What do you want me to write about?
How’s the car doing? You never talk about the car. Why don’t you talk about the car? I want to know your deepest thoughts about the car.
Love, Andrew
I AIN'T COMIN' BACK LIKE THAT
Four of us were polishing our boots in the barracks on a Sunday afternoon—my buddy Carson; Roosevelt, who was now our platoon leader; Shaughnessy, a bull-necked, red headed Texan boy of few words; and me. We formed a half circle on the floor around Roosevelt who sat cross-legged above us on his lower-level bunk.
Among the other men, several lay on their bunks reading. Others slept. Still others wrote letters. A lucky few, on weekend passes, made love to visiting women in off-base motels. A half dozen men from our platoon watched King Kong at the Fort Lewis Movie Theater.
A blustery November wind smacked rain and flecks of ice against the windows. It was getting dark earlier now, and the sky was already black. A storm was moving in and the rain was hitting harder and more insistent against the window panes. It was a free day and I was trying to be cheerful, but it wasn’t easy. I had a lot on my mind.
We had pooled our money and given it to Toby, a boy who got on everyone’s nerves. Must have been an only child. Complains and whines about everything. He’s short and tubby, and has a pug nose.
We’d dumped the contents of a nearly empty washing detergent box into the crapper and handed the box and a laundry bag to Toby who then left the barracks and walked off the training grounds, illegally, to a donut shop. As we waited for him to return, we polished our boots.
We called it polishing, but we didn’t use brushes or polishing rags. We used spit. We wet the tips of our index and middle fingers on our tongues, rubbed our fingers on a cake of black wax in a can of Kiwi Shoe Polish, and rubbed the waxy mixture on our boots, using fast circular motions, applying more spit and then more wax, until our boots were glassy-smooth, and a thin smear of wax on a heel or a toe disappeared under our fast moving fingers like steam evaporating off a black mirror.
Eventually, Toby snuck back in, dripping wet, shivering and cursing, with five dozen glazed donuts at the bottom of the laundry bag and nine cups of coffee and cola in stiff paper cups with plastic lids, the cups stacked in the washing detergent box.
“You guys b-better appreciate this ’cause I’m f-f-fuckin’ f-f-freezing.”
“Gotta make sacrifices,” Shaughnessy said, studying the floor, his face turning pink to match his red hair. Carson grabbed the laundry bag and Shaughnessy grabbed the detergent box and balanced it on a wastepaper basket from the latrine. The box dripped rain puddles on the floor. Shaughnessy handed out our cups of coffee and no-brand cola.
At the same time, Roosevelt, a natural born leader who looked like Bill Cosby, helped Toby with a towel and a little praise, since the rest of us said “thanks” without another word or pat on the back because Toby was a whiny little weasel who tried to brown-nose his way into our group. So we used him.
“You got the shit past the guard,” Roosevelt said, rubbing Toby’s head with the towel, “and you’re our main man for today, and that’s for sure.”
Carson shook the paper bags of glazed donuts from the wet laundry bag onto two towels I’d spread on the floor. Then we shook the donuts out of the paper bags.
The donuts were flattened and squeezed together in odd shapes, and had to be pulled apart. They were heavy and slimy with grease and melted sugar-glaze, but they were marvelously illegal and wondrous to behold, resting misshapen on the floor on sheets of writing paper next to our cups of cold coffee and warm cola.
The cadre were gone for the day. The barracks was unsupervised all afternoon. We were in paradise.
But Toby wasn’t happy. Exiled to his bunk and shivering, he complained about his thin blanket. Then he whined about the cold coffee and complained about how greasy the donuts were—donuts he hadn’t paid for. We rolled our eyes.
Henson stopped reading, jumped off his bunk, and declared it’d be funny if Toby “died from pneumonia in a Washington winter while training for war in the tropics of Vietnam.”
Henson, who looked older than the rest of us, earned a donut for that one even though the joke was old. It was originally used on Carson and me. The two of us had spent the previous week sick from pneumonia in nearby Madigan Army Medical Center.
