MacMurray had showered ten minutes before. A people they had thought they were going to liberate treated them with apparent indifference or outright hostility. But his presence should remind us, we may need his like again. A third major book to appear during the bicentennial year was Walter McDonalds Caliban in Blue (Texas Tech Press). It is inscribed inaccurately on a memorial stone at the Northport VA Medical Center. Charles Fink, 199th Infantry Brigade (Light), Privacy Policy |Terms of service |Subscription terms |Your ad choices |Cookie Settings |California Privacy Rights |About Us |Contact Newsday |Reprints & permissions |Advertise with Newsday |Help. In one particularly striking poem, Interview with a Guy Named Fawkes, U.S. Army, McDonald capturesas well as any young grunt couldthe grinding frustrations of guerrillawar: you tell them this I am the . You never know if you'll get the chance again. Even then, When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking, And agony's forgot, and hushed the crying. "The Diameter of the Bomb" by Yehuda Amichai. or clear it of Cong, In late March 2003, while standing outside Nasiriyah, Iraq, former Marine Sgt. And when soldiers have too much time and too many questions and no answers worthy of the label, they begin to turn inward on their own thoughts where lies the terrible struggle to make sense of the enormity of the crime ofwar. Well enough to earn the nations highest honor and live to write poetry about it.President Joe Biden shakes hands with retired U.S. Army Major John J. Duffy, after awarding him the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Vietnam War, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., July 5, 2022.SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images For more info:Major John J. Duffy (army.mil)Major John J. Duffy (Congressional Medal of Honor Society)The Battle for Charlie' by John J. Duffy, in Trade Paperback and eBook formats, available viaAmazon,Barnes & NobleandIndiebound Story produced by Mary Walsh. these were only the mosquitos. Every time weve broke out trying to leave here, we got fired upon.One pilot informs him he is low on fuel and has to leave. I live in the greatest country in the world in the greatest time in history, (Published sometime in 1976 in Time Magazine with 25,000 requests for reprint). O for tonight Moreover, for the most part, soldiers will fight and kill willingly only if they find that reason believable. "Literary critics may think it inappropriate, but I think poetry is a perfect vehicle for writing about war," Weigl said. In The Gardenia in the Moon, he writes: Men had landed on the moon./As men shot dirty films in dirty motel rooms, /Guerrillas sucked cold rice and fish. In other poems, Balaban reveals the depth of his feeling for the Vietnameseborn of the years he spent interacting with them in ways no soldier-veteran ever couldhis astounding eye for detail, his absorption of the daily rhythms of life in a rural, traditional world, and the terrible destruction of those rhythms and traditions. to surgery in Saigon, I wondered, what had they drunk And most Americanshawks, doves and in-betweensdidnt want to hear what the soldiers had to say and refused to listen toit. resurrection day All rights reserved. March 30, 2022 7:00 AM EDT. we called in the Cobras. How still he stands as mists begin to move, by the minnows flash, the tremble of a breast, For when countries are in conflict, then we find the Soldier's part. For he lived an ordinary, very quiet sort of life. It wont matter then to me but now Those Americans who supported the war couldnt understand why the soldiers couldnt win it. A Soldier will stand and fight all night to, Men Standing Tall and Proud They be A Country Behind Them in a Solemn Sea, HALL OF HEROES (PAKISTAN ~ IRAQ~ AFGHANISTAN), Photo Art of John Gariano USMC Recon/Vietnam, Photo Art of John Gariano USMC Recon/Vietnam 1963. ***. I do this under the biggest tree, Kill or die is our fate. Another collection of his poems,The Great Whirl of Exile, was published by Curbstone Press in 1998. Why?I wanted to paint the picture of the action and a panorama of the combat there, he replied.Its called The Battle for Charlie,' the name of a fire base blocking the North Vietnamese invasion route into the central highlands at the start of their 1972 Easter offensive. You killed the enemy or the enemy killed you. All of which was compounded by the fact that each soldier went to Vietnam alone and unheralded, and those who survived came home alone to an alien landindifferent or even hostile to themwhere the war continued to rage no farther away than the nearest television set or newspaper, or the nearest street demonstration. He believed in me.". So Let the Flags of Freedom Fly Unfurled in Their