If Old Napalm Sticks to Kids, What About New Napalm?
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Robert M. Neer. Napalm: An American Biography. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013. viii + 310 pp. $29.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-674-07301-2. Reviewed by Roger Chapman Published on H-War (July, 2013) Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University) A few short years after the fall of Saigon this palm sticks to kids.” I did not ruminate over the reviewer spent most of a U.S. Army hitch with the words (as all that mattered was fnishing the run 1st Ranger Battalion. The legacy of Vietnam per‐ in order to return to the barracks, shower, and meated the Jody calls we Rangers sang during our head for breakfast chow), but that Jody call, in its morning PT runs. As might be expected, napalm various renderings, suggests moral uneasiness was the theme of some of this macho poetry. One over the use of napalm as a weapon of warfare. version went: “F-4 Phantom fying low / VC village Anyone who reads Robert M. Neer’s Napalm: down below / Dow Chemical don’t give a shit / na‐ An American Biography will be forced to consider palm sticks to kids.” We would repeat the latter whether napalm bombing is ethically justifiable. line, shouting with extreme callousness while em‐ This is an excellent work, providing a definitive phasizing the word sticks: “napalm sticks to kids, history of a controversial instrument of war. napalm sticks to kids.” Here we were seemingly However, like a similar volume on the atomic accusing the military-industrial complex of indif‐ bomb, the title of this monograph suggests that a ference. lethal invention has lifelike characteristics.[1] Bi‐ Another version of the song, however, ographies are supposed to be about people, not blamed the Vietnamese for exposing their chil‐ inanimate objects. The concept of “biography” dren to the fghting. That rendition referenced suggests autonomy and agency. The concept of two Vietnamese in a ffty-caliber machine gun pit “American” biography is all the more problematic, and a “baby sucking on mama’s tit.” The conclu‐ at least for an American reader who has a healthy sion was that the Viet Cong, who would allow a appreciation for Americans. Personification is evi‐ mother and baby to man an antiaircraft position, dent in Neer’s pronouncement, “Napalm was born “will never learn” that “napalm sticks to kids, na‐ a hero but lives a pariah” (p. 4). Later, when pointing out that the 1967 Israeli attack on the H-Net Reviews USS Liberty was carried out with napalm bombs noncombatants, had sought cover at a temple (representing the frst time napalm had ever been complex. According to Neer, the importance of used against the United States), the author pro‐ Ut’s photograph is how it serves as “an intimation claims, “Napalm had turned upon its creator for of [American] national defeat, as much as a the frst time” (p. 90). Such imaginative language record of individual tragedy” (p. 148). However, can be like the napalm Jody calls, deflecting re‐ the photograph reinforces the refrain that “na‐ sponsibility. palm sticks to kids.” Outrage preceded this inci‐ When a weapon of warfare gets endowed dent, as in January 1967 when the general Ameri‐ with heroic or villainous qualities, there is the can public frst learned about napalm attacks on risk of the moral gaze fxing on the wrong thing. South Vietnamese civilians after articles appeared To Neer’s credit, by the time his work fnishes un‐ in the New Left periodical Ramparts and women’s packing the history of napalm--from the lethal magazines such as Redbook and Ladies' Home gel’s frst test explosion in a pond on the campus Journal. of Harvard University to the United Nation’s Con‐ The fallout from such media attention was vention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), Dow Chemical suffering damage to its name Protocol III, which declared as a war crime the brand. “By 1968,” Neer explains, “napalm’s identi‐ use of incendiary weapons against a “concentra‐ fication with the horrors of the Vietnam War, and tion of civilians” (p. 165)--the reader is forced to by extension Dow Chemical, was complete” (p. consider the ethical aspects. Shockingly, prior to 142). In May of that year protesters, led by clergy, Neer’s work the best source to read up on napalm showed up in force at Dow’s annual meeting to was Wikipedia.