While the Vietnamese have written history, too, their stories stand little chance against the shock and awe of the American military-cinema-industrial complex. But as novelist Gina Apostol says of this complex: Few storytellers want to discuss this because the fact that war makes an enormous amount of money is either disturbing to most Americans or not disturbing at all, due to the aforementioned disorder. The photographs simply capture Americans playing in sporting events or watching them. Only the last photograph of the War Memorial in Indianapolis acknowledges the war, with these words on the facing page: What is most disturbing about his photos is the implication that if war is hell, then this is what hell looks like, Americans enjoying seemingly innocent pastimes.
Being acclimated to hell is part of our disorder. Whenever we ate a candy bar, when we drank grape juice, bought bread ITT makes Wonder bread , wrapped food in plastic, made a phone call, put money in the bank, cleaned the oven, washed with soap, turned on the electricity, refrigerated food, cooked it, ran a computer, drove a car, rode an airplane, sprayed with insecticide, we were supporting the corporations that made tanks and bombers, napalm, defoliants, and bombs.
For the carpet bombing. For many, this is not a good war story, but a bad one they would rather avoid. This story says that all war is, in a sense, total war. Opening a refrigerator is a true war story. Complicity is the truest war story of all, which is why a blood-drenched movie like Apocalypse Now tells only half the true war story. It is about the heart of darkness over there, in the jungle where the white man discovers that he, too, is a savage, the heart of darkness beating within him.
But the other half of the true war story would show that the heart of darkness is also where we reside, over here, all around us. Americans do not wish to confront this domestic horror directly, which is why they substitute for it stories of zombies and serial killers and the like.
Fictional violence and monstrous horror are easier to stomach than understanding how opening our refrigerator or watching a football game connects us to war, which is not thrilling at all. The true war story is not only that war is hell, a statement that never prevented us from going to war but has always gotten us to run to the movie theater or pick up a book.
The true war story is also that war is normal, which is why we are always going to war. War is boring, a bad story most people do want to hear. War involves all of us, and that is more discomfiting than any horror story over here or blood-and-guts story over there. The fact that my family of refugees has become living proof of the American Dream is also a true war story, my parents wealthy, my brother a doctor on a White House committee, and myself a professor and novelist. To many Americans, we are evidence that the war was worth it, since it gave us the chance to be better Americans than many Americans.
But if we are a testament to the immigrant story, we are only here because the United States fought a war that killed three million Vietnamese not counting the three million others that died in neighboring Laos and Cambodia during the war and immediately after.
Filipinos are here because of the U. Koreans are here because of the Korean War that killed three million. Santo Domingo was Iraq before Iraq was Iraq. A smashing military success for the U. Many Americans forgot or never knew this true war story. If Americans think of the arrival of Dominicans to America at all, they most likely think of it as an immigrant story. But what if we understood immigrant stories to be war stories?
And what if we understood that war stories disturb even more when they are not about soldiers, when they show us how normal war is, how war touches and transforms everything and everybody, including, most of all, civilians? War stories that thrill may be true, but they only make war more alluring, something that happens somewhere else, over there. Another kind of true war story reminds us of something much more uncomfortable, that war begins, and ends, over here, with the support of citizens for the war machine, with the arrival of frightened refugees fleeing wars that we have instigated.
Telling these kinds of stories, or learning to read, see, and hear boring stories as war stories, is an important way to treat the disorder of our military-industrial complex. Rather than being disturbed by the idea that war is hell, this complex thrives on it. Nguyen writes hear that many people all over the world enjoy war stories and especially the more gruesome and disturbing ones.
I find this to be very disturbing but very true for a majority of people worldwide—especially those in America. We make War into novels and movies and use colorful pictures in our history books and always making excuses and saying that these wars are all started for good and that we are fighting for pure righteousness. War is nothing like that. We have become so desensitized that we no longer realize the true weight of war. Most people only know war as higher taxes and higher gas prices but not as mass murder, genocide, rape, the things that are truly war.
I agree Nguyen accuratley depicts an American society that mislead and obsessed in regards to war stories. Using contemporary films as examples, Nguyen allows readers to go more in depth with the content within these war stories. The comparison between Claymore face and American Sniper depicts a mislead society. A society in which rape and murder are accepted and tolerated as soon as it is in the environment of war. Controversial topics as rape and murder are no included into the norms of society.
