Small presses have been willing to publish novels about soldiers whose jobs lack the direct excitement of danger faced by the grunt, or the exotic roles of lurps and special forces. The protagonist of Shaw's Nam is a searchlight crewman, and K. W. Gorsky Jr.'s Thirteen Months is about mortarmen, but only David Willson has had the courage to write a novel of the Vietnam War Zone about a rear echelon clerk-typist assigned in 1966 to the complaints department at the USARV headquarters at Tan Son Nhut.
Certainly it is a story that should be told because it its the story of most Vietnam veterans. Even at the peak of the American war effort only some hundred thousand soldiers were in direct combat roles. So for every soldier in combat, nearly five were in support roles. The experiences of these veterans have gone largely unnoticed in the fiction and films about the war (Good Morning, Vietnam notwithstanding). David Willson, tongue in cheek, states in the prologue:
This is how it was to be a REMF in Vietnam--the ice cream, the Coca Cola, the air conditioning, the clean starched jungle fatigues, and yes, the parades and the whores. I leave nothing out; it is all there. The typing and the saluting, too.
Willson chose a diary format for the novel which at first seems boring for an audience used to the blood and thunder in the jungle of most Vietnam War novels. For example, Willson's protagonist writes of his living conditions:
I'm living in the USARV compound near the Tan Son Nhut Airport which is heavily protected and quite safe, I'm told--no trouble from the Viet Cong. The barracks I live in has a concrete floor, metal roof, screens, and electric fans. Free movies are available every night. (6)
The day by day entries that record the minutia of office routine and the domestic concerns of off-duty time seem trivial. And they are. Willson's protagonist writes about the movies and television, shows that he watches most evenings, about the troubles he has with the Vietnamese laundry losing his fatigues periodically, about the mama san mismatching his shoes that he has left out to be polished, about the food (cheeseburgers, french fries, malted milks and ice cream) he can get at the Ton Son Nhut USO, about the trials of pulling guard duty or Task Force 5 duty (clerks and support personnel running about in the night with their M-16s on alert getting wet and dirty), about the day by day activities and petty jealousies of his office and the officers and other clerical personnel who work with him. Never once in the novel does Willson's protagonist directly experience the violence of the War. There are no accounts of bombings, of battles, of casualties. In fact, he notes that if it weren't for the accounts of the War on the radio and in the Saigon Daily News the violence " . . . is a side of the war I'd miss entirely" (26). Willson makes this point beautifully with the use of juxtaposition which is one of his most effective techniques in the novel. The entry for 1 November 1966 is a case in point:
I'm sitting in the hooch performing my duties as barracks orderly, namely doing nothing. Other than a runaway monkey, no excitement. I've been listening to all the excitement downtown, broadcast on the radio. Quite a bit of trouble. But it's National Day and trouble was expected. It's a lesson that we're really an island in a country controlled by the VC. They had a company or so downtown with several (6) hundred pounds of plastique explosive.
This morning I dug out my field equipment for the first time and discovered I'm missing a helmet liner. Also I polished my belt buckle. I'm sitting here in a T-shirt drinking an RC with the wind blowing on me very comfortably. (41)
Willson's choice of an epistolary format for the novel is, however, a careful choice and one that succeeds in pulling the reader into the world of his protagonist. Willson's protagonist is a callow youth whose unjaundiced eye records what he experiences and thinks without seemingly recognizing differences in importance. This becomes one of Willson's most effective narrative techniques in the novel--the juxtaposition of observations by a naïve narrator. It is the source of the humor in the novel that is one of the most entertaining aspects of the work and is very much in the tradition of American humor. Our Innocent Abroad provides delightfully incisive comments on the war through his diary entries. For example:
Today was another easy day. I spent the day revamping my file system for the files inspection due next week. Lt. Co. Prince asked me today what the big folder of cases was that sat on my desk. I told him it was cases in suspense. He said that he thought there was a daily suspense system file in the file cabinet. I said yes there was, but that there were two interdepartment file systems that I used for suspense. The one on my desk consisted of cases that had individual unspecified suspense dates except for impending ones. The file cabinet contained all cases with specified suspense dates, also unspecified suspense dates that were impending. Also, I said any cases with unspecified dates that are brought to his attention, action taken and re-suspended are put in the daily suspense file in the cabinet. He asked why it was done that way. My answer: so that I don't have to look through 50 to 75 suspended cases in a daily suspense file that is arranged non-numerically, but chronologically. Because the folder on my desk is arranged numerically, so that when he asks for a case by name before its suspense date has arrived I can look up the name in my card index and find the number and look up the case from the folder on my desk unless it's in the daily suspense file, has been filed in completed cases, on purpose or by accident, or is in Prince's desk or has been accidentally stapled to another case and misfiled or a million other things. Prince (said to Major Tief sitting nearby): "Well, that's what I get for having a PFC with a college degree working for me." Then he asked does it work. And I said yes. But the catch is that no one else can find anything or even have it explained to them, so I'm indispensable. I'm not so dumb, I don't care what…
"What's New Pussycat" is on tomorrow night in the new theater and it costs 35 cents. "North by Northwest" was on tonight.
