Participation in the Vietnam War was an extremely controversial issue in the minds and hearts of many Americans because of its many moral implications and discerning views on the necessity of the US’s involvement, however the most greatly affected by the war were the young men who left their homes in America to risk their lives for an issue that many of them did not feel that strongly supportive of or connected to. In Tim Obrien’s If I die in a Combat Zone, the readers are introduced into some of the personal memoirs and experiences of Tim Obrien and several of his fellow American soldiers in the Vietnam War. The reader learns first hand accounts of the use of vulgar and crude curse words and sexual language, the sometimes cold and heartless behavior towards what many soldiers referred to as the Vietcong, and the first hand experiences with death. The soldiers’ isolation from home in a far away foreign land, coupled with doubt in the necessity of US involvement in the war, and exposure to the everyday loss of life of friends and compatriots, left many soldiers feeling desensitized, disconnected, and disillusioned.
In Tim O’Brien’s As I lay Dying, O’Brien discusses some of the lessons that he has learned as a soldier who has been to war and returned from this “wrong war,” or a war that he and many others feel America should not have participated in. O’Brien says, “Now, war ended, all I am left with are simple, unprofound scraps of truth. Men die. Fear hurts and humiliates. It is hard to be brave. Dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell in Vietnam, …. Some men thought the war was proper and others didn’t and most didn’t care…(O’Brien 31). O’Brien’s retrospective quote of the ‘sum of lessons that he learned in war’ are not positive statements on the bravery of men and the sacrifice of life for one’s country, or the honor that he felt participating in the war. The lessons that he shares are dry, perhaps even insensitive sounding to an individual who has not ever participated in war or particularly this Vietnam War. O’Brien also brings up the issue of the soldier’s divisiveness on the necessity of the war. Some men thought that the war was proper and righteous, others didn’t, but he makes sure to add in the fact that most didn’t care. Even that final statement seems one of cynism, mental and emotional fatigue, and speaks to the desensitized and disconnected emotional state of many of the American soldiers who fought in the war.
On the outside looking in, a person would most likely assume that if you are fighting in a war, one way or another, you are going to take a personal stance on whether or not you agree with the war and its “cause” and moral implications. For an individual to sacrifice his/her life, deal with the fears of being a target in a foreign land, work in the difficult and oppressive conditions of war, see so many lives lost and not “not care” if the war is wrong or right, most likely means that person has past a point of sensitivity and concern that would allow him/ her to care. If someone is fighting in a very different foreign land, seeing many atrocities in front of them, and dealing with the implications of completely losing their innocence, naivety, and maybe even trust and hope in the system and in America for sending them to this place, it may become rather easy for that person to lose faith or concern in a lot of areas.
Through Obrien’s commentary on the lessons that he first learned joining Alpha Chapter, the reader is able to gain a little insight into the desensitizing nature of the war. Obrien explains that, “that no one in Alpha Company gave a damn about the causes or purpose of the war. It is about dinks and slopes, and the idea is to simply kill them or avoid them. Except that in Alpha you don’t kill a man, you “waste” him. You don’t get mangled by a mine, you get ‘fucked up.’ You don’t call a man by his first name – he’s the Kid or the Water Buffalo, or if the fellow is disliked, he’s just Smith or Rodriguez” (O’Brien 84). In this passage O’Brien addresses the desensitization and depersonalization that the soldiers experience or learn while in Alpha chapter. The first important part of the passage is that O’Brien explains that no one in Alpha chapter cared if the war was right or good. Which again, reflects on a certain distancing from emotion or emotional concern with morality and belief and pride in country or cause. The company refers to the Vietnamese fighters as dinks and congs.
This depersonalization may make it easier to kill or see another as an enemy or target as opposed to a human being with emotions, family, and concerns. Or the depersonalization of the oppositions’ names and classifications may make it easier to not have to confront issues of whether or not the war is right or wrong or for a righteous cause. Another issue O’Brien rings up in this passage is the terminology used by the soldiers when someone gets mangled by a mine. To lose an arm, a leg, or both arms and legs, to have your face disfigured, or ultimately for someone to lose a life due to a land mine is tragic, unfortunate, and upsetting. By referring to the event as getting “fucked up” as opposed to referring to it with more sensitivity, attention to the tragic emotional components, and the unfairness and inequity of having something so terrible happening to a person again can be viewed as an emotional distancing or gradual desensitization and disillusionment with the tragedies of the Vietnam War.
Finally in the passage, O’Brien discusses the issue of a man’s name when he is killed. Rather than saying “John Doe” or whatever a man’s actual name was to refer to his death, the company used generic nicknames for men who were killed. This is the ultimate example of the dehumanizing and emotionally destructive nature of the consequences of the Vietnam War on many of its American soldiers. To refer to a dead compatriot, someone who you went to training with, or fought side-by-side with, or shared stories and fears with, to be killed, and to refer to him as Water Buffalo or Buddy Barney requires a lack of a certain emotional chip, that of sensitivity and connection to human. This seems to have been a result of the many terrible and tragic events that the soldiers witnessed during their tenure in Vietnam in the War. It appears that after seeing so much hardship, destruction, chaos, sadness, and death, one must either self-destruct or become extremely hardened by their environment and circumstances.
Many of the events that O’Brien describes in the novel speak to the dehumanizing and desensitizing nature of the Vietnam War on many of the American soldiers. The desensitizing led to a group of individuals both old and young alike who returned to the U.S. after their stint of service in the Vietnam War, lost, disillusioned, and disconnected with other humans, with any sort of faith in their government and in their country, and with major divisive issues of whether or not the war in which they had just risked their lives was righteous or unnecessary.
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