I was terrified! From somewhere deep inside, there was a presence, a deep-rooted sense that my ultimate fate would be to die in a rice paddy — if I went to Viet Nam. My family and my community had instilled an equally deep sense of patriotism in my psyche. My father was a World War II survivor. My sister's father died in the Philippine Islands in the same war. My size and lack of street smarts left me out of the "survivor" category and more towards the "victim" role. My birthday came up at number 65 in the December draft lottery of 1969 and when I started college in the summer of 1970, I was classified 2-S, student. Those factors gave me significant incentive to study, not to mention the mental images reported by television and LIFE magazine. The photograph that was later known as "Reaching Out" made me nauseous; I couldn't look at it for years. It's still a disturbing image.
Girl by the Road at Night by David Rabe begins with Joe Whitaker's visit to the Washington Memorial amidst anti-war demonstrations on the mall. He had difficulty maintaining his focus and experienced no enjoyment from his last stint as a tourist because of the piece of paper in his pocket. It was a neatly folded copy of his order to go to the war. "Fingering the shape of the papers outlining his fate beneath the cloth of his jacket, he is bewildered by the power of the document," and then, "How can paper move him? Incredibly, his hand is shaking." For me, it's 1969 again, and I feel his terror. Can I deal with the fear 40 years later? I can't put the book down.
Article comments
1 - Reese McKay
Good review. I had similar feelings about the war. My father and all of my uncles fought in the Second World War. I grew up hearing their war stories. One of my brothers served in the Army in Vietnam. He nearly married a Vietnamese girl. I haven't talked to him in a long time about his experiences there. He ended up marrying an American girl and has three grown children now. A lot of time has passed. Yet Vietnam sometimes seems like yesterday.