By Tom Skiens

I bought a pare of size 8 1/2 hush puppies at the retail shop on the ground floor of the Singapore Ambassador hotel. The hush puppies were the “in thing” on my 21st birthday, June 21st 1968. I also bought a Hammock, a 4X4 orange tarp and a hooker of Indian nationality. In order to make my 21st birthday complete I visited three Indian snake charmers with a cobra in a jar and a bag of weed in their hand. I stayed away from the snake but I took possession of the weed.

As the day moved on I traded in my Indian nationality hooker for a younger model. The mommasan pimp didn’t mind. Her standard advertisement was, “you like boom boom number one cherry girl, she love you long time”.

The Ambassador hotel was filled to overflowing with G.I’s fresh out of Vietnam and all of them were looking for the same thing. Showers, flush toilets, clean sheets, music, booze, women and a telephone call back to the world. The kind of a call where after you finish speaking you must say “over” and then after your mom on the other end of the line finishes talking she must say, “over”. This makes for a difficult conversation but talking to my mom on my 21st birthday from Singapore, priceless.

The hotel was making a mint off the American servicemen on their one week escape from Vietnam. It made no difference if the G.I. job was in the rear with the gear, humping the bush, hurling 60 tons of steel down highway one, a cannon cocker, a rotor head or a rubber tired mine magnet, the goal was the same. Get laid before you get laid and get drunk while you are doing it. Everybody at the hotel got rich and the G.I had the best R&R story he could ever have dreamed of. I did not make friends with the other G.I’s at the hotel. I would say Hi in passing and that was about it. I felt like all my friends were dead and so was I. The most conversation I had was with college students who played music at the bar. The students were in the middle of a revolution, declaring Singapore a Free city state and breaking away from China. I found out years later that they were successful.

I told my hooker friend a story about my life. It goes like this. I wave goodbye to my mother and thank her for washing my Basketball uniform as I open the door of the “47″ Ford I bought for $50.00 with money I had earned thinning trees with a chainsaw the summer before. “If I didn’t wash your uniform, who would”, she says. I smile and say, ” Sorry mom, I will give you more warning next time but they just told us about the pictures this morning. I have to go, the Varsity photos are scheduled in less than 10 minutes. By, love you”

I back out of the driveway being careful not to scrape the white picket fence. I drive 1/2 of a mile north on Egan street and take a left on W. Tyler street. It is five blocks from here to Hwy. 395 and then less than a 200 yards to the high school. I travel four blocks and begin to slow down for the approaching intersection. All of a sudden the front of my car explodes, my windshield is shattered but still intact. What the hell has happened? My car glides to a stop. I try to open the drivers door but it is jammed. What the hell has happened?

I slam into the door as hard as I can with my left shoulder, the door begins to move with the metal on metal scraping of steel bent against steel sound. I hit the door again and it opens enough to allow me to exit. My windshield is broken with a thousand lines going off in as many different directions. What the hell has happened? I turn around and see a Honda motor bike lying twisted and broken on the road to my east. I walk four steps toward the rear of my car. I see the legs of a person on the pavement. I take two more steps. I hear a girl screaming and I see her boyfriend, the senior class president and honor student lying on the ground. Randy will lay there forever. The ambulance will come and take him to the hospital. Randy will die a week later, His family will grieve and the ramifications for the other lives involved will begin to mature.

My mother will tell me as she dies of cancer how she crossed the street for more than 20 years to avoid coming face to face with Randy’s mother. On one occasion, Mrs. Russell followed my mother across the street and cornered her in an isle of a store. She begged my mother to quit avoiding her and said that she held no blame for anyone in our family concerning her son’s death. My mother and I both cried together.

I am tasked to ask the question,” why him and not me”? I will go to war to search for the meaning of life. I will come to know death in the war but I will struggle to have a relationship with life.

I ask my hooker friend what she thought about my story and she said,” I no understand English so good. You want boom boom now”. I was glad she neither spoke nor understood English. I needed to tell someone about Randy who would not attempt to absolve or blame. She was the perfect listener. I gave her all my money when I left town.

The return flight from Singapore to Vietnam is filled with a ghost like silence. Everyone partied hardy the last night of the R&R. Leaving no drink standing, no hooker unrewarded, no laugh repressed, no lie untold, we did our job well.

I have made love, not to the one I love. I have slept with, showered with, not the one I love. I return to a place where I know I will die. It is just a matter of time. It is more certain than the notion of living. I can visualize my death but I cannot visualize my life.

The Asian heat of Singapore is similar to that of Vietnam. It sucks the air from my lungs, sticking to my body like Elmer’s glue. The heat and memories of a weeks worth of sex, a hangover, a meal plus the steady rhythm of the jet engine lead me to a dream filled sleep.

In my dream it is April 19, 1968. I am the fourth person back in the left column. The other column is less than 10 yards to my right. We should not be this bunched up. God knows we have hit enough booby traps to learn. I see and hear an explosion to my right front less than 15 yards away. I drop to the ground but before my stomach touches I am on my way back up.

I know what this is. It is the same thing as January 13, 1968. A Bouncing Betty leaves us with two dead and eight wounded. Zimmerman and I are the next two unwounded in the column and we must walk the line. (See: “Betty“.) Today is not much different.

I move to the right column, drop my rucksack and get the PRC 25 radio from my radio telephone operator. 0900, grid square BS 533853, Company C request dust off for two KHA, two WHA result bouncing Betty. I move into the zone making sure the path is clear for the medics. A fucking new guy walking point in the left column has hot steel in his stomach.

The F.N.G. came in on the resupply chopper the night before and has been with the company less than 14 hours. The company put him in first Platoon and first Platoon put him on the point in the left column. First day in the bush and the F.N.G. gets hot steel in his stomach which may result in him going home. The guy at my feet, dead. The next guy, dead. The next guy, Platoon leader, LT. his right foot is blown off and his right hand doesn’t look good, he will probably lose it. He is moaning from shock and pain. His weapon has been thrown to the right, it is destroyed, useless.

