Transcription
Thanks so much for doing this, Tim. We're really thrilled that you came to Kansas City to spend part of this fall celebrating Ken Burns Lynn Novak's debut of the Vietnam War documentary as part of Kansas City's Big Read KC.
I don't know that I told you that the Big Read KC involves all six of Kansas City's public libraries. It's a really unique collaboration among all the libraries. We're sharing we're sharing your book across the metro area. We are promoting the events across the metro area, and it's been a real delight to see Kansas City get so vested in starting the conversation about the Vietnam War through your book and through the screening of the documentary.
Right. Yeah. I wanted to start by asking you about things that the soldiers might have read in your company, or so, or what you knew soldiers were reading over in Vietnam.
You mean, during the war?
During the war. Did they carry books with you?
Not much. No. I mean, number one, everything you carry is so incredibly heavy. Anywhere from, I'd say, 70 pounds to a hundred pounds into combat, and you're all you're doing is walking all day. So anything extraneous, we didn't carry. I tried carrying an English-German dictionary thinking, well, I'll be in a year in this country and I maybe I'll learn German. But that thing was ditched after, I don't know, a week and a half or so. I I never I did it just so much stuff to carry. I was in Vietnam. I was, among other things I did, I was an RTO, means a radio operator. I had a big radio on my back in addition to a rifle and on my back. In addition to a rifle and canteens and ammunition and all the other stuff you carry, which is a lot, hand grenades. So I was really overloaded, to begin with. So whatever was extraneous, including food, you know, I did see rations and most of us did.
One of the things that was extraordinary in being in the infantry in Vietnam was that we were the beneficiaries of the great American war chest. I mean, we'd get watermelons flowed out to us and woolen sweaters in the middle of a jungle. The strangest stuff would be flown in. Most of which we just didn't carry. We just got rid of it, and we carried what you had to carry to stay alive. Nothing. No extras at all.
But there were some personal items that people would carry.
Yes. Just to stay connected to folks at home.
Absolutely. Or previous lives. No. You carry lightweight things that connected to for sentimental reasons to people at home, a girlfriend's necklace or a picture of your parents you put in your helmet, is something to live for. Just to dream about, maybe I'll survive this nightmare. And when I get home, I'll be able to see my mom and dad again or my girlfriend. That when you're in the midst of a war, you're so full of death thoughts and and killing thoughts that you need something to be yearned for and get get get to when it's over, something to strive for. So that's the sort of lightweight things, letters, something things like that, personal things.
Did you, speaking of letters, did you write letters? Did you write notes about your experiences to share with folks at home?
I did. I wrote some letters, not many. I think there may be a bundle that just a stack a couple of inches thick that I sent to my mom and dad. I wrote few because I didn't wanna scare them. And I also didn't wanna lie and say, oh, this is easy and there's no problem. I I didn't wanna lie to them, so I didn't write many. But I wrote some. And I also wrote for myself that after a day's march, before the sun went down, we'd make an encampment on a usually on high ground, dig foxholes and where you'd spend your night. And as twilight came in just in the maybe half an hour before dark, I would sit at my foxhole and I might every week or two, I would write a little two, three page vignette about something that happened that day. I was writing really for myself, but also so if I were killed, there would be something in my body that was a record of what I was thinking about and what I what I'd gone through. So that my mom and dad and my sister and my brother would at least know something of what what I was going through in the war, what I'd seen. And so I wrote these little two, three page handwritten things in in a half an hour. And there, by the end of the war, I had, oh, I don't know, 40 pages, something like that. And then those 40 pages were all most of them were like couldn't even really illegible because I carried them in my rucksack and it rained all the time. I mean, the monsoons and But here and there, I'd see a scrap of stuff that I I I actually used for my first book. It reminded me of what I of that day when that happened.
Did any of those any of those vignettes make it into your other books? Into the things they carried, for example?
Not directly, but indirectly. They would they would kick off the a line from that material would kick off a a a another memory. So I'd I'd say that there's a line about lying behind a paddy dike when I was wounded. And that memory would lead into, oh, and then the next day that happened and the next day that that I probably wouldn't have remembered if that first line weren't there. Memory is a strange thing that that most of Vietnam is doesn't exist for me anymore. Almost all of it's been erased and was kind of erased as it happened because what happened one day would be succeeded by what happened the next day, which was worse than the first day. And then something else would happen. So you're sort of constantly erasing your own memories. And I think that's pretty true in life. But if I were to ask you, tell me about yesterday, I don't think you could do talk for very long and you could talk generally. But and then if I asked you, what about February, what were you doing? Or ten years ago. So I think both in life, but also in a war, we do we pretty much erase our lives as we lead them. And you're left with a few intense memories. And you call that your life, what what you remember when, in fact, you forget most of your life, even in a war. And I've talked to many veterans of Vietnam and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and they pretty much say what I'm saying. You know, I I've got I've got memories, but a lot of it is erased. You forget all the monotony and the constant marching from village to village. You forget the mosquitoes and the heat. You forget what you were thinking about late at night on guard. It's all gone. It's transitory. So you're left with this this few burning images.