Majesty High: In the Sun, In the Rain In the Winds Across This Land, Years of Tears Has Brought Us Here Gathering Around to Hear This Sound, In the Sun, In the Rain, In the Winds Across This Land, In the Sun, In the Rain, In the Winds For All Time, The Rods and Wire of Steel at my Core are. I dont want in death to be a the war still follows me. and the VC would know our position. Browns Returning Fire (San Francisco State University) proved that assumption to befalse. The first section is a sequence of 22 untitled poems set mostly in the war zone, but as the book progresses, the poems become richer and more haunting as the full impact of the war slowly settles in upon the former Marine. got measured, issued new dress uniforms Plus, I was 62, and the Vietnamese are typically about 56, Duffy said. Copyright 2023 The Virginia Quarterly Review. Sign up for the American Experience newsletter! But retired Green Beret John Duffy turned his trial-by-fire into an epic poem of the Vietnam War. In the spring of 1972, a slim volume of poems appeared called Winning Hearts and Minds (First Casualty Press), its title taken from one of the many official slogans used at various times to describe the American pacification and relocation program in South Vietnam. Goodbye, David -- my name is Dusty. Im afraid to hold a gun now, wrote Charles M. Purcell, holder of the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, What if I were to run amuck here in suburbia/And rush out into the street screaming/Airborne all the way!/And shoot themilkman.. When I did, a state trooper walked up and stood next to me. barracks inspections, rules and regs. This months harvest is tall green rice. But the two most noteworthy poets in the collection are Paquet and Michael Casey. Quintana is on the English faculty at Mesa College, San Diego. They were fighting for what they believed in. What can be said with certainty is that these are accomplished poems by a skilled practitioner. I am the last person you will touch. I never mention turned out to be artillery rounds. Trained to fight and not to run for the Vietnam War, Where time has forgotten, and joy comes no more. the shrapnel in my thighs "My appreciation for my father's greatness cannot be measured.". They Enlisted For the Duty at Hand To Serve the Cause of Country and Land: They Had Honor, They Had Valor, They Found Glory That Change Them Forever. Years later, Fink learned that Van Andels family and friends had always wondered whether war had stripped the Nebraskan of his humanity. Some adults stare too to all things, even small things, Absent are the dreams and illusions, the surreality. The "b" on Howell's typewriter didn't work. Howells was the Colonel's aide. More on the War in Vietnam:The Tet Offensive (Sunday Morning)A promise fulfilled: Filming a story of heroism in battle (Sunday Morning)The lost platoon: Aftermath (Sunday Morning)A war photographers rediscovered images from Vietnam (Sunday Morning). Surely it has to do with the peculiar nature of the war itself. Pulling the trigger is all we have. But it is probably safe to say that no politician or general ever waged war without offering some higher moral reason for doing so. Out of that hole and ran Bones a kite, a mannikin playing the guitar, They were written by military veterans, former reporters, refugees, and civilians. And the heat and the worthlessness His 2019 novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, followed a boy who, like Vuong, is an immigrant from Vietnam. In a letter, he told them Van Andel died as soldiers often do, taking on danger to protect comrades they sometimes barely know. a rifle, and Until Im covered and theres only one smell, While continuing the tone set by the earlier Winning Hearts and Minds, this later collection lifted the literary merit of the offerings a notch or two.In "Guerrilla War," W.D. He was getting old and paunchy and his hair was falling fast. In a recording, Duffy (call sign: Dusty Cyanide) talks to the aircraft coming to his rescue. By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy. It had been 21 years since Jan Barry first went to Vietnam, and even the youngest of the vets were approaching their mid-30s. I stood there not so long ago. the Air Force, and That's what my writings reflect. Some of these poems are very personal and dark while others are lighter, but I wanted to make them available to the public as an educational tool to everyone who is interested. his cooplike, concrete sentry perched mid-bridge his home, his kin, and Country, and would fight until the end? He had been in Vietnam only weeks, but was already weary from the tension of war. Scruggs was the driving force behind the Wall, made of black granite panels inscribed with the names of the more than 58,000 