I yell at the F.N.G. to stop running around because he may set off another mine. Sgt. Don fox and Zimmerman talk the F.N.G. to safety. In three days Zimmerman and I will be on our bellies crawling over to Sgt. Fox who will have a bullet in his belly that pentrated through his weapon befor entering his body. Higher/higher said it was Auitomatic weapons fire but I was standing next to him and only remember 1 round. Two days after the Sgt. Fox dust off Zimmerman will be involved in another Bouncing Betty and I will on the radio calling in another dustoff. Charlie 1/1 is getting beat up.

A medic asks me to help put one of the dead on a poncho so we can drag him to the approaching chopper.

I rifle through the guys rucksack to get a poncho while the medic rolls him onto his back. I find pieces of bone and blood on the inside of the grunts rucksack. For the first time I look at the dead guys face. It is my friend John John.

I am stunned, shocked. This is the day, the hour, the minute and the grid coordinates where the American dream dies for me. Dark clouds invade my mind, a deep numbing pain penetrates my soul. The medic wants me to lift the right side of the body. John John is pulverized flesh from head to toe, like the Gook on the receiving end of a B-52 package. Concussion and shrapnel have transformed his body to the consistency of firm Jelly. I can’t find anything solid enough to lift.

A year passes, then two, finally I see the middle finger of his right hand, I test it to see if it will stay attached to his body as I lift. I grab a hand full of bloody pants leg with my right hand and lift the lower part of his body off the ground. I pray that pieces of his body do not come off in my hands as I lift my dark broken friend high enough to set him on the poncho.

April 19, 1968, 0900 hours, grid BS533853, I died, the dream ends, no preparation, I be zombie. I died because it was the easiest and fastest way to deal with my problem. I could not move forward while packing the weight of the dead and I could not leave them behind. I must sacrifice a part of my soul so my body can move on. I don’t have time to morn, only to tuck the memory of the mangled bodies into the corners of my mind and keep on humping.

The corners of my mind will meld over time
The visions of the dead come more often
I’ve recorded their names and absolved them of chains
While I’m busy constructing my own coffin

A zombie gets off the return flight from the Singapore R&R in Chu Lai July 3rd 1968 and finds his company waiting on the tarmac for a C-130 to take them north. He goes to the orderly room and puts together his gear including: Rucksack, weapon, ammo, C’s, smoke grenades, steel pot, Poncho, Pancho liner, Jungle knife, 4 canteens, smokes, matches, Bug juice, TP and lots of shoe strings because they are the only thing in this Army that you can get plenty of and they always work.

I use shoe strings to tie around my legs, above my calves so that they will keep the leeches lower. Shoe strings to tie the souls of my boots on when they come apart in the jungle. Shoe strings to tie my poncho to stakes and pegs to make a hooch for the night. Shoe strings to tie the PRC 25 mike close to my ear so only I can hear. Shoe strings to tie my socks to the outside of a rucksack so they can air out. Shoe strings for splints and slings. The strings that keep the grunts alive exist only because the black market finds no profit in them.

I packed my Hush Puppies, the Hammock and the orange 4X4 tarp. The C-130 takes us north about 45 minutes and lands at a well developed fire base. These guys have the works, tanks, APC’s, bunkers with 5 sandbag roofs, NCO club, showers plus heavy artillery like the 175 MM and the 155 MM Howitzer.

We would spend some days here and then choppers would take us to a place not so developed. The Zombie doesn’t know he is dead but he knows how to act like he wants to die. He wears the 4X4 orange tarp on the outside of his rucksack. Sticking up above his head is the antenna from the PRC. 25 radio he carries. He sometimes walks point adorned in this fashion. The orange tarp and antenna a tempting piece of sniper bate.

I had planned to use The Hush Puppy shoes I bought in Singapore when we dug in for a couple of days near a water source. I hoped to get out of my boots for a couple of hours, go down to the water hole in my Hush Puppies, steel pot, M-16 and nothing on but the armed forces radio network. I never did find that waterhole.

At the first opportunity I dug out the Hammock and tied it between two trees. I quickly realized that if we were to get hit the hammock would be the worst possible place to be. I chucked the hammock and went back to sleeping on the ground where all grunts belong, near a foxhole, curled around a rock with the edge of my steel pot as a pillow.

I used the Orange 4×4 tarp as ground cover for a time. I think it wore out. If I packed it on the outside of my Rucksack much it would not have lasted long. The jungle would surround, choke and destroy it like it did everything else. I think the jungle ate my Hush Puppies.

A final word on the Hooker. I didn’t even know her name. When I left Singapore I did not promise to write her and she did not promise to write me. We both kept our word. If either of us had tried to write I am certain a letter addressed to ” Hooker ” or “GI from Oregon ” would have a difficult time finding the RIGHT “Hooker” or “GI from Oregon.” I for one have never received such a letter.

Know them as tears fill their eyes at the sight of a child while memories repeat a vision of  dead, militated, burnt children cast beside the road to Baghdad.

Know them as they smile while talking about their best friend dying.

Know them as you discover they sleep on the floor and run nightly patrols.

Know them as a slight disagreement explodes into a killing rage and the vet is stepping backwards seeking his knives and guns.

Know them as they get and lose as many different jobs as they have years separated from the war.

Know them as they condemn themselves for the smallest mistake because in their world a mistake will  kill someone.

Know them as they display anti-social and addictive behavior.

Know them as they struggle with borderline personality disorders and have extreme difficulties with interpersonal relationships.

Know them who suffer the pain as they pronounce that others deserve veterans benefits more than they do.

Know them as you ask when they fought a major battle and they say, “Last night.”

Know them as they walk in the woods while keeping a proper spacing between people they are with and constantly registering the next closest spot for cover and concealment.

Know them as they drive white knuckled, holding back the urge to “SHOUT,SHOW,AND SHOOT” at the driver who gets too close on the highway and fight the desire to swerve away from anything that might contain an IED

Know them as they travel across six states to help a friend but they would not cross the street to save their own ass.