This is the moment that Nguyen depicts a society that has become desensitized to war and its cruelness.
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While I agree that there is a serious issue in the United States with the romanticization of war in general, do you think that the majority of the population shares this view? I think that the media, such as movies, songs, and T. S, war IS hell, and they do have some sort of understanding of how truly awful war can be. I think this is very accurate and reminds me of the novel by George Orwell. In the novel the proles, or the regular people, do not even notice that the adversary is constantly changing because infinite war is the same as infinite peace.
It becomes a policy not an act. My take on what Nguyen is trying to communicate in his essay is that when you get to the bottom of it war makes us forget what it is to be human and basically brainwashes us to see the other humans we are fighting not as humans but as targets, as enemies. Because in the end we are all human we are all one why should we kill one of our own?
Nguyen utilizes the example of the Vietnamese post-war immigrants as a case example into this reality. He asks a fair question: He suggests that the answer is yes. And he also suggests that his story is equally valuable if not more valuable than glamorous stories with explosions and weapons. Nguyen himself is a professor of English, and he studied ethnic studies and English. Interestingly enough, this essay seems to be very interested in the ethnically relevant outcomes.
The glamorization of war has always been something that has bothered me immensely. Nguyen does a nice job of reminding the reader that war has more than two sides- that it has is million faces, a million facets. The good guy and the bad guy, the hero and the enemy? Every shade of gray, every civilian and child and family caught in the in-between folds of glorified slaughter, must be recognized as well.
American people tend to focus on what is appealing rather than what is true when it comes to war. With Hollywood films depicting American soldiers as the heroes, we tend to root for the men of our homeland and disregard their actions for the sake of war. This is how the American military-industrial complex is able to brainwash people into believing America can and will defeat anything that stands in its way.
They make us believe we won the Vietnam War, when in reality America was defeated and partly responsible for millions of deaths. We tend to forget that war is not something to be romanticized, rather it should make us as humans uneasy with the way we could treat other human beings. The fact that many American immigrants were the result of the U. A false representation of war is what allows people to misconstrue patriotism with reality.
War is hell and no flashy Hollywood studio could ever compare to the real thing. Saving people from their supposed subjugation by killing them until their reason for oppression is eradicated is completely illogical and ends up doing more harm than good. The intensions of war can be good and maybe even the outcome but only after everything has settled and the majority has stopped caring about all the ramifications war brought about. The good is felt only by the people who think they helped, the bad happens to the others.
War is comprised of numerous occasions that are not generally positive. I feel this passage gets a handle on the idea of war consummately. For each fighter, each armada, and each gathering going out to war there is blended feelings. In some cases you may feel the pride and respect of battling for your nation, and different times you feel the torment and languishing of battling about what you accept.
There is no right meaning of war or no synopsis of what every individual perseveres regularly. Nquyen writes about how Americans and other individuals across the globe take interest and enjoyment in war stories. Although war is terrifying and brings death and sadness, our country tends to only look at the good that comes out of it.
Our society has accepted war as a common thing. I believe that our country has experienced war as an everyday occurrence and as a way to cope with the mess it makes, and the media portrays war in a positive light. The author also mentions how various war stories get left out. America has never really experienced war as a whole.
Every battle is everywhere but our backyards. We need to see how gruesome war is when it hits home and how awful it can be to have the ability to move masses of people out of their country. A story about a soldier surviving hell on Earth sounds like a great story but the facts are unpleasant, yet people embrace these stories and glorify them to make them sound like legends.
Nguyen read about the narrator threaten a Vietnamese prostitute to blow him and his friends or die. Personally I embrace these war stories; they are from people who decided to put their lives on the line in order to make a change. Nguyen explains heroes soldier Army is a contradictory story, compared that experiences in Vietnam. The military troops spread afraid between people. To USA people is better to be victimizer than victim. The author explains the reality of the war result a cruel fight with catastrophic consequences. The war causes emotional maladjustment and psychiatric disorders to the victims, such as PTSD and depression.
The other side of the story, Americans enjoyed the war movies and stories of war like pastimes. War has a positive and negative point. The positive points are people from war become independent from other countries. Also, younger people get an experience and they work as a union. On the other hand, the negative points are many innocent people are killed and some of them lose their family, country, job …etc. Also, the country is survival by population but country by war lose their people.