We’d missed a few grenade-throwing exercises, but more importantly, we missed training with the M60 machine gun. Our sergeants told us we probably should take AIT over again, but we were bright, they said, and we could pick-up the M60’s operating characteristics along the way, “at least good enough to get by.” We knew they were sacrificing us for their trainee quota lists, but we had more disturbing issues on our minds. We hadn’t mentioned them to our buddies during the two days we’d been back in the barracks because we were embarrassed by how much they’d frightened us.
After Carson and I woke up in the hospital from our fever-induced delirium, we did double-takes at the other patients. They weren’t sick. They were broken. Or burned. Or missing limbs. Many of them horribly scarred. We saw big white casts everywhere. Lunch in the cafeteria was an exercise in not looking. Madigan Medical Center was the U.S. Army’s primary facility for treating and rehabilitating men who had been wounded in Vietnam.
“One guy I saw in the cafeteria didn’t have a jaw,” Carson said, after we admitted what was bothering us. “Bottom half of his face hung in folds. I didn’t get a good look at it ’cause he hid it with his hands when he pulled back the bandage. He used his fingers to squeeze his lips around a straw.”
Shaughnessy spit on his boot. “What’s he doing in the fucking cafeteria without a jaw?”
“Aah, that’s all crap,” Roosevelt said, waving his brown fingers that didn’t show the polish. “You ain’t seen nothin’. That’s full o’ shit.”
“You sayin’ I ain’t seen nothin’?” Carson thrust his face toward Roosevelt. “You think I’m full o’ shit? I’ll tell you something, smartass, I seen men without arms and legs. Is that good enough for you? I seen men with sewn-up wounds you wouldn’t believe. So you tell me what I saw. Go ahead. Tell me what I saw.”
“He’s not bullshitting,” I said. “I saw the same things he did. An orderly told me they even have a ward for guys with their balls shot off.”
“I ain’t comin’ back like that.” Roosevelt stuck out his lip and shook his head and swirled a touch more wax on the toe of his boot. “All my parts come home hangin’ where they belong or I ain’t comin’ back.”
“You got that right, motherfucker,” said Quenton, another black guy, walking up the aisle next to the windows.
Roosevelt rolled off his bunk and slapped Quenton some skin and got some back.
Then he grabbed his crotch and jerked it up and down. “Ain’t nobody doin’ no tongue job in this nigga’s bed.” They collapsed in laughter, got all loose-limbed, and gave each other a black brothers’ handshake.
“Preach the truth, my Righteous Brother,” proclaimed Quentin loud enough to fill the barracks. He turned, laughing, still not looking at the rest of us, and walked along the windows to the latrine. Roosevelt settled back on his bunk, grinning to himself, and resumed his boot polishing.
I was curious about how serious Roosevelt was, so I asked, “What will you do if you lose an arm or a leg?”
He looked up, irritated. “I tol’ you. I ain’t comin’ home ’less everything hangs the way it was before.”
“So you’ll kill yourself?”
“What’d I say? How many times I gotta say it?”
“What if you can’t do it and you wake up in the hospital and you can’t move?”
“Then I’ll ask somebody, just do the thing.”
“But what if you’re messed up and you can’t tell people what you want?”
“Fuck, man!” Roosevelt dropped his boot in his lap and looked at me like I was the dumbest asshole he’d ever seen. “Then you shoot me! Damn, if I’m that bad. Send me to Jesus.
”
Everybody laughed.
“No, man, I’m serious.”
“So am I. You guys gotta swear you’ll shoot me if I’m all fucked up,” I blurted. Everybody looked at me. I was surprised, too. I’d reported a decision I didn’t know I’d made. Now I needed to explain it … even to myself. “I’m not coming back like those men I saw. Not like that. Life isn’t worth it.”
Carson nodded his head. “I’m for that.”
Shaughnessy nodded, too.
“If it’s right for you, my brothers, it’s right for you.” Roosevelt focused on his boot. “If it’s gotta be done, then we do the hard thing.”