Know them as they will not come to you for help. They are to proud.

Know them as you would your own. Provide for them for the rest of their lives the mental, medical and social tools  that reflect our ability to honor the veteran.

Know them.

Poem by Tom Skiens, with shout, show and shoot line by two tour
Afghanistan vet James Dowmen

Victor R. Volkman	Victor R. Volkman is Senior Editor of Modern History Press, a publishing house dedicated to empowering authors to speak about surviving conflict and seeking identity in modern times. Although not a veteran of any service, he is committed to seeing veterans’ stories told.
Marc Levy	Marc Levy served with Delta 1/7 Cav as an infantry medic in Viet Nam and Cambodia in 1970. He was decorated once for gallantry, twice for valor, and twice court-martialed. His prose, poetry and essays have been published in various online and print journals, most recently on counterpunch.org. In 2001 he was selected to attend an ACA residence. A video of his war experiences, “The Real Deal,” is distributed by The Cinema Guild.
Tommy Joe Skiens	Tom Skiens joined the 11th light infantry brigade in Hawaii, September 1967 a year out of high school. Tom became the 4.2 inch Forward Observer (FO) for Charlie Company, 4th Battalion 3d Infantry Regiment on the USS General Gordon seven days before they arrived in Viet Nam. He later attended Southern Oregon State College from 1969 through 1974. He has conducted 50 critical incident debriefings which provided trauma related information to over 600 people. He also brought the drug free workplace program to the National Forest where he worked. This led to four interventions. Tom has given classes and trained others about substance abuse and critical incident stress.
Tony Swindell	Tony Swindell served with the 31st PID, 11th Light Infantry Brigade (LIB), Americal Division, during 1968-69. His unit participated in the My Lai massacre in Pinkville in 1968, and he was later a witness to incidents involving the murder of Vietnamese civilians by brigade commander Col. John W. Donaldson. He is currently an editor at the Sherman, Texas, Herald Democrat.

Tyler: Welcome, Victor, Marc and Tom. I’m happy you could join me today. Let’s begin by your telling me about what is contained in “More Than a Memory”-are they individual recollections of the Viet Nam War?

Marc Levy: The book is mostly made up of firsthand accounts of war and its aftermath. The contributors have chosen to express themselves through poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Some writers are more accomplished than others; each saw his particular share of combat, and each tells a unique story.

Tyler: What made you decide to include not just essays but stories and poems?

Marc Levy: Actually, poetry, fiction and nonfiction are the dominant forms found in most Viet Nam vet anthologies. A well-written essay, side stepping the eager trap of political or patriotic or academic anthem, speaks directly to the reader. It attempts to wed the writer’s past and present experience with the readers, and draws upon the reader’s awareness, or lack thereof, and by indirection serves to heighten the traditional narrative forms in the book that precede or follow it.

Victor Volkman: We were able to encompass a larger number of writers and therefore viewpoints by expanding the scope of the work to include every possible type of writing. Sticking to just one type of writing would have limited both the range of emotions expressed and some writers would have been left out. An anthology is to a large degree an act of faith on the part of the editor that the contributions will harmonize and weave into something more powerful than the sum of the parts. My faith was in a large part inspired by my work with Rick Ritter on “Made In America, Sold in the ‘Nam 2^nd Ed” (2007) who pretty much broke all the rules you could have in an anthology. Although Ritter and Richards’ book was born out of the shared experiences of the Ft. Wayne VVA chapter, “More Than a Memory” includes vets from all around the USA: Maine, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, and so on.

Tyler: Will you give us more details about the stories? Are these recollections of events, or are they fictional stories?

Marc Levy: In my case I’ve taken actual events, most often interesting but not especially compelling, and fictionalized them in order fully to develop their potential, make them compelling to the general reader. Anyone can trot out a verbatim war story. It takes hard work to develop fictional characters, make them believable, create tension, a story arc, a satisfying ending. It takes discipline to let go of the actual events and successfully distill and expand them into something greater than the sum of their pedestrian parts. It takes guts and skill and heart for a combat vet to tell a good war story that lingers in the mind long after the last page has been reached.

Tyler: Will you tell us about some of the authors and their roles in Viet Nam?

Marc Levy: I met Tony Swindell through Alex Cockburn, co-editor of counterpunch.org and the newsletter of the same name. In 2006 Tony wrote an excellent article predicting the massacre at Haditha, Iraq based on his time with 4/3 LIB in Viet Nam (Our Descent into Hell Has Begun). Recall that this was one of three units involved in My Lai. I did a net search and couldn’t find anything on Tony. At the time I didn’t know Alex but sent him a carefully worded query. My antennae were up. There are enough fake vets out there to fill the Grand Canyon ten times over for a month of Sundays. Alex promptly forwarded my email to Tony, who responded in a most gracious manner. We immediately hit it off and have been Net pals ever since. Tony’s counterpunch article skillfully interweaves his war exploits with his understanding of how the travails of certain American troops in Viet Nam parallel those who went wild in Iraq.

My friend Preston Hood saw extraordinary levels of combat in Viet Nam and elsewhere as an elite Navy SEAL. As did my pal Dave Bianchini, a thrice wounded and much decorated two tour Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) point man, who later married and managed the rock star Laura Nyro, got caught up in drug smuggling, did ten years hard time, and now, as he likes to say, builds houses so he can drink good liquor and eat lobster tails.

I met Alan Farrell at a William Joiner Center Writer’s Workshop in 1999. He was an imposing figure. Close cropped hair, compact build, swagger step, full-length leather cape/coat. AWOL style clothes bag. Al’s blue eyes could kill a great white shark from anywhere on Earth. “Who were you with?” I asked him, as he walked past me in a cafeteria. The inner radar indicated he was a vet. “Fifth Special Forces,” he said. And kept walking, storm clouds filling his face. The first day or two in class the students were terrified of him. Al sat off in a corner; he seemed ready to launch himself like a full back into anyone who dared come close. After a time he methodically spread five inch squares of origami paper atop his desk, gingerly pressed and creased the paper with the blade of military knife, and two hours later was encircled by graceful white swans, green scuttling crabs, galloping horses, the occasional eagle. The women students were immediately smitten and stopped Al from tossing the menagerie into the garbage. He gave them away, the ice was broken, and from that point the entire class looked forward to whatever Al had to say or read. His comments were always gracious; his writing was superb; his sense of humor had people slapping their thighs.

