this quote from michael herr, dispatches:

“I went to cover the war... behind the crude but serious belief that you had to be able to look at anything, serious because I acted on it and went, crude because I didn’t know, it took the war to teach it, that you are as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you do. The problem was that you didn’t always know what you were seeing until later, maybe years later, it just stayed stored there in your eyes...”

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My Dad was a first Generation Swede who got a high lottery number from Uncle Sam. He went through three rounds of lottery and was never called, but the thing I remember as a 5 year old was how each of us had packed suitcases under our beds. It was much later in life when I reminded my dad how strange that was and he filled in the blanks. I understand now that we would have headed to Canada and then back to Sweden.

 

A few years ago, I am Curious Yellow was re-released in DVD form in the US. This was the film that was banned in the US because of its "pornographic" content, but in point of fact, it was its anti-vietnam war perspective. Two great interviews in the film with Olof Palme, who was later gunned down in a Stockholm street and Martin Luther King Jr., who as know was also gunned down. We tend to forget about how vocal MLK was against the war. The US needs to revisit that part of his charge.

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In 9th grade I saw Platoon 3 times in a row in a couple of weeks. At the
time (with all my 14 years) I had never been so touched by the sadness
of a film, or the senseless waste of humanity. The aerial shot of Willem
DaFoe on his knees with his arms raised as the camera rises off the
ground in a helicopter and the theme beautiful music plays hits such a
nerve even now.

 

This was a modernist experience I suppose because it felt intensely
authentic to me.

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Paul Hardcastle "19"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byCCmBwRjGw

 

The 1985 release of "19", brought Hardcastle acclaim and chart success. "19" was a dance record, featuring stuttering samples of television narrator Peter Thomas speaking about Vietnam war veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. Initially unhappy about having his voice used in this way, Thomas relented and allowed the single to be released. A number one hit single for Chrysalis Records in the United Kingdom for five weeks, the record topped the charts in both France and Germany in two versions, the English language original and an authorised local language alternative. Altogether it was number one in thirteen countries, selling just under three million copies worldwide.

 

UK prog rock musician Mike Oldfield claimed that a melodic element of "19" had been copied from a sequence of his multi-million selling concept album, Tubular Bells, and a settlement was made. Simon Fuller, who was Hardcastle's manager at the time of "19"'s release later adopted the song's title for his company, 19 Management.

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with the reverberation of oswald's bullet still bouncing through
his city lost and found
our orchestra plays vienna
under a terrible blue sky
as the fall of saigon unfolds;
beating choppers a flock of terns
over waves as tools of hopeful transfer
are pushed overboard
accepted gently by the south china sea.
grasping suitcase or swaddled infant
pushing through closed gates
and up the stairs to another city of lies -
ho chi minh smokes cubans,
or didn't you know?
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August 1971
Visiting Francis, or was it David, and his wife, the seamstress, in Vancouver, BC. Official draft dodger from the south, disowned from his family, kicked and kicked out. Studying philosophy and high-end cooking. Served us soup from the butcher made with soup bones “for the dog” and a soufflé of apples and bacon. Friend of Bill’s and Sandy’s. I guess Bill turned gay now, looked happier the last time I saw him but he didn’t say hello and neither did I. You don’t have to go we said, you can leave, we will help you. And we did.

 

Always, now and forever
The Deer Hunter Christopher Walken and Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep Weddings, the guns, killing animals, the snow, the suicides, Christopher Walken blowing his brains out.

 

Always
The photograph of the little girl running naked, was she screaming, burned with napalm, or was that Hiroshima.

 

mid-1980s-late 1990s, Argyle Street, Chicago
Vietnamese Restaurant Hot spicy soup, Vietnamese prostitutes and waitresses, I guess, and my very best friends.

 

1990s
People, friends, traveling to Vietnam, I want to go.

2007

Shirt-tag from Target, made in Vietnam.

 

2008
Vietnam, I still want to go there. Maybe, it’s like getting to Moscow, getting back to Moscow. It was better then. I swear it was better then.

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I have two vivid memories of the Vietnam War. The first relates to the two pictures below. My father met "Sonny" and his father while selling cars in Bloomsburg. Sonny came to visit us when we lived below Picture Rocks, and David and I got our picture taken with him. Sonny was wounded in Vietnam,and his picture was on the cover of the February 11, 1966 cover of "Life" Magazine (He is the one on the left.). I was around ten, and I remember asking if he ever killed anyone. He looked at me very thoughtfully and in a very somber voice, he told me that he had. I'll always remember that.

 

The second was my friend in high school, Wally Green. His brother Vernon was killed in Vietnam. I remember telling Wally that I was very sorry about his brother. Wally was the first person that I can remember expressing sympathy to. When we visited the Vietnam Memorial in DC, we looked up his name. He may have been the first person from the Hughesville area killed in the war, but I'm not sure.

