Survival Manual for Vietnam
Jerry Neren
War Poetry Contest 2008 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention
I - Introduction
A.
In order to physically survive
inside a combat zone,
just follow one simple rule:
do not get killed.
B.
In order to mentally survive
inside a combat zone,
you need to follow three,
not quite as simple, rules
neither thumb-tacked
to your barracks' bulletin board,
nor found italicized
in the army rules and regs,
nor presented in chalk talks
in boot camp training rooms,
nor parceled out
by your commanding officer
for you to read
and memorize
and then destroy
prior to landing in Da Nang,
for these are unspoken and unwritten rules
you would have had to learn
the way a child learns not
to touch a flame
but only after first touching it
if not for this manual.
To the extent you keep these rules,
the good news is
you'll make it through your twelve-month tour
of combat duty in Vietnam,
and you'll go home,
a little worse, of course, for wear,
but you'll go home.
To the extent you break these rules,
the bad news is
the following formula will then apply:
break one,
and you will have nightmares of Vietnam
for the rest of your life;
break two,
and you will wander
homeless through the days and through the nights
of city streets;
break three,
and you will still go home,
but with your mind inside
a body bag.
II - Rule Number One
Be friendly, and all of that,
but never get too close
to anyone in your platoon,
for this is not Hometown, U.S.A.
where friends will be around
as long as the oak tree in your yard,
but Vietnam
where in a combat zone
like Khe Sanh or Tien Phu
however many friends you'll make
will more than likely be
as many friends as you
in just a few
short weeks
or days
or even in just a finger snap
will lose
and neither from natural causes,
nor illness, nor disease,
but suddenly
and violently
and sometimes while even in
your young trembling and unbelieving arms.
So never ever become fast friends
with anyone in your platoon,
for if you do,
what happened to
Rosey,
when Artie, wrapped
inside a poncho like a Slim Jim in cellophane,
sloshed up to him in driving rain
and said in that surprisingly high-pitched voice
for someone who weighed two-sixty-five,
can you believe,
I mean, can you believe,
your pal, Spumoni, just took a tracer round
right in the mouth,
I mean, right in the mouth,
blew off the back of his head
but never even touched
his lips or his teeth
when it went in.
He must've been yakking at the time,
or laughing at a joke,
or maybe yawning even,
when it went in,
I mean, it's like he breathed it in
just like a goddamned gnat.
Rosey's face
grew gray as that monsoonal day.
And calm as a midnight street,
Rosey unclipped from his webbed belt
a hand grenade
and twisted it into his mouth
and pulled the pin,
and what could Artie do except
hit the ground, cover up—
or to Mad Max,
when his buddy, Alphabet,
got caught in an enemy cross-fire.
Alphabet was bleeding
from so many AK-47 bullet holes,
it looked as if he were crushed between
two beds of nails.
Mad Max was holding him
as tightly as a tourniquet
as if by so doing he could stop
the bleeding from all those holes.
And no one could separate
Mad Max from Alphabet,
not even after Alphabet was dead.
And even when the medevac touched down,
the medics had to load them both
into the chopper
still locked together like
two lovers in some sort of strange, slow dance—
or to the Fonz,
when Estevez, his confidant,
while waltzing over to
a stand of banyans to take a pee,
triggered a land mine rated at
two-hundred pounds of TNT.
What little was left of Estevez
was not enough to fill
a baggie, let alone
a body bag.
On hands and knees, the Fonz
collected whatever odds
and ends that he could find
and tried to fit them
like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle
into what once was Estevez—
will happen, and you can take this to the bank,
to you.
III - Rule Number Two
As men who butcher in a slaughterhouse
must distance themselves
from the cows and the pigs
by deeming them dumb and doltish beasts
that neither have feet but hooves,
nor skin but hide,
nor weep but stare,
nor dine but graze,
nor circles of friends but herds,
nor make deep caring love
but mount and mate,
if they are to lift that sledge
and crush that skull,
if they are to run that knife
across that throat,
so you must learn as well
to distance yourself from those
whom you must kill.
