Download PDF of this full issue: v35n2.pdf (18.1 MB)

Notes from the Boonies

By Paul Wisovaty

Like every hamlet and metropolis in America, Tuscola has been getting its Iraq vets home this past couple of years. I was reminded of that in August, when several of them served as grand marshals of our annual Harvest Festival Parade. The crowds cheered and the high-school band played and the fire engines blew their horns, and it reminded me of all the floats I got to ride on when I got back from 'Nam.

Or not. Sorry, that was cheap. Of course, I am very happy for these young men and women, because they're home safe and sound—at least until they put in six or eight months at Fort Riley and get shipped back again. I got to spend some time talking with them, but the exchanges could hardly be described as meaningful. I wanted to ask the Question: What's your take on this war? But I didn't. My fear was that they'd think I wouldn't understand. What could my tour under Black Jack Pershing possibly have in common with what they went through? Here's some old guy wearing a VFW cap, and he just wants to hear something that will prop up his fantasies about America's 21st Century Manifest Destiny. I wear a VVAW pin on my cap, but maybe they don't notice it, or probably they don't even know what it is. Then again, it is also possible that they support the war, and who the hell am I to challenge that? They were there; I wasn't.

I guess that's the reason I don't ask. It's their war. Somehow, I don't feel that I have the right to cross that line without being invited. This Memorial Day, I had a guest editorial in the Tuscola Review, and I spoke to that subject. I said that we have no idea what these young men and women did in the Middle East. They might have spent seven days a week listening to Armed Forces Radio (I read somewhere that Chris Noel is now in an assisted living complex), or they might have spent an afternoon listening to "Taps" being blown in the field for a buddy. My suggestion was to tell them how happy we are to have them back, and not to ask too many questions. If they want to talk about it, they will.

Or will they? Some of us did, and a lot more of us didn't. Some of us didn't start talking about it until we joined VVAW in the '90s. What are these young people carrying inside? How long will they have to carry it? As "Boonies" readers are aware, I've always been a pretty clever wordsmith when it comes to posing questions, but my columns have a way of ending suddenly without answers.

It gets worse. I have never thought of myself as an old fart (since I'm 59, maybe I'd better start), but in talking with these bright, sparkly young'uns, I feel like I'm a hundred damn years old. They are just so—I hate this word—respectful. They call me "sir," and I don't even let my drug dealers and child molesters do that. I want to grab them by the shoulders and say, "Hey, I do know what you went through! I know about being an occupying army with the 'best of intentions.' I know about destroying a country in order to save it, about turning its adolescent boys into drug dealers and its preteen girls into prostitutes. I know about the smug looks we used to get on our faces when we talked about the 'gooks,' and I imagine that you are not unfamiliar with the term 'sand niggers.' (If you served with African Americans, the term was no doubt modified. But it's all the same.) And I know—I really know—that one or ten or thirty years from now you might be writing a column just like this one. I just wish to hell I could do something right now to help you."

They say that if you work for the government long enough, you get paranoid. Maybe that's it. I guess I need to get together with some Iraq Veterans Against the War and talk about all these things. Or maybe I just need to grow a spine and talk to some of them in my own backyard.