One of the pleasures of driving to
Naples, Florida to visit my mother is to listen to an audiobook. On our
fall trip in 2019, we listened to Bryan Cranston read Tim O’Brien’s The
Things They Carried. We were already familiar with this novel. I read it
aloud to my wife Janelle in 2017, after we returned from my class reunion. I
fancy myself a competent sight-reader, but kudos to Bryan, he did justice to
the many voices found in Tim’s masterpiece. It was a pleasure to revisit our
introduction to Tim’s small but mighty collection of published works. From the
moment we heard Tim read a portion of the titular first chapter near the end of
the Vietnam War series, we knew we had found our next read-aloud selection.
Tim O’Brien’s sacrifices gave my life a
purpose. I knew nothing of him until I heard him speak about his Vietnam
experience in Ken Burns’ documentary. Now, two and a half years later, I think
I know him as well as anyone in my small adopted town of Howland Maine,
probably better. Tim didn’t appear at length until Episode 7. By that time, I
had unpacked a shoebox of letters my mother saved for me. Among others, there
was a group of letters written during my service years. She also collected a
handful of newsletters sent by the commanding officer of my ship to the
families of the crew. These documents provided a personal context to accompany
the stories told in the series.
As Janelle and I prepared for our trip
to Illinois for my 50th high school class reunion, we would settle in each
evening to watch the series. The veterans who were interviewed presented a wide
range of events and emotions. They were men who were drafted, men who enlisted
after the war started, and men who were already serving when the war began. Tim
was one of the thousands who were drafted. He had completed college with a
degree in political science. Like me, he lost his 2-S deferment after leaving
school, so he wasn’t surprised when his notice arrived in the mail.
In episode 7 of the series, Tim talks of
the day his letter came. I couldn’t know it at the time, but seeing his
interview would pave the way for me to finally come to terms with my
experience. Here is the transcript of his first appearance:
“I grew up in a small farming community
in southern Minnesota called Worthington. Small-town America -- at least my
small town-- had great virtues. It was a safe place to grow up. There was
Little League baseball in the summer, and there was hockey in the winter.
Everybody knows everyone else’s business and their faults and what’s happening
in their marriages and where the kids have gone wrong. It was full of the
Kiwanis boys and the Elks Club and the country club set and the kind of chatty
housewives and the holier-than-thou ministers. I remember the day my draft
notice arrived. It was a summer afternoon, maybe June of ’68. And I remember
taking that envelope into the house and putting it on the kitchen table where
my mom and dad were having lunch. And they didn’t even read it. They just
looked at it and knew what it was. And the silence of that lunch--I didn’t
speak, my mom didn’t speak, my dad didn’t speak--was just that piece of paper
lying at the center of the table. It was enough to make me cry to this day, not
for myself, but for my mom and dad, who both of them had been in the Navy
during World War II, had believed in service to one’s country and all those
values. On the one hand, I did think the war was less than righteous. On the
other hand, I love my country. And I valued my life in a small town and my
friends and family. And so the summer of ’68, as I wrestled with what to do,
was for me, at least, more torturous and devastating and emotionally painful
than anything that happened in Vietnam. In the end, I just capitulated. And one
day, I got on a bus with other recent graduates, and we went over to Sioux
Falls about 60 miles away, and raised our hands and got in the Army. But it
wasn’t a decision, it was a forfeiture of a decision. It was letting my body
go, turning a switch in my conscience, just turning it off, so it wouldn’t be
barking at me saying, ‘You’re doing a bad and evil and stupid and unpatriotic
thing.’”
Just like Tim’s parents, both of mine
served during World War II. Dad joined the Navy and became a Seabee. Mom joined
the Army as soon as she turned 21, leaving her job as a crane operator at the
bomber plant in Willow Run. I got a letter from Uncle in late September of
1968. It wasn’t a draft notice. I was required only to go to Chicago for physical,
psychological, and aptitude tests. There was nothing wrong with me, nothing to
label me unfit for duty. The Army might have taught me a marketable skill, sent
me to Germany to fight in the Cold War. But I’m not a gambler. I opted to talk
to the Air Force recruiter in Waukegan, then walked next door to the Navy
recruiter. I took the latter, signed the paperwork for delayed entry, date TBD.
