Download PDF of this full issue: v27n1.pdf (9.8 MB)

While I Was Sleeping

By Jim Creaven

I awoke this morning in the Nam. Looking around it became quickly obvious that I had overslept, badly. Much had changed. We had gotten older, very noticeably so, and fatter. There was a lesser amount of hair, much pickier as to its choice of location, coloration, and distribution. The uniforms were strange, too, camouflaged, not that worn and faded green as they had been last night. Everyone seemed to have received a lot of medals, too; it appears like I picked a fortuitous time to have dozed off. There were E-5s there with more ribbons than I remember seeing in all of John Wayne's movies combined. More than Westmoreland had the last time I looked, must have been hell. Glad I missed it.

Who the hell are these guys? Where are my friends? What happened to the guys who helped me carry and listen to all those Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane tapes? The ones who wore peace symbols, montagnard bands, and round shades, and partied half the night? Who talked of nothing else but getting back to the world, out of uniforms, out of the Army, in one piece if possible, or with at least the most important piece intact? So, who the hell are these guys? The lifers are easy enough to spot: black shoes, white socks, starched jeans pressed so many times by the base laundry that they have a white stripe on that razor crease. Starched and pressed jungle shirts with so many patches, medals, flags and buttons that the shirts must be almost bulletproof. But who are the rest? The ones massed around the beer tent at such an early hour, where the rain that was falling and mixing with copious amounts of spilled beer produced a quagmire much like the war itself, sloppy and hard to extricate oneself from. The ones lined up in front of the tattoo and mystery meat tents? These overweight, out of shape, middle-aged guys buying jungle boots for fifty bucks, pins and ribbons by the handful, unit T-shirts, and clocks with pictures of tanks and planes and napalm exploding over a green canopy of trees? Did I miss something? Is this the right war?

Then it hit me. I hadn't slept at all -- I was in the middle of a Vietnam vet reunion and revisionism was rearing its ugly head, eyes dimmed with the passing years, making heroes of us all. It made no difference to the beast where, when or what you had done, you were now a hero. There were no cooks here. No truck drivers, mail clerks or generals' chauffeurs. We are heroes, each and every one. No sir, no clerks here, just recon, LURPS, special forces and rangers. You probably deserved that Silver Star more than most who received them 25 years ago, well step right up and for just a few bucks slap one on. What, you were an REMF? No problem. Not your fault that the brass didn't have enough brains to recognize the second coming of Audie Murphy; you would have won those medals if you had been given a chance, you know you would. Right the wrongs.

So how the hell did those puny peasants ever win? Look around, there had to have been a terrible mistake. Check those refs' cards again, would ya? I mean, just look at us. All these medals, all these patches, who could have beat us? Look over there at those bumper stickers that say: "We were winning when I left," those shirts proclaiming every unit as the "baddest of the bad." Check those cards, check the math, we had to have kicked ass. There has to be a reason. We had the planes, choppers, ships, and of course, God. He's always been on our side, right? So there has to be a reason. Ah! Now I see. The answer is becoming painfully clear. It was that bitch. Yeah, you know the one. Hanoi Jane. Jane Fonda. That seems to be the consensus, judging by the patches anyway. She went over there with that starlet's body, flashed that face, that smile, showed those legs on top of that tank, exposed those little guys to a real American woman, and fired up those bloody little bastards. Then all hell broke loose. They knew what they were fighting for now! Barbarella! We never had a chance after that, doomed, done in by the oldest trick in the book: a traitorous woman. Check it out with Samson. Oh sure, they had that experience thing, fighting the French, then the Japanese, then the French again. Sure, it was their country, they had no place else to go and all that, but we were winning. It was her fault. Had to be. There's no other reasonable explanation. She must sell those exercise tapes over there, for sure nobody here buys. I can just picture it: working those rice fields all day, coming home to the thatched hut, popping a tape in the VCR, and getting the burn as those calories literally melt away. Jane-san, number one. Cellulite, number ten.

Sitting around that night, next to the travel trailers at the picnic table, with the colored lights in their white globes dangling overhead, beer and Jack Daniel's everywhere, grills smoking, war stories flying by, I finally understood the answer to a question that had lurked in the back of my mind for these last 25 years. Why, if war is hell, do we keep doing it? Why do men keep going? Now even women want the chance to participate in mankind's strangest way of reaching out to touch someone. I mean, I was there, I did it, enjoyed the full Army experience, a grunt, point man, sixty days in the field at a time, cookouts each night hiking all day, communing with nature. Offer me the chance to do it again, with pay adjusted for inflation of course, and I would have to say, with all due respect, "Sir! No thank you, Sir! Freak off, Sir!" So why are fathers letting sons and now daughters go? Why are they not telling them the truth? Why isn't every one of us spreading the word: war sucks! Don't go! Let them come here for a change. Why are we always the visiting team? The answer is that we can't afford to be honest. For many, that one year, that one tour (or, for those a tad slower on the uptake, two or three) was the high point of their life. Nothing will ever again offer that same rush, the same feelings of sheer excitement and adventure, and the basis for telling some great stories, that like waistlines never seem to shrink, but inevitably expand with time. We can't afford to tell the truth: that war is simply nothing more than organized, legalized murder. Who would want to hear our tales of glory? Who would go? If you told them about the mud, the leeches, the c-rats, living like an animal in the jungle, who would go? If we told of friendly fire, booby traps, mosquitoes so big they need numbers on their wings, officers trying to rack up points for promotions regardless of the cost in human lives, who would go? If we told about walking like a duck in a shooting gallery, taking fire, losing a best friend, firing back at bushes and trees, and getting to do it again the next day, or even later the same day, who would go?

No, we must keep the secret. That's tradition. Don't tell, let them find out for themselves, just like we did. Don't tell them that war is really getting to go to some far-off land, getting to meet some different unusual people, and getting to kill them. That's tradition!

Jim Creaven lives in Gainesville, Florida and is a 100% combat disabled vet. He's also President of Veterans for Peace in Gainesville. e-mail: jcreaven@worldnet.att.net