Casualties

"Remains of Fatal Crash"          watercolor by Jan Barry

I arrived in Vietnam just before Christmas 51 years ago, assigned to an aviation unit in America’s secretive war in Southeast Asia. Casualties in these special ops missions were seldom recorded in the news or elsewhere. Working on art to plumb the origins of disturbing dreams that still propel me out of bed, I’ve been painting an unforgettable scene in Vietnam in 1963.

Years ago, I wrote a poem, titled “Casualties,” that described this scene in detail:

Eyeballing the remains
of one of our planes
recovered from a mountainside,
a bunch of us stand
in the gaping space
where the propeller, engine,
instrument panel, and
windshield had been—

contemplating the miracle
of the copilot stepping unharmed
straight out onto the ground,
while the pilot was fatally
wrapped around a tree,
still strapped in his seat.

Lt. Rhinehart’s take off
from a hole in the jungle
uphill against the ridge’s rise
nearly scattered six Special Forces
troopers and their jump gear
plus the crew chief
through the mangled trees
behind his corpse.

“Lucky thing the lieutenant
only killed himself,”
muttered Sgt. Bowen, the chief
mechanic, through a clenched cigar
jutted into the wrecked cockpit.

“Nineteen years in the Army—
and Wright’s resigning,”
someone said of the copilot.
“Said he’d be damned if he’d die
in this damn campaign.”
Resigning a year short of retirement
provoked respectful silence.

“I'm hanging it up, too,”
Thomson, the crew chief,
barely 19 years old,
abruptly announced.

“Third crash,” he spat,
a grimace aging boyish cheeks,
his suntanned left arm
pinned in a sling.
“The jackass who dreamed up
flying Canadian bush planes
in the god damned tropics
can kiss my ass.”

Legacy of Winning Hearts and Minds

As one of the editors, publication of a collection of poetry by war veterans was a major highlight of my life in 1972. How it fit into the larger poetry scene and the arc of American life I'll leave to others to determine. A very interesting perspective by a British writer who recently explored the legacy of that poetic act is conveyed in the current issue of War, Literature & the Arts.  

Here is an excerpt from “And the fire still burns”: Vietnam War Poetry, Moral Witness, and Winning Hearts and Minds by Adam Gilbert.

"Forty years after its publication, Winning Hearts and Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans remains one of the most compelling, insightful, and moving accounts of the American war in Vietnam. A key work of witness of the twentieth century, this poetry anthology of over one hundred pieces, written by thirty-three contributors, testified to the disaster of what was then America’s longest war. Although the current conflict in Afghanistan has now claimed that grim record, and along with its sister war in Iraq has generated a fair amount of debate, the war in Vietnam is still America’s most controversial and contested military campaign. Winning, and the body of “Vietnam war poetry” that it helped to establish, presented a searing critique of the war by those who had fought in it, a critique that continues to offer a valuable opportunity to understand and examine “America’s policies and attitudes towards Asia through the eyes of the men who implemented them.” This article presents an overview of the history and legacy of “the seminal anthology against which all future Vietnam war poetry would be judged”, and outlines how the collection can be viewed as a particularly powerful and perceptive case of moral witness. Four decades on, now is an appropriate moment to consider the legacy of Winning, to see where it came from and where it led to, and to start to come to terms with its profound and enduring moral significance.

"Whilst interesting and penetrating analyses of Winning can be found in works such as Michael Bibby’s Hearts and Minds: Bodies, Poetry, and Resistance in the Vietnam Era, Subarno Chattarji’s Memories of a Lost War: American Poetic Responses to the Vietnam War, or Lorrie Goldensohn’s Dismantling Glory:Twentieth-Century Soldier Poetry, the actual story of its publication, placed in a literary-historical context with particular attention given to its antecedents and successors, has not been investigated as thoroughly. The fullest account of the anthology’s publication, Caroline Slocock’s “Winning Hearts and Minds: The 1st Casualty Press”, is a helpful description of the painful publishing process faced by the collection, but does not give much consideration to what came before or after. Furthermore, since Slocock’s article was released in 1982, it did not have the benefit of being able to assess the long-term legacy of the anthology. This study utilises the material available to Slocock and brings the story up to date with additional information from the newly accessible Jan Barry Archive at La Salle University and recent interviews with some of the key poets. By examining the forerunners and descendants of Winning, as well as the volume itself, we can begin to appreciate the importance of its role in the history of Vietnam war poetry. ..."

