The Bequeathal of Fools
Image by Holly Mindrup
I was born in 1938.
In the eighty-four years of my life there have been five wars: WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. If we count the Cold War, then there have been six though I hesitate to count it since it was the one I was in, and no shots were fired in combat.
In January or February of 1958, when I was 20, just seven or eight months after I had completed my two-year tour of active duty as a USN Reservist, the opportunity presented itself for me to fulfill my heritage as a combat soldier.
My great-grandfather, George Orlando Lloyd, Sergeant Major, 17th Infantry Battalion, Michigan of the Grand Army of The Republic, fought four years in the Civil War; his grandson, my father, born in 1891, was in World War I, as was my distant relative Latham Eastman, an American Ace; his son, Latham Eastman, Junior, my godfather, was a torpedo bomber pilot in World War II; another distant relative was a Marine Colonel who fought in the Pacific and in Korea. Aside from him, Korea passed by the rest of my family because they were all too old or, in my case, too young.
The Korean War was over in 1954. I couldn’t enlist until January 1955, when I was seventeen. I did and steered a Destroyer in the Formosa Straits six miles off the China Coast before I knew how to drive a car.
And so, I saw the smallest of all notices on one of the bulletin boards at San Francisco State College that read, “Vets Only.” In my sublime ignorance, I considered myself a vet even though the government did not (I was not eligible for the GI Bill in those days). My war was not validated, and neither was I.
I went to the interview at the Presidio in San Francisco and met a Richard Widmark-looking Captain in the United States Army Airborne whose medals and rank I could read that my previous experience had taught me to recognize.
In 1958, the Captain said to me, “We’re looking for men who want to learn a foreign language, become experts in guerilla warfare, communications, and demolitions, who jump behind enemy lines and mingle with the populace. Does that interest you?”
It interested me, I told him.
Would you jump out of a plane? he asked me.
I don’t know until I get up there, I told him.
A Major was at my side, his face in mine. “You’re a very intelligent young man,” he said. “Transfer out of the Navy Reserve,” he said, “and into the Army Reserve. We’ll give you your rank as Corporal. In the summers we’ll send you to Fort Benning. We’ll pay your travel, your rate, and jump pay. You can continue your education.”
What was all that?
That was Green Berets, Vietnam. In 1958, five years before any advisors were sent, the Vietnam War was being prepped for and planned. Five years.
I went to Treasure Island and requested the transfer.
My military obligation was over on January 8, 1963. Before that date, I would have been in Vietnam as a Special Forces Advisor, and if I had lived, which is doubtful, I would have returned – given my personality, I shudder to think how and in what condition – especially if had my arms and legs. And face.
There is a God. The Navy would not release me.
When Vietnam finally did come, I had wised up a bit. I marched, not in the war, and not against it, really, but against the stupidity of my government that has mutated into egregious incompetence to serve the People. The People, of course, are equally to blame for our continuous pursuit of, as Gore Vidal said, “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” a disgusting paradox of slaughter whose legacy of loss and ruin has been inherited by us all.
I wrote a novel about all that: Legacy – the inheritance of war inherited by those who remain.
Peterjohn Carlyle Morrison is the protagonist. His Dad writes in a letter:
“These bastards should be killed in the wars they have caused. If I were able to make a prayer come true, it would be that all of those sons of bitches would stand alone, naked, and face the reality of war in its horror to the innermost depths of their bowels; you and I both know that shit and death, no matter what side you’re on, smell the same.”
Mrs. Warren, Peterjohn’s former elementary school teacher says:
“Douglas, my husband, fought in World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’. Obviously, it wasn’t. My son Randy was killed in World War II. His war killed Douglas. He lost all interest in living, and there was nothing I could do about that.”
Peterjohn himself discovers:
“He did not know what was being said, but he knew what he was seeing. The changing of regimes. Soon, there would be blood. If not today, tomorrow. If not tomorrow, another day. It would come. People would die. Be burned. Maimed. Hurt. And not even know. For a long time. Perhaps forever. Forever? Forever and a day. Here. Sitting. Still here. Back. Where it all began. The attempt to control destiny. The suit-and-tie Egberts in their leather chairs. Congress? Fuck them! President! Fuck him! Whoever he would be, it would be certain that he would be stupid. If he were not, they would kill him. As they had already killed one and his brother. And lied. As they were to those chanters and nonchalant passers-by who did not know how royally they were getting screwed. He wanted to close his eyes against their inevitable blood but could not. It was too lonely there.”
And in his isolation on the beach:
“He resumed his martial arts practice, drilling naked between high dunes close to the headlands at either end of the beach so that he arrived there mid-run and ready in his sweat, his nudity provoking a ferocity that alarmed him, but he could not contain it. He practiced, not against what had happened to him, but what was going to happen to those not yet born.”