I met Rich Raitano while doing research on 4/3 Light Infantry Brigade (LIB). We have a common medic friend. Rich had one of the worst jobs in Viet Nam: Graves Registration Point, in Iraq the euphemism is Mortuary Affairs. Rich helped to collect and reassemble the dead in order to send them home. His writing reflects how far he’s come from his particular grind in hell.

I met Richard Levine through a mutual friend. He was a grunt in Viet Nam, became a teacher and a Quaker and a very good writer and knows how to read off the printed page. I’m hopeful that a revised edition of “More Than A Memory” will include “Mud Walking,” which several distinguished writers consider to be Richard’s finest poem.

I met Dayl Wise through a mutual friend while living in a YMCA in Tarrytown, NY. We were in country about the same time, both infantry, probably crossed paths. Dayl was in a recon platoon and hit close quarters. He works hard, plays hard, takes his activism seriously, does not sweat the small stuff, has been a great husband, dad, a generous friend, and brought good things into the world. He takes pleasure in his writing. I’d like to see him take the next step.

I met Richard Boes through Dayl at a poetry reading in Woodstock, NY in 2008. Richard has had supporting roles in several distinguished major motion pictures, and has had long relationships with drugs, alcohol, and the South side of the law. Presently he is dying of cancer. His narrative style in “The Last Dead Soldier Left Alive” is a relentless unfolding narrative stick up that renders the reader bloody and breathless yet craving more. His unique lyrical violence soars above the typical first person war account.

I met Tom Skiens while doing research on a piece for Counterpunch. Tom’s website www.buffgrunt.com contains an abundance of info on My Lai and much written material by the men who were there. It’s not for the fainthearted. In Viet Nam, Tom was a Forward Observer and point man, both extremely dangerous jobs. He’s a naturally gifted storyteller. There is a dream like, take no prisoners, no-deadwood quality to his writing. Every word leaps off the page. His descriptions are unputdownable.

Tom Skiens: Thanks for the intro, Marc! I volunteered to join the army and I volunteered to go to Viet Nam. I even volunteered to become the 4.2 Forward Observer (FO). [Ed. Note: the job of a 4.2  FO is to call for and adjust indirect high angle supporting fires for his unit.] I don’t remember ever being in a  firefight where the enemy engaged us conventionally. I do know the battalion hit 70 booby traps the first 6 months in country.

Tyler: Where did you get the idea for this collection and why did you think it would be a good addition to the Viet Nam literature already in print? How did you find the authors to contribute to the book?

Victor Volkman: “More Than A Memory” sprang from an on-air interview with Anya Achtenberg on Author’s Access in Fall 2007. She teaches a series of workshops on writing for social change and she mentioned she knew a number of Viet Nam veteran writers who were looking for a home for their work. Specifically, I remember her recommending poet Preston Hood and things kind of snowballed quickly after that once the word got out. Many of the authors were already on a first name basis as you can guess from Marc Levy’s earlier answer.

I was immediately impressed by the quality of the submissions rolling in. There is no question that there are many more stories to be told. We’ve learned the power of storytelling to heal from the Truth And Reconciliation commissions in South Africa, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere. Until the truth can be told, healing doesn’t happen. That is part of the overall mission of Modern History Press.

Tyler: Why did the authors themselves choose to write about the Viet Nam War?

Tom Skiens: What if I am the only person who remembers the dead? I write so the dead will never be forgotten. I write about Viet Nam because that one year of combat has dominated my life. I am obsessed.

Marc Levy: Naturally I’ll speak for myself. I never had a problem after coming home. I never had a need to read about Viet Nam. True: I slept with a loaded pistol under my pillow for several years (as many vets still do), then a meat cleaver, then a machete; I was fired from every job I ever had; spent long periods alone; was considered strange, felt alienated; with few exceptions had no feelings for many women other than sexual; had nightmares, crying spells, thought of killing people a dozen times a day, suicide a pleasant lullaby; spun, turned, ducked or kicked at the slightest sound; left the country twice for extended periods, etc & etc. But didn’t have a problem with war or with PTSD. In ’92 while living in Guatemala and backpacking other parts of Central America, I wrote long travel letters to friends. ’94 a lost year. Then a year saving money while working in New Zealand. Then eight months backpacking Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Europe. Many flashbacks, many adventures. Many letters. A melt down in Amsterdam. A two month VA hospitalization for war stress, another lost year. I began to jot things down. Penned terrible poems. Success arrived with short stories that combined war and erotica. Then travel tales. Then post war stories. The occasional war poem. The periodic essay. My best friend and editor is the actor and writer George Dickerson, who has pushed me past the limits of my stunting ego. My good friend and teacher Larry Heinemann encourages all writers to face their dread. That’s where the story is. The art comes next.

Tyler: I’m impressed that the book also includes poetry, which sounds odd for the subject of war, although great war poems have been written about the world wars. What is it about poetry that you feel captures the war in ways that prose cannot?

Tom Skiens: I believe that Human drama is best expressed through poetry.

Tyler: How does writing in general work as a type of therapy or release for frustrations or stress from the war-even if a soldier has no aspirations toward being a writer, is writing or journaling used by therapists as a way to overcome PTSD?

Tom Skiens: You can manage PTSD but you can’t defeat it. Writing can be a therapeutic exercise for war vets as well as traumatized children.

Tony Swindell: I’m a writer, and writing has helped me deal with PTSD, especially after putting thoughts into words and looking at them after time has passed. Almost always, a new perspective will pop up.