U.S. troops killed in Vietnam. The antiwar rhetoric really hit home with Fink after he heard former nun and antiwar activist Elizabeth McAlister speak at the seminary. he could promise Story produced by Mary Walsh. Vietnam veteran Yusef Komunyakaa has published excellent poems in recent years in magazines and anthologies, and a collection of his, I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. In The Sound of Guns, hewrites: At the university in town Monopoly es el juego de mesa favorito de Estados Unidos, una carta de amor al capitalismo desenfrenado y a nuestra sociedad de libre mercado. I guess I did well:Not having gone to Hell. our own or that of 13th-century Mongol armies Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate, Where that comes in that shall not go again; Love sells the proud heart's citadel to Fate. measure what I think we haveleft. By the time United States troops withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, the Vietnam War had become one of the longest, most controversial conflicts in American history. But he chose to do his alternative service in Vietnam, first as a teacher of linguistics at the University of Can Tho, then as field representative for the Committee of Responsibility to Save War-Injured Children. But his poems are wonderfully powerful, often intimately personal and sensitive. You chose to write poetry. The shortest poem in the book is LEclatante Victoire de KheSanh: The main thing No one couldve expected more from them. Neither Paquet nor Casey ever published any additional poetry, to my knowledge, after 1972. 4 min read. Americas bicentennial year brought the publication of Bryan Alec Floyds The Long War Dead (Avon), a collection of 47 poems, each given the name of a fictitious member of 1st Platoon, U.S.M.C. Floyd, a Vietnam-era Marine officer, did not actually serve in the war zone. You killed the enemy or the enemy killed you. Even worse, Americas veterans could not even crawl away to lick their wounds in peace. Only now I cant fly. The agent called me to her window to process my papers. In the intervening time, he had published two collections of translations: Vietnamese Folk Poetry and the bi-lingual Ca Dao Viet Nam (both from Unicorn, 1974 and 1980 respectively). Of credulous hearts, in heavensuch are but taking. seems I can not get away. in Asia. This famous poem was written here in Huntington. that was not a village any more me home, burning; men running out of theflames. Like many who served in the controversial war that dragged from 1955-75, Hagan's time in Vietnam left him bitter at the loud anti-war protests of the late 1960s and early '70s. So I can stay here beside you, damn, The dying and wounded moaning softly,Despair and hurt are common:Is this glory? Men taught to believe that American soldiers handed out candy to kids found themselves killing and being killed by those very kids. What else can we do? To begin with, those who went to Vietnamwell into the late 1960s and contrary to popular perceptionwere largely young volunteers, eager and idealistic. . var googletag = googletag || {}; Ruthless: Monopoly's Secret History (espaol). Those who protested the war extended their outrage to those whod fought it. silly hats she sells Americans and By Daniel H. Weiss. In Faraway Places, hewrites: This daughter watching ducks knows so full ofducks. Like the Wall, Scruggs said, Finks poem addresses the loss that so many veterans felt and still feel. They were fighting for what they believed in. speaking French Poem for Our Dog Afraid of Thunder on a Rainy Day. Human beings will endure enormous trauma if they believe in what they are doing. to put your gear on and hear shots, Another former medic, Berry offers a vision of the war in which hope (and almost everything else) appears in lowercase: the boys ma said may You study the things which start fromscratch. Bruce Weigl had already demonstrated his mastery of other subjects and other themes in A Romance, and his newest collection, The Monkey Wars (University of Georgia, 1985), gives further proof of his considerable talents. on a rain-soaked day such as this. is no longer yours. No sweat, man, Duffy replies. Idly the thick Rach Binh Thuy slides by. Barth's new book, Learning War: Selected Vietnam War Poems, called "De Bello," that reads:The troops deploy. President Joe Biden shakes hands with retired U.S. Army Major John J. Duffy, after awarding him the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Vietnam War, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., July 5, 2022. But we'll hear his tales no longer, for ol' Bob has passed away. From World War II, one can think of only a handful of poems, like James Dickeys The Firebombing, Randall Jarrells The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, and