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Notes from the Boonies

By Paul Wisovaty

How do you try to tell a bunch of high school kids about Vietnam?

Well, a good way to start is by telling them that you don't think of them as kids. Some people might look at them that way - let's say, the ones who wrote and published and actually spent good taxpayers' money on those history books sitting on their desks - but you're not one of them. You consider them to be young adults, which is the way you're going to talk to them for the next forty-five minutes. If they'd prefer to be talked to like kids, then all they have to do is open that book in front of them - probably titled "The Pageant of American Triumph" or something similarly pandering - and they'll get just what they're looking for. They will instantly be reassured that, as young Bobby Zimmerman once suggested, we've always had God on our side.

Ideally, the first thing you'd like to do is take them back to about 1850, and talk about the real nasty horrors of French Indochinese colonialism. You'd like to talk about Ho at Versailles in 1919, and about the state of anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa at the end of World War I. You'd like to tell them how the Viet Minh helped us out during World War II, and how "the-buck-stops-here" Harry Truman sold out the Vietnamese independence movement for a few pieces of Cold War silver. And you'd like to tell them about how the French got their butts deservedly kicked in 1954, even after the United States poured several hundred million dollars into that last sad bit of Beau Geste bullshit. Well, you don't need me to rehash all of that for you. I mean, you've all studied this stuff, right? Unfortunately, their young adult status notwithstanding, most of these students couldn't find Vietnam on a map of Indochina. So, truth to tell, you have to kind of lead them by the hand, and - at all costs - avoid engendering confusion. They're not all that ignorant of history, but their circuits can overload pretty quickly, and you have to be careful.

So what's your game plan? Well, it doesn't hurt to talk about VVAW. I bring along one of Barry's homemade T-shirts, and ask one of the students to come up front and hold it up for the class. Then I ask them: given the fact that you have probably never before heard of this organization - called Vietnam Veterans Against the War - can anybody give me a good guess as to who might join this organization and why? If nobody answers, you can then assure them that this is not a trick question. (Several students laugh.) Then somebody raises his hand, and you say, "Yes, sir?" or "Yes, ma'am?", and they usually give you a fairly accurate answer. (Like I said, it's not a trick question.)

And there's your opening! You say, "Hey, look, there has never before, in this country's history, been a war in which thousands of its veterans came home and said, 'We're tired of this, this is bullshit, and we're not going to stand by and watch our buddies continue to get slaughtered - and slaughter a whole bunch of other people - to make LBJ and Wall Street look good.'" (Note: usage of "bullshit" is optional. When I'm on a roll I use it; this may or may not be a wise choice.) But you've got their attention. You talk about the origins of the anti-war movement, the Nixon White House, and all those Spiro Agnew types who questioned whether we were even veterans in the first place. You tell them about Dewey Canyon III, and all of those decorated Nam vets who tore their medals off their chests and threw them at the White House. And you say, "You know why they did that? They did that because that was their way of saying, to our government, 'This isn't our fault; it's yours. You did this to us, and you'll be awful damned lucky if we, or two or three generations of Vietnamese, ever forgive you for it."

To be honest, I have never been able to recreate this scenario for the students without getting physically emotional. I suppose that some of them may attribute this to my advanced age and lack of self-control. Others, I hope, may see it in a different perspective.

What are some other effective approaches to use? Well, I very quickly make a comparison between the American and Vietnamese revolutions. They've studied the first one, so this is pretty useful. I tell them that what the British tried to do to us, during our war for independence, was very similar to what we tried to do to the Vietnamese in their struggle two centuries later. I then add that, in both revolutions, the good guys won and the bad guys lost. This is important. They realize that our involvement in Vietnam had a few flaws, but most of them have been spoon-fed the notion that it can all be written off as "some good intentions that just didn't work out." Yeah. Anyway, as I say, this is important, because it may be the first time in their lives that they've been asked to look at their government as "the bad guys." You may get some reaction from this, although I've used it six times, and I haven't yet.

I talk about the racist nature of the war, and I get very explicit about that. I talk about the different experiences of combat and support troops, and I emphasize that I'm not just referring to how much "action" they saw; I'm also talking about their experiences with the civilian population. (The locals at Bearcat would remind you constantly that "GI number 1, VC number 10." You didn't hear a whole lot of that when you were passing through a village in an armored cav column.) I talk about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, because, as we all know, all of those things were very important parts of our Vietnam experience. In many ways, they helped to define not only the nature of that war, but what happened to a lot of us after we "left" it.

I suppose I have to admit that I really don't know what impression I did (or didn't) make, upon six high school history classes in Douglas County, Illinois, in the spring of 1998. I may or may not have taught them something. But for what it's worth, I got some reinforcement of something I'd hoped for all along: they're not just dumb high school kids. They really did have some pretty good questions, and sometimes I didn't have the best answers.
Next year, I'll try to do a little better.

Paul Wisovaty is a member of VVAW. He lives in Tuscola, IL, where he works for the probation department. He was in Vietnam with the US Army 9th Division in 1968.