Poems that were written as a result of the Vietnam War are much more focused on the realities of war then the old glory poems of past wars. Michael Casey’s Obscenities (1972) is a collection of poems written by Casey about Vietnam (O’Nan 81). These poems are very much darker in nature than poems written after previous wars. For example, “To Sergeant Rock”, begins, “Gentlemen, / One year over there, / An you’ll age ten.” This poem is written from the standpoint of a recruit listening to his Drill Sergeant or Drill Instructor. The Sergeant does not talk about the glory they will receive for fighting and dying for their country. He immediately starts by telling them that the prime of their life will be behind them and they will see things that one should never see. Not in those words exactly, but it is clearly inferred.

Two poems written by Frank A. Cross Jr. deal with the death of innocent Vietnamese civilians (Franklin 247). These poems are “Gliding Baskets” and “Rice Will Grow Again.” “Gliding Baskets” starts with an artillery spotter attempting to contact an artillery base. Then it goes to a Vietnamese woman walking in a field. It switches back between these two scenes. The artillery spotter is asking for a “fire mission” on a “dink in the open” (Dink is slang for Vietnamese). The “dink” turns out to be the woman and she is killed. In “Rice Will Grow Again,” a patrol is walking on a dike when one of the members of the patrol, Mitch, sees a Vietnamese farmer planting rice shoots. For no apparent reason, Mitch shoots the farmer and kills him (Franklin 248). These poems are distinctly different from poems of other wars. It is very difficult to find a Vietnam poem with a light side.

“We Regret To Inform You” was written by Paul Cameron. It starts out “Dear parents of the deceased, / We regret to inform you of this release, / Your son was mortally wounded in combat, / His valor keeping with finest tradition and all that,” The “and all that” shows the “tradition” part of the telegram is just the usual Army nonsense trying to glorify the death of a fallen soldier. In most wars, this would be acceptable and the parents might even believe that their son had did defending freedom, but before the Vietnam War few people even knew where Vietnam was. Now their son had died there? This is very different from the famous World War I poem, “In Flanders Fields,” which is written from the view of the dead soldiers telling their comrades to carry on (Playton 1). In this poem, their death was very much glorified.

Oral histories were published with much darker truths in them than oral histories from earlier wars. The book Voices From Vietnam has an entire chapter called “Body Count” (Denenberg 93). Because the Vietnam War was a war of attrition, soldiers were made to feel obliged to get as high of a body count as possible. This was the standard of progress. In other wars, you had tried to gain ground. In this war, you tried to kill as many people as possible. In the chapter “Body Count,” soldiers, a journalist, and even a Vietnamese civilian tell about how remorseless the soldiers could be while getting a good body count. One soldier tells a story about how he found six or seven badly shot up Vietnamese two of whom were still alive. He asks his Commanding Officer what should be done about them and the Commanding Officer implies that they should be killed so he shoots them. He later said about it, “It didn’t bother me at all.” The journalist was in a low-flying helicopter when the helicopter's gunner opened fire and killed a farmer. The gunner later said that he thought he had seen the farmer reach for a gun, but the pilot and the journalist were both pretty sure that it was the gunners imagination. Another story is from a Vietnamese civilian who was in his house with nine or ten family members, when a group of Americans came in and were greeted by the house owner. The Americans simply laughed and threw a grenade in the room killing everyone in it except for the house owner. These types of stories are almost all unique to Vietnam literature. You can probably find a few stories like these published about other wars, but the major difference is these stories are in almost every Vietnam book ever written.

Short stories on the Vietnam War were very much against the war. One of the most riveting fiction short stories to come out of Vietnam did not even take place in Vietnam at all (Franklin 124). It is written by Kate Wilhelm shortly after the My Lai tragedy where so many Vietnamese civilians were brutally killed. In this story, we are introduced to a small, normal American town and to an American patrol. The men in the American patrol are making their way towards a free-fire zone where the occupants have been warned to clear out. If they have not then cleared out then the patrol is supposed to clear them out. The story is basically taking the My Lai event and putting it in an American town. The patrol come in the small American town we were introduced to before and starts shooting and beating people. The author makes sure to include the violent death of a young girl and the violent deaths of a mother and her baby. In the end of the story, the men of the patrol have set everything on fire and are laughing. I cannot even imagine this type of story to come out from World War II or any other previous wars.

Another short story, called “The Lake was Full of Artificial Things,” was written by Karen Joy Fowler. It is about a woman who is trying to alter how she remembers her boyfriend who was killed in Vietnam. In real life, she dumped him right after he was drafted and she actually started dating someone else before he was drafted, because she knew he would be. The woman, Miranda, has a therapist who is able to use Miranda’s memories of her boyfriend to make it seem like she is with him again under altered circumstances. In one of her sessions with him, she “learns” that he killed a six-year-old Vietnamese boy. The thing is that there is no reason for her to believe what she heard because she knew she was going to get false memories of him. But because what she “learns” comes from her own mind, then she must have the preconception that “if you went to Vietnam, you killed an innocent person.” Again, the recurring theme is the death of an innocent Vietnamese.

