Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

By George Olsen

17 Sept, 69

Red,

Thanks for the letter, but now you've made me self-conscious about my writing, You used some words that rather jolted me: Morbid, Chaplain, and a few others. They belong to another world about which I've forgotten an amazing amount as it's irrelevant to anything going on now. I've just about forgotten what college was all about, though there are a few memories that stick in the back of my mind.

Yesterday we took to the bush to recon a river crossing on one of Charlie's major supply routes coming in from Laos....It was an uneventful patrol, but I committed the mortal sin of small-unit patrolling: I broke contact with the man in front of me and split the patrol into two elements something that could easily prove fatal in the event of contact with the enemy. We'd just crossed the river at a ford to join the team reconning the other bank and were going through fairly green stuff when the man in front of me dropped his lighter. I bent to pick up and by the time I straightened up he was out of sight and hearing. Had we been hit then, It would have been a bad situation made worse by my stupidity. I've picked up most of the patrolling tricks - taping metal parts to prevent their making noise during movement, wearing bandoliers so the magazines are on your chest and stomach and form makeshift body armor, and other tricks that stretch the odds a little more in you favor and give you a little more of an edge in combat - but I'm still new and yesterday I really loused up....

The fact of the matter is that I was afraid - which I am most of the time over here - but I allowed my fear to interfere with the job at hand, and when that happens to someone, he ceases to be a good soldier. It's all right to be afraid, but you can't allow that fear to interfere with the job because other people are depending on you and you've got responsibility to them and for them. From now on I'll be keeping that in mind and I won't louse up so badly again. Had that happened under fire, people might have died unnecessarily due to me.

One other impression from the patrol is that anyone over here who walks more and 50 feet through elephant grass should automatically get a Purple Heart. Try to imagine grass 8 to 15 feet high so thick as to cut visibility to one yard, possessing razor-sharp edges. Then try to imagine walking through it while all around you are men possessing the latest automatic weapons who desperately want to kill you. You'd be amazed at how much a man can age on one patrol.

We're supposed to go on a very hard sortie soon which, unless it's canceled, virtually guarantees some hard fighting. I'm not trying to be mysterious or anything, but common sense precludes giving too many details before the operation. We're going to raid one of Charlie's POW camps and attempt to free some GIs, but that's about all I'll say till we pull it off, if we do.
I many have played up my unit here a bit too much, but I'm proud to be in it and might be inclined to brag. We're not supermen or anything like that, and we're not about to walk into bars, where music automatically stops at our entrance, and proceed to demolish anybody and everybody in the place. But as far as being soldiers, we're proud of our outfit and its history, and are definitely among the best troops over here....Men have gone on operations here with broken ankles in order not to let their buddies down. So you see, we take our business seriously.

I'm going out now for a fun in the sand to toughen my feet up. So I'll be signing out....

George

Sp/4 George Olsen, Co. G, 75th Inf. (Ranger), Americal Div., Chu Lai, 1969-1970, He was KIA 3 March 1970; he was 23 years old.

Through the Tunnel

Through the Tunnel

By Doris Lessing

Plot Summary

In Lessing’s “Through the Tunnel,” Jerry, a young English boy, and his mother are vacationing at a beach they have come to many times in years past. Though the beach’s location is not given, it is implied to be in a country that is foreign to them both. Each tries to please the other and not to impose too many demands. The mother, who is a widow, is “determined to be neither possessive nor lacking in devotion,” and Jerry, in turn, acts from an “unfailing impulse of contrition — a sort of chivalry.”

On the second morning, however, Jerry lets it slip that he would like to explore a “wild and rocky bay” he has glimpsed from the path. His conscientious mother sends him on his way with what she hopes is a casual air, and Jerry leaves behind the crowded “safe beach” where he has always played. A strong swimmer, Jerry plunges in and goes so far out that he can see his mother only as a small yellow speck back on the other beach.

Looking back to shore, Jerry sees some boys strip off their clothes and go running down to the rocks, and he swims over toward them but keeps his distance. The boys are “of that coast; all of them were burned smooth dark brown and speaking a language he did not understand. To be with them, of them was a craving that filled his whole body.” He watches the boys, who are older and bigger than he is, until finally one waves at him and Jerry swims eagerly over. As soon as they realize he is a foreigner, though, they forget about him, but he is happy just to be among them.