The rest of us looked at each other in confirmation of our agreement. None of us said a word about the shooter and the problems he might have.
So we all agreed: if we’re bloody and broken and can’t do it ourselves, we want our friends to shoot us.
Maybe gathered around us. In a circle.
In my mind, anyway, a circle. Looking down at me. Tears welling in their eyes.
****
Monday, Nov. 25, 1968
Dear Janice:
We’ve had a great Thanksgiving. Turkey. Dressing. Pumpkin pie. The works. The mess hall was decorated. We had the whole day off.
I’m pretty much back to normal from my bout with pneumonia. A little weak, but getting stronger. Carson is better, too. Our free day, today, helped a lot.
You’re right, lately I haven’t been talking in my letters about much of anything except my training. I’m sorry about writing in that letter that I wanted to hear your deepest thoughts about the car. That was mean-spirited. I’m sorry.
You know I love you. If you don’t know that by now, then I don’t know how to say it any plainer. I love you.
But I’m struggling to … I’m just struggling. There are some things I can’t put in words. I’m conflicted. I’m not sure what I think.
But know that I love you and miss you so much that I ache inside.
Love, Andrew
Wednesday-Friday, Nov. 27-29, 1968
Dear Janice:
You keep asking about what’s going on in my mind, so I’m going to tell you.
This letter will take a few nights to write, but I can’t help that. I can’t write reflectively under these conditions without taking a lot of time doing it.
Honey, I’m becoming a soldier. Training to be a soldier isn’t just learning how to shoot a weapon. The training is designed to alter our minds and make us psychologically strong enough to withstand horrible conditions and the possible abuse we’ll face if we’re captured. Most of all, it prepares us to kill and maim other human beings.
You keep making a big deal about the vulgar language I used when you visited me at Fort Campbell. I say “fuck” and “shit” and “cocksucker” all the time. Maybe that’s not needed. You’re right. Maybe I should learn how to shoot, stab, burn, and blow a person’s guts out without cursing. But that’s the way I’m being trained. Vulgarity is a tool we use to prepare ourselves to kill. We have to become hard and insensitive. We have to build a barrier around our minds to prevent us from thinking about the people we’ll kill and the families who’ll miss them. Killing is vulgar and using vulgarity helps to separate us from the men we once were and mold us into the soldiers we must become. Honey, consider what I’m training to do.
We both agreed, if you remember, that I could not claim conscientious objector status. I believe some wars are justified. Like World War II. So when my draft number came up, I didn’t run to Canada. Right? We talked about all this. Remember? And I also believe my country’s leaders might know more than I do about large-scale political and military situations. If South Vietnam is fighting to be independent of the North, and if North Vietnam is trying to force communism on the South, and if we can stop it from happening, shouldn’t we?
Everybody said that doing what my country is asking me to do is right and proper and honorable. Mom even wrote that she’s praying I’ll be a good soldier. (She hasn’t a clue what she’s praying for.) So I’m learning how to kill, because that’s what it means to be a soldier.
And you keep objecting to the words I use to harden me to do the killing? Maybe I shouldn’t have exposed you to that language. But I haven’t learned, yet, how to be a “motherfucking killer” during the day, ready to jab out a man’s eyes or blow off his head, and then transform myself in the evening and make soft cooing noises to my visiting wife. I am immersed in the culture of killing every second of the day and I haven’t yet found the switch that turns off the soldier and turns on the sensitive husband who can write flowery love letters. I hope someday I find that switch, but you not understanding doesn’t help.
I know I spoke and acted badly at Fort Campbell. But when you said, ‘That isn’t the way a Christian should talk,’ I went nuts. How many times do I have to say I’m sorry? But I was angry, and I still am. My pious, sanctimonious family wants me to be a patriotic skull crusher. They want me to stab people in the chest with bayonets and learn how to use explosives that will blow a person’s body into so many pieces their own relatives couldn’t find them all or recognize them even if they did. You want me to salute the flag and kill the enemy, but you don’t want me to say “fuck.” Heavens no! So I took my anger out on you at Ft. Campbell, and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. But it wasn’t only that.