I rode an early train to Chicago on January 31, 1969, to sign my name and raise
my hand and promise Uncle my body and soul for the next four years, come Hell
or high water.
About halfway through episode 7, Tim
continues his story, picking up at the point where he was finishing his
stateside training, and beginning to have doubts about the whole thing:
“Do you go off and kill people if you’re
not pretty sure it’s right? And if your nation isn’t pretty sure it’s right? If
there isn’t some consensus, do you do that? I was at Fort Lewis, Washington,
and Canada was, what, a 90-minute bus ride away. I wrote my mom and dad and
asked for money. I asked for my passport. And they sent them to me with, again,
no questions. ‘What do you want the passport for?’ They just sent it. And I
kept all this stuff stashed, including civilian clothes stashed in my
footlocker, thinking maybe I’ll... maybe I’ll do it. It was this kind of
“maybe” thing going on all throughout this training as Vietnam got
closer and closer and closer. What prevented me from doing it? I think it was
pretty simple and stupid. It was a fear of embarrassment, a fear of ridicule
and humiliation. What my girlfriend would have thought of me and the people in
the Gobbler Cafe in downtown Worthington. The Kiwanis boys and the country club
boys and that small town I grew up in, the things they’d say about me. ‘What a
coward and what a sissy for going to Canada.’ And I would imagine my mom and
dad overhearing something like that. I couldn’t summon the courage to say no to
those nameless, faceless people who really, in essence, this was the United
States of America. And I couldn’t say no to them. And I had to live with
it now for, you know, 40 years. That’s a long time to live with a failure of
conscience and a failure of nerve. And the nightmare of Vietnam for me is not
the bombs and the bullets. (voice breaking): It’s that failure of nerve that I
so regret.” (My emphasis)
[Forty years, fifty, that’s a long time
to live with something locked inside of you. Sometimes it isn’t locked away,
it’s there lurking about, hiding, in the shadows, waiting for you to drop your
guard, distracted by something outside the light, waiting to blindside you,
spin you around and make you see what it was you have avoided all those 40 50
years. Despair, a moment too long not to notice, desperation so deep that you
can’t move fast enough to shake it, to hide from it, to take away its power to
drive you to a place you’re not sure you’ll return from in time to save
yourself. There’s that tipping point when you lose your balance, your footing,
your grip, your sense of right and wrong reality. You have no choices left,
nowhere else to turn, no one to keep it real, to keep you real, to change the
reality before the reality is you’ve gone over the edge.]
Regret. Watching and listening to Tim made
me feel his regret, but not the first time I watched it. However, I was aware
of the depth of his conviction, and I paid close attention when he spoke at the
beginning of the final episode. He was reading a passage about soldiers
carrying things. They carried things that you could see and touch, and they
carried things inside of themselves as well. There was no doubt that Tim was
still carrying things inside himself, things he still hadn’t been able to put
down, to walk away from after 40 years.
I learned that Tim was reading from his book
The Things They Carried, a novel published in 1990. When we returned
from the class reunion trip, I ordered a used hardcover copy so I could
continue with the story begun in the documentary. The beauty of this book is
that you are informed in the frontmatter; it is a novel. The narrator of this
novel is a man named Tim O’Brien, who so inhabits the stories that the line
between fiction and reality disappears, such that the writer is telling about
his own real experiences. It becomes impossible to experience the story
otherwise.
A few chapters into the book is the
story called “On the Rainy River.” This story appeared in the January 1990
issue of Playboy. (Many of the longer pieces were previously published;
Tim added connecting chapters to these pieces to add weight to the illusion of
memoir.) In this story, Tim the narrator talks about getting his draft notice.
It begins: “This is one story I’ve never told before. Not to anyone.” The
narrator says pretty much the same things that Tim said in Episode 7. At least
for the first half-dozen pages.
