OPERATION HOMECOMING

OPERATION HOMECOMING

As I watched each of the soldiers try to strip off their courage to unveil the true emotions I was reminded of my own family and the secrets that hid behind their eyes. My grandfather volunteered and served in World War II, my uncle was drafted and served in the Korean War, my father volunteered and served in the Vietnam War, and my cousin volunteered and served in Iraq. All made it home, in a sense, and all never really talk much about what they went through. My grandfather, father and cousin enlisted, they chose to go and they knew what that meant. My uncle wanted no part of war, but the war wanted him. They knew that war was nothing more than two childish men arm wrestling until one finally gave in, using the bodies and souls of the soldiers as a table to dig their elbows in. Ironically my cousin died while repelling down a mountain, while he was on leave. For my cousin; his peace was in Iraq, here in the good ole USA he was struggling through a very tough divorce. Losing the woman he loved and knowing that the sacred time he had with his two boys was now going to be reduced down to flashes and glimpses of them as they grew; that was more devastating than any war scene for him.  

Watching this documentary forced me to think about the service of my own family and the death of my cousin; and I came to the conclusion that regular life, outside of war, is like war, only in slow motion. Life is full of tragedy, and war is life on steroids. A freak tsunami took out 250,000 people in one day. People experience all the emotions; fear, pain, guilt, courage, etc, just a different situation. What about the child born in a small African village. The minute that child takes in its first breathe it is forced into trial were it is unjustly found guilty of living and is given the death sentenced by starvation, millions are sentenced each year. Life is like war; the only difference is one is controlled by mankind and one controls mankind, try and decide which is which.

This documentary really reinforces how I look at and comprehend Tim O’Brien’s writing. I really like his thought, “there is a false sense that we ought to get over things…there are some things we shouldn’t heal from, they’re unhealable. There is something to be said about not healing and remembering.” (O’Brien OH). What a powerful statement. In this he is saying healing makes you forget, and if you forget you stand the chance to make the same mistakes again. Sean huze’s “The Sand Storm” blends specifically in the Iraq stories that the soldiers tell, where as Tim O’Brien’s, “The things they carried”, seems to be more of a timeless writing. The difference between Tim O’Brien and Sean Huze is simple. Sean Huze enlisted and wanted to be part of the war. Tim O’Brien wanted nothing to do with the war. The traumatic and emotional drain that these men experienced was very similar, the main difference is that one man wanted to be there and one man did not. 

The stories of all these soldiers all are saddening and intense. “Taking Chance Home” was the hardest to watch, I don’t know why I had tears or maybe I don’t want to know why, but it hit me the hardest.

I have had some family members that enlisted and some that were drafted, and because of that I can make this speculation; if you are forced off a cliff and die you have the right to question the reasoning, if you chose to jump off and die you have no one to question but yourself. Tim O’Brien was forced to go to war; Sean Huze chose to go to war.

“Works Cited”

            Robbins, Richard E., dir. "Operation Homecoming." America at a Crossroads. Prod. Tom Yellin. Pbs. Television.

Summary v Analysis

Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong

Summary

In “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” Tim O’Brien recalls a story that Rat Kiley told about a medic who figured out a way to get his girlfriend to Vietnam. While Rat Kiley was stationed at a small medical base a young medic named Mark Fossie managed to get his girlfriend, Mary Anne Bell, to the base. At first it was a quaint and cozy atmosphere but as the weeks went on something changed in Mary.

Slowly Mary became infatuated with Vietnam, the good and bad. At nights she began going on night maneuvers with a small group of Green Berets. Mark forced her to stop going on the maneuvers but after a few weeks she was back with the Green Berets. Mark makes one more attempt to get her out of Vietnam only to have her tell him "he" doesn’t belong there. Rat Kiley was shipped out shortly after that and goes on to say that the last he heard Mary went into the jungle one night and never came back.

