"There It Is": Narratives of the Vietnam War. Tom Burns

in earlier wars, is the awareness of the Vietnam veterans that they had been singled out and that their sacrifices were not appreciated because they were pointless. It is worth noting that during World War II, nearly every able-bodied man in the United States, 12 million in all, from every social class and occupational group, went into the armed forces. There was a popular perception, Paul Fussell writes, that World War II was the most democratic war ever fought:

Some readers will remember the Vietnam antiwar slogan “What if there was a war and nobody went?” Well, in 1939-45 there was a war and everybody went, or nearly everybody: all classes, all races, both sexes. Civilians, too, worked, suffered, sometimes fought, died. For once in human history, a war was fought that was everybody’s war.72

These soldiers had the full support of a civilian population that agreed with their president that the war was necessary and just, requiring a united effort by all Americans, but the case of the Vietnam combatants was markedly different. In the oral and written accounts, the men in Vietnam constantly register bitter complaints about what they consider Vietnamese ingratitude. But as Frances FitzGerald has argued, after the US had set up a military dictatorship in Vietnam, defended it against all native resistance, killed or maimed thousands of Vietnamese, made thousands more homeless and destroyed their livelihoods, it was unrealistic to expect the Vietnamese to feel gratitude, especially when it was felt that the Americans were using Vietnamese soil to fight a war that was really directed against the USSR and China.73 Such geopolitical matters, however, were of little concern to the fighting men, who were misled about their role as liberators, since they often harbored in their minds the stories of fathers and uncles and the heroic cinematic images (such as the often seen films of American troops marching and riding triumphantly into Paris) of World War II.

      In their disillusionment, these soldiers came to realize that instead of liberators they were regarded by both the Vietnamese people and an increasing segment of their own people as brutal invaders, because once in the field they were often ordered by superiors to do things that resulted in the destruction of villages and the terror of the civilian population—hardly the most effective way to win hearts and minds. Such acts generated negative feelings toward the American soldiers, which were often returned with interest. As extreme reactions, outrage and anti-Vietnamese feeling could result in atrocities. By this logic, it is no accident that the My Lai massacre, the worst recorded atrocity, occurred in 1968, the year of the highest number of American casualties.

Another factor contributing to increased stress was lack of motivation. In the limiting circumstance of the one-year tour, the men naturally wanted to be in the field for the shortest time possible to reduce their chances of being killed or wounded. As Ward Just wrote: “The principal criticism of the twelve-month tour was that it tended to institutionalize impermanence. Men in Vietnam were transients, traveling salesmen of war and democratic processes.”74 Their adversaries, however, knew that they were in the war for the duration and were far more ideologically motivated. The American combatants in Vietnam were in fact aware of their own lack of motivation compared to the apparent dedication, staying-power, and moral purpose of their adversaries. As one man put it, “we were playing games and they were fighting for keeps.”75 As Fox Butterfield has described the enemy, they were

men who were well-disciplined enough to march down the [Ho Chi Minh] trail even while thinking that for the vast majority of them it would be a one-way trip. They were men who subsisted for weeks at a time on little better than a handful of rice and some roasted salt. They were bombed by B-52s that fly so high they could neither see nor hear them until the bombs exploded. Once in the South they were not able to send or receive mail; and if they died, their families were not notified for years afterwards, if ever.76

      What the men of the revolutionary forces lacked in sophisticated weaponry they made up for in commitment, as can be seen by comparing their combat effectiveness with that of the far less motivated soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), who fought well only when they were protecting their native villages. Political lessons were as important a component of the NLF and NVA soldier’s life as military training. Communism was taught as, and perceived to be, a political system that offered greater material prosperity and justice for the Vietnamese people as a whole, as well as liberation from foreign rule, a notion that is much more plausible to soldiers fighting on their own soil. In the fictional narratives, American soldiers are often represented as well aware of the enemy’s commitment, as seen in this dialogue between two “grunts” (infantry soldiers):

      “They really come at you.”

      “They’re hard-core.”

      “They come right at you. And they keep coming until you kill them…They ain’t never gonna stop, are they, Pablo?”

“We’ll never stop them.”77

      In this aspect—a much greater individual commitment to winning the war—the soldiers of the NVA and NLF were, ironically, akin to the Allied soldiers of World War II who were the cultural touchstone of the young American soldiers who went to Vietnam. The notion of the necessity of decisively defeating the enemy before going home, ingrained in the combatants of World War II, was regarded as hopeless by their American counterparts in Vietnam. With the lack of any territorial gains—those defined “lines” that moved slowly but relentlessly forward toward Germany and Japan, the enemy homelands—how could progress toward victory be measured? By the staff, it was measured by the “body count,” a consequence of General Westmoreland’s declaration that the conflict was a war of “attrition.” The sole concern of the lowly American soldier in Vietnam therefore was to avoid becoming a statistic by lasting out his individual tour of duty—exactly one year (thirteen months for Marines). “How many days?” became the overriding question, from which arose the frequently evoked superstitions and comic cult practices (jokes, calendars) of the “short-timer,” the man who had a only short period remaining before being recycled back to the US. The short-timer phenomenon may have actually increased anxiety because it ensured a greater degree of individualism and lack of cohesion in the unit. No one wanted to die when he had only a short time to return to the “World.”

      American soldiers, who were well trained and equipped, are reported to have fought well up to 1968, when the suffering and frustrations of taking part in a war they realized they could not win begin to take their toll. Combatants felt keenly the futility of a war whose progress was based on body counts rather than conquered territory, and they understood the tactical weakness of search-and-destroy missions, which drew fire from a well-concealed enemy on the ground, who could then be shelled by artillery or bombed, strafed, rocketed and napalmed by US aircraft. Being used as “bait” to draw enemy fire was, unsurprisingly, deeply resented.

Once the troop withdrawals began in 1969, the continuation of the war became even more pointless to those fighting it. Discipline broke down in some units and became weaker overall, as seen by the increase in the shirking of patrols and “fragging” attacks on officers (2000 reported incidents, in which, for example, a fragmentation grenade is thrown under an officer’s bunk), as well as milder forms of protest like the wearing of peace signs and helmet graffiti. Evidence of relaxed discipline may be also seen in attitudes (racial tensions) and practices (drug use) imported from the US. A large number of men smoked Cannabis both on and off duty, and a significant number (an estimated 10%) were doing hard drugs like heroin to bear the pressure.78 These numbers suggest that the military was now manned by draftees who were not ready to die for what they perceived as an abandoned cause.79

iii. The Narrative Literature of the War