Correction
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War becomes us. Take a look at all the flags flapping mindlessly in the breeze. Read the headlines. Listen to the TV. Ask any politician. In ever venue and in every medium people plead for me to remember how much they have suffered, remember those who sacrificed their lives for this or that country, remember that no one died in vain and that the living will never forget.
Growing up under the tutelage of public education, war was taught as a throwback to more innocent, less enlightened times. The Vikings, the Huns, the Romans, the Mongols, the Native Americans and the Japanese: they all existed and lived in history books wearing their funny little costumes, carrying their decorative spears, clubs, muskets or swords, and standing in a snow-white background like two-dimensional paper cut-outs. In museums across the country little school kids walk from one molded figure to the other, and stare at them while listening to tour guides as stiff as the wax mannequins, absorbing only dust and stale air. [Let’s move on to the next exhibit, and please, do not touch.] Back in class the history teachers boil everything down to dates, names and major events. Timelines in the textbooks show when a battle began and when it ended, and that it always culminates in a clear-cut winner. Storylines never deviate from the prescribed dominant narrative that everything progresses and today is better than the one before.
As a child in America, I was afforded the same privilege as any other kid: Not having to remember. As a result, I have no memory of war. It is not that I am not conscious of war. My life has not been immune from its fallout. It is simply that I do not know what war means because I never had to pick up a gun and kill for the cause; I never had any relatives or friends killed by the enemy; I never had an enemy that I wanted to bomb back to the Stone Age. War, people say, is an emotional, tactile, communal experience. But stories of war, of victory and defeat, of the vanquished and the conquerors, can only hold so much water until they begin to leak.
The two greatest lies ever told to me about the protracted, indecisive, cruel war in Vietnam were that the United States was simply trying to help defend freedom and democracy around the world and that only Americans sacrificed and suffered. At this very moment, a lot of old Vietnam vets, I can only suspect, are sitting in their easy chairs and swearing up and down that the war was this country’s to lose. If only we had dropped the Bomb, if only we had killed more Commies, if only the President hadn’t been such a wimp, if only I had been given the order, I would have killed ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out. Such were the sentiments when in the spring of 2002 allegations were made about possible war crimes committed by former senator Bob Kerry and his SEAL unit (nicknamed Tiger Force), whose goal was to destroy the enemy, whoever it turned out to be, in Thanh Phong in 1969.
The vets’ version of this war has already been solidified and glorified with the dedication of numerous monuments, statues and arboretums all over the country, and always adorned with that self-righteous POW/MIA black-and-white flag. Their teary eyes and sorry excuses have become the cornerstones of a sweeping myth, and anyone who tampers with this house of cards - as the expos about Bob Kerry did - is vilified and once again the projector of false memories is set up to play all the familiar lies on the blank wall of our national conscience.
“As an honorably discharged, two tour, combat veteran of the Viet Nam war, if Kerry and his boys shot children in a free-fire zone, which is what they were classified then, well he was protecting himself and his brothers-in-arms! Did you ever face any of those FUCKING children aiming an AK-47 at you? I doubt that you did! I have no sympathy for those people that were found in free-fire zones. They were my enemy. Their survivors still are.” (sa1001695 from the Tiger Force website forum)
It’s taken 36 years for Huynh Thi Gioiís story to be heard around the world. She survived a raid in her village conducted by the elite U.S. Army unit led by Bob Kerry in 1967. According to her, when the raid was taking place, she was called out of her hut and when she appeared with her young son on her shoulder, he was promptly shot dead. “I held his body tight and I was crying and later the translator said the American soldiers killed him because he was a boy and the son of a communist soldier.” (The Asian Reporter, 11/4/03) Set these two above quotes side by side and you’ll soon realize that tragedy occurs when one person loses his humanity while at the same time taking it from another.
Without the Vietnam War, I would not exist today. I am undeniably tied to this war, intimate with it, in fact. I am the biological outcome of two bodies that met on a certain day, in a certain year, in a certain country, during a particular war that took them from me before I could remember their voices, what they smelled like and what their names were. The only comfort I take from their absence is that I was picked to survive in order to bear witness to the futility of a war that engulfed them.
I am trying to remember this war for my own peace of mind because few people are being honest with me. I have collected reams of printed paper documenting references to news footage, official memos, survivors’ tales, journalists’ photos and other peoples’ stirring, living memories. Books upon books have been written about this war and everything in between. People who were aware and involved back then are being forced to take a long ride with Hindsight and relive the decisions they did and did not make. On the road to Death, it all becomes a merciless vortex of cause and effect, reflection and regret.
If they look down through all the clouds and the lights, they will see me hauling and dredging, exhuming and reaching through the guts so that I can finally see the glowing, beating heart of the matter. Because that is what I was born to do.
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