To read the full article:
http://wlajournal.com/25_1/Default.aspx

A Writer’s Activist

Herbert Mitgang, one of my major influences in becoming a journalist, died this week at age 93. Here’s how the Authors Guild, which he served as president for many years, noted his passing:

“Herbert Mitgang began his distinguished writing career as an army correspondent for Stars and Stripes during World War II; he would soon become managing editor, first for the paper’s Oran-Casablanca edition, then for its Sicily edition. After the war, Herb joined the staff of The New York Times, where he would work for nearly five decades. (He also immediately became a writers’ activist, serving on the executive board of the Newspaper Guild of New York from 1948 to 1949.)”

When I met him in 1971, he was a member of the editorial board at The New York Times. He took an interest in a scathing antiwar essay I sent to the Times and dropped by the tiny office of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in New York to meet me. Shortly after, as VVAW conducted an encampment in Washington, DC, calling for an end to the war in Vietnam, my essay prominently appeared at the top of the op-ed page of the Times, titled “Why Veterans March Against the War.”

Mitgang stayed in touch, encouraging me to write about the Vietnam war as I saw it. In the spring of 1972, the Times’ op-ed page, where he was an editor, published a highly unorthodox selection of poetry from Winning Hearts & Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans, introducing to an international audience a self-published collection that I coedited, published from my apartment in Brooklyn.

In subsequent years and decades, Mitgang, who was also a wide-ranging author and magazine writer, was my model for combining a journalism career and activism encouraging wider civic participation on war and peace issues.

Having served as a soldier-correspondent in World War II, Mitgang went to Vietnam to review coverage of the war by CBS News and came away convinced that the fuller story beyond U.S. combat operations wasn’t being reported.

Some insight into his stance on the Vietnam war at the time I met him can be gleaned from a passage in a book review he wrote in 2000 that appeared in Newsday: “Columnists and editors on the same newspapers were divided about the conduct of the war. For example, The New York Times editorial page opposed the escalation of the war and the human and environmental damage caused by the intense aerial bombing, while some of the important news editors on the paper supported the war effort and disagreed with the editorials.”

As I forged my journalism career, I was greatly encouraged by Herbert Mitgang to report it the way I saw it. My poetry was also influenced by his insight that the best writing on war is by soldiers. In Civilians Under Arms, a history of the Army newspaper The Stars and Stripes, he wrote: “For the G.I. poetry was the Greek chorus of his conscience, emerging in language of humor, protest and beauty.” 

For more information:

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/22/books/herbert-mitgang-wide-ranging-author-and-journalist-dies-at-93.html?_r=0

 

Death of a Dream

Fifty years ago today, I was sitting in an assembly hall at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, when an announcement was made by an Army officer: “The President has been shot.” It was as though a gun shot exploded in that room. Resisting an urge to duck, I thought: just days ago, the president of South Vietnam was killed—and now the war has followed me home.

Ngo Dinh Diem, the U.S.-picked leader of the Republic of Vietnam, died on November 1, 1963, killed in an overthrow of the government in Saigon by his own generals, an assassination carried out under the umbrella of the U.S. Military Command in Vietnam that President Kennedy had created to protect this Cold War ally. On November 22, Kennedy was assassinated in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.

As I sat stunned in that gathering of fellow soldiers at the U.S. Military Academy Prep School, my dream of attending West Point and having an illustrious military career dimmed considerably. The killing of the leader of South Vietnam by American-trained military officers made a mockery of the military mission in Vietnam where I’d served the previous 10 months. We clearly were not waging war for democracy in Vietnam, as we troops had been informed.