Marc Levy: I think the assumption that vets writing about war helps to release stress, etc, is open to debate. There’s a fair amount of angry prose on the Internet, in self-published accounts, in accounts of guys who have gone back to where they fought. Often they are close-held grudges against the former enemy. There’s an absence of insight and a surplus of ego. It’s as if the writer needs to reinforce anger rather than face the deeper issues that come with reflection: Sorrow, grief, guilt, dread; these are not easy memories to face. But in other cases, regardless of the depth or quality of writing, it may serve to open doors that might otherwise remain shut.

Tyler: Modern History Press has produced other books about the Viet Nam war as well. What about this particular war still keeps it at the forefront of America’s attention, more so than probably World War II or even the current war in Iraq?

Marc Levy: Academic friends tell me that high school and college students see Viet Nam as ancient history, just as World War I is to baby boomers. Regards Viet Nam, there is the abstract concept of the United States having lost a war, but absent is an awareness of actual horror, of combatants or civilians loss or suffering. So in a sense the question misleads. The (fading) notion of American invincibility may be at the forefront of a popular consciousness, but few Americans aside from health care professionals, veterans and their families have an inkling of war and its aftermath. Still, Viet Nam remains an enigma. At least to those who accept the official story and block out the strange ideal of self-determination.

Tony Swindell: In response to the question about what differentiates Viet Nam from other conflicts, it took me years to understand what was so pernicious and nationally debilitating about Viet Nam. In WW2, you had the seeds planted for all-out war against civilians with atrocities like the concentration camps, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima/Nagasaki, etc. By the time Viet Nam rolled around, however, you had the full flowering of evil with civilians becoming indistinguishable from enemy soldiers. “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” became a national sentiment for a very large segment of the American population. My two cents’ worth.

Victor Volkman: What’s missing in the experience is a sense of closure. Erecting the “The Wall” was the first step on that journey but merely wanting to put something behind you is not enough. Truths need to be told, stories need to be heard.

Tyler: Earlier, Marc said that Tony predicted the massacre at Haditha in Iraq. In watching this latest war unfold, does Viet Nam become more relevant. What are your reactions to the war in Iraq, and have we learned lessons from Viet Nam that have helped us in Iraq, or is Iraq another example of how humans fail to work for peace?

Tom Skiens: You could say that the word relevant and Vietnam should not be on the same page! This war was predicated on lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) lies just like Vietnam was predicated on lies about the Domino Theory.

Tony Swindell: We haven’t learned a damn thing from Vietnam, except that our national leaders are even more corrupt. I’m afraid that America will be paying a high price for these aggressive wars and sooner than most people think.

Marc Levy: Parallels to Iraq and Vietnam have been discussed at length in the mainstream and left of center media. In many ways Iraq seems more disastrous than Vietnam. We’ve destroyed the country in half the time it took to destroy Vietnam, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, killed at least an equal number of civilians, failed to improve the civilian infrastructure, incited barbaric ethnic cleansing, made public the privatization of war, and unleashed a level of financial war contracting fraud unheard of. Our own casualties, many of whom would have died in Vietnam due to their catastrophic nature, are often sent home to die. As in Vietnam, for the most part we remain ignorant of Iraqi culture, and have continually redefined a thoroughly discredited mission. Our military forces appear broken: Multiple combat tours were the exception in Vietnam. In the ‘war on terror’ they are the norm. Wounded veterans have been betrayed by the VA health care system; the Pentagon has been lackluster in its acquisition process: the Humvee scandal comes to mind. Our foot soldier weaponry and battle gear appear to benefit shareholders more than soldiers. As in Vietnam the brass overseeing military strategy in Iraq cannot accept that a (multi-faction) guerrilla insurgency will remain outsmarting high tech, and that the war will only end in stalemate. Iraq is less an example of how humans have failed to work for peace and more an example of how corporations have succeeded in making and prolonging war to increase profits.

Tyler: Victor, what about Viet Nam intrigues you that you have edited and published books about it? Do you have a personal connection to the war?

Victor Volkman: That’s a good question, Tyler. I put it to you that if you look around there is someone in your family who has been affected by this war. It might be a friend of a brother who went to war and never returned or someone closer than that. I personally lost a brother-in-law I never got to meet. He did a tour in Viet Nam and subsequently committed suicide on a base in West Germany a year or so later.

My first conscious contact with Viet Nam vets was when I met David W. Powell and Pieter van Aggelen in 1989. They both spoke eloquently about their recoveries from PTSD at the 1989 Institute for Research in Metapsychology Conference. At that time, the idea crystallized in my mind that the stories MUST be told. However, I didn’t act on that impulse until my publishing house started up in 2004 and I began corresponding with David, helping him tell his story. His book “My Tour In Hell: A Marine’s Battle with Combat Trauma” (2006) was well received and resulted in coverage on the Pentagon Channel and Retirement Living TV networks.

The scale of the event, the sheer amount of men and material deployed in Viet Nam, was only recently exceeded by Operation Iraqi Freedom in the past few years. I also saw telling the stories of Viet Nam soldiers as a prelude to understanding to the traumas that were going in Iraq, even though it is barely now starting to be admitted to its full extent.

Tyler: What kind of diversity exists in “More Than a Memory” considering how the war is treated by the various writers. For example, is the war seen as foolish by one and necessary by another-and how do the authors’ individual experiences create different voices about the war?

Tom Skiens: All war is recorded in the eyes and the voice of the individual. We cannot hear all the voices, only the one in front of us.

Tony Swindell: It’s full of viewpoints most Americans haven’t seen before, not just “war is hell and I was there up to my neck in blood and guts.”

Marc Levy: Each writer provides his own unique perspective on combat. Some go further than others in coming to grips with war and its aftermath. The chapter on the African American soldiers who organized and protested the war and refused to be sent to Vietnam provided a unique counterpart to the various recollections of combat.

Tyler: The war is now thirty to forty years in the past. Will you tell us a little about the beginnings of Viet Nam war literature. As soldiers become more comfortable talking about it, as the literature changed from the years directly after the war to the present. As we achieve distance and perspective over time, do we come closer or farther from understanding and depicting the war accurately?