Reading the war history brings many lights to the future people, even though it is the most bitter experience. This kind of lecture shows the writers to see the realistic side of war. Nguyen describes how war could be affected in society and how this focus is destroying people and and why war is terrifying by his own experience. People only wants to hear the blood spill and glorification of the war. What are some other aphorisms that either Nguyen posits or that you can create on your own?
Try to use his examples in the text, but feel free to bring in your own as well. The little things people do in their every day lives somehow contribute to the war. Buying a carpet for your house or opening a refrigerator supports the large companies they come from. By supporting these companies back home, unintentionally you are also supporting their efforts in the war overseas.
Throughout the text, Nguyen provides evidence about how war affects so many people in so many different ways, both on the battlefront and back home in this case, America. She explains how the Vietnam War provided many with jobs, both during and after the war, and how some people were completely unaware of their contributions to the war. The legacy of the Vietnam War continues today. For example, in my class AAST at the University of Maryland, there are many students whose parents and grandparents came to America as refugees to start a new life.
Many people applaud those who participate in the games of war. War is made up of many events that are not always positive. Nguyen would say how war is hell, and when he was twelve he experienced the Vietnam war. What war meant to Nguyen was that his experience living in Vietnam and being here now in America was terrorizing by making Vietnamese into bit actors. Americans would take advantage and would only please themselves. Do all people love to hear war stories? With entire industries banking on the response of the American population towards war, it seems he might be in the right.
Comic books became popular at the height of the second World War — just as there were soldiers overseas, Captain America was beating up Nazis. But is that what the American people really want to see? Or is it instead that what people seek is just an escape from the boring — the very thing that the author suggest war might just be? Perhaps what the American people are looking for is not a good war story: When the American military is painted as being always in the right, there is something comforting about the idea that a story about a soldier will feature the defeat of evil. War stories seem to be the fantasy of good triumphing over evil in the modern day.
The world is a complicated place where it seems chaos reigns. Throughout history, we have documented the horrors of war in a multitude of creative ways-including books and movies. However, these stories have been misconstrued and created into what we want them to be-more heroic and more exciting. In creating the sense that he was created into something different than what he originally wanted to be because he was raised in America, he symbolizes how Americans create and shift stories to fit the mold of what they want people to fit.
In relation to the war stories, Nguyen realizes that he enjoys what he was told and taught to enjoy, not the actual stories of mystery and terror that he later touches on. I find this paragraph to be the perfect definition of war. War is a period of growth for many countries and for the people involved. Thousands of innocent lives have been lost to war but can war be avoided?
On one hand, war is what has made our country grow and learn. Different countries have banded together and made alliances but at the same time, they have made enemies with other countries. War can provide for resources and provide jobs for people who are in need of such. During World War II, when all the men were at war, there were many job vacancies that had to filled or else the economy would collapse. As a result, women started taking over of jobs that men originally occupied. This created a chance for women to fight for equality and take a step into an area that was previously unavailable.
However, at the same time, war brings the guilt and trauma of having blood on the hands of the soldiers. This is a very unfair life for kids who have done nothing to deserve such a thing. There are many views and debate on war but I think this paragraph summarizes everything that war offers into short and concise sentences. I think that this paragraph grasps the concept of war perfectly. For every soldier, every fleet, and every group going out to war there is mixed emotions. Sometimes you feel the pride and honor of fighting for your country, and other times you feel the pain and suffering of fighting for what you believe.
There is no right definition of war or no summary of what each individual endures on a daily basis. It is hell, it is mysterious and most definetely terrifying. I agree that soldiers will have mixed feelings when entering into war zones for the first time. Yet I feel as though Viet Nguyen is making the argument that the adventure.
Fighting for what you believe in a great motivational saying, but war is still hell. So depicting it as something which can give you glory and self discovery, is how writers try to engage their audience patriotism, and entertain, rather than inform. When I first read this paragraph I was confused for a brief moment. But after a few seconds I realized that these are all emotions and realizations that someone who was a victim or fighter in any war could possibly feel. To the viet cong who were fighting against the Americans, they believed that they were fighting for their own country and that their reason to go to war was both courageous and honorable.
One could also feel longing and love for their loved ones back at home who are wondering if they are going to make it back to them. War does not just bring sadness as an emotion but could bring many other contradicting feelings. Although he knew that he would be arrested for his military affiliation to South Vietnam, he was determined to stay in the country and die for it if he had too.
