Home Fronts

I remember back in 1994 when my dad had one of those “where have the years gone?” moments. “I can’t believe it’s been 50 years!” he said. He was referring to an upcoming anniversary of the Normandy invasion; he had been on a Liberty ship supporting the Omaha landing. Today, I can’t believe it’s been 50 years since I was a high school senior who had just received an acceptance letter from George Washington University, which meant a 2-S deferment from military service. Yes, I know: that is scarcely anything comparable or even commendable. (It was not actually true in a general way that those who could afford to go to college didn’t go to war back then. They just went four years later. Someone who got a deferment in 1966 was eligible for the draft in 1970. In my case, however, the timing was indeed such that the draft ended before my college graduation.) It says something about that era that among the large chunk of the generation that was draft-age but for whatever reason didn’t serve, a frequent topic of conversation was (and still is) how they avoided it. Arlo Guthrie’s song isn’t so very far over the top.

2,700,000 Americans, however, served on active duty in Vietnam between 1964 and the end of direct US participation in the war in 1973. The 2,640,000 who returned were only 10% of their generation. They knew the other 90% simply couldn’t relate, so most chose not to talk about it. So, largely, did Hollywood and publishing houses. Compared to flood of books and movies that accompanied and immediately followed the two world wars and Korea, Vietnam for several years produced a mere trickle. Other US wars – most of them in fact – starting with the War of 1812 have been divisive and controversial. It helps, however, when you win. Feelings of guilt among those who stayed at home and betrayal among those who didn’t dissuaded many authors and screenwriters in the 1960s and early 1970s from touching Vietnam. This began to change in the late 1970s, though the themes tended to be quite dark as in The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. It accordingly is no surprise that my Memorial Day picks for book and movie are dark as well. Both deal more with the aftereffects of the war than the war itself.

Cover by Jack Ketchum

Multiple Bram Stoker Award winner Jack Ketchum (aka Dallas Mayr 1946-2018) is the author of some of the most truly disturbing horror fiction to have been written in the past half century. He writes well: graphically but well. Cover is his third novel and the most mainstream of any before or after. In the forward Ketchum tells us the book was prompted by a television interview with a Viet vet who chose to live in the woods because he didn’t trust himself around people, including his own family. [It should be noted that Vietnam veterans, like other veterans, have lower rates of criminality and violence than the general population; PTSD, where it exists, is more often directed inward than outward.] Ketchum mined the experiences of his veteran friends for his flashback details.

Veteran Lee Moravian has isolated himself in the forest since his grip on reality is none-too-secure. He frequently flashes back to the war. He supports himself by growing first-rate marijuana, which he sells wholesale to another (far more grounded) vet named McCann with a weekend cabin at the edge of the woods. McCann tells him that thieves have raided other marijuana patches in the region and to be on guard. The warning amps up Lee’s paranoia. Meantime a bestselling author from Los Angeles named Kelsey, though struggling with his current book, has decided to spend a weekend camping and hunting with several friends including his wife Caroline and mistress Michelle. (Yes, they’re all friendly.) When they stumble on one of Lee’s plants and steal some leaves and buds, Lee misidentifies them as a serious threat. Lee disables their vehicles and sets VC-style traps. Armed primarily with a crossbow he hunts them as they desperately try to escape and fight back. Though the book is primarily a thriller, the characters are not cardboard cutouts, but have complexity to them. All (even Lee) are sympathetic yet none is entirely excusable either.

Thumbs Up. Not my favorite Ketchum novel, but Thumbs Up.

Who’ll Stop the Rain? (1978)

In 1978 the Washington Post reviewer called this “a knockout adventure destined to become a classic.” He was wrong. And right. This movie flopped at the box office and hasn’t done much better on video. Yet it is a worthwhile film based on the novel Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone.

It starts off in Saigon during the war where war correspondent John Converse (Michael Moriarty) arranges with his friend and former Marine Ray Hicks (Nick Nolte), currently a merchant sailor, to smuggle heroin into the United States. Converse is a vacillating intellectual without any real standards but with an inclination to make excuses for himself. Hicks, on the other hand, has taken Nietzsche to heart. He doesn’t give a damn anymore about other people’s standards – which sent him to places like Saigon – but he is rock solid on his own. So, the law doesn’t matter to Hicks, but his own ethos of, for example, keeping faith with a buddy does matter to him – even when the buddy doesn’t deserve it as, as Converse definitely does not. Ultimately, it’s not about Converse but about what has meaning to Hicks. Hicks makes the connection in San Francisco according to instructions with Converse’s wife Marge (Tuesday Weld). Marge, it turns out, knew nothing about the deal. She also has a drug addiction of her own. Things get messy and violent when it turns out they all have been set up by a corrupt federal drug agent and his goons. A flight to New Mexico follows.

In this thoughtful but suspenseful script it is not at all clear whether the war has corroded morals and morale in ways that inform the events, or whether corroded morals were responsible for the war being the mess that it was. Either way, the war looms in the background, and the only character with…well…character is Hicks, albeit not in a conventional way. Great acting by Moriarty, Nolte, and Weld.

Solid Thumbs Up.

…and a remembrance to the real life vets who came back (mostly without fanfare or drama) and those who didn’t.

 Trailer: Who’ll Stop the Rain?