I’ve no doubt that Tim did entertain the
idea of heading for Canada. He wouldn’t have been alone. There were an
estimated 20,000 to 30,000 men who evaded the draft by going to Canada. Many
others went elsewhere in the world. President Jimmy Carter pardoned all draft
evaders in 1977, allowing them to return to the USA without fear of being
prosecuted for the crime. Not all of them returned. Whether they did or not,
they had strong convictions that propelled them to leave the country in the
first place.
Tim the narrator describes what he did
that summer after school. He talks about his job. He talks about what he did
with his time off, about what he should do, about his feelings concerning the
war, about expectations and disappointments, about how he couldn’t decide what
the right thing to do was. Finally, he says: “Most of this I’ve told before, or
at least hinted at, but what I have never told is the full truth. How I
cracked.” At this point in the story, as I am reading it aloud for the first
time, my voice breaks, and I cry like a baby.
-------αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρστυφχψω-------
I had no high expectations about
military service. I had no preconceptions about boot camp. Getting sent to the
Great Lakes Recruit Training Center (RTC) less than ten miles from home
guaranteed a frosty initiation into the ways of becoming a warrior. I knew
enough to pay attention to every detail, figure out how to keep those in charge
happy and attempt to make a good impression. The Company Commander made me the
Educational Petty Officer. As such, I had to make sure my company was in the
right classroom at the right time. I was expected to master the materials
presented during each closed-circuit TV lesson. In the evenings, after barracks
cleanup was done, I had to gather anyone who felt they needed help understanding
what was covered in class that day.
I got my men through the first round of
exams given at the halfway point in boot camp and just before service week.
Service week is a break in training when most of the company is dispersed to
various work assignments around RTC and at the Naval Training Center (NTC)
across the road. I became so dedicated to coaching my men that I contracted a
respiratory illness due to dehydration and the rigors of training. I landed in
a bed in sickbay with a fever of 105°, missing out on a desk job during service
week.
Near the end of boot camp, I had to make
sure that my men were solid with every part of our classroom training,
the information found in the Bluejacket’s Manual, so they could pass the final examinations
and graduate. Failure to pass the finals would result in being set back at
least a week, with a transfer to another company of strangers to make another
attempt to pass the finals. I can proudly say that every man in my company
passed their final exams. When the results were given, there were at least a
couple of my students who got emotional as they thanked me for helping them
master the materials.
During the last part of boot camp, we
were given the opportunity to request extra training, training in a specific
skill, with many of the schools to be found at NTC. I was offered to receive
advanced electronics training in exchange for extending my active duty from the
initial four years to a total of six, the amount of time that any service person
was required to serve. It seemed like a great idea since I would be trained in
something that I was interested in, something I could parlay into a decent job
after being discharged. I assumed I would go to Electronics Tech or
Communications Tech school. When the orders came, they said I would go to
school at NTC, and that I would be specializing on the ASROC (anti-submarine
rocket) launcher at the Gunners Mate (GM) school.
I had no desire to learn about weapons,
but I had no choice. There was no one to complain to. So, I decided to do what
I did in boot camp: be a good sailor, apply myself to the material, stay the
course. I was looking at about one year of schooling, broken into three unique
sessions:
1. “A” school, basics of Naval weaponry
in 15 weeks
2. Advanced Electronics, suspiciously
shorter at 8 weeks
3. “C” school, another 15 weeks devoted
to the ASROC system
The “A” school was eight hours a day
with a lunch break, ending around midnight. Our 3-story barracks was across the
street from the massive dark-green glass building that housed the GM school. We
night students were all on the top floor of the barracks. There were a couple
of sailors from the German Navy on our floor; I was in a four-man room with a
first-class petty officer from the Korean Navy, who had a black-belt in one of
their martial arts and of which he gladly demonstrated his skills.
Protocol in the barracks was that
everyone, night students included, had to be out of their racks by 7am.
Virtually everyone in night classes would head to the mess hall after class for
mid-rats, or midnight rations. Most people went to bed by 2-3am, and 4-5 hours
of sleep wasn’t enough. There was a lot of, shall we say, friction between
authority and night school sailors that lasted several weeks. Some guys would
get out of bed at first call and go into their little closet and sleep on their
dresser to avoid repercussions. At some point, the issue came to a head. When
it was over, we had won a concession that allowed us to sleep in. What we gave
in return for the privilege was trivial by comparison, and those who came later
got to enjoy the fruits of our determination.