War brought despair to the people who were escaping by boats such as the Bolinao Seeing her son growing without his father and struggling to adapt to American society brings her despair. War is not always one sided when it comes to the people it makes contact with. Some people may embrace war.
What this paragraph is saying is that war cannot be interpreted in one way but could be interpreted in many different ways depending on the person and their own experiences. Just to stretch this out a little bit further, it might be worth thinking about how all of these individual feelings and notions about war come together to create the collective war experience. While each person has their own reaction to war, whether it be fear, despair, or even love, when these get grouped together, societies begin to have similar viewpoints on war.
Eventually, when many different view on war come together, and one can stand back and merely observe all the moving variables, war might be understood from multiple sides, not just one of personal feeling. It is interesting that the author described war as being a myriad of adjectives. At first glance it does not really make sense. How can war be described as fun?
But when you think about all sides involved, indeed one see it as so. I find this especially intriguing because although many might have a similar war story but each individual have their own journey and destiny. Hence their own story. In addition, the lives of individuals that are affected by war also have a carryover effect.
Meaning, it holds space in memory that can be contradicting or flawed. As an result, the truth in their hearts are justified by the events that they endured and not necessarily facts. I feel like the different adjectives were used in order to emphasize the different motivations people have for going to war. However, I agree with your notion of every one having their own war story when they come back from it — war does inevitably effect countless lives, with war being viewed in different lights based on who you end up asking. This perception of war, which is certainly a prevalent one, identifies a gritty, energized image of war.
War, to some, is a thrill, granted a dirty one. However, what we do not see in this paragraph is anything that would suggest war is subtle, invisible, or calm.
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So, considering that these are common attributes associated with war, the silence on U. The silence could easily be considered to be intentional. For example, we had invaded Vietnam before citizens of the United States knew, suggesting, the silence is strategic. Silence perpetuates the military industrial complex. Even in newscasts of war, one sees soldiers firing, carrying out actions, but not real exchanges of fire or casualties.
In this way, the real impacts of war, the external impacts are silenced. Life is a plethora of mixed emotions and experiences, ranging from all kinds of varying descriptions. This perpetuates perhaps a dangerous idea that war is just a part of life, perhaps even essential. War should not be naturalized in this way, and instead should be used to educate those on the real life consequences of war, some of those being mentioned in the rest of this article, rape, abandonment, gore, and oftentimes pointless violence.
This article examines the different impacts war has on those it directly affects as well as those watching from a distance. This article also teaches us that not all war stories are bad ones. This article really makes you think about modern day immigration. We claim that immigrants come to our land to have a better life, and we view this as them just wanting better financial success.
This is rarely the full case. The majority of immigrants who leave their home land are often not only fleeing poverty, but unsafe and dangerous territory that threatens them and their family. This is how Viet Than Nguyen sees war through the lens of society. The author explains how there are two or more ways to look at war.
If you are victorious you will see war as glorious and as a sacrifice, and even as a necessity for a greater good. But on the other hand if you lose everything in the war it will become a living hell. American society can look at war like a thrilling and full of adventure real life tale. But in reality war is hell as the author has stated before. I can explain this idea that many American have by criticizing the media that sells war as an amazing thing where stories of courage and honor are forged.
The reality is that there is no good way to look at war. Not even if you are the one who gets to end it. In this sentence, Nguyen is explaining the complexity of war. It is somewhat of an emotional roller coaster with highs, low, and many mixed emotions. Most obviously, war is hell.
When the ordinary person thinks of a war, they think of bloody battles, fighting, casualties and brutal times for those in battle. However, there is much more to this. However, even with all the hardships, comes longing, holiness, and love. People who fight in wars have extreme pride, beliefs, and love for what they are fighting in which brings joy and a feeling of accomplishment to them. War is extremely emotional and its complexity can be seen in examining all the emotions that come with it. Throughout this essay, Nguyen presents a sense of sensationalism that comes with the telling of war stories.
War is portrayed solely as a necessary, heroic gesture meant to save people of an impending evil. However, the many realistic details that constitute the majority of war and its business aspects classifies war as less ideological and more mundane.
Nguyen argues that looking at those seemingly mundane details is a more accurate description of the trauma caused by war. Although not necessarily war-related, this exposition makes me think of white feminism and how previously those white feminists believed that they need to alter the cultural dress of Eastern and Middle Eastern women in order to fit this idea of Western feminism. This is not an accurate representation of all feminists, obviously, but it contributes to an important conversation about Western entitlement. It is about how Americans portrayed the war for them but not the real way it occurred.
