Download PDF of this full issue: v36n1.pdf (6.8 MB)

"I was a soldier once. . ."

By Barry Romo & Joe Miller (reviewers)

Black Virgin Mountain: A Return to Vietnam
By Larry Heinemann
(Doubleday, 2005)

"I was a soldier once, and did a year's combat tour in Vietnam with the 35th Infantry Division at Cu Chi and Dau Tieng from March 1967 until March 1968."

This is the opening line in the newest book from Larry Heinemann, and it is quite a ride! If we were to recommend just one work on the American war in Vietnam, it would be this one, without a doubt. Close Quarters, Larry's first novel based on his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam, was published in 1977. Ten years later, he won a National Book Club award for Paco's Story. This nonfiction work should also have a special place on everyone's bookshelf.

From the start of Black Virgin Mountain, the reader is drawn into an extended conversation about the context that took Larry and his younger brother to military service in 1966 as young draftees. In his words, "We submitted to conscription with soul-deadening dread." He brings us the sights, sounds, and smells of the journey to war, as well as the war's angry aftermath, which takes Heinemann back to Vietnam on multiple visits. Larry is an excellent writer, and he seamlessly weaves a tale back and forth through time.

This book is not merely a record of his return to the mountain area that dominated his combat tour with the 25th Division. It also provides an accessible history of the various struggles in Southeast Asia and their current consequences. We are reminded of the inner details of the Vietnam War, and Heinemann draws connections between it and America's other wars. There is also a 1989 meeting in Moscow with the afghantsi, those poor Russian grunts who found their "Vietnam" in Afghanistan with the Soviet military adventure there. (Are ya listening, G. W.?)

Heinemann's love for ordinary people everywhere comes through on every page. Through his eyes, the reader can see the beauty of Vietnam and the ugliness of the war. We can almost smell and taste it all: basic training, the fear and drudgery of the war, the homecoming, and the postwar confusion.

Heinemann's anger remains to this day, and it is directed toward those at the top who sent us, who lied to us and to the rest of the American people, and who finally abandoned us. This work is a thoughtful and painful reminder of that era, what it cost the people of Vietnam, and what it cost those of us who served in that unjust and immoral war.

He reminds us of one of our favorite Vietnamese writers, the former NVA soldier Bao Ninh, who wrote The Sorrow of War. The pain, the fear, the frustration of the grunt on the ground trying to survive, to just get home—these elements are found in the work of both writers.

This is definitely a must-read for anyone who wants a down-to-earth book about what Vietnam meant, what it still means for most of us, and how we can continue on the road to reconciliation.

A VVAW postscript:

Early in the book, as he talks about his postwar feelings, Heinemann states that he never joined VVAW because "it was my understanding that the organization was basically run by ex-officers, and I'd had enough of lifers to last me quite a while (no offense, guys)." Barry (one of this review's authors) does not regret being an ex-officer, just as long as you realize that it is the "ex" part that is most important to him and the rest of the "guys" in VVAW.