I'm going to circle back now to your book because I'm recalling a couple of comments I've heard in multiple discussions I've attended. And one one thing that comes up a lot are folks who have no experience of the Vietnam War aside from maybe what they've seen on TV, and readers who might not even have been old enough to experience it. But the one thing a lot of them say when they read your book is, this feels so true. It must be a memoir. It must be fact.
Mhmm. And then of course, there are elements of your of the entire book of some of the stories where we know they're doesn't seem real at all. But why would someone who has no experience of Vietnam War read your book and think this must be true? What's in it that's making them think this must be true?
Well, it's a great question. I'm not sure I have a satisfactory answer. It does say in the front of the book a work of fiction. So, I I just said this is fiction and if it feels true, that is what I wanted. I wanted to write a novel, announce it. This is made up, but make you as you're reading it think it actually happened. That this is real. And to make them people stop and sort of go back and think this is a novel. Even though it is one, I wanted to make it feel real. It was a kind of experiment in one sense, but it was the kind of book I'd wanna read. I like it when I'm in a book and it's two in the morning and I'm you know, in the middle of it or almost done and I'm so in it. It seems so real to me. It's a great feeling. And the best movies and the best books always grip me as this is real. You don't read Huckleberry Finn and turn every page and say, that didn't happen. That didn't happen. That isn't real. That isn't real either. That is if you did that, you'd be insane. Or if you went to The Godfather, the movie, you said that that scene is not real and that's not true. You you you at some point, if the arch is good enough, the movie or the book or the play, you surrender. Even though you you know it's not real. And and you and it you just accept. There is a horse head in the bed with that guy and the godfather.
Can you talk a little bit about the power of story in in your book and or in all your works?
Well, I'm a big believer in the power of story that that I think it's important kind of recognize them after I say them. But I don't think we all walk around thinking story is important in our lives. But I think that stories help us heal. They help they console us. You you when you're in a story when you're in a bar or a restaurant and you're talking to a stranger, you're you're yearning for those moments of an anecdote, a story. So it's not just abstract, How are you doing stuff? Or what do you do for a living? You're you're yearning for a story, so you get to know the person. We the stories make make us feel that we're kind of all part of something universal. And and that kind of journey down the birth canal and out into the light and then toward the grave, we all take the same journey. No matter of woman, man, whatever country you live in. And the stories we tell along the way bind us together. They make us feel like we're part of something. There's a place for abstraction, place for history. It's important to learn the facts of what what happened in say, Vietnam. Very important to know your own history as a country. But if it's too abstract, it doesn't have that emotional zing that life has, the joy and the sorrow that life carries. And stories convey, for me anyway, they convey an emotional heart to why you memorize the facts that you you wouldn't. I mean, I could give you facts about the room we're in and the rug looks to be black and there's a gold rim about it. And I could tell you there's a white floor beyond that. And I could describe everything in this room and you'd walk out of here and you'd forget it all because there are new facts out the door, then there are different ones. But if in this very same floor, there were say, a dead Viet Cong soldier of 16 lying without a jaw and his eye is a big hole and he's lying on that floor, there's gonna be something emotional where all that stuff matters. It's a context. So story, I think, is is is so essential to why we care about things, why we care about history and sociology and and things like that.
If the men couldn't carry stories with them, did they share them at the end of the day? Their stories of what happened during the day?
That's a great question. It's a strange one. I've never had that one before, but the answer is yeah. Because on a on a day where something emotional happened, which was usually death, the day's over. The bodies have all been helicoptered out. And yours, it's twilight again and you're getting ready for the dark and facing another terrifying night. You talk about what happened that day. Everybody's story is different. Sometimes in radical ways, same event. But if I'm looking that way and you're looking that way, you have another you have two different stories. I saw Jack it up and charge that bunker. And I and the other guy's story is I saw Jim, you know, cowering in that ditch and crying and begging God to stay alive. Two different stories. One's a story of kind of macho heroism and the other one is of terror. And everybody's angle on a war and on a battle or just an incident is gonna be different, depending on partly on where you're looking, but also depending on partly on where you're looking, but also depending on your temperament. What kind of person are you? What are your politics? Are you a Christian or whatever you all the stuff you bring inside you, you have a different kind of story to tell, including the story of what you were thinking as all this was going on this horrible day. There's a day on my mind I'm thinking about right now. I mean, all the stories that were told afterward. For example, I my company commander, a guy that I kind of idolized, he was just brilliant guy, but he was a brave man and he was a kind guy, very rare kind of officer to have. He came to visit me years after the war when I was living in Massachusetts, and we were talking about a particular day. And everything he said was new to me. We were when we were bound together by a cord, I was his RTO. I carried his radio. So there was a cord that went from me to him. So I had to be as close to him as I am to you or even closer. And everything I said to him, he didn't remember. Same event, same day, and our recollections were completely different. So story has this malleable quality that depends on your personality and depends on on what you observe and notice in the world. Some things you'll notice that I won't and other things I'll notice that you won't. So story is not absolute. There's no real true story. There are a whole bunch of true stories to each different person.