The duplicity of the Diem assassination by military officers we trained struck me hard. Now I thought, is Kennedy’s assassination tied to this? A few days before Diem’s overthrow, as I was awaiting a flight to the States from Saigon to report to Ft. Belvoir, rumors of an impending coup against his government were openly discussed in a nightclub frequented by Vietnamese and American military officers. Barely two weeks later, the rumors I’d heard—and thought were just drunken chit-chat—proved to be true. 

Or perhaps one of the other secret operations U.S. forces were engaged in under Kennedy’s presidency triggered his death.

In a year and a half in the Army, I’d encountered many incredible tales of covert actions, including soldiers’ stories about the U.S.-organized invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro groups that foundered in the Bay of Pigs debacle, hush-hush Special Forces operations in various parts of Southeast Asia, and the back-story of how the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved by a secret agreement by Kennedy to remove U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey, installed within close firing range of the Soviet Union, in exchange for the Soviets removing the nuclear missiles they set up in Cuba within close range of the United States.

Somewhere in these secret maneuvers was the trigger that fired the bullet that killed Kennedy, I felt. And this cast a huge shadow over my dream of becoming a West Pointer and following in the footsteps of statesmen-generals like Eisenhower, Grant and, harking back to the origins of our nation, Washington. If our military forces couldn’t protect the president of the United States—and the leader of an allied nation whose army we created, advised, supplied and paid—what kind of career was that to aspire to emulate?

And so began my unexpected, emerging career of asking questions, rather than salute and blindly follow orders.        

New Jersey Veterans Mentoring Program

Public Meeting Thursday at Fairleigh Dickinson University

for New Jersey Military Veterans Mentoring Program

HACKENSACK, NJ—The New Jersey Battle Buddies Mentoring Program is being launched to help expand services offered to military veterans through the state courts’ Veterans Assistance Project.

The first of several public information sessions on the mentoring program is scheduled for Thursday, November 21 at 6-8 p.m. at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Edward Williams Auditorium, 150 Kotte Place, Hackensack, NJ. 

Speakers at the event include retired state Superior Court Judge Barbara Curran, who serves as a pro-bono counsel for veterans seeking disability benefits and other services; Jim Fallon, of Hoboken, a veterans service officer with the Disabled American Veterans; and Benjamin Levine, a U.S. Navy veteran and Hackensack-based lawyer who is organizing the mentoring program.

 “The idea is to focus mentors to work with veterans who need assistance,” said Levine, who served in the Navy as a pilot. “Who better to understand the problems of veterans than a veteran.”

The Veterans Assistance Project (VAP) was launched in 2008 as a pilot project in state and municipal courts in Atlantic and Union counties and has since expanded statewide. VAP is a joint effort of the state Judiciary, New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, and the New Jersey Department of Human Services, Division of Mental Health Services.

“This project seeks to identify veterans as soon as possible after they enter the criminal justice system, and when needed, provide referrals to community resources to address the unique services required by veterans. Those services could include substance use/abuse treatment, mental health counseling, securing veterans’ benefits and if necessary, mentoring by a fellow veteran,” states a summary of the project on the New Jersey Judiciary website. The goal of the project is to aid veterans to overcome or change “behaviors that led to their criminal justice involvement.”

In addition, the mentoring program will assist veterans who potentially face legal problems. The program is seeking honorably discharged veterans of all branches of the U.S. armed services to serve as mentors.

“We’re looking for men and women willing to serve as, essentially, ‘Battle Buddies’ with fellow veterans in the court system,” said Levine. “We are seeking veterans with a variety of life experiences, from college students to older veterans active in community and veterans’ organizations.”

The mentoring program will include training sessions for volunteers and be developed through the assistance of the Administrative Office of the Courts of New Jersey, the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, county veterans service officers, college veterans affairs officers, and veterans service organizations.