Tom Skiens: The first books to come out about Nam were from writers and artists who may have had early access to documents etc. The grunts are almost always 30 years behind in organizing, collecting documents and reconnecting with Buddies, etc.

Tony Swindell: I think “More Than A Memory” is a product of accumulated wisdom from guys who at first were just glad to get back alive, went through a cycle of self-medicating with alcohol and drugs and finally found their voice. We can look back with clarity now, with the benefit of wisdom gained by aging. We are definitely closer to clearer understanding of our experience.

Marc Levy: There seems to have been a flurry of novice and mid level writing during the early 70s and 80s. The short lived chapbook series DEROS comes to mind. As does the longer lived but now defunct Vietnam Generation. The real writing may have started with the 1972 publication of the poetry anthology Winning Hearts and Minds, edited by Larry Rottmann, Jan Barry, and Basil T. Paquet (which included work by the young W.D. Ehrhart.)

Michael Casey won the 1972 Yale Younger Poets Award for his seminal poetry collection Obscenities. The late Phillip Jones Griffith wrote the scathing photo/essay Vietnam, Inc. Originally published in 1971, it was more or less banned in the US. In 1972, the captured UPI war correspondent Kate Webb wrote the underrated On the Other Side: 23 days with the Viet Cong. Larry Heinemann wrote the novel Close Quarters, which some say is the best war fiction of the Vietnam era. His next book, Paco’s Story, won the National Book Award. Tim O’brien won fame with The Things They Carried and subsequent combat themed books. Yusef Kumanyakaa was heralded for his early and later war poem collections. The late war correspondent Gloria Emerson wrote the 1976 National Book Award winning Winners and Losers. Comprised of interviews with veterans, their families, friends and acquaintances, its interwoven commentary sears the soul.

Journalist Hunter S. Thompson brought Vietnam Veterans Against the War to brief, but everlasting fame. Michael Herr dug himself a foxhole of fame with Dispatches. Marine war reporter Gustav Hasford’s The Short Timers, published in 1979, was later adapted to screen in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987). Al Santoli’s 1981 oral history Everything We Had is mandatory reading. Bruce Weigel’s Song of Napalm remains a classic of American Vietnam war poetry, as is the lesser known but astonishing The Moon Reflected Fire by Marine medic Doug Anderson.

In 1983, the late Lynda Van Devanter wrote her highly acclaimed Army nurse memoir Home Before Morning (met by gales of criticism from her sister nurses, who objected to her frank recollections of drugs and sex in war time.). In 1986, William Broyles began the trend of books concerned with vets going back to Vietnam with Brothers in Arms: A Journey from War to Peace.

It’s interesting to note that several of Kumanyakaa’s war poems reference the Vietnamese (i.e. You and I Are Disappearing), Broyles interacts with the people and the culture, and in Full Metal Jacket the viewer is confronted with the life and death of the teenage female sniper who has killed several men in Private Joker’s platoon. On the other hand, though Ron Kovic’s enduring Born on the 4th of July was well received in the United States it’s film adaptation was roundly criticized in the The Guardian by England’s foremost journalist and war correspondent, John Pilger. “Where are the Vietnamese?” he demands in a two thousand word essay. “They flit across the screen like matchsticks.”

In this regard the initial question is somewhat misleading. It assumes the reader equates war literature of the Vietnam era with American writers only. But the Vietnamese have also written about this war, most famously in The Sorrow of War, by Bao Ninh. In fact many other Vietnamese books have been translated, including the exquisite short story collection, Night, Again, edited by Linh Dinh. In sum, reading American and Vietnamese literary accounts is essential to having a balanced view of what the Vietnamese in their thousand year history call The American War.

Prof. Edwin Moise of Clemson University has assembled an extensive bibliography of Viet Nam literature. In 2006 Photographer Jeff Wolin published Vietnam War Veterans: Inconvenient Storys, which contains fifty contemporary photos and well-edited interviews of combat veterans. He is currently at work on a book using the same format but will feature fifty North Vietnamese and VC veterans.

Tyler: What do you as editor, Victor, as well as the authors of the essays themselves, hope readers will come to understand after reading “More Than a Memory: Essays on Viet Nam”?

Marc Levy: After reading this book I hope that readers will be moved to action. That might mean listening to veterans rather than patronizing them on the appropriate holiday. That might mean working with or providing direct service to vets. That might mean questioning why we fight.

Tom Skiens: I hope they understand that war is not heathly for children and other living creatures. Wars without reason are doomed to failure and for each war that fails we should seek even more justification and reason before accepting the next war.

Victor Volkman: Quite simply, there is no healing without storytelling. My humble contribution is to serve as the conduit to veterans getting heard and listened to.

Tyler: Can you provide us with an example of how writing about the war has helped one or more of you to heal?

Tony Swindell: I’ve been a writer all of my working life, but I don’t think it was until I got older that the real healing began to take place.

Tom Skiens: I wrote down the stories 40 years ago and now I have documents listing time, grid coordinates, all names of personnel and places, etc. I no longer have any questions about by tour. That gives me clarity about exactly what did and did not happen and purpose to seek alternatives to the next war.

Tyler: Will you tell us more about Modern History Press’s “Reflections of History” series such as what other books have been and will be printed and the overall goal of the series?

Victor Volkman: The Reflections of History series shows the impact of American involvement in the world at large. As such we currently have books in print with a first-person perspective of the Viet Nam and Iraq wars. My greatest hope is that this series will contribute to the lessons learned from such conflicts and influence people to take a second look at foreign policy that they may have taken for granted. We have books forthcoming about the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the struggle of women in Pakistan for equality, and Saffron Dreams, a novel of tragedy and redemption about a Muslim-American woman whose husband died in the World Trade Center disaster.

Tyler: Thank you for allowing me to interview you today, Victor, Marc and Tom. Before we go, will you tell me about the website for “More than a Memory: Reflections of Viet Nam” and what additional information about the book may be found there?