Jerry joins them in diving off a high point into the water for a while, and then the biggest boy dives in and does not come up. “One moment, the morning seemed full of chattering boys; the next, the air and the surface of the water were empty. But through the heavy blue, dark shapes could be seen moving and groping.” Jerry dives down, too, and sees a “black wall of rock looming at him.” When the boys come up one by one on the other side of the rock, he “understood that they had swum through some gap or hole in it. . . . [But] he could see nothing through the stinging salt water but the blank rock.” Jerry feels failure and shame, yelling at them first in English and then in nonsensical French, the “pleading grin on his face like a scar that he could never remove.”

The boys dive into the water all around him, and he panics when none surface. Only when his count reaches 160 do the boys surface on the other side of the rock, and as soon as they come up, they leave. Believing they are leaving to get away from him, he “cries himself out.”
When Jerry sees his mother that afternoon at the villa, he demands that she buy him goggles immediately. With the goggles he can suddenly see, as if he had “fish eyes that showed everything clear and delicate and wavering in the bright water.” He descends again and again desperately trying to find the opening in the rock that the older boys had swum through, until finally “he shot his feet out forward and they met no obstacle.”

Jerry is determined to be able to swim through the tunnel, and begins immediately a practice of learning to control his breathing. He lies “effortlessly on the bottom of the sea” with a big rock in his arms and counts. That night his nose begins bleeding badly, and he spends the next two days exercising his lungs “as if everything, the whole of his life, all that he would become, depended upon it.” When his nose bleeds again, his mother insists that he rest with her on the beach. He does so for a day, but then the next morning he goes off to the bay by himself without asking, “before his mother could consider the complicated rights and wrongs of the matter.” He again practices holding his breath under water, and he experiences a “curious, most unchildlike persistence” while studying the tunnel.

When his mother announces they are to leave in four days, Jerry vows to succeed in his quest even if it kills him. His nose bleeds so badly he becomes dizzy, and he worries that the same might happen in the tunnel, that he really might die there, trapped. He resolves to wait until the following summer, when he will be bigger and stronger, but then an impulse overtakes him and he feels that he must make his attempt immediately — now or never. “He was trembling with fear that he would not go; and he was trembling with horror at the long, long tunnel under the rock, under the sea.”

Once inside the tunnel he begins counting, swimming cautiously, feeling both victory and panic. “He must go on into the blackness ahead, or he would drown. His head was swelling, his lungs cracking. . . . He was no longer quite conscious.” Even when he surfaces, he fears “he would sink now and drown; he could not swim the few feet back to the rock.” When he finally pulls himself onto the rock and tears off his goggles, they are filled with blood.

He rests and then sees the local boys diving half a mile away, but he is no longer interested in them. He wants “nothing but to get back home and lie down.” His mother is concerned at his “strained” appearance when he returns to the villa, but consoles herself remembering that “he can swim like a fish.” He blurts out that he can stay under water for “two minutes — three minutes, at least,” and she replies in her usual moderate way, cautioning him that he “shouldn’t overdo it.” Jerry has succeeded in his quest — it is “no longer of the least importance to go to the bay.”

Waters of Babylon

"By the Waters of Babylon"

By Stephen Vincent Benet

Plot Summary

Set in a future following the destruction of industrial civilization, the story is narrated by a young man[4] named John who is the son of a priest. The priests of John’s people are inquisitive "scientists" associated with the divine. They are the only ones who can handle metal collected from the homes (called the "Dead Places") of long-dead people whom they believe to be gods. The plot follows John’s self-assigned mission to get to the Place of the Gods. His father allows him to go on a spiritual journey, but does not know he is going to this forbidden place.