Following are three suggested ways
of distancing yourself,
ways which will make it easier,
if not enjoyable,
for you to kill:
(1) Dehumanize
While lobbing a hand grenade
or tossing a satchel charge
into a tunnel or a cave,
imagine the enemy
as creepy and crawly
as rats
and roaches that
the U.S. Government is paying you to
exterminate.
(2) Politicize
On muggy mornings when marching off
on search-and-destroy operations,
remember that just as someone has to kill
if we're to have our Big Macs and KFC,
so you must kill
if we are to have democracy.
(3) Philosophize
Each time you torch
Vietnamese villages
with suspected Viet Cong,
follow the logical, not the moral, school
of thought professing that in a war, the more
of them you kill—
in fact, the more the merrier—
the greater will be the chance
that you will win,
the greater will be the chance
that you will survive
Be mindful, then, of rule number two
by dissociating yourself from those
whom you must kill,
and never embrace the sentiment
that they, like you, have thoughts
of home and family
while hunkered down in bunkers in
the fright of night;
that they, like you, have hobbies and interests
like stamp collecting and gardening;
that they, like you, have companion dogs
they like to take on strolls;
that they, like you, have messengers
who walk up those unpaved paths
to thatch huts with dirt floors
and knock on bamboo doors
and say, and not
in English but Vietnamese,
I'm sorry, but your son, your son—
for if you do,
to even think of killing them would be
like killing your own,
and if you think like this,
then you won't want to kill them anymore,
and when you don't,
you'll run the risk
that they will kill you instead,
or that the army will kill you for
not killing them,
and this creates
a conflict that you can't resolve—
a paralytic inability to choose between
your life and theirs,
and one way to resolve
an irresolvable conflict is
to go insane.
IV - Rule Number Three
Never question
why you're in Vietnam,
and always deep-down inside believe
those starry generals in Arlington
and those high-ups in Washington
would never send
a couple million adolescent men
to hell
if not for reasons
sane,
if not for reasons
sound,
even though you're the one who's there,
who's on the killing line
in Vietnam,
while they are here,
not on the killing line
inside the Pentagon,
not on the killing line
inside the Oval Office in Washington;
and always deep-down inside believe
you wouldn't be there were it not
in the best interests of
the South Vietnamese,
even though the people
you're there supposedly to help
neither shower you with flowers,
nor with kisses,
the way the Europeans did
GI's in World War II,
but spit on you
and catcall epithets instead
like doo-mommies while you're marching through
their thatch and bamboo villages
and tell you to go home
and let them farm in peace
their rice paddies and their fields of tea;
and always deep-down inside believe
that you are the saviors of the world,
even though such notions,
romantic as they may be, don't mean
a fat rat's ass
to eighteen- and nineteen-year-old kids
whose only thoughts
are sex inside
the Hung Dao Hotel
on Tu Do Street, Saigon,
or getting drunk,
or getting stoned,
or wasting gooks,
for these are the only ways
to vent your anger, vent
your hate
and your frustrations in the Nam;
and always deep-down inside believe
that getting paid
a couple hundred bucks a month
and all the Viet Cong that you can kill,
and all the C-rations you can eat,
and all the jungle rot that you can treat,
and all the body bags that you can fill,
and all the "Dear John" letters you can read,
and all the monsoon muck that you can slog,
and all the clotted traches you can unclog,
and all the leeches you can feed,
is a pretty sweet deal.
So never question why you're in Vietnam,
for if you do,
you won't come up with one good reason why,
and when you can't,
then you won't want to be there anymore,
and when you don't,
then you'll create
some sort of mental game
to take your mind off things,
like thinking of the time—
that summertime
when just a boy of ten—
you lived inside a tree house that you built,
and then you'll think about it once a week,
and then you'll think about it once a day,
then all the time,
then pretty soon
you'll be that boy of ten again,
and you will be inside that tree house
living happily the summer long,
and no one and nothing—
neither your first sergeant, nor
the medics, nor the chaplain, nor
psychiatrists, nor thorazine,
nor megavolts of electroshock therapy
enough to dim the hospital's lights,
nor pleas of parents,
nor even those of your fiancée—
will ever get you down from there.