Victor Volkman: Interested readers can go to www.ModernHistoryPress.com and click on the book cover that will take them to the book mini-site. There they can find book reviews, audio interviews, and a complete chapter from the book. Additionally, the authors have banded together on their own blog at www.ReflectionsOfVietnam.com where you can read new poetry and other writings.

Tyler: Thank you all for being here today and sharing your stories. I wish you much success with “More than a Memory: Reflections of Viet Nam.”

In October 1968 I got a punji stick in my left knee while conducting a combat assault with Charley Company of the 4/3 Inf. I found the punji stick by a large gray moss and debris covered rock I was hiding behind.

I was hiding behind the rock because that’s what I always did when I reached the destination of a combat assault. I would get off the chopper, hide behind a rock or tree, or a piece of bamboo or an anthill or a chick dressed up like a rice paddy Dyke on a motorcycle. I could hide behind a single blade of grass, Or you or him. I was determined to hide behind something because that’s how the army had trained me.

Even though I was an expert at hiding I always liked to be on the first lift of a combat assault. Maybe then I would catch some shit and get out of the bush in a half-way, sort of respectful manner. It never occurred to me that I could die again. Hell, I had already died once.

So I am hiding behind this rock covered with debris from the two B-52s who, 1/2 hour earlier, had dropped half their load in this huge valley that had its mouth pointing in a northeasterly direction.

The B-52′s did a 180 and dropped the rest of their load in the valley. “C” and “D” companies were far enough away to be safe but close enough to be impressed. We could feel the shaking of the earth like God taking command of the planet with a completely controlling hand and moving it about. The sound was a deep, deep rumble unlike the sharp smacking sound of artillery or the air moving freight train sound of 16 inch rounds as they passed overhead. This sound was God awful death from 40,000 feet. Hundreds of bombs going off individually and combining into one move the earth rumble.

Both Delta and Charlie companies would combat assault into the decimated area left behind by the B-52 drop. Minutes after the rumbling from the B-52′s subsided we could hear the wop, wop, wop of 19 helicopters descending on our dry rice paddy L Z. The choppers picked Charlie company up and took us to the West ridge of the valley. That’s how I got behind this rock.

So I am hiding behind this rock after a CA and I get a Punji stick in my left knee. I called the second lift and tried to send the message about Punji sticks. I’m not clear weather the message was copied but no one else to the best of my knowledge, got stuck that day.

Very close to my hide rock I saw what used to be a human one hour earlier. He was 5 meters from the edge of a crater created by either a 250 or 500 Lb high explosive bomb. I think pulverized or maybe pulverized jelly might be the best I could do in describing the condition of the body. Almost burnt into the ground by concussion like a surreal sculpture hinting at the life that used to exist there.

It’s like, “Wazup breeze, want a smoke.” A cigarette would poke a hole through his body.
It’s like, “Your looking thin man, Maybe you need to stop smoking.”

We humped around the ridge and after three days worked our way to the bottom of the valley. We watched a show where fast movers were dropping Napalm close enough for us to feel the heat. A pull me push me FAC (forward air control) plane was on station using WP (white phosphorus) to mark targets for the fast movers (jets) and a Gook piloted prop job who could slide into box canyons or tight places the fast mover could not reach. I think the Col. got shot down on this day. If memory serves, he was shot down 3 times this week. This didn’t bother me much. Every time he flew over it pinpointed our location for Charlie. After he was shot down I sent a thank you note to the Gooks.

Later that day, after I mailed my note to the Gooks, we prepared for another combat assault. Choppers came in and we were taken to the top of the opposite ridge. As the chopper was about 6 feet off the ground I jumped, much to the dismay of the pilot. I could read lips well enough to know that the pilot was not praising my courage and tumbling skills. No, it was more like, ” you dumb SOB, what the fuck are you doing.”

After the company had landed and formed a perimeter I talked with the Company CO about catching a ride to an L Z to get my wound treated. He said that if I could bum a ride on the battalion commanders bird it would be O.K. with him.

The Battalion commander landed his chopper to confer with the Company CO. I ran up to the Battalion CO Stinking from beau coup sweat and no personal hygiene for over a week plus the fact that I had not worn shorts for over 9 months.

I approached the commander and dropped my pants to my ankles to show proof of my wound. Looking back on it 40 years later I think this is when I concluded that the Battalion CO was not gay for unwashed grunts with an M-16 and their pants around their ankles.

I requested a ride to whatever L Z he was going to. One look at my leg and he agreed I should have the wound treated. I did not tell the Battalion commander about my note to the Gooks. After this ride I would never again be required to go on patrol or to the field. This was a good thing.

I was taken to Duc Pho. The first shirt from Echo company met me at the chopper and told me to go to the medics, “Get fixed up and tell them you have earned a purple heart,” he said.

I lost it. I started crying and yelling at the first sergeant. I told the first shirt that everyone in Charlie company was losing their legs and arms and their lives and the only thing they received was a purple heart. I pointed out a place he could put his purple heart.

As a result of this conversation the First Sergeant never ask me to reenlist. Everyone else in the company got the re-up pitch except for me. This hurt my feelings and may have contributed to my future use of the evil weed, or not.

I went to the medic tent and they told me I had earned a purple heart. Medics walk on water so I told them I didn’t want a purple heart because my mom would receive a telegram that would concern her. They said, ” OK, but you will be sorry.” They were right.

For the next two months I smoked weed. I smoked like the top of a nuclear reactor’s cooling tower. I bought a brand new pipe and burnt a hole through it in a month. One day I smoked 40 joints before lunch, ate and then smoked my pipe for the rest of the day. I don’t remember ever being stoned. I just smoked and smoked.

I don’t think the smoke could match up to the full combat alert that my mind and body were in. Even after being out of the field for close to two months my hyper personality and combat experience had me wired, violent, depressed, and I would find out later, a bunch of other emotional and psychological stuff I had not even heard of.