What does it all mean? Are the VC gallant fighters for liberty against filthy economic imperialists? Or are the gallant Americans rooting out the black evil of communism and all that rot? It's murder on both sides with both sides wronger than hell. (114-115)
His contact with the Vietnamese is very limited; he does not make any excursions into Saigon and the only death he sees is a drowned Vietnamese boy--seen from a passing bus (17-18). His war is one of typing and filing and putting up with the nonsense of military life. The objective reality of the day by day activities is offset, however, by a fantasy theme that runs counterpoint to the rest of the novel. Willson's knight-errant protagonist, a poor loony boy, arriving in Vietnam sees a vision when another soldier points out Marshal Ky's bungalow from the bus taking them to the 90th Replacement Battalion:
I caught a glimpse of a purple interior and then a perfect Asian face was framed in the window. Her sloe eyes caught mine and held me in thrall. (3)
He has volunteered for the crusade in Vietnam to escape some unspecified blots on his escutcheon from his previous duty station in Italy (7). Madam Ky becomes his Dulcinea, his sweet princess to rescue from a tower; he fantasizes about her, writes her passionate love poems which he fastens to the door of the Ky bungalow in the dead of night. He longs to perform some heroic deed to catch her attention: He speculates:
If I were sent to the place where the battle is, don't think for a moment that I wouldn't try for one of them bronze things, though. It would look damn good on my record. (130)
His Excaliber is a switchblade knife that he self-consciously purchases from a shop in Saigon.
One day it may come in handy. I could be a hero. It could give me an edge, the unexpected advantage which could make all the difference. (31)
But he is overwhelmed with indecision. Seeing a film causes him to consider his own situation
--no wife and somewhat obsessed with another man's. That's the problem with me. That "somewhat" says it all. Otherwise I'd act. DO SOMETHING! But what? I wish the Forces would show me a sign. (120)
But he doesn't act except to pin doggerel to her door and telephone the Ky household unsuccessfully. He fantasizes jealously of the domestic life of Ky and Darling Mai preferring not to imagine them
. . . unzipping each other's jump suits and collapsing to the floor to writhe around in a sexual manner. But with a house full of children, that actually must be seldom. (81)
He even becomes petulant thinking of his beloved Mai as
the spoiled brat in her Go-To-Hell jumpsuit. My Darling. My stewardess War Baby. (91)
His independence comes on the Fourth of July 1967 when he plans to accost His Darling when she visits her dressmaker, convince her of his love and carry her off to America where she can set up a boutique and they can live in bliss happily ever after.
Surely his offer to take her away from this war-torn country, this rotting emerald of the East, will not fall on deaf ears. (311)
5 July 1967, Wednesday
Yesterday all my plans went awry. Hooligans (more likely VC) made an attempt on My Darling's life. I intervened--reflexes nurtured on John Wayne and Audie Murphy films causing me to valiantly soak up a bullet intended for the perfect body of my Jungle Princess, or maybe for her bodyguard. I suppose it could have been fired by accident, but anyhow I caught it. In the scuffle I somehow managed to get out my switch-blade and stick the miscreant (in a non-vital spot) with it. (311-312)
His escape into fantasy is as valid as Paul Berlin's. REMF Diary allows us to see the war from a different angle. It is clearly an important addition to the canon of Vietnam War fiction.