John takes a journey through the forest for eight days, and crosses the river Ou-dis-sun. Once John gets to the Place of the Gods, he feels the energy and magic there. He sees a statue of a "god" — in point of fact, a human — that says "ASHING" Could be wASHINGton on its base. He also sees a building marked "UBTREAS" Possibly sUBTREASury?. After being chased by dogs and sleeping in someone's apartment, John sees a dead god. Upon viewing the visage, he has an epiphany that the gods were simply humans whose power overwhelmed good judgment. After John returns to his tribe, he speaks of the places "newyork" and "Biltmore". His father tells him not to, for sometimes too much truth is a bad thing, that it must be told little by little. The story ends with John stating his conviction that, once he becomes the head priest, "We must build again."

The Interlopers

The Interlopers

By Saki

Plot Summary

The characters in “The Interlopers,” Ulrich von Gradwitz and Georg Znaeym, have been enemies since birth. Their grandfathers feuded over a piece of forestland. While the courts ruled in the Gradwitz family’s favor, the Znaeym family has never accepted this ruling. Throughout the course of Ulrich and Georg’s lifetime, the feud has grown into a personal, bloodthirsty one. As boys, they despised each other, and by the evening that the story takes place, the two grown men are determined to bring a final end to the feud by killing their enemy.

On this fateful evening, Ulrich gathers a group of foresters to patrol the land in search of Georg. Separated from his men, he hopes to meet Georg alone and, when he steps around a tree trunk, he gets his wish. The two men face each other with rifles in hand, but neither can bring himself to shoot the other. Before either man can act, a bolt of lighting strikes a tree. It falls over and pins them underneath its limbs.

The men are pinned down side-by-side, almost within touching distance. Both are dazed, injured, and angry at the situation in which they find themselves. Georg tells Ulrich that his men are right behind him, and threatens that, when they arrive, they will free him but roll the tree on top of Ulrich. To this threat, Ulrich replies that his men will arrive first and kill Georg. Both men know it is only a matter of waiting to see which group of foresters will reach them first.

Ulrich manages to draw his wine flask out of his coat pocket. He drinks some wine and, feeling something akin to pity, offers it to Georg. Georg refuses on the grounds that he does not drink wine with an enemy. During a few moments of silence, an idea comes to Ulrich. He proposes to Georg that they bury their quarrel. He believes that they have been fools and asks Georg for his friendship. After a long silence, Georg answers, accepting Ulrich’s proposal.

The men decide to join their voices together to shout for help. Suddenly, Ulrich sees figures coming through the woods. They shout louder and the figures come down the hillside toward them. Georg, who cannot see as well as Ulrich, asks which men are approaching. Ulrich does not reply. He has seen something horrible: it is not men who approach them — it is wolves.

The Village

The Village

By Estela Portillo Trambley

Plot Summary

In Estela Portillo Trambley’s short story “Village,” a young American soldier named Rico reflects upon his morals in a situation of mandatory action in Vietnam. Rico’s actions thus reflect the true hero in the story, despite the rank of his superiors in the US Armed Forces.

In the beginning of the story, Rico is sitting with his soldier buddy Harry, looking over the village of Mai Cao. While talking about real fighting action and home, Rico thinks back about why he’s in the position he’s in. “No action yet. But who wanted action? Rico had transformed into a soldier, but he knew he was no soldier. He had been trained to kill the enemy in Vietnam. He watched the first curl of smoke coming out of the chimneys. They were the enemy down there. Rico didn’t believe it. He would never believe it” (436). It is also safe to say that Rico was a draftee in the war by the fact that Rico was transformed into a soldier but was not truly a soldier. If Rico was a true, devoted soldier, he would immediately think that the people down in the village below him were indeed his enemy and that he would want to see action as soon as possible. The instant Rico contemplates his reason for being in the war justifies the fact that he values his morals in the time of war.

Rico then proceeds to think further about his days in training and being taught what to believe. He reminisces about his family and his past back in Texas, and how the special bond held between people wasn’t limited to just the people in the States, but rather to all people around the world. “It struck him again, the feeling – a bond – people all the same everywhere… The woman with the child on her shoulder mattered. Every human life in the village mattered. He knew this not only with the mind but with the heart.” (437). It can thus be understood that Rico values and respects human life, no matter where in the world. Human life.