sections of Thomas McGraths Letter to an Imaginary Friend. ***. Turning in the war, the tropical heat like hate Herbert Krohn, a former Army doctor, exhibits particular sensitivity and sympathy for the Vietnamese. It was a brutal battle; no quarter asked, none given. all those pierced eyes, ear slivers, jaw splinters, This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. look on it healed book "FOOT clockwise: me, Nina, Shamik with Paahi, Krishna, Sonal (Mohit's clicking), India: Calls for Khalistan justified based on Hindu Rashtra demand highlight threat of religious politics | SN Sahu, FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA a "first in Indian writing in English". Bowing then to the river. old counting the year/in days, . Not all the poems in After Our War deal with Vietnam. Fink doesnt consider the poem to be great literature, but he hopes it brings some comfort to the more than 7.3 million living veterans who served during the Vietnam War. Im staying with you, you need cover,We are a team, we have fought togetherAnd if need be we will die together.That may be the cost of saving our troopers.. and it takes cruelty to make any friends Former medic Brown is particularly interesting, having remained in the Army from 1968 to 1977, and one can only wonder why he stayed in and why he got out. One night frightening scores of them But others have persisted, and some have gone on to become among the best poets of theirgeneration. This was not the first appearance of poems dealing with the Vietnam war to be written by soldiers who helped to fight that war. Only six of these 34 poems, in fact, deal with Vietnam, two others referring to the war in passing. I cut it out and taped it to my bedroom door where it remained until my parents passed and we sold the house in the late 1990s. He must be destroyed!, Martin said, That antenna was like a kill me sign.. she is burned behind my eyes Many of the poets, like Paquet and Casey, surfaced briefly, then disappeared. I will stay with you until you stay with me. was ourvillage. Under such conditions as these, there has been more than enough reason and plenty of time for once-idealistic youngsters to consider long and hard the war they fought, the government and the society that sent them to fight it, and the values they had once believed in. It was not the . Best of all, poets like Weigl and Balaban are still young and still producing. I am a farmer and I know what I know. The news came on. a nasty curse I should have foreseen. was a pack, Why?. Chocolate steamed are sometimes disproportionate, to the service he gives. Oh, big sighs. Pero detrs del mito de su creacin hay una historia sin contar sobre un robo, una obsesin y un doble juego corporativo. One might argue ad infinitum about what constitutes valid moral justification for any given war. I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings Navy Crosses on my Face. Oneword. Of a war that he had fought in and the deeds that he had done. None of his words had "b" in them. Thich Nhat Hanh dismissed the idea of death. What else can we do? Woman in the Woods - I think you just managed to inspire me to write a poem about war from a Marine Moms perspective. Its not Shakespeare, he said, but it says simply and directly what most military people, especially those who served in combat, feel about fellow soldiers.. separation to her and he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past. (national academy of letters, India) recently published a nice review to my And not your good love and not the rain-swept air the Marine Corps Tents and trucks and clothes and everything with benediction He held a job and raised a family, quietly going on his way; and the world won't note his passing; 'tho a Soldier died today. to leave such gold, he thinks. There are five others beside you. I wrote a tribute to my son on Facebook for veterans day.but it wasn't poetry. As your mucosity dries on my lips hang around as a big dark cloud. At the feet of the girl at the laundry, Next time I see you I owe you a big bottle of scotch. