the vietinnocent
Imagine yourself in a newly strange, unfamiliar tropical jungle environment. The catch is, your purpose is not to take eye-catching photographs for National Geographic magazine. Instead, you are assigned to kill people of a foreign land you have never seen before, because your government tells you it is the patriotic, honorable duty you owe your country. Everything is all right in the beginning. You arrive in Vietnam, familiarize yourself with your platoon, acquaintances and close friends alike. The worst things so far are the irritating, annoying insects that buzz around you in the midst of the tropical heat while wearing a hot, uncomfortable marine uniform, while carrying a heavy backpack and a semi-automatic weapon, and fatigue from hiking and digging numerous trenches. Until one night in the jungle, someone you are perhaps close with is blown to pieces before your eyes. Its possible the only thing left of them is sadly their lower half. It is the first time you have witnessed another human being violently, grotesquely mutilated to unexpected death in only a matter of a second. Emotions are raging through you: fear, anger, shock, frustration, paranoia, sadness, and maybe after seeing th
Finally, the US government itself was at fault for soldiers committing random acts of brutality and violence against Vietnamese civilians, such as the My Lai massacre. Terriotrial conquest was less essential to American victory. Body count was the more preferable objective. It was more important to kill as many Vietnamese as possible as the means of winning the war. Killing as many Vietnamese as possible was punctuation on American victory. The government felt that not only was it necessary for America to claim victory in Vietnam, but to claim victory by a large margin. This would show the rest of the communist world who was in charge and that capitalism would reign supreme if we wanted to live in a harmonious global society. Instead of helping the Vietnamese stray from communism as originally intended, we attempted to use them as an example of what would happen to the rest of the communist world if they defied the United States. Naturally, the US knows what's best for the rest of the world. There were thousands of soldiers who experienced pressures and conditions that influenced the gradual alteration of their state of mind. Many soldiers experienced fellow platoon members getting so horrifically wounded from battle to the point of permanently intense disfiguration and more commonly death. Of these "statistics," some would no longer partake in the fighting against the Vietnamese or normal routine life the way they knew it before the war-forever handicapped. The majority however, would no longer live to again embrace their families, friends, significant others, and perhaps even children. According to Kregg P.J. Jorgenson's Beaucoup Dinky Dau: Odd, Unusual, and Unique Stories of the Vietnam War, Peter Martinsen, a former Vietnam veteran recalls of a fellow platoon member: "He just sat there in the grass just laughing. He's laughing and he's yelling. "Goddamn, I'm hit. You know what this means? I'm getting out of this *censored*!" He's pointing to his missing leg and he's laughing. "This is my way out of this *censored*! Out. Out." In Philip Caputo's "A Rumor of War," A sergeant in Caputo's platoon states "I have a wife and two kids at home and I don't care who or how many people I have to kill to see them again." (156).
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1995
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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