The Tape-Recorder War

By R.Z. Sheppard

PEACE IS OUR PROFESSION Edited by Jan Barry

East River Anthology; 294 pages; $5.95, paperbound

EVERYTHING WE HAD by Al Santoli; Random House; 265 pages; $12.95

NAM by Mark Baker; Morrow; 324 pages; $12.95

The Viet Nam War went on so long and under such scrutiny that nearly every observation and prediction about it had ample time to bear a truth. The uncustomary fact of defeat, however, was quickly buried, and Americans turned back to what they do best: helping themselves. They jogged, played tennis, meditated and nurtured a reverence for ecosystems. At times it seemed as if Judaeo-Christian civilization had been overrun by pagan-aerobic tribes.

But even as the statistics and footage of war receded in a blur of swoosh stripes, words began to sprout. A poem, a play, a novel, a memoir might recall what most citizens wished to forget. Some could not. Viet Nam veterans grew older, had children and, as if by some compulsion to pass on their stories, began to talk. In the spring of 1981 the "livingroom war" shows signs of becoming the tape-recorder war.

Peace Is Our Profession is an anthology that combines recollections and poetry by men and women who fought in Viet Nam or demonstrated against it. The book smolders with old indignations; yet there are notable flashpoints. From Herbert Woodward Martin's A Negro Soldier's Viet Nam Diary: "Do not celebrate me when and if I come home. I step around the smallest creature these days." From Poet Muriel Rukeyser: "Cancel war, we were taught./ What is left is peace. . . it is no canceling;/ The fierce and human peace is our deep power/ Born to us of wish and responsibility." Veteran Harrison Kohler recalls the excitement and intensity of his fighting days: "It is easy to look at the war in Viet Nam and know why one should hate it. . . What is infinitely more difficult is to articulate why I loved it."

Nam and Everything We Had employ the techniques of oral history to find the answer. Mark Baker and Al Santoli have skillfully edited and orchestrated their interviews. Nam stretches the form. A crisp, uniform tone suggests that many of the anecdotes may be composites from various sources. None of those interviewed is identified, though a glossary reacquaints us with the language of the war: busting caps for firing a weapon, cherry for inexperience, hooch for shelter, No. 10 for the worst, klick for kilometer, slick for helicopter, Spooky for gunship. Santoli's approach is more traditionally documentary, though both books reveal a deranging truth: memories of war's exhilarations often outlast the horrors and revulsions.

"I can almost picture my platoon," says one former lieutenant, "how tall they were, where they were from, what they did--I mean, who cried and who didn't cry." An ex-grunt remembers a godlike feeling: "I could take a life, I could screw a woman, I can beat somebody up and get away with it." Another returns home to join a stickup gang: "It wasn't the money with me. I was doing things for a handshake. I wanted the adrenaline pump."

Elsewhere a veteran brushes with paradox: "I was engaged in the one activity which is the ultimate macho experience. Within that I found myself and others capable of a tenderness which society only assumes of women." Military Nurse Gayle Smith found all such assumptions turned upside down. "I never knew what the word hate was until . . . I would have dreams about putting a .45 to someone's head and see it blow away--over and over again. I remember one of the nurses saying, 'Would you be interested in working on the Vietnamese ward?' And I said, 'No I think I would probably kill them.'

Mostly, the contents of these books are beyond a dreamer's imagination. Teen-agers with guns kill civilians on order, on whim, on dope. Rage explodes in all directions. Barracks arguments escalate into fatal shootouts. Corpses are mutilated for sport and trophies. A dead man is not allowed to fall but kept dancing grotesquely on a stream of bullets.

One common side effect of war is that emotional polarities can be switched in an instant. Omnipotence suddenly turns to helplessness, brutality to compassion. The details in these pages arrange themselves into a vivid collage: the painted yellow footprints on which brand-new Marine recruits are told to stand; the puce and canary Braniff jetliners that fly replacements to Da Nang as if it were a trip to Disney World; U.C.L.A. sweatshirts left behind by retreating Viet Cong; the exploding shoeshine box of an urchin-guerrilla; the contoured fiber-glass chairs that give a military morgue the look of a "futuristic barbership"; the computer printout that informs one veteran that he has been honorably discharged ("I thought I'd at least get a little plaque or something").

Reading these books can be an exercise in abject fascination: matters of morality are disturbingly outflanked by questions of sanity. Hollywood has attempted this effect with Defense Department-size budgets, celebrity brass and vast pretensions. The results have been a parody of the wastefulness of war itself. The truth of a holocaust is not apocalyptic; it comes slowly, relentlessly, word by word. --ByR.Z. Sheppard

Excerpt

"It felt so good after it was all over and you could just exhale, just taste the time, taste the life . . . I was really looking forward to coming home, but after three or four days, I was climbing the walls. I dropped back into the old neighborhood and nothing had changed. They were the same people in the same situation with the same head. There's been no time passing for them. It was like I never left. But I did leave. I wasn't the same any more. I didn't feel comfortable doing what I used to do. I didn't know how to spend time. I was geared up for dealing with a hundred thousand dollars' worth of equipment and a lot of responsibility for human life. I've come back here . . to do what?"

--Nam by Mark Baker

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