Rico’s morals are not compromised when he receives orders to destroy the village he was just looking down upon. After learning what is expected of him, Rico immediately has an urge to stop the orders from going through. This very notion proves that Rico will not tolerate his morals from being compromised. He feels that it is not his right to take the life of another human being. Even before he makes any physical judgments or actions, Rico already has the mindset of a hero.
Rico then goes a step further and stops everyone from taking a life in that village. He already knew personally that he was not going to take a life, but as he looked around himself and saw all of the other men around him armed, he knew that he had to take further measures for the sake of humanity. Rico then stops any action by shooting the hand of his superior before the signal to destroy was given. By stopping the order from the very hand which was to give the order, Rico saved an entire village from assassination.

Rico can be regarded as a hero due to the fact that he was willing to sacrifice his own rank and social position in the military than to let an entire village be killed over speculatory information. What sets Rico apart from the other men with him was the fact that he was the only soldier who questioned authority. He knew that his orders did not feel right or justified, so he solely stood up and made the difference. That is what truly made Rico a hero – not letting go of his morals and value of human life. At the end of the story, Harry says to Rico, “You’re no soldier. You’ll never be a soldier” (440). However, Rico knows that he saved lives and is perfectly content with the consequences he will face in the future. Thus, he replies, “I’m free inside, Harry…free” (441).

A Sound of Thunder

A Sound of Thunder

By Ray Bradbury

Plot Summary

On the eve of an American presidential election, a party of rich businessmen undertake a time travel safari to the past to hunt dinosaurs. While the organizers have taken every precaution to minimize the impact of the hunting party on the past, one member violates the rules and leaves the designated path. Upon their return to the present the group finds that the world has been drastically altered by the seemingly innocuous death of a pre-historic butterfly.

The Lady or the Tiger?

The Lady or the Tiger?

By Frank Stockton

Plot Summary

“The Lady, or the Tiger?” begins with a description of a “semi-barbaric” king who rules his kingdom with a heavy hand. For punishing criminals, he has built an arena featuring two doors. The criminal must choose his own fate by selecting one of the two closed doors. Behind one door is a hungry tiger that will eat the prisoner alive. Behind the other door is a beautiful lady, hand-picked by the king, who will be married to the accused on the spot. The people of the kingdom like this system of justice, because the uncertainty of the situation is very entertaining.

The king has a beautiful daughter whom he adores. She secretly loves a young man who is a commoner. When the king discovers her illicit affair, he throws the young man in jail to await his judgment. For a commoner to love the king’s daughter is a crime, so the king searches for the most ferocious tiger and the most attractive lady (but not the princess, of course) for the young man’s trial in the arena.

The day of the courtier’s “trial” comes, and the young man walks into the arena, his eyes fixed on the princess. He looks to her for guidance, because he suspects that she has learned which door conceals the lady, and which the tiger. Indeed, the princess does know the identity of the young lady behind the door. She has been jealous of her for some time, thinking that she has sought to steal her lover from her. The princess signals for him to choose the right-hand door. Without hesitation, he moves to open the right-hand door.

Stockton does not reveal what waits behind that door; he leaves readers to come to their own answer. As the narrator of the story explains, the answer involves a study of the human heart which leads us through devious mazes of passion, out of which it is difficult to find our way.

The Monkey's Paw

The Monkey's Paw

By Edgar Allen Poe

Plot Summary

The story opens with Mr. White and his son Herbert playing a game of chess. Mrs. White is knitting by the fire. Mr. White loses the game and becomes agitated and exasperated. Soon, there is a knock at the door and the Sergeant-Major enters. They share a few drinks and the Sergeant-Major tells them some tales about his trips to India, where he obtained a monkey’s paw. The paw is magical, allowing three men three wishes each. One man has died and the Sergeant-Major has used up his three wishes. He tosses the paw into the fire, but Mr. White snatches it out and keeps it for himself. The Sergeant-Major tells them that a fakir has put a spell on the paw “to show that fate ruled people’s lives.” Those who tamper with fate “did so to their sorrow.” But Herbert coaxes his father to wish for something modest, like 200 pounds. His father does so, while Herbert plays dramatic chords on the piano in accompaniment. They all go to bed for the night.

In the morning, Herbert leaves for work and tells his parents not to break into the money before he comes home that evening. Mr. and Mrs. White make light-hearted comments about Herbert’s return and his reactions to an arrival of the money.