For more information, contact: Benjamin Levine at 201-488-1161 or Levine@ix.netcom.com.

Art Works

"Losing It," water color by Jan Barry

 
In my continuing quest for self-improvement, I’ve taken up delving into “oh crap!” moments as I dabble with learning to paint in water colors.

Thus, I mutter “oh crap!” whenever I mess up in my late-stage foray into painting, which outburst echoes—and hopefully draws some of the sting from—far more unsettling “oh crap!” moments in life.

Recently, I’ve managed to do an art piece on an incident that happened last spring. For reasons that will become evident, I’ve titled this work “Losing It.”

For a couple-three years now, I’ve joined other veterans as volunteers staffing tables in the “Activist Area” at Clearwater’s Great Hudson River Revival music festival at Croton Point Park, NY. This year, several of us decided to display a large array of Combat Paper art works on just about every nook and cranny of a street festival-type tent sheltering a folding table covered with more art work.

The idea was to raise public awareness, funds and support for the Combat Paper Project, which provides workshops at which military veterans turn old uniforms into hand-made paper, to which art is applied that addresses deep-seated emotions about war-time and postwar experiences.

On the second afternoon of the festival, after others in the group had drifted off to rest, catch some music or head home, a thunderstorm cloud rose just across the Hudson River. Abruptly, a fierce wind swirled across the water, scattering Combat Paper pieces into wet grass and mud puddles from a previous rainstorm.

I felt overwhelmed by hostile weather, trying to save what seemed like an endangered enclave of artists’ works. “Oh crap!” was the mildest of the volley of four-letter words I yowled.

   

Vietnam Blues

 Lem Genovese returned from Vietnam with two burning passions—playing guitar and chasing elusive faces of the war.

“My VA counselor asked me what I hoped to accomplish writing this book,” Genovese notes in his 550-plus-page self-published memoir, Tunesmith Chronicles: A Musical History Tour. “I gave him a simple answer. ‘To get it right…’

“The US involvement during the Indochina Cultural Exchange Program has caused enough dissention, derision, confusion and damage. As a veteran I have seen both sides of that polarizing experience and like [Ulysses S] Grant, long to see the sense of hostilities subside into a mutual understanding of what is truly needed to learn valuable lessons from a bitter war to enable this nation to approach that more ‘perfect UNION.’”

Genovese’s quest put him on the road roaming the country as a hard-strumming bard of Vietnam veteran blues, as a crusty college student trying to pin down the unsettling role of Vietnam vets in American society, and as an old-timer National Guard medic trying to protect less experienced soldiers in the 1991 Gulf War.

He still harbors a white phosphorus-hot anger about a lot of things he encountered in war zones in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, as well as stateside. And each outrageous incident or moral injury is buttressed by pages of deeply researched background information—ranging from Agent Orange to post-traumatic stress disorder, war crimes to billion-dollar wastage of military equipment.

“Frankly, after being exposed to dioxin in the Mekong Delta, the toxic cocktails in Desert Storm and 40 years of bad luck, the author relishes this opportunity to follow in the large footsteps of Army Air Corps General Billy Mitchell in one regard, sacrificing what little reputation this particular retired Army/Guard staff sergeant field medic has left … to better protect this nation’s future,” he writes in introduction to a section in which he lambastes “war profiteers” with more than 60 pages of examples.       

Nearly lost amid his furious, fulminating diatribes is a story about a soldier from Des Moines, Iowa, who found salvation in making music. “After returning to Iowa from my 13 month tour of duty in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam, MUSIC was my form of therapy and has kept me from going off the deep end (drugs, alcohol and suicide) many times in the ensuing years,” he states deep in this massive memoir.

As he notes more succinctly on his Yankee Medic Records website, Lem Genovese’s aim is “to be a musical bridge that promotes compassion, healing and understanding.”

For more information:

www.yankeemedicrecords.com/