Analysis

In “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” a loss of innocence is poured out on the pages of this story.  In the line, “just a kid, just barely out of high school-she shows up with a suitcase and one of those plastic cosmetic bags.” (O’Brien pg90), a true unpreparedness for what is about to happen is portrayed. The conversion from a boy to a Vietnam soldier is played out as the image of Mary, the all American girl, is stripped down and converted into a soldier “her blue eyes opaque, she seemed to disappear inside herself…a haunted look partly terror, partly rapture…it was as if she was caught in that no-man’s-land between Cleveland Heights and deep jungle. Seventeen years old. Just a child, blond and innocent, but then weren’t they all.” (O’Brien pg105).

Along the sidelines of this conversion from innocence, the by-standers assess the change. Mark Fossie considers the change in Mary devastating, while the “Greenies” eagerly welcome it. As soldiers were sent to Vietnam, a whole country was left behind voicing their opinions on whether it was right or wrong.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY6zfB-WHFU

“Works Cited”

           

            O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: a Work of Fiction. 1st ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.

The things they carried

In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” the reader is taking along with a group of soldiers through three different parts of the Vietnam War era. The short stories cover the soldier’s experiences before, during and after their involvement in the war. O’Brien not only writes about the things they literally carried, but also about the things they carried in their mind and on their soul.

  INNOCENCE

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s letters from Martha. Tim O’Brien’s Phi Beta Kappa and Harvard

Scholarship. Henry Dobbins’ girlfriend’s pantyhose. Norman Bowkers’ love for Sally Gustafson. All these were things these men carried from home; animating thoughts and objects of their innocence.

LOSS OF INNOCENCE

Tim O’Brien’s repetitive analogy of the man he killed. Azar mocking the young girl that was eerily dancing in front of the destroyed hut that contained the bodies of her burned family. Henry Dobbins threatening to kill Azar if he did not dance right while mocking her. The soldiers searching for Kiowa in the shit field. These images, feelings and memories are things they acquired and carried during their tour of duty.

 

 REALITY

The horrific deaths of Kiowa, Ted lavender and Curt Lemon. The suicide of Norman Bowkers. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s guilt of failed leadership. Rat kiley shooting himself to get out of Vietnam. Tim O’Brien’s struggle with being a “coward” in his mind. These are the things that each soldier will carry to their death. Horrific memories and events that changed their lives forever. Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” takes the reader by the hand through several scenes of soldier’s lives before, during and after the Vietnam War and the effects it had on them.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQA6UUVpz5M

“Works Cited”

Captain America    ioffer.com

Beach Boys    moblog.whmsoft.net

69 camaro    classicdiecast.info

Helicopters    dynamichistory.com

Explosion    pzzzz.tripod.com

March    msad40.org

Running kids    open.saloon.com

Outcome    socialuplift.org

War is hell    techbuddha.worldpress.com

Sand Storm

Talk is cheap when it comes out of the mouth of inexperience. Huze’s Sand Storm gives the inexperienced masses a glimpse inside the lives and minds of soldiers fighting in a difficult war. An enlisted man himself, Huze was driven by the events of 9/11 to serve his country. The harshness of the wars effect on soldiers is spelled out clearly in the line, “I never took my eyes off him the whole time I ate. The more he wept and pleaded, the more I enjoyed my meal" (Huze pg.9) This may seem crazy and hateful, but after watching humvees’ full of men explode, or your buddy getting shot up, the ability for compassion slips away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbRGksthTHQ 



Huze makes a profound statement when he refers to soldiers that come home as empty shells. After a round of ammunition is shot and the shell (cartridge) is ejected, it is called a “spent” shell (cartridge). I think he is referring to the hallow empty feeling of giving every ounce of emotion you’ve got and when it’s over all you’re left with is an empty shell of a human.

Huze, Sean. "The Sand Storm." Susan Schulman Literary Agency. 2004.1 September 2010

Soldiers in fox holes askville.amazon.com

Soldier kneeling wagingnonviolence.org

Soldiers in battle techbanyan.com

Responding to a poem...