No matter how gruesome, they were told as simple stories. Personally, war is not just a story. In my family, a few of my uncles, as well as my father, were marines. I felt that I really connected with this article because war is just told as stories and not for what it truly is. I often do not read war related literature outside of class. So the majority of my knowledge of war lit. However, they are some of the most influential ones, a reason why our education requires us to read it.
Death is a fascinating thing to talk about. The closer it is, the more it grabs our attention as readers. The moment we think of war, we think of death. In typical war story fashion, Americans were the saviors, or the good guys really. I think in this paragraph, Nguyen may have had a conflict with his identity. Who would he side with? While reading this I recalled all the age specified material we have through out the world and it seems that this disproves these for history materials or True War Stories.
But my rebuttal to this is that should we allow this? The two different views of war he provides fascinates me. Though he wondered if war is truly as gruesome as it is made out to be, he later understands that it is, and as an author, one should leave such details in even if they seem intangible. The rape scene he offers the reader is an unfortunate, but realistic aspect to war. It shows the cruelty of war without having to be a complete gore fest. I was surprised when I read the 7th paragraph about the boy being 11 or Initially, Nguyen was shocked and had wished the scene was not included in the novel.
However, after some time she realized how important it is to include the reality of war and the events that surround it. Before this class I had never heard of comfort women and what they went through. I was having a conversation with my parents over the weekend regarding the subject, and it was the first time my mother had heard of such a tragic side effect to WWII and the Vietnam War.
Everyone knows what happened to the victims of the European Holocaust, however not as many are aware of the young Asian victims who were tricked or sold into forced prostitution. I think the author makes a great point here. War favors the victor, often regardless of their methods.
That even though we know what is being shown to us is horrible, that in the end it was better for us to be committing the act then to be the victim. I believe that the audience wants to know that for all the wrong that we had done, there was something from it that we could hold up as a difference that we made for the better. This statement by Nguyen is a sad reality for any war.
It is always better to be the victimizer than the victim. When a country is victim of a war, it suffers the biggest losses and damages, its population dies and the economic system starts to fall apart. The victimizer has the power to make independent decisions and not care about future consequences that they can have. During the Vietnam War, the victimization of the island of Guam is a great example of how it is better to be the victimizer than the victim. By the end of the war, the beautiful island was left with nothing but unemployment, poverty and pollution due to Agent Orange gasses.
That is a great example of how important it could be to be the victimizer rather than the victim. In the case of Guam, of course it is a shame to have to essentially destroy a society, but it was necessary for the Americans to gain a stronghold in the area. War is a life or death, win-lose situation.
It is unfortunate, but at the end of the day, you have to do whatever it takes to win, even if what you are doing is negatively effecting others. However, that does not mean that you should be able to do inexplicable acts that does nothing to help your cause. In the case of Guam, the United States was gaining access to a very strategic position to help them with performing bombings in Vietnam. But in the case of raping a Vietnamese prostitute, there is no reason- and no justification- for this behavior.
There is a difference between being the victimizer for a cause or for no apparent reason. In other words, the complex and contingent history of the Vietnamese people must be forgotten so that the success story can be retold. Additionally, Vo states that when Vietnamese Americans reprise their history in the U. Yes the movie Zero Dark Thirty was a successful movie but why? We are applauding a movie based on war and death.
We would witness people die and being tortured yet, we are applauding this movie. We saw how these soldiers tortured people to get information but why do we not see it as a bad thing? All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under I green sea, I saw him drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed, And no man claimed the conquest of your land. But gropers both through fields of thought confined We stumble and we do not understand. You only saw your future bigly planned, And we, the tapering paths of our own mind, And in each others dearest ways we stand, And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind. Grown more loving kind and warm We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain, When it is peace. But until peace, the storm, The darkness and the thunder and the rain. And the shut shops, the bleached Established names on the sunblinds, The farthings and sovereigns, And dark-clothed children at play Called after kings and queens, The tin advertisements For cocoa and twist, and the pubs Wide open all day;.