“Moratorium,” by Wayne Karlin, is about two soldiers and their wives who are going to a huge march for peace in Vietnam. The protagonist, Brian, is thinking about the man who died for him unconsciously. Brian was supposed to go on a mission but the other man, Jim Hardesty, wanted to go instead. Brian and Hardesty both only had a week left before they were sent home, and because they were helicopter gunners that only meant one mission between them. Brian is thinking about why Hardesty wanted to go on another mission. Rumor had it that Hardesty was always a little scared when he was up there so maybe, Brian thought, Hardesty wanted to try and prove himself one last time before he went home. Another story that this reminded Brian of was when Hardesty had shot a pregnant woman. When he came back to the base he jokingly bragged about killing to “gooks” with one shot. Then the story picks up with the two couples at a gas station where they are confronted by an officer who heckles them a bit about impersonating American soldiers. They tell the officer off and he threatens them saying that they “will hear about this.” He then leaves and the couple goes to the march where they march with about five hundred thousand other people. This is another story where civilians are killed. In a World War II book it is a tragedy when a civilian gets killed by a stray shell. In Vietnam books, both fiction and non-fiction, they shell villages and kill civilians all the time.

Memoirs were another very popular tool for veterans to explain their part in Vietnam. There have been many World War II memoirs, but not as many as Vietnam memoirs. This could be because after a veteran came home from World War II he was presumed to be a good guy, even a hero sometimes, but veterans returning from Vietnam were commonly met with disgust. These veterans needed to let people know that they were basically good guys. In Roger Mason’s Chickenhawk, a soldier, Rubenski, is telling Mason a plan his friend came up with to rob a casino (Mason 314-15). Right after he finishes telling Mason the plan (in which Mason would be involved) Rubenski and Mason learn that the guy who came up with the plan originally was just killed. In the very next paragraph Mason watches as a soldier, who has a lot of experience in Vietnam, runs in to a Helicopter’s tail rotor and thinking the man is dead Mason contemplates resignation, but then finds out that the man’s helmet saved him (Mason 316). Another portion of the book concerning the death of an American service man goes like this. Mason is asking this question after he just landed his helicopter.

“A grunt mule driver lost control and flipped over.”

“Was he hurt?”

“No. Killed.”

Then they change the subject and it is not mentioned again. These stories are just small portions of one of many Vietnam memoirs. These men are facing death everyday. This is very different from the World War II memoir The Journal of Sergeant Giles which is written by a combat engineer who is always at least one step behind the front lines and spends much time mourning the loss of the one engineer from his outfit who dies during the book. It is also very different from Richard Tregaski’s book, The Guadalcanal Diary, in which I believe the author is shot at once.

The songs that have come out from Vietnam are mostly anti-war with the exception of “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” which is one of the most war-glorifying pieces to come out of Vietnam in any form of literature (O’Nan 285). “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” was written by Country Joe McDonald (O’Nan 286). It is anti-war. The first verse basically says that America has gotten itself into another mess and that it is time to send in all of our young men. Then the chorus, which is from the view of a new recruit, shows how the young men going in had no idea what they were fighting for. The second verse says that it is time for the officers to get their promotions by killing commies, then the chorus is repeated. The third verse “encourages” Wall Street to profit from the war by “supplying the arm with tools of the trade.” Then they repeat the chorus and go into the final verse, which is telling the parents to “Pack your boys off to Vietnam” and “You can be the first one on your block, To have your boy come home in a box.” This is starkly different from another song from a different war, “The Star-Spangled Banner” which was written not only during the Revolutionary War, but also while the author watched an American fort being shelled (Key 1). Another anti-war song is “War” by Edwin Starr (O’Nan 292). In this song Starr shows disgust for every facet of war with phrases like, “Oh war I despise because it means destruction of innocent life” and “War it ain’t nothin’ but a heartbreaker, Friend only to the undertaker.”

In general, Vietnam War literature contains the most anti-war literature that has ever come out from American authors. Pieces on the Vietnam war that glorify any portion of the war are few and far in between. In previous wars, it was the complete opposite. It is quite difficult to find anti-war literature about any preceding war.

Casey, Michael. Obscenities. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972

O’Nan, Stewart. The Vietnam Reader. New York: Anchor Books, 1998

Casey, Michael. Obscenities. The Vietnam Reader. O’Nan, Stewart. New York: Anchor Books, 1998

Sadler, Barry, and Robin Moore. “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” The Vietnam Reader. O’Nan, Stewart. New York: Anchor Books, 1998

Franklin, H. Bruce. The Vietnam War in American Stories, Songs and Poems. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1996

Kate Wilhelm. “The Village.” The Vietnam War in American Stories, Songs and Poems. Franklin, H. Bruce. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1996

Karen Joy Fowler. “The Lake was Full of Artificial Things.” The Vietnam War in American Stories, Songs and Poems. Franklin, H. Bruce. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1996

Frank A. Cross Jr. “Gliding Baskets.” The Vietnam War in American Stories, Songs and Poems. Franklin, H. Bruce. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1996

Frank A. Cross Jr. “Rice Will Grow Again.” The Vietnam War in American Stories, Songs and Poems. Franklin, H. Bruce. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1996

Denenberg, Barry. Voices From Vietnam. New York: Scholastic Inc., 1995

Key, Francis Scott, Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001 1997-2000

Cameron, Paul. “We Regret to Inform You.” Nam Vet Artwork and Poetry. Ed. David J. Blackledge. 18 Oct. 2001 http://www.dblackledge.com/namtales/poems.htm

Mcrae, Major John. “In Flanders Fields.” In Flanders Fields. Ed. Josella Simone Playton. 3 Oct. 1997. 18 Oct. 2001 http://home.t-online.de/home/Josella.Simone.Playton/flanders.html

Mason, Roger. Chickenhawk. New York: Viking, 1983