 

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protests
embittered veterans
the last war that Americans really felt strongly about
quagmire
Maya Lin's memorial
the military museum in Hanoi
"The American War"

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Apocalypse Now

Merle Haggard's Okie from Muskogee

The attempt to levitate the Pentagon: "Rise Pentagon Rise!"

Wilem Dafoe as a soldier in Platoon

Robert McNamara

LBJ

illegal Cambodia bombings

Q. And Babies? A. And babies.

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Painted faces. Half camouflage, half hippie street fair.

And when I was 8 I saw a photo in the newspaper (Honolulu Star Bulletin) of a soldier, in country, with a striped kitten in his breast pocket. His two hands were in the photo, one stroking the kitten’s little head and the other holding his rifle. As I stared at the photo my mother said his hands are so beautiful. They should be holding a violin not a gun.

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My oldest brother was in Viet Nam and was shot in the leg. My second oldest brother was also there, not shot but not unscathed, either.

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Cursing. Lots of cursing. Really filthy language.

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I was born in 1963 and do not recall ever seeing the “body count” on TV, even though I was old enough to remember that, but I do remember seeing GIs/POWs at the end of the war, getting off an airplane in the US and kissing the tarmac.

My father missing going by just a few days--- My older brother was born 4 days before he got his notice to report to the draft, but I learned years later that his best friend was killed in Vietnam the following week. Dad kept his draft card in his wallet until the mid 1980s.

I have clearer memories of Watergate than of Vietnam--- I was a bit older and more politically aware by then--- my memories of Vietnam are more of people missing from families; people who were gone already before I knew their brothers and sisters, but who I learned of after-the-fact, after they had died.

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So many good movies it's all mediated for me as I wasn't alive yet but my mom remembers being pregnant with me and watching the news footage of an airlift at the end of the war and she said she cried and cried thinking of all those babies left behind and mothers being seperated and all that. Martin Sheen Coppola and Stone legs blown off and wheelchairs and leg braces on Forrest Gump. My step-father-in-law was a POW and now cannot find any redeeming qualities in an Asian face. He thinks Sandra Oh is ugly and will not watch Grey's Anatomy.

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flag burning, wall memorial, draft card burnings, guys wading through swamps, vets in the us on the side of the street begging for money.

 

my dad was a conscientious objector and told me that his number was the next one to come up on the draft several times and that somehow each time they started the draft over and he was never drafted. he had to go to court several times to establish his c.o. status and said he was willing to be a medic in vietnam but wouldn't carry a weapon or fight.

 

i went to the memorial with my dad and was amazed at how many names he knew. he was very moved by the memorial. it was kind of scary- i was really young

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I remember sitting at the breakfast table with my family and hearing the weekly casualty counts on the radio. I never realized until the Iraq War exactly how many 200 deaths actually is. How many people that impacted. How many lives were changed forever. Now I read of 3 or 4 in the paper and I'm appalled. Back then I heard the numbers and my only thought was that I was glad my cousin, John, didn't have to go.

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images on TV in black and white of a 50-ish father and 20-ish son watching images on TV (on a kitchen table, over TV dinners) of soldiers slogging through rice paddies with helicopters flying overhead intercut (on the TV on the table) with flag-draped coffins coming off of planes...

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I am too young to remember the Vietnam War, but the first thing that pops into my head is that movie that came out in the 1980's about the war: Platoon. I was fairly obsessed with the Vietnam War from this movie and from the Vietnam War Memorial, which I first saw in eighth grade. I wrote a poem about that had Vietnam War images in it when I was 12. I was also very afraid of nuclear war during this time.

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helicoptors, 50 cal. machine guns, green...green...green, CJ-Five jeeps, bombers, napalm, jungle, personnell mines, vietmam vets for the last 30 years, dope, fragging, vietnam memorial

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My father tried to enlist but had a bum kidney. He was 18. Not getting into the army, he married my mother. Me and my two siblings were all born within what would have been his tour of duty.

 

My uncle Chip was accepted and fought. I only heard him talk about it once, he said, "You got off the plane and you decided if you wanted to be drunk or high. If you drank you cried when the bombs fell. If you were high you looked up and said 'ohhh, how pretty.'"

 

My mom told me Uncle Chip worked the machine gun in a helicopter. Whenever we'd be watching a movie throughout my life she'd point at the screen and say "That's what Chip did." This was a proud comment, similar
to how sometimes she'd try and make an argument that our family had Irish heritage.

 

My Uncle Chip came back from Vietnam and was a Hell's Angels biker for the rest of his life in California. He died because he didn't chew his food and it ruined his digestive track. He died young.