Any
veteran
of Viet Nam (and i don't mean just
combat vets like Drake, i mean REMFs
like myself) ought to recognise what
this story is about; it's about
damnation and about people who don't
deserve it who were sent to Hell, and
about redemption.
It's about something we didn't get. |
"I
think my country got a little
off-track;
Took 'em
twenty-five years to welcome me
back..."
(Johnny Cash, Drive
On) |
It's
about
the way that people who didn't
understand what some of us had been
through regarded us... and it's about
the only way those people could
possibly have been brought to
understand that we weren't
(quasi-quoting Drake) toxic waste that
sometimes explodes without warning; a
way that could never actually happen.
It's about letting the veteran prove
his worth in his own eyes and in the
eyes of others; letting him buy back
his pride and his sense of himself as
a man, and not as just a
hunted/hunting animal/killer.
It's about admitting that we owe
the people who fight our wars
something... if only a little respect. |
"This is your lucky day --
you been back from 'Nam
for
only six weeks, and I am gonna do for
you what
it took someone six months to do
for me."
"Really? Thanks, brother -- what is
it?"
"Nothin'. Sign here, please."
(Robert Blake as
an Arizona motorcycle cop,
as he
tickets a truck driver,
in ElectraGlide
in Blue.) |
The cover painting
for this book -- especially without the huge sight-ring
that is not part of the
original painting; Baen Books has a
terrible record with regard to cover
art and treatment of same -- is
one of the most striking i have ever
seen illustrating a war story, either
"real" or sf war.
Simply, almost crudely, rendered,
showing the cruelly stressed soldier
trying to shield the child's body from
the blast with his own; on his face
the expression almost of a suffering
Christ, his eyes fixed in the
"thousand yard stare" of what earlier
generations called "shell shock" or
"combat fatigue" (and God damn George
S. Patton to hell), still out there on
the front, fighting for what he
himself may have almost forgotten...
Right there, on that anonymous grunt's
face and in his actions, is the theme
of sacrifice and damnation and
redemption that Drake is playing on in
his text. (One suspects that the
artist himself may well have "seen the
elephant".) |
"It
don't mean nothin', snake."
(David Drake, Rolling Hot
[reprinted
as part of The
Tank Lords]) |
| This
book,
at least as i read it, is an attempt
to show that that the 'Nam grunts'
catchphrase isn't true -- that it does
mean something and that we are
worth something. |
"You owe us, long and heavy is
the score..."
(Robert W. Service, The
March of the Dead) |
Society
owes
its soldiers support and gratitude and
help.
Sometimes it pays off on those debts.
Sometimes it's easier to just ignore
the redliners you create. |
"But
it's 'Special train for Atkins!' when
the troopship's on the tide..."
(Kipling, Tommy) |