You were from another place in my life. You seemed foreign. You were beautiful and good and wonderful and totally out of place in the ugliness I’d grown accustomed to. I felt coarse and crude around you. I’d become proud of doing things I never wanted to do—things I never want you to see me do. That’s why I acted distant. That’s why I didn’t want you to come here to Fort Lewis. And I still don’t want you here.
I struggle with the morality of all this. Independent of whatever else is happening in the world, my basic training calls for me to be willing to kill people. Anybody they point to. I must be ready to do unspeakably violent things to other human beings upon the command of my superiors. The moral justification for this killing or that killing is not relevant when I’m training to be a state-sanctioned killer.
I now realize it’s the political neutrality of Basic Training and AIT that’s crucial for preparing me and other morally and politically uncertain men for fighting in Vietnam. Once I allowed myself to be inducted into Basic Training and allowed myself to become a trained soldier committed to trusting my superior’s orders, I’m in less of a position than I was before to make fine-tuned political and moral decisions.
So … you wanted to know what I’m really thinking.
Love, Andrew
Sunday, Dec. 1, 1968
Dear Janice:
I know that last letter must have been disturbing to you, and we can talk about it when I’m home at Xmas. But there are a few more things I might as well explain.
I worry that my participation in the Vietnam War will be morally wrong, but I can’t come to any definite conclusion about it. I’ve talked to captains and sergeants and anybody I think might have an informed opinion, but all they say is, “A soldier does what his government tells him to do.”
Here’s the example they use to justify doing whatever we’re told to do. Suppose your sergeant says, “We’ve been ordered to take that hill.” But as far as you can tell, that hill is of no military value and attacking it will cause pointless deaths and injuries among your buddies and nearby civilians.
Question: Should you refuse to obey the order?
Set aside that you’ll be court-martialed if you refuse. Should you refuse to obey the order if you’re convinced the attack will result in nothing of value?
Answer: You obey the order.
Why? You don’t know enough of the larger picture to make an informed decision. As far as you know, the attack might be part of a diversionary operation that will save many more lives than the casualties you suffer and the people you and your buddies kill.
Despite all my reading about the flaws i
n our Vietnam policies, I assume my government and my military leaders see the big picture better than I do. On the other hand, maybe they don’t. I don’t know. But I do know that U.S. involvement in Vietnam is not for economic gain or political power. And North Vietnam attacked us in the Gulf of Tonkin. So shouldn’t I give my government the benefit of the doubt and hope they know what they’re doing?
I’m caught in a conflict of issues over life and death more basic than anything I’ll face the rest of my life. I’ve found no secure position. But my dilemma goes even deeper.
Suppose I decide our involvement in Vietnam is unjustified. I don’t know if I can bring myself to refuse to go. I don’t know if I have the courage to stand up against my buddies, the Army, the government, society, and my family all at the same time.
I would be called a coward. I would go to a military jail. Any future career I might hope for as a teacher would be compromised.
And what would your dad say?
What would your granddad say if I refuse to go to Vietnam but say I’m willing to go to Germany or some other safe place? I respect your granddad more than any man I’ve ever known, a man who confided in me about the things he saw and did in the trenches of France. He advised me to “do what you have to do.” What would he say?
And what would my parents and grandparents say? Grandpa Atherton already wrote me in Basic Training to “buck up” and stop complaining and learn to defend my country, the one God blessed and appointed as a “beacon unto the world.”
And it’s not just our families. It’s you, too. You’d all say, “You should do God’s will, and that’s to fight godless communism,” and since you’re all convinced you know God’s will and you think I do too, you’d think I was a coward. You’d say, “We still love you,” but deep down you wouldn’t respect me. And deep down I’d wonder if you’re right. I wouldn’t have any way of proving or knowing, even for myself, that you were wrong.
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