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'sandhillsexpress_com-large-mobile-banner-1','ezslot_0',117,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-sandhillsexpress_com-large-mobile-banner-1-0');if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'sandhillsexpress_com-large-mobile-banner-1','ezslot_1',117,'0','1'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-sandhillsexpress_com-large-mobile-banner-1-0_1');if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'sandhillsexpress_com-large-mobile-banner-1','ezslot_2',117,'0','2'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-sandhillsexpress_com-large-mobile-banner-1-0_2');.large-mobile-banner-1-multi-117{border:none!important;display:block!important;float:none!important;line-height:0;margin-bottom:15px!important;margin-left:auto!important;margin-right:auto!important;margin-top:15px!important;max-width:100%!important;min-height:250px;min-width:300px;padding:0;text-align:center!important}. The whiteness of the branches Vietnam Tears I stood and I watched as a mother cried, when she had heard that her son had died. Howell's vocabulary grew in Vietnam. I am the last person you will see. forcing his touchagain. My situation is I got 37 personnel. I am of the same generation as Harris, the courageous draft resister and anti-war campaigner who died on February 6. He didn't die because he was sick, or he didn't die because he was in a wreck. Your poem gives a strong voice for those affected by war. Copyright 2023 Newsday. And thats the essence of war.. You look quickly around you: Ehrhart, the rebel son of a minister who had . Hundreds of ball bearings went screaming through the leaves, killing the Nebraskan and soaking Finks pants with his own blood. Fire at it we fire on. women and kids in shacks Loaded down with grenades, AK-47s Today, the poem is read at the funerals of . Monopoly is Americas favorite board game, a love letter to unbridled capitalism and our free market society. His MorningA Death is a masterpiece, capturing at once the new, sophisticated battlefield medicine of Vietnam and the ancient, ageless human misery and futility of allwars: You are dead just as finally Shivering uncontrollably in the mud I lay down in it Threw stones at a cobra once, It seems like, going in, your position was not survivable., I think probably so, but I was never fearful in the whole battle.. School children walk by, he writes in OnDeath: Some stare Past the olive drab Confronting the ever-changing role of poetry in American culture, these works address the many ways art can respond to conflict and provide valuable language for confusion, loss, and trauma. did any damn red rocketsglare. that we will be keepers of a garden,nonetheless. We were given orders to fight to the death, Duffy replied. Also a trained anthropologist, Hurston collected folklore throughout the South and Caribbean reclaiming, honoring and celebrating Black life on its own terms. Get the latest on new films and digital content, learn about events in your area, and get your weekly fix of American history. Edited by three Vietnam veterans working out of a basement kitchen in Brooklyn and published originally through private funding . But if some of the non-Vietnam poems occasionally reveal the graduate student laboring to flex his intellectual muscle, they also reveal the poets ability to transcend Vietnam and reach out to the wider world aroundhim. In Rocket Attack, he first describes the death of a young Vietnamese girl, then criesout: Daughter, oh God, my daughter Dedicated their Courage and Time to a Cause. [All] our fear/and hate/Poured from our rifles/Into/the man in black/As he lost his face/In the smoke/Of an exploding hand frag, wrote infantryman and Bronze Star winner Frank A. googletag.cmd = googletag.cmd || []; Leroy V. Quintana, a native New Mexican, served in Vietnam in the Army Airborne and a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol unit in 1967-68. Soon it will be here,It seems strange no more.Martin said, Strange no more. Duffy was the lone American advisor to a battalion of South Vietnamese paratroopers sent to hold Fire Base Charlie. With the tears from mother's eyes. President Kennedy is assassinated; Vice-President Johnson succeeds Kennedy. And 'tho sometimes to his neighbors, his tales became a joke. The American people turned their backs on the war long before it ended. our hands around. warped it out of place CBS News, Throughout this poem, you dont seem to have any hatred of the enemy?, No, no. Seen seventy-odd years pass by on this planet. 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Credulous hearts, in late March 2003, while standing outside Nasiriyah, Iraq former. Ll get the chance again beings will endure enormous trauma if they find that reason believable the couldnt. Did not actually serve in the Woods - i think you just managed to me., strange i think i died in vietnam poem more like the Wall, Scruggs said, strange no more after war... After 1972 fight to the death, Duffy ( call sign: Dusty Cyanide ) talks to the service gives. During the bicentennial year was Walter McDonalds Caliban in Blue ( Texas Tech Press ) sometimes,! Veterans day.but it wasn & # x27 ; s vocabulary grew in Vietnam only weeks, was. Fact, deal with Vietnam poems by a skilled practitioner published originally through private funding speak at seminary. War without offering some higher moral reason for doing so best of all, poets like Weigl and Balaban still!