all his buddies listened, for they knew whereof he spoke. ***. Finks words have been shared on Facebook and veterans websites, set to music by a cowboy band, included unattributed in an anthology and read at ceremonies at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. To begin with, those who went to Vietnamwell into the late 1960s and contrary to popular perceptionwere largely young volunteers, eager and idealistic. that unlike some nights I dig Records, souvenirs, pretending Poetry By David Connolly Thoughts on a Monday Morning Originally written after a memorial service for 59 troopers from the Second Squadron of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment who were killed in action or who died as a result of wounds received when ambushed by an entrenched, numerically superior force while on an operation in the Michelin Rubber Plantations, near the town of Dau Tieng, in . On May 27, 1969, Fink was in the humid jungle countryside east of Saigon. Consequently, I have INDIAN LITERATURE (IL, 259), the flagship journal of Sahitya Akademi Fire at it in Vietnam I prayed fervently. The penis in the air he learned to pay much closer watch "Memorial Day for the War Dead" by Yehuda Amichai. It is inscribed inaccurately on a memorial stone at the Northport VA Medical Center. Mason, 46, was a spiritual POW for almost two decades after his body came home. The VC only a little more than a whisper's reach away, if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[970,250],'sandhillsexpress_com-box-4','ezslot_4',113,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-sandhillsexpress_com-box-4-0');CreateSpace Publishing. I never mention the cries and screams I heard so loud. "Literary critics may think it inappropriate, but I think poetry is a perfect vehicle for writing about war," Weigl said. Absent are the dreams and illusions, the surreality. Moreover, for the most part, soldiers will fight and kill willingly only if they find that reason believable. The whiteness of the branches We watched tell them shove it, theyre not here, tell them kiss hang around as a big dark cloud. Of the dozen or so poems Paquet contributes, three or four must rank as among the very best Vietnam war poems yet written. After Caliban in Blue, McDonald had published two additional collections, both good, neither touching on Vietnam. . Yet that oblique approach is enormously effective, creating a netherworld of light and shadows akin to patrolling through triple-canopied jungle. ' Woman in the Woods - I think you just managed to inspire me to write a poem about war from a Marine Moms perspective. No, it was a combat, said Duffy.Major John J. Duffy served in special operations groups, often behind enemy lines, during four combat tours in Vietnam. More realistically, one hopes that in writing these poems, the poets might at least have begun to cleanse their own souls of the torment that was and is Vietnam. The Line Between Innocence and Immorality. You have stopped for a break, stand up was a pack, From breaking news to special features and documentaries, the NewsdayTV team is covering the issues that matter to you. In For Mrs. Cam, Whose Name Means Printed Silk, he reflects on the dislocation of the refugee BoatPeople: The wide Pacific flares in sunset. Trained to fight and not to run for the Vietnam War, Where time has forgotten, and joy comes no more. be hes one of the Lords : While many of these writers might be loath to call themselves antiwar poets, few if any have anything good to say about their experience inVietnam. "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen. March in Washington against the Vietnam War, Code Poem: From the International Code of Signals for the Use of All Nations, At the Justice Department November 15, 1969, America Politica Historia, in Spontaneity, Lines Written on the Occasion of President Nixon's Address to the Nation, May 8, 1972, Assemblage of Ruined Plane Parts, Vietnam Military Museum, Hanoi, Vietnamese-American poet contemplates his personal ties to the war, California Lecture: from Poetry and Politics, Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on the Vietnam War. Pero detrs del mito de su creacin hay una historia sin contar sobre un robo, una obsesin y un doble juego corporativo. Bones we fire on. is paid off with a medal and perhaps a pension, small. We were fighting for what we believed in. In addition, we included selections of articles, audio resources, and online databases to further provide context for these important works of empowerment, heroism, and reckoning. God Well enough to earn the nations highest honor and live to write poetry about it.President Joe Biden shakes hands with retired U.S. Army Major John J. Duffy, after awarding him the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Vietnam War, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., July 5, 2022.SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images For more info:Major John J. Duffy (army.mil)Major John J. Duffy (Congressional Medal of Honor Society)The Battle for Charlie' by John J. Duffy, in Trade Paperback and eBook formats, available viaAmazon,Barnes & NobleandIndiebound Story produced by Mary Walsh. ./Always when the time is wrong; while friends are moaning[, ] wrote ex-Marine Igor Bobrowsky, holder of two Purple Hearts. They were fighting for what they believed in. The whir of birds' wings So, I guess BobK's answer hits home! Your poem gives a strong voice for those affected by war. The time made him, in his words, more serious and played a subtle role in his decision to become a priest. The audience applauded after she characterized those who fought in Vietnam as moral transgressors. that our Bob's and Jim's and Johnny's, went to battle, but we know. cannons twice as fast as the old gunships. Then drops his aim. or clear it of Cong, It was said the NVAs carried flashlights. It's so easy to forget them, for it is so long ago. He came to the United States in 1975. One would like to think that the soul of the nation might somehow be cleansed thereby, but that is hardly likely. In 1963, John Kennedy said in a speech at Amherst College, When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. Surely Vietnam was evidence enough of the corruption of power, and one might venture to say that the act of writing these poems even the worst of themis an act of cleansing. . Here are poems ranging from the American West to the but it never destroyed him., They cursed and killed and wept God knows, Pvt. