veterans

The Women, by Kristin Hannah

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Frankie McGrath, a naïve 23-year-old “California girl” and nursing student, enlists in the Army Nurse Corps because it is the branch of the military that will send her to Vietnam as quickly as possible. It’s 1965, and she has an idealistic vision of meeting up with her brother who is deployed there.

Unsurprisingly, once there she’s overwhelmed by the difference between her dreams and reality. The author recreates the day-to-day chaos and destruction of a medical station during the Vietnam war through Frankie’s eyes and emotions. Frankie manages to adjust and become a superb surgical nurse, very much thanks to Barb and Ethel, two fellow nurses who befriend and support her. Friendship, loyalty and betrayal are themes that run through the book.

At the end of her second tour in 1969, Frankie returns to California, and the second half of the book is about the antipathy she encounters. Confronted by antagonism that ranges from pretending she (as a woman) could not have been in Vietnam to outright hatred and abuse, she struggles to find her feet. As her mental health deteriorates she calls constantly on Barb and Ethel who repeatedly drop their East Coast lives to fly to California to help her.

All the conflict in this part of the book comes from the supposed hatred of Vietnam vets. True, there are romantic and work problems, but it is her emotional and mental fragility in the face of this hatred that makes her unable to deal with these normal problems.

I do not question the PTSD suffered by returning Vietnam veterans of all genders and, indeed, all of our veterans deployed in war. However, I was active in the antiwar movement at the time, and I NEVER saw protestors spitting on returning veterans and calling them baby killers, not in person, not on tv. Just the opposite. We were on the side of the soldiers, working to help them come home safe from a senseless war—something most of the soldiers in country wanted as well.

So I have long believed that all that supposed fury of protestors against veterans is a story—a lie—created by the warmongers to discredit the antiwar movement. It’s an urban legend. Here’s what Snopes has to say.

The claim that anti-war protesters spit on Vietnam veterans returning from the war is a persistent one, but there is no clear evidence that this was a widespread occurrence . . .

The persistence of this claim, despite lack of clear contemporary evidence, suggests it may be more of an urban legend that gained traction over time rather than a documented widespread occurrence. However, the available Snopes archives do not contain a comprehensive fact-check specifically addressing the broader claim about anti-war protesters spitting on Vietnam veterans.

Without more specific archival information addressing this claim directly, it’s difficult to make a definitive statement about its veracity. The persistence of the story, even among those who did not serve in Vietnam, indicates how deeply ingrained this narrative has become in discussions about the reception of Vietnam veterans upon their return home.

Other resources are a scholarly book by Jerry Lembke: The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam and a Wikipedia page, neither of which find any credible proof to support the myth.

These days, we know a lot more about deliberate misinformation—lies—told for political purposes. I’m disappointed that Hannah, a brilliant writer whose other books I’ve enjoyed, has chosen to repeat and amplify this distortion of what actually happened back then.

The first part of the book which takes place in Vietnam, although a bit melodramatic, provides a vivid picture of what life must have been like on the ground for nurses. I applaud her choice to concentrate the second half of the book on how hard life is for returning war veterans. I’m just sorry she stuck to this simplistic—and false—narrative of abuse of Vietnam vets instead of digging into the more nuanced reasons why we see so many vets struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts.

Have you read anything about women in the Vietnam War?

The Ha-Ha, by Dave King

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Ha-ha

I’d never heard of ha-has being installed here in the U.S. I’ve seen them in England, most dating from the Victorian era: walls set into a slope, separating high ground from low, like a river lock. The purpose is to keep the cows or sheep where they belong without disturbing the view. When you look out from the house, all you see lovely green lawns stretching into the distance, under the same principle of having the servants face the wall and pretend to be invisible when the lords and ladies pass them.

Here the ha-ha is at a convent, hiding the interstate that runs by their border. Howard works at this convent, mowing lawns and doing other odd jobs. Mowing the ha-ha, which is forbidden, is one of Howard’s few joys. Injured in Vietnam, only sixteen days into his first tour, Howard’s brain injury has affected his language abilities. He can hear and understand but cannot speak intelligibly, nor can he read or write. People who know him know that his intelligence is unaffected, but strangers often treat him as though he is not all there.

One person who knows him well is Sylvia, his first love, now a single mom with a drug problem. As the book opens, she is heading to rehab, asking Howard to care for her nine-year-old son Ryan. It would be a challenge for anyone to take in a child they barely know, but it is much worse for Howard given his disability and lack of experience with children.

One thing I like about this book is that we stay in Howard’s point of view throughout. Since any dialogue is going to be pretty one-sided, that means we get a lot of Howard’s interior monologue. This could have been a disaster, but the author has calibrated Howard’s voice perfectly—moving between exposition, self-pity, anger, bafflement and a range of other emotions—while making sure that there is plenty of action.

The only exception is near the end, when Howard is heading towards a crisis. I found this last part a bit unrealistic. It felt as though the author was straining for a big film-worthy climax instead of staying true to the characters.

The characters are another thing I like. All of them, even the minor characters, are well-drawn and multi-faceted. I was especially intrigued by Sylvia. Since we see her through Howard’s eyes, we rarely see him criticising her but we do see the effect her actions have on him as she ricochets from caring mom to selfish druggie to careless narcissist. It shouldn’t work, but it does. I found myself loathing her one minute and feeling sorry for her the next.

Also, Ryan is completely believable as a child in this situation: sometimes resentful and reticent, other times reluctantly affectionate. This nuanced portrait alone is worth the price of the book.

There’s a good bit of humor, too, especially between Howard and his three housemates. It’s Howard, though, who carries the book. Maintaining a strong and absorbing voice throughout a long novel is a real accomplishment, especially when so much of it must be in that voice.

I found much to consider here, about communication and families and disability. I thought about all the things we pretend not to see, all the things we try to wall out and ignore.

What do you pretend not to see?