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

Bravado and Compassion

By Jim Willingham (reviewer)

Stop War America
By Robert McLane
(Corps Productions, 2006)
www.corpsproductions.com

Robert McLane, a former activist with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, has written a memoir in the style of real-time gonzo journalism. It's dedicated to the memory of Hunter S. Thompson, and it's an absorbing journey into the heart of a young man whose patriotism was in touch with essential truth and human value. In other words, he was both a US Marine and an antiwar protester; he was a survivor, a hearty vagabond whose path took him through the rigors of boot camp and the scorched earth of Vietnam. Along the way, he found the counterculture and somehow melded the two worlds into a fusion of bravado and compassion.

I knew the guy as a down-and-out vet when I was rebuilding my own shattered psyche, doing therapy at a vet center, staying awhile in Shreveport. It was a place where time stood still, save for one of the few places of enlightenment there, the weekly evening meditation group at the local Unitarian church. He popped in and plopped down, always smiling. It's what gets me the most about this guy: his joy of life. Yet Bob had all the pathos of a man who had seen the atrocity of war without redemption (like me) and was dealing with the aftermath of that. How do you find enduring meaning in it all? How do you keep living in a strange new world?

We journey back into the Vietnam War and the antiwar veterans' movement, and through this narrative, we find a picture of history that is at once difficult and personifies a path with heart. When Bob finally gets on the freedom bird, we feel his relief. His effort at dialogue and detail throughout is exemplary.

On coming home, he writes, "I hitched a ride on a military plane going to Oklahoma. An Air Force general was kind enough to let me have a seat on his personal jet. First I watched his valet bring his luggage on board, including the two sets of golf clubs. Finally the man himself walked aboard and sat down on the solitary bed that was waiting for him. He looked at me with the eye of some jaundiced Caesar while an Air Force staff sergeant loosened his shoestrings and took off his shoes and put them under the bed. He then pulled the curtains to give the general privacy...I remembered the night at the Rockpile when Rail and I tried to make a floor out of boards from some ammo crates while the rain poured down through the leaky ponchos we had snapped together in a vain effort to stay dry."

As it turned out, Vietnam and the Marines had prepared Bob for what was to follow, only there was no war, just hard traveling with interludes of friendship and protest, trials and celebrations. We get to encounter a number of other interesting people from those days: some famous, some infamous, some marginal at best. Bob is an interesting person. He has heart, more than any other quality, and he combines that with a healer's calm and a genuine respect of self and others—except when he's playing Coyote, the trickster. Some might call it an attitude; judge for yourself.

When the Marines stop following dumb orders and demand honorable missions with ethical purposes, Bob's book will have realized its mission as well. Bob has an independent bravado, an alchemy of spirit; he's still a Marine, and he has hope for America. Dig it, man.