Musings On Viet Nam -- Those Colorful Zippos
Even a quarter century after the last troops pulled out of Saigon, the Viet Nam War continuous to haunt our national consciousness. In film, in print, in fact and in folklore, in history courses and above all else, in the memories of those who served there, Viet Nam has imprinted itself upon us in a way that is unique in the larger setting of the Cold War.
I mean, how many folks recollect the Gary Powers U-2 incident, the Bay of Pigs, or the Bamboo Curtain? Not many that I’ve heard of. However, how about war protests and Woodstock, the Tet Offensive and the Air Cav?
Now we’re talking!
I suppose that a conflict that lasted as long as Viet Nam did – well over 10 years of ground combat – and waged against a tapestry of a political reality that I think will never be fully understood or made public, makes for some powerful American folklore.
Right now, I’m not much interested in the machinations of Hanoi, Saigon, Moscow and Washington, DC. I would prefer to concentrate on the men who had to fight that war, and live with the consequences of the decision-makers, wherever they happened to be. Let’s talk, then, of coping with an insane situation, and combat, as any grunt will tell you, is what life at the front lines can be – a vast and deadly sanitarium, indeed.
Coping, of course, was not just applicable to Viet Nam, but applies to any war, at any time in our history. A common thread that you will always find, war to war to American war, is how the men (and sometimes women, too, “lucky” few that there were) turned to their sense of humor to deal with the trials the terrifying cauldron of combat produced.
Whatever war it was, it’s there. WWII had Bill Maudlin’s Willy and Joe cartoons, and for instance. Korea, the Civil War, the Revolution, and, I imagine, even the more obscure conflicts (remember King Phillip’s War and the Mexican War from history class?) all had their jokes and burlesques.
The humor that was ran in Stars and Stripes and the darker stuff, the gallows humor of men on the line, though, are far different. Sticking to WWII for a second more, you may be familiar with a famous photograph of two human skulls chained to the hood of an American Jeep, one over each headlight. Coming out of Guadalcanal, the skulls are presumably Japanese (although they could easily have been American or Australian – the jungle knows no prejudice in death, and maggots find all flesh tasty incubators).
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