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E-TICKET TO 'NAMLAND
by
Dan Simmons
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INTRODUCTION
I was born in 1948. By the time Kennedy was elected in 1960, World War II seemed like ancient history. Not just to me ... everything is ancient history to a twelve-year-old .... but, I believe, to most people in America then. The countless veterans had come home, and while many individuals had to deal with the traumas of war, the vast majority of them put the war behind them in various ways: went on to school on the GI Bill or got on with starting families, bought homes, and renewed their lives. Many of the men and women in my parents' generation had changed during the war, but most for the better. Travel and combat had brought some half-sensed maturity to the men; work and participation in the war effort had brought some inexpressable confidence and widening of horizons to the women. America had changed forever-gone forever was the isolationist, essentially rural nation recovering from the trauma of the Depression. I was born into the world's greatest superpower. We had the Bomb, economic prosperity, an unlimited future, and a young president who promised a New Frontier.
World War II was ancient history. Fifteen years had passed since our victory over the dictatorships, and even the brutal dress rehearsal of Korea hadn't changed our optimism. The real war was long ago and far away.
As I write this, fifteen years have passed since the last Americans fled Vietnam. Seventeen years have gone by since we withdrew our fighting forces. Two decades-a fifth of our century-have elapsed since the height of our involvement there. Yet, I feel, we're just beginning to find some collective peace of mind about Vietnam.
I suppose someone has suggested the parallel (it may be a cliche by now, for all I know), but it occurs to me that the stages of our national response to the trauma of Vietnam closely reflect the classic stages of response to the death of a loved one or the reaction to learning one has a terminal illness. just look at.our movies about Vietnam over the past twenty years.
First, denial: No major films. Nada.
Then anger: The cathartic "Coming Home" mental rewrites where the veterans were either anti-war martyrs or nutcases, followed by the revisionist fantasies of Rambo and his clones.
Then depression: The one brilliant depiction of the war was "Apocalypse Now,' but Coppola jumped a stage in our recovery cycle so his effort was shunned. If he had waited until after we'd sickened of our Rambo fantasies, the film would have been received quite differently.
Finally, acceptance: 'Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacker and "Casualties of War" and the other post-trauma films have--despite the ballyhoo to the contrary little content, less philosophy. What they do have is a shockingly correct texture--something quite close to the real smell of sweat and crotch rot, something surprisingly near to the actual language and true fatigue and terrible claustrophobia of a patrol in the boonies, something almost right about the fear that rises from the actors on the screen and spreads to the audience like the stench from a day-old corpse.
And so, after two decades and with an entire new generation which has grown up bored with the whole topic, after more changes in the texture of daily life than we can imagine or accept, I think we're finally beginning to fee~-if not really understand-the true dimensions of the terrible national traffic accident that was Vietnam.
But for some people, that's just the beginning of the process.
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E-TICKET TO 'NAMLAND
The twenty-eight Huey gunships moved out in single file, each hovering a precise three meters above the tarmac, the sound of their rotors filling the world with a roar that could be felt in teeth and bones and testicles. Owe above the treeline and gaining; altitude, the helicopters separated into four staggered V-formations and the noise diminished to the point where shouts could be heard.
"First time out?" cried the guide.
"What?" Justin Jeffries turned away from the open door where he had been watching the shadow of their helicopter slide across the surface of the mirrored rice paddies below. He leaned toward the guide until their combat helmets were almost touching.
"First time out?" repeated the guide. The man was small even for a Vietnamese. He wore a wide grin and the uniform and shoulder patch of the old First Air Cav Division.
Jeffries was big even for an American. He was dressed in green shorts, a flowered Hawaiian shirt, Nike running sandals, an expensive Rolex comlog, and a U.S. Army helmet that had become obsolete the year he was born. Jeffries was draped about with cameras-, a compact Yashica SLR, a Polaroid Holistic-360, and a new Nikon imager. He returned the guide's grin. "First time for us. We're here with my wife's father."
Heather leaned over to join the conversation. "Daddy was here during ... you know ... the war. They thought it might be good for him to take the Vet Tour." She nodded in the direction of a short, solid, gray haired man leaning against the M-60 machine-gun mount near the door's safety webbing. He was the only person in the cabin not wearing a.helmet. The back of his blue shirt was soaked with sweat.