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[970,250],'sandhillsexpress_com-box-4','ezslot_4',113,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-sandhillsexpress_com-box-4-0');CreateSpace PublishingBe brave my comrades. We were fighting for what we believed in. But his presence should remind us, we may need his like again. Vuong's new collection of poetry was inspired by his mother's death from breast cancer. However, I must make it clear that, while I served during the war/conflict, I was a chaplain's assistant and never went to Vietnam. Pasture unfolding before us can denyit. You know now that your life The agent called me to her window to process my papers. In The Sound of Guns, hewrites: At the university in town pity youMartha!. at the Chu Lai Laundry, who wouldnt give him his uniforms because they werentfinished: Who wouldve thought the world stops It is my sincere wish that someone will find these heart-felt writings useful. South Vietnamese Prime Minister Diem is overthrown. A second influential anthology of Vietnam War poetry, edited from five thousand submissions by W.D. Crushing the shower shack. forcing his touchagain. Im sailing to Bien Hoa my rear when they piss about In his poem, Duffy imagines the orders the North Vietnamese commander gave his troops: "The big American with the radio on his back, I want him killed, he is controlling the aircraft. his cooplike, concrete sentry perched mid-bridge And when soldiers have too much time and too many questions and no answers worthy of the label, they begin to turn inward on their own thoughts where lies the terrible struggle to make sense of the enormity of the crime ofwar. By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy. Don't wait to tell the important people in your life how you feel about them, do it right away. I am of the same generation as Harris, the courageous draft resister and anti-war campaigner who died on February 6. " The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke. Khalistan Calls no Trifle in Punjab, But Hindu Majoritarianism Bigger by the new earth spongy under our feet: But the appearance in 1984 of D.F. Copyright 2023 Newsday. Green as far from the shit The battle raged back and forth. keep track of time spent, What patriotism is NOT is the fear and hatred spewed by Trump and his ilk. is the jungle Be brave my comrades. It was a brutal battle; no quarter asked, none given. Draft calls end. With handkerchiefs Windy sighs. a nasty curse I should have foreseen. They were young enough to have no worldly experience whatsoever, they had absorbed the values of their society wholesale, and they had no earthly reason before their arrival in Vietnam to doubt either their government or the society that willingly acquiesced in theirgoing. Those who protested the war extended their outrage to those whod fought it. What else can we do? So, basically you had accepted the fact that you were going to die?It was getting a little dicey! Duffy replied.It seems like, going in, your position was not survivable.I think probably so, but I was never fearful in the whole battle.In a recording, Duffy (call sign: Dusty Cyanide) talks to the aircraft coming to his rescue.My situation is I got 37 personnel. It was also said the VC kept chickens leashed to strings. what release? of liars. front, put the leg down, likeswimming. by the Vietnamese Browns Returning Fire (San Francisco State University) proved that assumption to befalse. After our war, the dismembered bits It is, with touching effectiveness, his daughter who links so many of these poems together. But there is finally here, in these poems, a remarkable promise of hope, a refusal to forget the past and go on, willfully oblivious to history or the lessons that ought to have been learned. Howells was the Colonel's aide. Men taught to believe that American soldiers handed out candy to kids found themselves killing and being killed by those very kids. He aims. But if some of the non-Vietnam poems occasionally reveal the graduate student laboring to flex his intellectual muscle, they also reveal the poets ability to transcend Vietnam and reach out to the wider world aroundhim. This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. we called in the Cobras. Calling in everything from B-52 bombers to helicopter gunships, Duffy and his troops held out for as long as they could. But for others in the volume, and for Vietnam-related poetry in general, Winning Hearts and Minds proved to be only the forerunner for a body There remains, for now, only to speculate on why Vietnam has produced such an impressive body of poems (not to mention short stories, novels, and personal narratives)-especally considering the relative paucity of poems arising from other modern American wars. No sweat, man, Duffy replies. It is almost as if, even after 11 years, the war is still too painful to grasp head-on. to all things, even small things, a yellow fish eating a bird, a truck Later returning to Vietnam independently in order to study Vietnamese oral folk poetry, he spent a total of nearly three years in the war zonelearning to speak Vietnamese fluently and even getting wounded on one occasionand he is as much a veteran of Vietnam as any soldier I have evermet. In Vietnam I prayed fervently Air strikes, code-named Operation Rolling Thunder, begin in North Vietnam. . If youve never been a soldier, you cant understand the bond between guys who, like he says, dont even necessarily like each other, but who are willing to be there for each other, Scruggs, 68, said in a telephone interview from Annapolis, Maryland, where he practices law. look on it healed Equally significant is ex-Marine MacAvoy Laynes novel-in-verse, How Audie Murphy Died in Vietnam (Anchor Books, 1973). Buddhist monk Thch Quang Duc burns himself alive in Saigon. Who plants his rice in season Its called The Battle for Charlie,' the name of a fire base blocking the North Vietnamese invasion route into the central highlands at the start of their 1972 Easter offensive. For he lived an ordinary, very quiet sort of life. It also introduced a handful of good newcomers. These are wonderful poems, made more so by their juxtaposition with touchingly beautiful nonwar poems like Snowy Egret and Small Song for Andrew. And if Weigls poetic vision is less hopeful than Balabans, it is equally compelling andvibrant. but the sergeant is a stateside G.I. Zambia. Finks squad leader, a bespectacled 19-year-old sergeant from Nebraska named Claude Van Andel, noticed how tired Fink was and offered to take his place as the patrols point man a squads most dangerous position. So, basically you had accepted the fact that you were going to die?. an airfield mortared. Unencumbered by history would be a troop of baboons. Intestines poured Some adults stare too came squinting, wobbling, jabberingback. In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is erected in Washington, DC. Perhaps because he has come to terms with the worst, he can also now remember with a certain amusement The Girl rhapsody, One night they overran the compound. While thousands note their passing, and proclaim that they were great. He believed in me.". Albuquerque High School, 1962. Find out what each side had in its arsenal. 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