Introduction for National Vietnam Veterans Day Observance, March 24, 2019
“Vietnam changed every person who was there.” A comment made by my character Andrew Cameron in my book Memories of Jake.
Some three years ago I embarked on a journey of research and writing books about two brothers whose lives were turned upside down by their involvement in the Vietnam War. I was a young wife and mother during that period, and while I was, of course, aware of the war, I had no idea how much I didn’t know or understand about the conflict. Research included reading many first-person accounts, watching videos and films, visiting veterans’ forums online, and eventually finding a voice, Lt. Col. Charles Vincent of the Army Corps of Engineers who had fought with the Green Berets in Vietnam and who became my military consultant. The result was these two books, Memories of Jake and Man with No Yesterdays, the first published in March of 2017 and the second the following November.
While writing, I began to have some small understanding of what our valiant warriors endured both while in country and after returning home. It was a deeply emotional journey and has changed my life forever. Over the course of the books, I covered nearly every aspect of the war, from the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to the fall of Saigon and beyond. Andrew, the older brother, visits the Wall in Memories of Jake. In Man with No Yesterdays, Jake, the younger brother, spends time in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State with his brothers-in-arms. This is my dedication for Man with No Yesterdays: “To Jake and to all who fought in Vietnam, with the hope that never again will we blame the warriors for the war.”
I followed the bill that was introduced in Congress to declare March 29 National Vietnam Veterans Day which was signed into law on March 28, 2017. Last year, the Pocono Cinema worked with me to honor our local Vietnam Veterans. Staged readings from both these books were presented along with music from the era. Courtney Tolino and I agreed this observance should become an annual event. This year, I asked the Vietnam Veterans of America, Pocono Chapter 678, if any of them had personal memoirs we could present in this same format … actors reading the words they had written. Three men—Tom Doyle, Glen Lippincott, and Jim Sargent—submitted the writings you will hear tonight.
Two books I read when researching have resonated with me ever since, and we’ve included two selections from Home Before Morning by Army nurse Joyce Van Devanter. Women also served in Vietnam, and some died there. The other is a book I believe should be required reading in every high school in this country, Philip Caputo’s book A Rumor of War. The author shows us a clear-eyed, heart-wrenching, totally honest look at the things war can do to a man. And the things a man can do while he is at war. Nearly thirty years later, Caputo considered his time in Vietnam in retrospect and his thoughts included this:
“Vietnam was the epicenter of a cultural, social, and political quake that sundered us like no other event since the Civil War. […] Our self-image as a progressive, virtuous, and triumphant people exempt from the burdens and tragedies of history came apart in Vietnam, and we had no way to integrate the war or its consequences into our collective and individual consciousness. […]
“At the very beginnings of Western civilization, it was the role of the battle singers, who sang their verses around the warriors’ glittering fires, to wring order and meaning out of the chaotic clash of arms, to keep the tribe human by providing it with models of virtuous behavior—heroes who reflected the tribe’s loftiest aspirations—and with examples of impious behavior that reflected the worst failings.
“Vietnam was fought with M-16s and helicopters instead of swords and steeds, but the battle singer’s task was the same. The nature of the war made it exceptionally difficult: how to find meaning in such a meaningless conflict? How to make sense out of a succession of random fire-fights that achieved nothing? And what heroes could be found in a war so murky and savage? How to explain our failings? Yet the task was necessary. […]
“The politicians, commentators, analysts, and historians still cannot agree on the war’s causes, much less on its larger significance. So, it is left to the artist to make sense of it, or at the very least to begin to make sense of it, shaping enduring art out of the shapeless muck of a terrible experience.”
And that is why we are here tonight, to try to make some sense of the Vietnam war through words and music, to share thoughts and memories and pay tribute to the fallen and honor their sacrifice, to celebrate the heroes who are still with us. Tonight, we are the “battle singers.”
**
Excerpts from A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo, First Owl Books Edition 1996
covers by Tristan Flanagan
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