Advanced Electronics school. What a
joke. I finished a close second behind the guy who finished second behind me in
“A” school. The problem is that I learned nothing I hadn’t already learned in
my junior year in high school. Surely there had been some progress in the field
during the last four years. By the end of the session, I was having trouble
maintaining my “good sailor” attitude, and my internal compass was beginning to
plot its own course.
Let me point out that the fifteen months
total I spent at the Great Lakes Naval Base were not spent entirely within the
vacuum of the service. At every opportunity, I would escape to the world.
Although my close high school friends were busy with college, I still had other
friends from Libertyville who picked me up outside the gates and took me on
various adventures. There was a train station right next to the base for trips
to Chicago. It was like I never left home, sort of.
During the late fall of 1969, three of my
sailor chums and I decided to purchase a car. We found an ad on the back page
of the base newspaper for Bernard Chevrolet in Libertyville. Used vehicles were
quite inexpensive then, with car dealers selling vehicles for less than $100.
We selected a light blue 1961 Buick Special station wagon from the ad, priced
at $75. We showed up after dark to complete the sale. The salesman said they
would have to get it out of the snowbank at the back of the lot to prep it for
us. The car had a decent battery, fair tires, and a two-speed automatic
transmission with no reverse. Perfect.
That car provided endless hours of
entertainment opportunities, more than I care to list here, but let me finish
the day of purchase. When we were done with the formalities at the dealership,
we headed north on Milwaukee Avenue to get back to the base. Since I was from
there, I was GPS and Google Assistant. We were all hungry and thirsty after
the long process of acquiring our wheels, so I told the driver to stop at the
convenience store on the southwest corner of Milwaukee Avenue and Rockland
Road. We pulled into the lot and parked in front of the store; a few minutes
later, we emerged with our sodas and snacks and hopped into the car. The driver
fired up the mighty six-cylinder, put the car into gear -- and nothing
happened. We looked at each other, opened all four doors, stuck out four legs
and feet, and got the car rolling backward. Mission accomplished, we headed
back to North Chicago and the base and called it a good day.
I will admit that the “C” school for the
ASROC system was challenging. It demanded plenty of attention to details:
aboard ship, we would be expected to maintain the equipment through the
preventative maintenance (PM) schedule, which covered the mechanical, hydraulic,
and electrical/electronic systems. There was a whole new vocabulary to learn.
Unlike some of the projectile-throwing weapons that were available for other
students, we had no in-house ASROC launcher. I don’t remember ever seeing a
movie of one in action during the course. We had to learn all the intricacies
of the system from books and the mouth of the instructor.
I was not the only one in the class who
felt that the Navy pulled the old bait-and-switch trick on us, making us commit
to six years of active duty and giving us nothing in return. Sure, we all
worked hard, learned what we needed to go into the fleet, and be useful members
of a ship’s crew. But the promise of useful knowledge, something above and
beyond simple electro-mechanical-hydraulic machinery function, was denied us at the cost of two more years of our youth. I was not alone when it came to the
reasons why we were there in the first place: we chose the Navy to avoid the
trenches and to acquire skills in a field that would offer plenty of
opportunities when the six years were up.
During the final week of school, we were
given a survey to fill out. There were a lot of questions about the coursework,
the quality of instruction, our impression of our readiness to go into the
fleet, and do the work we were trained for. There was also a space for any other
thoughts or suggestions. I wasn’t alone when I wrote about how I felt we had
been taken advantage of by being placed in Gunners Mate school with the promise
of advanced training in exchange for two precious years of our lives. I like to
believe that we were heard, but knowledge of that wouldn’t come soon enough.
I finished at the top of the class
again, just ahead of the same guy who challenged me from the beginning of GM
school. By the time we graduated in the middle of March 1970, we had our orders
for our next duty station. We had been given a form to fill out at the
beginning of “C” school to rank our choices for our next assignment. A wish
list you might say, as in “you can wish in one hand and shit in the other and
see which one fills up first.” I requested duty on the east coast aboard a new construction vessel. You already know which hand my orders ended up in.
