like the animals that are supposed to ride there and you don’t say anything, just watch the trees, big lush pines in the snow.

But there’s so much to write about, and the details pile on one another so that a massive, grey picture of each day is all that’s left when it’s over.

Just before Thanksgiving I received the passport and immunization card from my parents, and on the same day I asked to see the battalion commander.

The first sergeant arranged it, grudgingly and because some regulation said he had no choice. But he ordered me to see the chaplain first.

‘The chaplain weeds out the pussies from men with real problems,’ he said. ‘Seems this last year we been using too much shit on the crop. It’s all coming up pussies, and the poor chaplain over there in his little church is busy as hell, just trying to weed out all you pussies. Good Lord ought to take pity on the chaplain, ought to stop manufacturing so damn many pussies up there.’

The chaplain was named Edwards. He had thick red hair, a firm handshake, a disciplined but friendly mouth and a gently plump belly. Edwards was a man designed to soothe trainees, custom-made.

‘What’s the problem, mess hall not dishing out the bennies?’ Edwards was trying to soften me up, trying to make me like him, trying to turn the real problem into something not really worth pressing, trying to make all problems buckle under the weight of a friendly, God-fearing, red-headed officer. How often does an officer joke with you, man-to-man?

Smiling and saying no sir, my real problem is one of conscience and philosophy and intellect and emotion and fear and physical hurt and a desire to live chastened by a desire to be good, and also, underneath, a desire to prove myself a hero, I explained, in the broadest terms, what troubled me. Edwards listened and nodded. He took notes, and smiled whenever I smiled, and with his encouragement I gained steam and made my case. Which was: Chaplain, I believe human life is very valuable. I believe, and this has no final truth to it, that human life is valuable because people, unlike the other species, are aware of good and bad; because men are aware they should pursue the good and not the bad; and because, often, people do in fact try to pursue the good, even if the pursuit brings painful personal consequences. I believe, therefore, that a man is most a man when he tries to recognize and understand what is good – when he tries to ask in a reasonable way about things: is it good? And I believe, finally, that a man cannot be fully a man until, deciding that something is right, his actions make real the suspect bravery of the mind.

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