Later, a stranger comes to the door and, after coming into the house, tells the parents that Herbert has been killed at work that morning when he was caught in some machinery. The stranger then gives them compensation from the company: 200 pounds.

Herbert is buried in a nearby cemetery. About a week later, Mr. White is awakened by the sounds of Mrs. White weeping over their son. Suddenly, she remembers the paw and the two wishes that remain. She pleads for Mr. White to get it and to make a wish that Herbert would be alive again. He tries to tell her that since he was mangled in the machinery and had been buried for a week, it would not be a wise wish. But she insists. Despite misgivings about invoking the magic of the paw again, Mr. White wishes for Herbert to be alive again.

They wait. They watch out the window, but nothing happens and no one arrives. They start to bed again when suddenly a slight knock is heard at the door.

Mrs. White then remembers that the cemetery is two miles away and that it would have taken Herbert a while to walk home. The knocking increases, ending in a series of rapid hangings on the door. Mr. White tries to stop her from opening the door. She persists and climbs up on a chair to open the top-most bolt.

Just as she opens the door, Mr. White asks his third wish. The door opens; the street is still and empty. Only a dim streetlight flickers on the roadway.

The Masque of the Red Death

The Masque of the Red Death
By Edgar Allen Poe

Plot Summary

Poe’s story “The Masque of the Red Death” begins with a description of a plague, the “Red Death.” It is the most deadly plague ever, as “no pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.” The symptoms of the plague include “sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores.” The “scarlet stains” on the body, and especially the face, of its victims are the “pest ban” or first visible signs of the disease. Once the stains appear, the victim has only thirty minutes before death.

In order to escape the spread of the plague, Prince Prospero invites “a thousand hale and light hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court” to seal themselves “in deep seclusion” in an abbey of his castle, allowing no one to enter or leave. With adequate provisions, Prospero and his privileged guests attempt to “bid defiance to contagion,” by sealing themselves off from the suffering and disease spreading throughout the rest of their country. The Prince provides for his guests “all the appliances of pleasure” to help them not to “grieve” or to “think” about the Red Death raging outside the walls of the abbey.

Toward the end of the fifth or sixth month, the Prince holds a masquerade ball for his guests, “while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad.” The Prince takes elaborate measures in his decorations for the ball, which is to take place in “an imperial suite” of seven rooms, each decorated in its own color scheme. The only lighting in each room comes from a brazier of fire, mounted on a tripod, which is set outside the stained glass windows of each room, causing the color of the glass to infuse the entire room. The progression of rooms is from blue to purple to green to orange to white to violet to black. The seventh room, decorated in black velvet, is lit by the fire burning behind a redstained glass window. But the effect of the red light is “ghastly in the extreme,” and the seventh room is avoided by most of the guests.

In the seventh room is a “gigantic clock of ebony” which strikes at each hour. The sound of the clock striking is “of so peculiar a note and emphasis” that all of the guests, as well as the orchestra and the dancers, pause at each hour to listen, and there is “a brief disconcert in the whole company.” But the revelers remain “stiff frozen” only for a moment before returning to their music and dancing.

At the stroke of midnight the guests, pausing at the sound of the clock, notice a mysterious “masked figure” in their midst. The figure wears “the habiliments of the grave” and the mask on its face resembles “the countenance of a stiffened corpse.” The costume of the mysterious figure has even taken on “the type of the Red Death.” Its clothing is “dabbled in blood” and its face is “besprinkled with the scarlet horror.”

When Prince Prospero sees this mysterious figure, he orders his guests to seize and unmask it, so that he may hang the intruder at dawn. But the guests, cowering in fear, shrink from the figure. In a rage, Prospero, bearing a dagger, pursues the masked figure through each of the rooms — from blue to purple to green to orange to white to violet. The figure enters the seventh room, decorated in a ghastly black and red, and turns to face Prospero. The Prince falls dead to the floor. But when the guests seize the figure, they find that, underneath its shroud and mask there is “no tangible form.”

The guests realize that the Red Death has slipped into their abbey “like a thief in the night” to claim their lives, “and one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel.” The last line of the story describes the complete victory of the Red Death over life: “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”