I went home on leave. I was given an
extra 4 days of travel time along with my accrued leave, so I had almost two
full weeks before I was due in San Diego. Getting to relax at my parents’ house
again, eat Mom’s food, really relax and think about something else besides the
Navy and my future felt good. After a few days, I discovered that a couple of
high school friends were going to the Florida Panhandle for their spring break.
They said that if I could get down there on my own, I would have a place to
sleep when I got there.
I rode Greyhound down to Pensacola,
perhaps even the rest of the way to the small community where they were renting
a beach house. There were also a couple of women friends who were a part of the
rental, so it was cramped but cozy. The weather was beautiful, the white sand
of the beach felt like silk to walk upon. We played catch with Frisbees and
swam with schools of jellyfish. Another high school friend of ours was
attending USF in Tampa, so he and his girlfriend came up to camp at a
campground near Panama City. For a change of scenery, I spent a night at their
camp located on the inland side of a sandy spit. The campground was full; the
large group next to us had gone fishing in the Gulf and caught more red snapper
than they could eat, so they brought us a heaping, steaming plate of just-fried
fillets, still the best fresh fish I’ve ever had.
[Things don’t happen for a reason.
Things happened for many reasons, based on actions near and far
and ancient and immediate, events of our own design and those of billions of
others who came before and billions of the present moment. The focal point for
the past is the now, the unmeasurable now, the be here now, the now over which
we all have personal control until it isn’t now anymore. If we want to, if we
dare to, we can use our now to look at our collection of now for clues about a
now that’s yet to come. Just remember that you will be remembered for what you
do now.]
My last day in paradise was my 21st
birthday. The friend who invited me to Florida had turned 21 a few months
earlier, so he drove us to a nearby lounge at midnight. After proving my right
to sit at the bar, my friend suggested that I have a vodka gimlet for my first
legal alcoholic beverage. With a toast and a sip, I was finally the master of
my fate, responsible for my actions, right or wrong, no one to blame. Just what
I needed as I prepared to take my place among the millions of young men who ever
went off to fight in a war.
Except I wasn’t very philosophical fifty
years ago. I was just a man-boy like so many millions before me, man-boys who
knew nothing more than that their fate was not in their hands anymore. My
logical mind was having trouble calculating probable futures. During the long
bus trip back to Libertyville, I tried to see the end of my six-year
commitment. What I saw was the last days of my youth in the hands of men who
didn’t value my worth, and it made me fear for my life.
Those last few days before having to
depart for San Diego and the USS McCormick are irretrievable. There was no
girlfriend to say goodbye to. I doubt I did anything other than eat, sleep,
watch TV, walk across the alley behind the house to get a coffee and smoke a
cigarette at Rudolph’s Drive-In. I think I was silently saying a final goodbye
to all that I knew and loved because I was sure I wasn’t coming back alive.
I was flying out of O’Hare Airport on
American Airlines, my first commercial plane ride ever, flying military
standby. It was the last day of March 1970, in the middle of the week,
departing in the morning on a direct flight to San Diego. There was no one
there to see me off, which was just as well because I never got on the plane.
I do not remember that moment of
clarity, that instant when all my nows became a singularity of purpose. I would
not proceed as ordered to my assignment aboard the McCormick. I would not
sacrifice my life for my country for any reason. I went into the men’s room
with my seabag full of uniforms and a small soft-sided suitcase with civvies
and changed out of my sailor suit. I probably stuck my seabag into a locker in
the airport, then took my suitcase and headed for an exit where I would catch a
bus into Chicago. It was time for another ride with Greyhound. Destination?
Tampa, Florida.
Canada isn’t so far from Chicago. If I
had been thinking of taking that route, I would have already gotten my
passport, been better prepared. But there was no premeditation, no carefully
thought-out plan, no preparation or research. I cracked, just like Tim the
narrator did in “On the Rainy River.” For me, hopelessness leaked out and
resolve filled the void. I decided to go to Florida, to beg asylum for a while
with my good friend going to school at USF. I would figure out my next move
once I got there. I knew it would all work out, just not how.
©2020 John Robin Swanson
