The de-glorification of war

The extremes of public reactions to personal experiences in the Vietnam War were well-charted by American veterans. John Kerry burned his war medals in front of throngs of protestors in Washington D.C.; Lieutenant Coker spoke of such virtues as courage and love of country in front of a hometown crowd, with uncomplicated admiration.

Tim O’Brien, upon returning from a war in which he had never believed, seemed hell-bent on avoiding extremes. He refused to indulge in simplified characterizations of the war which would vilify one side or the other; nor would he allow himself to rapturously sing the praises of countless untold acts of selfless heroism which he had personally witnessed during epic battles.

Yet he had been greatly affected by the war, and felt compelled to share the experience. So rather than write a war novel that could just as well have been the script for a John Wayne flick, he wrote about the things men carried in their rucksacks while humping. He wrote about how a junior officer privately doted over a picture of a high school volleyball player, while another soldier, being a bigger guy, had chosen to pack his ruck sack with extra desserts. He mentions how the Army dentist who spoiled a day of R&R had had bad breath; how the main thing he remembered after being shot, when his own life seemed to be in jeopardy, was the new pair of boots on the feet of the cherry medic who had waited too long to treat him.

O’Brien weaves a few yarns that are quintessentially ‘Nam. He goes into excruciating detail, drawing readers into eerie, fog-draped mountains where they hear music and impossible voices in the night. But then he tells us they’re mostly hearsay, and that the guy he heard them from was a big exaggerator. Tim O’Brien has a good deal to say about the hardships inherent in the experience of war; but he does not glorify them, and he begs us not to glorify them, either.