Literary Response To War and Peace

         In our readings for English 384 we have recently read two remarkable Vietnam War books, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brian and Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Meyers.  Throughout the course of the class, I’ve been doing some relevant outside reading as well; for this section I’ve read the Vietnam section of the anthology collected by Lorrie Goldensohn American War Poetry and a personal war history by Randy Zahn, Snake Pilot.           

          Given their age, for my fellow classmates, the Vietnam War is largely a historical event, perhaps the war of their fathers or uncles. For me, although I did not serve, Vietnam was the war of my generation and my memories of the events of the 1960’s and early 1970’s are vivid.  I was in Washington DC last week and visited, for the seventh time now, the Vietnam Memorial Wall (I went for its dedications also). On that wall are the names of almost 59,000 guys that I grew up, played with, went to school with, and became a generation with. Those guys died young though, Meyer’s “Fallen Angels,” and never had the joy of seeing their kids grow up, last weeks sunset at Pere Marquette beach, or any of the bountiful joys and blessings we experience in our lives.         

            Between the recent readings and my recollections of conversations with Vets after the war, I felt inspired to write a poem, posted here. I chose to write a prose or narrative poem, a form e.e. cummings and Dan Gerber often used, based on a vivid recollection of the times. For those of you unfamiliar with the prose form of poetry, its intended to look like a normal paragraph, but read and sound like a poem. I don’t claim to be very good at it: 

My Brother’s Necklace            

      My brother Will (he’s really a step brother), an ex-Green Beret has a necklace he brought home from Vietnam. At first glance, its not much, about fourteen curled up brown wrinkles on a leather bootlace, each about the size of a half dollar, light as air, and looking for all the world like the chocolate rice cakes my wife munches on after the holidays. The thing is, though, its a necklace of human ears. Gook ears.              

       He explained that he didn’t really steal them because they belonged to the dead who didn’t need them anymore. He explained that he wanted a souvenir, something to connect him with the blood lust of the fight, something that showed the triumph over the men he killed. He explained that in our Father’s war, there were helmets, Lugers, flags, and metals to take home as souvenirs but in Vietnam the enemy wore only black pajamas and had only ears to offer. He explained that you had to have been there to understand it, that all of the “greenies” did it, that he was lucky to have got anything. After he got home, he kept it on the mantelpiece for a while, quite defensive about it, although soon he came to explain that it was really not a trophy. After a couple of years, he put the necklace away in a drawer. He explained that the dust collected on it.               

          Now he has it down in the basement in a box. He explains that the central heating makes it dry up all the more, that it will turn to dust. He will show you, though, anytime you ask.  He explains that the he’s no longer vindictive, that nobodies perfect. He explains that there were perfectly good reasons to fight that war, that the barbarity of the gooks to his brothers could not be allowed to pass. But he explains that during the white hot passion and terror of war, we could not really do anything to stop it while the war was going on, that we had to win the war first. He explained that we couldn’t always do what we would have liked to do. He explains the the gooks killed his brothers, cut off their testicles, and shoved them in their mouths. He explains how there weren’t any souvenirs of value, how it was always raining, how the terror corrupted the soul, how the mud smelled like ripe putrefaction of meaningless death. He explains that he really ought to keep it, that its his only connection to evil. A thing like that.                

       You really ought to go and see it. He’ll show it to you. All you have to do is ask. It’s not that its a very interesting necklace when you come right down to it, bunch of dried up rice cakes, but you learn a lot from his explanations.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Bruce Bytwerk