Oh, well, I do want you to talk a little bit about what it was like to be a consultant for the film and when did you start performing as a consultant?
I began, I would guess, four years ago, five. I can't really tell you exactly, but sometime back, maybe several years back. Lynn Novick, the co co director of the film had come to my house early on to to interview me. And we hit it off and I thought she was, you know, both a really talented professional at what she did, but also a kind and nice person, someone fun to be around. And she later after I don't know, some time had gone by a month or two called me and said, would you be an advisor on the film? And I said, yeah. But I was also I was all had also been counseling her not to make the film. I said, you don't know what you're in for. For. You're gonna get all these Vietnam Veterans who are, you know, either right wingers or or you know, coming after you. And everybody's gonna complain that their story is not in here, which we heard today, here in Kansas City. And the the you can't satisfy everybody as if Vietnam was a decades-long cultural global phenomenon. And you can't put everything in the eight eighteen hours. So everybody's gonna complain, I'm not in there and that period's not represented well. And that's kinda what happened. But I said, yes. I'd be led I'd be delighted to be part of the enterprise, even though I don't think you should do it.
Well, I'm so glad they did do it. I mean, it's I think it's a masterpiece. I think America has been educated about its own history, really, for the first time for a bulk of our population. Most of whom now weren't weren't alive then or or if they were alive, were not conscious yet of the world around them. They were young. It was an amazing thing to watch how Ken and Lynn made the art. They they were so we would there were maybe 15 of us, different people at different times would go to a Walpole, or to New York City where we'd view the film in progress. And we'd all chip in with our comments. The historians would make historical comments. They'd say, I think maybe a little more of this, or I'm not sure you got that fact totally right. And to my incredible surprise, both Ken and Lynn were able they had command of the most arcane detail where they could argue with people from Dartmouth and Cornell and I mean, about this little tiny details of history. They had such command of the material was just astonished me. Or not always argue, but sometimes just talk about it, you know, in an intelligent way. The the the artistic choices they had to make along the way, what what's gonna go out of this thing? And where where does it drag? And what can we do to make it undrag and move be, you know, more more emotionally gripping. And the ways they found to do that, sometimes with music, sometimes it's just different stuff. They just lose that passage and they put another one in. What's not talked about often, at least I haven't seen it talked about or written about are the people who actually do it. They put the film together and these incredibly talented editors, most of whom work in I think, New Hampshire. I'm pretty sure they do this. That's where I met them. They're they they put together these segments of doing all that kind of hard labor of of you mentioned magic and the the film's gotta have something magical in it to go with. And they're the people that put those things together. I remember I was during my interview with Lynn, I was talking about my hometown being the turkey capital of the world and sort of in passing to show what a kind of podunk place it was I grew up in. And they flew to I don't know how they did this, I don't know. But in the film, they've got film from maybe the nineteen fifties when I was a little boy of Turkey Day in my hometown. Actually, where the maybe I don't know how they got it. And and there's this picture that's the scene opens with this great big turkey. It's the most ugly animal ever invented from Turkey Day. And then you sort of pan out and you see this parade with the prom queen going by on her float, you know, and the Shriners Club going by. And the and the put that film against what I was saying and then to time it right so that they don't so the film doesn't overlap something different. It's a meticulous kind of frame by frame work, and these people deserve such credit that that and it's a technical thing in a way, but it's really mostly artistic. I mean, how they do this. And when when you watch it, you don't think about this stuff. You just have the film going by and you just watch it unless you're in the business and maybe you do. So I mean, it was a joy being part of of of it. I my contributions were very minimal. In fact, my two large my two largest suggestions for changes I were just rejected. They didn't they didn't happen. I mean, I I think I got made some progress in one small part of it. But the the the result is just just a terrific piece of art and history both.
Was there a part of the film or a person in the film that surprised you when you watched it?
Well, there was one huge surprise and he lives here in Kansas City. And that's John Musgrave, who began the film by saying, you know, I feel the purest I felt the purest hatred for these VC. Pure. And he said the word pure, like, six times and he sort of spit the word pure hatred. And then to watch this guy go through this metamorphosis into an anti war person from this decorated and badly wounded true believer in the war and to an anti war guy was shocking the first time. I've I've I've seen the film about four or five times, you know, over different stages. And every time I'm surprised when that moment comes that of God, this guy has turned against the war, but his whole personality is has become so gentle and it there's no pure hatred left in that guy. He's a he's a lover it seems to me of the world. He's a hater of hypocrisy, I think, because I am. He's a a hater of deceit, you know, some bald lying that goes on. But the flip side of that is is all the hatred is aimed at at as it should be at bad stuff and the love is aimed at good stuff. But his transformation really did surprise surprise me. And I think surprised most of America who watched that film. I think the first time, you know, woah, this guy has really been changed by the war. As in a way, he's a good representative for all of us. We were all changed by it.