And the countryside not caring: Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word — the men Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages, Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again. The darkness crumbles away. Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand You will do the same to a German Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure To cross the sleeping green between. It seems you inwardly grin as you pass Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes, Less chanced than you for life, Bonds to the whims of murder, Sprawled in the bowels of the earth, The torn fields of France. What do you see in our eyes At the shrieking iron and flame Hurled through still heavens? What quaver — what heart aghast? Here dead we lie Because we did not choose To live and shame the land From which we sprung.
Who thinks of June's first rose today? Only some child, perhaps, with shining eyes and rough bright hair will reach it down. In a green sunny lane, to us almost as far away As are the fearless stars from these veiled lamps of town. What's little June to a great broken world with eyes gone dim From too much looking on the face of grief, the face of dread? Do those remain the most vivid memories of your life? I just finished talking with a group of high school students here in D. And there's something about being amid the chaos and the horror of a war that makes you appreciate all you don't have and all you may lose forever, which goes from the sublime, your parents, down to the petty, the Big Mac and a cold Coke.
When you're really, really thirsty and you're drinking paddy water, the mind will lock on a can of cold Coke the way your mind might, you know, back in high school lock on a pretty girl. Does it surprise you that all these years later, your book is taught in high schools around the country? I had written the book for adults. I had imagined an audience of literate people on subways and going to work and in their homes reading the book. But I certainly hadnt imagined year-old kids and year-olds and those even in their earlys reading the book and bringing such fervor to it, which comes from their own lives, really.
The book was taken is applied to a bad childhood or a broken home, and these are the things theyre carrying. And in a way, it's extremely flattering, and other times, it can be depressing. I had a kid come up to me not long ago, though a book-signing line and say, yours is the only book I've ever finished. And of course, it was meant in a flattering way, and I took it that way, but in the back of my mind, I thought, God, all the pleasure that this kid has denied himself. It opens a door. Some of these kids is the wrong word.
It sounds, you know, sort of derogatory. These human beings who are young, a door's been closed to them through their own doing or that of their parents or their schools. And if a book can open that gateway or that doorway and encourage someone to find the pleasures of reading, then what a great thing to have accomplished in your life.
Here's one of those literate people, writing with an email, Shannon ph in Lyndhurst, Ohio. I'm a professor and I've been teaching your novel for six years now and consistently fall in love with it every time I read it. What I would like to know is: What is the single most important message you would like your readers to take away from the novel? I say that because you are Azar. Oh goodness, to take one thing away, it's a little bit like having a piece of cloth, you know, unravel a strand and the cloth dissolves as you look at the strand. The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human.
And in a way, for me, although on the surface, of course, it is a book about war, it's I've never thought of it, really, that way in my heart. Even when I was writing it, it seemed to be a book about storytelling and the burdens we all accumulate through our lives, our moms and dads and backyards, teachers, which I mean, my dad died, I don't know, four years ago, and he is as gone as anybody I knew in Vietnam. But like the ghosts of Vietnam, all I need do is, you know, close my eyes a moment and there he is throwing me a baseball.
And there's something about carrying the image of him, the symbol, the emblem of carrying that, at least in my experience, is pretty important to being human, I mean. We're talking about "The Things They Carried," and we're asking veterans to call us today to tell us about the things they carried and the things they continue to carry, And we'll begin with Jeff ph , Jeff calling us from Des Moines.
I was just telling your screener, I'm an Iraq War veteran. I was there in , , and there's never really thought about it, but there's three things I carry with me every day.
'The Things They Carried,' 20 Years On : NPR
I still wear my dog tags every day. And I've got a P can opener from And when I was in Iraq, my driver made wristbands out of cord for everybody in the section, and I wear that every day. But I wear a suit and tie every day, and a lot of people comment that that's a little jarring to see a piece of green nylon braided into a wristband on my wrist, but I wear it every day, so - just to remember that time, so You know, I think it's because I was in the military for so long, I hope nobody takes offense at this, but that's a completely different world than the civilian world.
And it reminds me of all of my experiences in the past and a lot of good memories. So, I don't know.
Harry Patch, Britain's last surviving soldier of the Great War, dies at 111
It's habit now, but I wish I did. You're right, that thing worked, and most of the can openers I use these days, you know, break in three minutes. My last I spent my first nine months as a rifleman and a squad leader west of Chu Lai in th Light Infantry. And the last three months, I managed to get a job as the door gunner on an observation ship and I got hit carrying a marine artillery observer out of Da Nang. You know, I'd like to say that one of the things that I still carry is the wonder that people voted to keep us there. I came back and joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and I found that you couldn't tell anybody what you had witnessed.
