Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam War. John A. Wood
Yes, veteran narratives were written by men and women “who were there,” but they are still recollections, not objective historical records. They are, therefore, governed and limited by properties inherent to every form of memory.
This book is a work of history, but it does not treat veteran memoirs as sources that can be straightforwardly mined for information. Instead, it is concerned with what veterans say about the war, but also how and why they say it. Like some pieces of past scholarship, it explores how veteran narratives have affected the collective memory of the war. But this book, unlike past works, presents a comprehensive analysis of the Vietnam narrative genre. It examines fifty-eight of the most prominent memoirs and oral histories published between 1967 and 2005. These books were best sellers, award winners, reviewed in the New York Times or another major publication, written by famous people, or referenced in scholarship. Only well-known narratives were included in this primary group because only titles that achieved recognition could have had a significant impact on collective memory.
The analysis of these fifty-eight works addresses the actual fighting experienced by veteran-authors, but it also delves into issues not directly related to combat. These include, as Meredith H. Lair puts it, “[t]he usual factors for consideration in social and cultural history—the troika of gender, class, and race,”38 but also politics, the war’s aftermath, and its commemoration. This approach follows the lead of Lair, Appy, Heather Marie Stur, and other scholars who have clearly demonstrated that there is much more to Vietnam War history than B-52 strikes, firefights, and booby traps. Material gleaned from memoirs is compared to and enhanced by supplemental sources, including newspaper articles, films, US government studies, and historical scholarship. Also employed are narratives that were not included in the primary memoir group because they were not prominent or not written by veterans. These accounts from Vietnamese civilians, African Americans, women veterans, and others are valuable perspectives not often provided by most famous memoirs.
The analysis begins, in chapter 1, by looking at the backgrounds of fifty-one veteran-authors for whom sufficient information is available. Demographic data taken from memoirs and other sources were organized into a variety of categories, including age, amount of time served in Vietnam, education level, and length of military service. These data are important because social, economic, and educational level helped determine both what an author experienced in Vietnam and how he or she interpreted these experiences. Those factors in turn influenced how aspects of the war would be portrayed in the veteran’s memoir.
Research into memoirists’ backgrounds ascertained that the majority were white, college graduates, and former officers. They served in Vietnam at an average age of twenty-seven. These statistics are potentially troubling because ground combat in the war was primarily fought by men of opposite backgrounds: poor and working-class white and minority enlisted personnel, many of whom went to war before their twentieth birthdays. This demographic disparity suggests that narratives were written by ex-soldiers who did not share the same experiences and viewpoints as the average American combat soldier. Closer examination of the data, however, leads to a more nuanced conclusion. Twenty-six veteran-authors fought as low-ranking, “junior” commissioned officers. Unlike their higher-ranking counterparts, junior officers lived, fought, and sometimes died alongside the men they commanded in Vietnam. The existence, then, of so many former low-ranking officers among the authors ensures that even though most authors were not grunts in background, most were grunts by measure of their wartime experiences.
Chapter 2 explores the interrelated issues of combat conditions and the Vietnamese people. Most veterans describe combat in a graphic, unromantic manner. Their collective depiction of warfare as chaotic, frustrating, and pointless amounts to a searing indictment of the American effort in Vietnam. It is strange, therefore, that these accounts simultaneously depict Vietnamese civilians, perhaps the greatest victims of the war, as two-faced enemy collaborators and greedy exploiters of GIs. Vietnamese rarely appear in narratives as anything more than racist, one-dimensional caricatures. Supplemental sources suggest that Vietnamese actions loathed by many US troops are understandable in the context of Vietnam’s tumultuous history. Memoirists frequently say, for instance, that GIs were irritated by the constant presence of beggars, peddlers, pimps, and other Vietnamese in search of American dollars. They do not explain that many South Vietnamese were forced into such activities because the war had wrecked their nation’s economy. The omission of this crucial information is understandable, however, since most mid-twentieth-century Americans, soldiers included, were largely ignorant of Vietnam’s language, history, and culture.
A great number of African Americans and other nonwhites fought for the United States in Vietnam, and racial tensions were high in the military during the war. Nearly all of the best-known memoirists, however, are white, and many of them do not broach the subjects of race and racism at all. Chapter 3 handles this situation by analyzing nonwhite narratives. Many of these works were not included in the primary memoir group because they are too obscure, but they are used in this chapter to show how ex-soldiers of color developed a race-centric “countermemory” of the Vietnam War. This nonwhite interpretation of the conflict consists of two competing, antagonistic paradigms. The first nonwhite version of the Vietnam experience emphasizes racial cooperation and pride in the combat performance of one’s own racial or ethnic group. The second version focuses on incidents of white racism, the self-segregation of GIs, and is influenced by the Black Power movement.
Chapter 4 tackles issues related to women and sexuality. Veterans suggest male soldiers acted generally sexist in their interactions with women in Vietnam. This depiction of male–female relations is confirmed by historical scholarship, wartime newspaper articles, the narratives of American women who went to Vietnam, and other sources. The misogynist behavior of male GIs was rooted in mainstream and military cultures that promoted hostility towards women and the belief that soldiers at war deserved sex. All women were subject to this attitude, but it was intensified in dealings with Asian women because of the racism that pervaded the Vietnam-era US armed forces. Veteran-authors, additionally, often make light of instances in which GIs disrespected and abused women, and both American and foreign females who appear in their narratives are usually depicted as offensive stereotypes.
Chapter 5 examines how memoirists dealt with their homecomings and postwar lives. Many veterans forthrightly admit that they suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other readjustment difficulties after returning to the United States. Postwar studies confirm that many Vietnam veterans came home from Southeast Asia with psychological wounds. Not everything memoirs say about postwar topics, however, is supported by other sources, including the contention that Vietnam veterans, unlike soldiers who survived earlier American wars, were harassed or ignored by their fellow citizens. Most veteran-authors, like Americans in general, were evidently unaware that ex-warriors have struggled to readjust to peacetime since the dawn of warfare. Veteran narratives also suggest that the passage of time invariably erased the PTSD and other homecoming troubles of the men and women who went to Vietnam. This is misleading because many veterans never found relief from economic and psychological problems related to their Vietnam service. This was especially the case for ex-soldiers who, unlike most memoirists, came from disadvantaged circumstances.
Political messages conveyed by veteran memoirs are covered in chapter 6. Some narratives feature unambiguous antiwar statements, and most portray the war in an overall unflattering light. Curiously, though, many memoirists also express hatred of antiwar protesters and were obviously proud that they had fought for their country. The chapter concludes by exploring why narratives conveying this ambivalent attitude dominated the memoir genre. One reason is that mainstream literary critics lavished praise and attention only on narratives that portrayed the war in a nuanced but generally negative light. Yet, according to opinion polls, Vietnam veterans as a whole thought the war was a mistake and disliked antiwar protesters, but remained patriotic and proud of their military service at the same time. In this sense, at