day 3 of 30: in pharaoh's army

By diana on Aug 1, 2014 | In capricious bloviations

I did manage to beat Bill at chess yesterday, by the way, and without fanfare or acknowledgement, as is our style, he started another game.

I read Tobias Wolff's In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War last night. It was a remarkably quick read, and an amazing book, insightful and funny. For example, while in basic training, Wolff notes that he'd never been good at school sports, but that military training agreed with him:

My body was right for it--trim and stringy. Guys who would have pulverized me on the football field were still on their third push-up when I'd finished my tenth. The same bruisers had trouble on our runs and suffered operatically on the horizontal bar, where we had to do pull-ups before every meal. Their beefy bodies, all bulked up for bumping and bashing, swayed like carcasses under their white-knuckled hands. Their necks turned red, their arms quivered, they grunted piteously as they tried to raise their chins to the bar. They managed to pull themselves up once or twice and then just hung there, sweating and swearing. Now and then they kicked feebly. Their pants slipped down exposing pimply white butts. Those of us who'd already done our pull-ups gathered around to watch them, under the pretense of boosting their morale ("Come on Moose! You can do it! One more, Moose! One more for the platoon!") but really to enjoy their misery, and perhaps to reflect, as I did, on the sometimes perfect justices turned out by fortune's wheel.

And reflection is something Wolff does well. The book is an unmissable indictment of the Vietnam War, but it's perhaps even more Wolff's indictment of himself. When confronted with the request to forward a note to his best friend to let him know he got a girl pregnant while in Airborne School, he doesn't do it. He explains his (very human) reasoning and the conflict of interest the letter creates. At no point does he blame the "girl in trouble"; instead, he wonders why she contacted him instead of his friend. Would he be selling out his friend to forward the letter? Would his friend even want to know? He postpones making the decision but it is eventually made for him when his friend is killed in action, leaving him with the guilty conscience of never having told him and having not done the right thing (and now unable to even notify the young mother, as he's lost the letter).

Later, he acknowledges his responsibility for the destruction of a refugee village. He wasn't in charge, but he had the means to stop it and he didn't because the man in charge was an arrogant prick (frankly) and Wolff wanted him to get his comeuppance: "...I wanted Captain Kale's orders to be entirely fulfilled. I wanted his orders followed tot he letter, without emendation or abridgment, so that whatever happened got marked to his account, and to his account alone. I wanted this thing to play itself out to the end. I was burning, I wanted it so much."

The "thing" in question was Captain Kale's decision to have a Chinook pick up a giant sling with a howitzer within the refugee camp (instead of moving to the road, say), where huts had been haphazardly thrown together using bits of rubbish from the destroyed town. The result is no surprise to anyone who's ever seen any helicopter--let alone a Chinook--land. The irony of Wolff's words are that he knows, even now, that the result was not Kale's fault but his own. In his defense, he owns his guilt.

In part, that's what the book is about. He's very witty throughout--his sense of humor is irrepressible--but sharply honest regarding his own choices. In another vein, the book is about what a charlie foxtrot* Vietnam and the Army itself was. He claims to have been commissioned as an officer, despite being the last in his class, only because he had skills as a writer and was the only person able to write the satirical scripts for the graduation night ceremonies. He (a first lieutenant) and a sergeant are assigned to a peaceful, French-styled town that is an oasis in the madness, so much so that the few Americans who have the right to go there** speculate that it is an R&R destination for the Vietcong. They don't have many duties, so they amuse themselves by creating a hooch of American luxuries. Most of this is done through black market trade or theft. The Americans are there as advisers, but their ability to influence their Vietnamese counterparts is limited.

* Goatrope.

** The town is off-limits to most Americans, which Wolff is thankful for because "without even meaning to [the power of American dollars and American appetites] would have turned the people into prostitutes, pimps, pedicab drivers, and thieves, and the town itself into a nest of burger stands and laundries."

Wolff's relationship with his father is notoriously difficult. There's some irony in the fact that he's finally able to connect with him only after his return from Vietnam, after he's done much he isn't proud of and thus can no longer bring himself to judge "the old man."

My only complaint, such as it is, is that Wolff's writing tends to be Hemingwayish, which is no surprise, as he loves Hemingway. (His writer-wannabe friend Stu tells him that "Hemingway...did not love words, and to be a writer you had to love words.") At least Wolff's prose isn't a bare skeleton like Hemingway's, so mine is a minor complaint.

I'm adding it to my syllabus.