Without having some experience, it just, they either didn't want to hear it or they couldn't relate to it. But the people that sent us there and kept us there, I count Johnson and Nixon and Kissinger and the rest of them, they knew that we weren't there to do anything but have a geopolitical influence on the Russians. Unfortunately, I didn't do a research project on why we were in Vietnam until after I got back, and the reasons were not what they told us.
I got nobody to blame but myself, but I felt very foolish for having trusted the government with my life. Terry, it's interesting what you say about stories. A lot of Tim O'Brien's book is about war stories and how, if you if they sound believable, they're almost certainly not. Yeah, thats - I mean, I identify with virtually everything that our caller just talked about.
And my memories are much like yours, and I think I carry with me the same thing you're carrying. Terry, thanks very much for the call, appreciate it. It's 20 years since "The Things They Carried" hit the store shelves. We'll talk more with author Tim O'Brien in just a moment. We also want to hear from veterans today. More than two million copies of "The Things They Carried" have sold since It's been read and passed around by countless veterans from Vietnam to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Tim O'Brien's book has also been optioned for a film, but so far it's not made it to the big screen. Now to mark the 20th anniversary, a new hardcover edition is out. To read a selection about the acidic boredom of war, you can go to our Web site at npr. Tim O'Brien is with us here in Studio 3A. We want to hear from veterans today. I actually carry two things personally. I do have a P, and I also have what Air Force crew chiefs called a church key, which was your normal, everyday, metal can opener. But the things that I don't personally carry, but I used to carry every day, were the coffins coming back from Vietnam, the nuclear warheads coming back out of I guess I can say it today, Subic Bay, because we used to catch them at Barbers Point Naval Air Station outside of Hickam Air Force Base.
And the nights that I spent at Dover during the first Gulf War with , to , pounds of JP4 on a C-5 and 30 to 40, pounds of small arms and rocket ammunitions or motors, and you would see the lightning and then all of a sudden It's hard to believe, isn't it, Rich? I was just talking with Tim O'Brien, just before we started on the show, that it was 20 years after his tour that he wrote this book. It's 20 years since then, but it's almost 20 years since the first Gulf War.
The first Gulf War. It's almost hard to believe. I mean, I went in as a kid. I entered the Air Force in , my senior year of high school, and then I went back, joined the Reserves and was in the Reserves for about 18 months, got called up, I believe it was in September of to go active duty during the first Gulf War. You, you back then you didn't think about it, but then that was when I was 17, 18, 19, Now you get up to 35, and you say, man, you know, I could be gone in a split second. I mean, we did lose a bird at Dover, got hit with lightning, and it tore the wing off between Number 2 and Number 3 engine, you know?
That is the reminder that is consistent in your book, not just the what you then considered an old man looking back you're a much older man now but the incredible youth of, well, you and the others in Alpha Company. Yeah, at the time it seemed I was among people who were fairly mature. I mean, looking back on it, these were 19, 20, year-olds.
People who at the time looked ancient to me turned out to be 27 or It's I think it's an important reminder for all of us that those who do our killing and our dying, they're not kids exactly, but they're not they're certainly not mature adults who have been schooled by life and what life can deliver to us. And that is a lesson probably worth tucking away. Email from Charles in Portland, Oregon: I wasn't old enough to serve during the Vietnam War. I made a knife sheath for him out of leather that held his fixed-blade knife, and it had another compartment for a pair of needle-nose pliers that he found useful for a variety of purposes.
I could imagine how that could be useful. At the time I was a year-old kid and I picked up there and I've carried since an empathy for other people's suffering. And now I currently work in the mental health field, and I want to thank Mr. O'Brien because when I was in college his book was one of the books that we studied. I'm delighted to hear that. I was talking with Neal before the show started and saying that books can sometimes have impacts on human lives that go way beyond what an author intends as the book is being written. And you can help people in ways you would never expect.
I'm delighted to hear it. Maybe it helped you a little. And Daniel, the things you still carry - I wonder, every day you hear about another ship being taken by pirates off the coast of Somalia or about the gun battles erupting between the government that holds three square blocks of downtown Mogadishu and the warlords. What do you think? Actually, you know, at the time I was too young to truly understand, but I think we as a nation and as a military service did a major disservice to the Somali people.