On the last week of November I was handed my ticket back to the world. I went to Chu Lai and just waited. Semi-morbid, waiting for dead guys. I couldn’t remember any names but I couldn’t forget the explosive body ripping images of people being blown up by a Bouncing Betty. I could have jumped on a plane and flew to Cam Ranh bay but I needed to know, I wanted to see how many Charlie company boys would show up. After five days it was clear I was on a flawed mission. Some of the boys had been wounded, some had finished their time in the service, some had transferred or extended. I had only my memories void of the names that went with them.

I flew to Cam Ranh bay. As the C-130 was about 5 minutes from the runway I saw smoke coming from the electrical panel. I was about to inhale the smoke but decided I might some day run for political office

Everyone in the cargo department was asleep except for me. I went to the back ramp where the crew chief was catching ZZZZ’s and gently woke him. He looked at me with contempt. There was to much noise to speak  so I stepped to the side and pointed to the electrical panel just behind the pilots cabin. At this point the crew chief became the leader of all the panic that would visit the C-130 over the next 5 minutes. I had a front row seat.

The crew chief jumped up to run to the front of the plane where the smoke was as he reported to the pilots on his headphone setup. His cord got tangled up and it unplugged before it broke. He had to come back and plug it in causing additional disturbance which alerted more people on the flight to our crisis. He was in charge and aggressively recruiting freaked out partners for his sleep deprived panic. There was no shortage of panic pushers.

When we landed everyone lined up behind the side door I had been sitting by when I noticed the smoke. Everyone wanted to be the first out of the plane. I stayed the last in line figuring I would have soft injured bodies to land on.

I timed our landing from when our tires first touched the ground until we stopped, got off and firemen in silver suits were getting on the plane with hoses. It took less than 30 seconds.

I checked in with the freedom bird people and was told I would be on the first flight the next day. About one month earlier I had put a 10 pack of Nuc Mao’s in my wallet. Nuc Mao’s are Pall Mall size pre-rolled joints that come in a pack of 10 for $1.50. I was afraid of being searched getting on or off the plane so I went to the beach and smoked every last one of them. It was a mission. Not to get stoned but to get home.

The USO or other people who do these kinds of things organized a party for the departing veterans inside a large brightly lite building. You would think light radiated outward but in this case I saw it as a big fucking magnet attracting every unpinned grenade in Charlies kingdom. It was like the headquarters of the galactic solar exchange.

The Biscuit Bitches provided food, music, entertainment and nonalcoholic drinks. Three times I made it up to the door and looked in at the R E M F’s (Rear area mother fuckers) smiling and telling lies about their imaginary “cop a feel” from a round eyed Donut Dolly. The doorway was like the Concertina wire that separated an L Z from the bush. Once I crossed that wire, Charlie would own my ass.

In my High school yearbook I am listed as the outstanding male personality of the senior class “66″. Now, less than three years later, I am the king of paranoia and antisocial behavior who cannot make myself attend a party on my own behalf. I consider going to another war just to see if I can reverse the trend. This idea was trumped by common sense.

I flew back to the world at the end of November 1968. I had an aisle seat and as the plane lifted off I reached across the chest of the person in the window seat and flipped off the whole fucking country. I was crying and I couldn’t talk to the guy beside me. I think I freaked him out. We didn’t talk for the entire flight. When we landed at Mc Cord air force base In Washington State we all clapped. Four hours later I was out of the army and hopping a plane to Portland Oregon. I don’t know if I will ever really come home.

My brother and sister-in-law picked me up at the airport. They gave me dinner and a piece of floor to sleep on. I ran patrols all night long.

The next day I called my mother to check in. She told me that my best friend from High School was in Portland being fitted for his prosthetic arm. We had played football and basketball together. We spent every weekend together. We took basic training in Fort Lewis Washington together. He went to Ft. Polk for jungle training and then joined The Big Red One. After running patrols for nine months he lost his right arm in a night time battle.

I hooked up with my high school friend and we spent all day together. Late that night we were at a bar and grill in downtown Portland when a homeless drunk told me to go get a haircut. I blew my top. My buddy helped hold me back. I told the drunk that I hadn’t killed anyone in a long time but I would make an exception in his case. This was a lie as I maintain I never killed anyone. I told him that 40 hours ago I was in Vietnam finishing my one year tour and I don’t remember seeing his sorry ass in my foxhole.

I was less than 40 hours out of the Nam and I was psyched to kill a civilian for little reason. I did not know that this kind of anger and hate would still be with me in 2008 at the age of 61. I never did come all the way home and that’s O.K.

The VA sends me Meds in the mail. I like to think of it as, the people who go postal delivering Meds so I won’t. If I went postal it would be like some kind of a franchise infringement.

By: Tom Skiens

Have you heard about Betty
She’s a bouncer from the land of ville s
The first time that I met her
Was at the bottom of an old ROK hill

The ROK’s long since departed
some wire and Betty remain
The point diddy bopped right over the top
but not Scully and Hall, what a shame

Its a hot date, our first time with Betty
She dropped ten men in a row
The eleventh in line was Zimmerman
learning things he didn’t want to know

The Zimmer Man and I
Well we got to walk the line
I be judging the size of Betty’s holes
On the radio with the Captain all the time

We be needing two choppers for the dust off
One bird can’t lift all this weight
We have two that are in no hurry
They be lined up at the pearly gate

The Zimmer Man and I
We be prancing down the line
You with the 2″ hole in the shoulder
Grab your gear and double time

Betty’s got one moaning
Another s  losing his mind
And another with a face full of shrapnel
Froze up standing his place in line

The Zimmer Man and I
Doing shit we never knew
Rifling through Rucks and Pancho’s
Getting ready for dust off #2

I don’t think  I like Betty
She’s a fickle bitch at  best
She jumps right up, 3 feet or so
And then fuck’s you in the chest

She will blow your legs to the left
And the rest of you to the right
She will blow your balls into the next day
And posses the souls of the night

With special thanks to;

Marc Levy, Mentor, editor and widely published author.