Sounding Off: Folksong, Poetry, and Other Cognitive
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SOUNDING OFF: FOLKSONG, POETRY, AND OTHER COGNITIVE DISSONANCE FROM THE AMERICAN WAR IN VIETNAM A Dissertation by MATTHEW KIRK IRWIN Submitted to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Chair of Committee, Terry H. Anderson Committee Members, David Vaught John Lenihan William Bedford Clark Head of Department, David Vaught December 2014 Major Subject: History Copyright 2014 Matthew Kirk Irwin ABSTRACT Among works treating Vietnam War history, few mention and none address extensively the folk culture that American and Vietnamese military forces produced. To bridge gaps between traditional and cultural primary sources, this study examines folk culture that the historiography has neglected: graffiti, folksongs, and poetry. Most were conceived and produced in-country, near in time to specific wartime experiences and their consequent emotions, thus lending them an emotional relevance and chronological proximity to Vietnam War history few other primary sources can boast. Graffiti, songs, and poems derived from specific historical contexts, registering social commentary and chronicling the cognitive dissonance that arose among combatants when their coveted, long-held, patriotic mythologies collided with wartime realities. These sources document the Vietnam War’s “inner-history”—the emotions, beliefs, concerns, and emotions of particular individuals, many of whom find voice virtually nowhere else in the historiographical canon. What folk culture lacks in terms of scope and scale vis-à-vis traditional sources, it abounds with in physical description, emotional narration, honesty, and transparency. Its value to historical inquiry lies in its tendency to pull no punches—ever. It animates and humanizes the personal histories of specific individuals while conveying historical truths concerning millions of anonymous masses who made up the Vietnam War’s cast of characters and who should always inhabit and animate its stories, giving voice to many who the bulk of the war’s historical record has previously overlooked. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... ii TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................... iii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER II AMERICAN GRAFFITI: THE KILROY TRADITION ........................ 16 Methodology ............................................................................................. 18 Raw Quantitative Results ........................................................................ 20 Qualitative Analysis ................................................................................. 23 CHAPTER III AMERICAN SONGS: LYRICAL LENS INTO WAR .......................... 66 CHAPTER IV AMERICAN POETRY: PART ONE ...................................................... 144 CHAPTER V AMERICAN POETRY: PART TWO ........................................................ 195 CHAPTER VI VIETNAMESE SONGS ........................................................................... 241 CHAPTER VII VIETNAMESE POETRY ....................................................................... 300 CHAPTER VIII CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................... 345 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................ 349 iii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION More than seventy years after the first official United States involvement in Vietnam, America’s longest war still captivates the consciousness of scholars and layfolk alike. 1 And as the U.S. continues to suffer the political, economic, diplomatic, and social consequences of its most recent quagmire wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, what can yet be learned about the American war in Vietnam will continue to hold significant relevance. In fact, even while America loses hundreds of World War II and Korean War veterans daily, and Vietnam vets come to predominate as the country’s most senior former combatants, works concerning Vietnam continue to proliferate. As of July 2014, searching the Library of Congress online catalog produced 1,302 different subject headings involving the term “Vietnam War.” Under the narrower yet still- broad subject heading “Vietnam War, 1961-1975,” 1,258 titles. In short, thousands of works examining virtually every imaginable theme on American involvement in Vietnam sag the shelves of the world’s largest active physical library. And yet, while audiences can find any number of perennially benchmark texts and specialized monographs as well as popular literature, fiction, poetry, music, and cinema treating the Vietnam War, scholars have scarcely approached anything remotely resembling a “last word.” And well they shouldn’t. Scholarly and popular works, regardless of 1 While most Americans use the term “Vietnam War” to designate either the conflict in Southeast Asia or that period of American involvement from 1965 to 1973, the Vietnamese people call that same period the American War. Though some readers may take issue with my choice, for simple ease of usage, I will regularly use the terms “American War in Vietnam,” “Vietnam War,” or simply “Vietnam” interchangeably. Whether “Vietnam” refers in my text to the place, the war, or the time period of U.S. involvement there should appear clear from surrounding context. 1 subject, always remain open for debate and further investigation, and understanding Vietnam remains both vital and pertinent to understanding not only that war but its continuing effects on everything from U.S. foreign policy formulations and considerations to the state of the American psyche—corporate and individual. Even with publication numbers mushrooming among the many historical subdisciplines (political, diplomatic, economic, military, and even social history), cultural history from inside the Vietnam War itself has received the least attention. In particular, cultural history concerning combatants remains historiographical territory into which few have ventured and fewer still have treated significantly or sufficiently. Consequently, examining a particular kind of historical primary sources to emerge from the war, what one might call folk-artistic texts or folk culture, is both timely and needed.2 Both American and Vietnamese combat participants and witnesses produced folk culture in various media before, during, and after the war to articulate their deep-seated 2 Although professional and academic folklorists may take issue with scholars outside the discipline appropriating their terminology (particularly terms so historically and perennially debated as “folk” and “folklore”), variations such as “folk-cultural,” and “folk-artistic” throughout this study should be understood as deriving from arguably the most straightforward definition of “folkore” ever articulated: “Folklore is artistic communication in small groups,” from Dan Ben Amos, “Toward a Definition of Folklore,” in Américo Paredes and Richard Bauman, eds. Toward New Perspectives in Folklore, (Austin: University of Texas Press for the American Folklore Society, 1972), cited from https://afsnet.site- ym.com/?page=WhatIsFolklore, (accessed July 3, 2014). When the term “folk” appears, it should be understood, too, in its simplest sense: those “small groups” to which Ben Amos refers, or herein, American and Vietnamese combatants and witnesses to the war. “Folklore” or “folk culture” refers to those artistic expressions various American and Vietnamese cultural groups used to communicate any number of sentiments, attitudes, beliefs, and concerns, and should not be construed to denote socioeconomic or other class distinctions. Neither should terms be confused with more popular usages of the term “folk,” e.g., the popular commercial phenomenon of “folk music” of the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, usage of “folk” and its derivatives throughout this work also adheres to Benjamin Botkin’s more situationally specific definition of folklore: “Folklore is a body of traditional belief, custom, and expression,… circulating chiefly outside of commercial and academic means of communication and instruction. Every group bound together by common interests and purposes [such as a nation’s armed forces], whether educated or uneducated, rural or urban, possesses a body of traditions which may be called its folklore. Into these traditions enter many elements, individual, popular, and even ‘literary,’ but all are absorbed and assimilated through repetition and variation into a pattern which has value and continuity for the group as a whole,” cited from http://folklore.missouri.edu/whatis.html , (accessed July 3, 2014). 2 sentiments about the war and their place in it. In short, they wrote, sang, drew, and scrawled their hearts out about it. Cigarette packs and C-ration crates, rifle stocks and canteens, tent flaps and foot lockers, artillery shell casings and whiskey flasks, even (or especially) human skin, all served as canvases for troops’ literary and visual self- expression. Soldiers’ graffiti popped up on troop transport ships, in barracks and latrines, on bombed out buildings, and on flak jackets and helmet liners—just about anywhere that would function as a tabula rasa for creativity or an outlet for emotional stress,