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-- Guest
Lecture
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Bill
Hunt
Response to Class Reading of Galloway
Subject: My
Response To Class Reading Of Galloway, From Bill
Hunt
(A Vietnam Vet),
Dear EWRT2
class:
I learned a
lot from your excellent paragraphs in response to
Galloway's Prolog, as posted on the list server.
I'm one of Swensson's "veteran resources", and you'll
meet me Feb 17th. Before then I'll chime in from time to
time on the list server, especially when asked a
question.
This will be
my third experience with an EWRT2 class as a veteran
resource,
and this is the first time I've had a
sense of where the students were at the beginning of the
class in terms of their knowledge about the Vietnam
War,
and all things related. You revealed yourselves
by your comments, without really intending to do so. In
most of the responses, within the same paragraphs,
by
the same authors, there were comments that
were both remarkably intuitive
and comments
that were delightfully naive and innocent.
I found myself
flashing on my own youth, when I was a junior in college
around 1966, not long after Ia Drang (though I would not
have known anything about that in those days). It was
summer, and I was commuting the freeways in Los Angeles,
trying to hold down a temporary job in a factory that
made nuts and bolts, of all things. On the way home one
evening I passed by the LA Airport,
and a young
Army paratrooper was hitchhiking at a freeway ramp. I
knew he was a paratrooper by his jump boots which were
worn with his "Class A" uniform (the one with a tie and
a coat). His pants were tucked into the tops of the
boots, a unique dress feature for paratroopers that even
I understood at the time.
When he was
all squared away inside my Volkswagen Beetle, blue and
still pretty new in '66, he said very little beyond the
fact that he had just returned from Vietnam, and was
headed home.
He wasn't like
anyone I had ever met before in my age group. The most
obvious physical difference was a deep sunburned face,
that wasn't tan so much as it was weathered like an old
farmer's face. And he seemed tired, but in a tense sort
of way, that revealed itself not so much by any outside
demeanor, but more by a focus on something near to him
but unreachable and unapproachable by me.
Our words were
few. But I risked giving expression to the only serious
though I had ever really had about Vietnam: "I can't
really imagine what it must be like in a place were
people are actually shooting at each other."
I wasn't just
making small talk, and he understood that. And I wasn't
really looking for a come-back or an explanation or even
his opinion, and I think he understood that too. But
I'll never forget the sum total of his words on the
subject, "It is not something you really want to know
about." I took that to mean, don't go there, you are
better off not knowing it's not a good thing, being
shot at. Stay safe.
Stay safe,
indeed. I joined the Army in 1967, but I soon found
myself avoiding a tour in Vietnam, using all sorts of
tricks available at the time including, believe it or
not, re-enlistment. I assumed, like so many others, that
the war would end. But in 1972 I finally did a tour as
an advisor in the Mekong Delta, and I got a small taste
of the very thing my hitchhiker friend was trying to
warn me about.
Oddly enough,
years after the war, I still feel compelled to warn
people off, to tell them they are better off not knowing
about the ugliness of a place where people are shooting
at each other. It's a natural desire, I think, and it's
shared
by many other vets.
But even as we
speak of such things, we know that young men and women
will always be curious and want their own taste. And,
pitifully, as long as there are tyrants in the world
capable of waging war, perhaps that youthful desire is
even necessary to the preservation of things we hold
dear. ...I hate that about war.
But still, I
cannot help but ask that you to listen and learn from
old war dogs so you'll never have to go there. Just
listen, know and be safe.
Just so you
know, there's my own naïveté. Still, one cannot help but
think that way. I found the single most intuitive
comment among the students to be from Aurelia Stevenson,
Sec 66z, who said, as a minor remark, almost buried in
her other observations, "To me the prologue seems to be
written as a letter to a future generation."
I'm sure
Galloway would agree, and marvel. And yet, there is a
hopelessness about that hidden sentiment that drives all
authors with knowledge of war.
For they also
want you to understand, and to even taste if possible,
the kind of profound sacrifices that people on a
battlefield are willing to make for each other. That is
the "love story" that Galloway was introducing.
And even in
the telling, all authors steeped in personal knowledge
of battle and the profundity of self-sacrifice probably
understand too well that all forms of love can only be
experienced, and never really explained, never really
communicated fully, and never really taught to a reader,
a movie goer, or a college student.
How can anyone
hold dear a profound experience, and advise people to
stay away?
I don't know.
I don't have all the answers.
I'm looking
forward to this class. As issues come up, you're welcome
to direct a question or two in my direction through the
list server or at WHunt47740@aol.com, and I'll try to
answer as best I can, time permitting.
Up Hill And
Keep The Faith,
--Bill Hunt
Advisor, Mekong Delta,
1972
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