The two poems that intrigued me the most were “Charlie Howard’s Descent” and “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting”.

“Charlie Howards Descent”

     Reading this poem was like being severed in half and pulled to both sides of a struggle. I know in my life I have been both aggressively intolerant towards views of others and have had my own views kicked aside by arrogant assholes.

     “Between the bridge and the river he falls through a huge portion of night; it is not as if falling is something new. Over and over he slipped into the gulf between what he knew and how he was known” (CHD lines 1-8). This poem begins with the speaker narrating an overview of how this young man (Charlie) has been dealing with people’s intolerance of what he felt inside and who he was. A feeling of relentlessness and hopelessness starts emerging from the start. “I imagine he took the insults in and made of them a place to live” (CHD lines 21-22). This line is very powerful in the sense that a feeling of acceptable surrender is laid the heart of Charlie. As the realization that he is entrapped in a world of unbeatable odds overtakes him, he quietly creates a place in his mind to take in the despair and turn it into harmless objects. “Three teenage boys who hurled him from the edge - really boys now, afraid, their fathers' cars shivering behind them, headlights on” (CHD lines 44-48). This is the turning point of the poem; the once tough and vicious young men were in an instant turned into quivering little boys, in a sense, reduced to hiding behind their father’s leg after stripping the mortality away from young Charlie. This second turn in the poem delivers a message of hope, “blesses his killers in the way that only the dead can afford to forgive” (CHD lines 52-54). Charlie’s life could never be accepted by others, but through his death his whole life was justified; and his tormentors were left behind drowning in their own self conscious.





“Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting”

In this poem a soldier tries desperately to spell out his love of a woman. Unable to find romantic inspiration in his desolate situation he uses the only thoughts that come to mind, “I tell her I love her like not killing or ten minutes of sleep” (LCDLF line 1-2). He feels trapped, unable to be where he wants to be and unable to leave where he is. He contemplates a letter, a letter that would only deliver the stench of war and distance. In his conclusion he would make light of war in a euphoric, almost on the verge of insanity, statement, “war is just us making little pieces of metal pass through each other” (LCDLF line 10-12).

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&tbs=isch:1&&sa=X&ei=aSOLTNPKNoqgsQPf87CUBA&ved=0CCQQvwUoAQ&q=despair&spell=1&biw=1158&bih=911

"Life begins on the other side of despair."
Jean-Paul Sartre


Photos:
drowning man by: the psycot horrothon.blogspot.com
soldier smoking kennyslideshow.com

Sam Hamill

  

                                                                                                  

Response to Sam Hamill

     In Sam Hamill’s “The Necessity to Speak”, he paints a portrait of the inability of mankind to be accountable for its actions and look truth in the eyes. The poems in the Poetry of Witness follow along the same edge of thinking that Hamill evokes. He goes into great detail about what humans know deep down is right, yet they refuse to see the world for what it’s worth and therefore blind themselves of any honesty. He points out a very interesting thought about acceptable limits of violence, “If a belt is acceptable, why not a stick? If a stick is acceptable, why not a baseball bat?” In this statement he shows that even the simplicity of spanking a child with a belt is a fallacy because it teaches the child that it is reasonable for a parent to whip a child like that even though the parent would not act that way to another adult.

     In his writing Hamill also states that the criminal is a victim as much as the victim themselves, in that the criminal is a product of a failed society that has created the circumstances leading to the event.

     Hamill has a very profound way of describing what a poet is and does. He states, “The poet invents a being, and that being, man or woman, stands before the world, naked and feeling.”(The Necessity to Speak pg.551). In this selflessness the poet allows others to experience the full impact of the poems thought, feeling, and emotion.

If only we could touch
the things of this world
at their center,
if we could only hear
tiny leaves of birch
struggling toward April,
then we would know.

Sam Hamill

http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/sam-hamill

Hamill, Sam. "The Necessity to Speak." 546-553. Print.
Photo: Looking Inward by: David Ho