[2] voice moral outrage. In March of 1969 a group led Predictably, Neer begins with Nick Ut’s 1972 by Catholic priests broke into Dow’s Washington, AP photograph, “The Terror of War.” This black DC, office, sabotaged equipment, splattered hu‐ and white photo documents the tragic incident in man blood on the walls, and posted photographs which Phan Thi Kim Phúc, a nine-year-old Viet‐ of children who had been injured by napalm namese girl, was hit with napalm. This haunting strikes. Neer suggests that when the napalm con‐ still image shows the victim running down a dirt tract came up for renewal later that year, Dow road, arms stretched out at her sides and mouth Chemical purposely submitted a losing bid in or‐ open in what everyone recognizes to be evidence der to get out of the business of manufacturing of excruciating pain. The image is eerily reminis‐ the controversial gel substance. cent of The Scream, the modernist painting by Ed‐ Although invented at Harvard in 1942, na‐ vard Munch. Ut went on to win a Pulitzer Prize palm has a genealogy that dates back to ancient for best spot news photograph of the year while times because it is a type of incendiary substance. the cruelty of napalm seared the collective con‐ Flaming arrows and cauldrons flled with coals, sciousness of humanity. Many are probably un‐ sulfur, and pitch were part of warfare in the days aware that this napalm attack was carried out by of old. In 69 BCE “liquid fre” (p. 18) was used for South Vietnam and not the United States, but ev‐ the frst time in combat; the defenders of Samosa‐ eryone knows Americans were the suppliers of ta, a city on the Euphrates in what is present-day the jet and the napalm that made the attack possi‐ southeastern Turkey, threw “flaming mud” (or ble. maltha) to successfully repel a Roman assault. In‐ Unlike the Jody call mentioned above, Kim cendiaries were later used by both Byzantine and Phúc was not behind a machine gun with her Arab commanders. By the mid-1200s, however, mother--rather, the little girl and her family, all the introduction of gunpowder via the Chinese 2 H-Net Reviews largely rendered liquid fre obsolete. Some fve sives. And water could not extinguish the fres centuries later, inspired by Indian rockets, the they set. British inventor William Congreve developed a As explained by Neer, this is the context in shell with incendiary capability. Subsequent which napalm was developed. Although an incen‐ British attacks on the French, the Danish, and the diary, what makes napalm different is that it is a Americans were conducted with the ever-advanc‐ gel incendiary. Generally, the gel substance is ing incendiary rockets. The British bombardment made from soap, which is mixed with thickened of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry in 1814 inspired the petroleum and magnesium. The gel enables the “Star-Spangled Banner,” with the words “the rock‐ fire produced from an explosion to stick on tar‐ ets’ red glare” being a direct mention of the incen‐ gets and burn at extremely high temperatures. diary attack. But subsequent developments--im‐ Louis Fieser, the Harvard chemistry professor proved artillery accuracy with greater range (due who is credited with inventing napalm, was in‐ to the rifle grooving inside gun barrels)--made spired by an explosion at a DuPont paint factory rockets with incendiary devices less useful in involving a sticky substance that was mixed with warfare. paint pigment: divinylacetylene. Fieser, with as‐ Neer seems to date the modern era of incendi‐ sistance from E. B. Hershberg, frst thought this ary warfare to World War I with the German in‐ material might have some hidden explosive capa‐ vention of Flammenwerfer (flamethrowers) and bility, but what was discovered was its unusual Zeppelin aircraft that dropped incendiary bombs stickiness. In the words of Fieser: “The experience on London. The British invented faming bullets suggested the idea of a bomb that would scatter to shoot down the German dirigibles. British, large burning gobs of sticky gel” (p. 15). French, and American inventors developed fre‐ Meanwhile, the German paratroopers effec‐ bombs made of thermite and powdered alu‐ tively made use of famethrowers--weapons large‐ minum. Overall, these developments were not as ly considered a failure during WWI--to capture a important as men in the trenches. However, dur‐ fort in Belgium in 1940. Taking note, Americans ing the subsequent Spanish Civil War, “Airplanes developed a famethrower that shoots a long restored incendiary weapons to their medieval stream of burning napalm. This weapon was frst pride of place” (p. 24). The infamous 1937 Nazi used during the Sicily campaign (August 1943). bombing of the Basque town of Guernica, perhaps Four months later, on an island near Papua New most remembered from the angry Pablo Picasso Guinea, Americans introduced the napalm painting (titled Guernica), was a case of an incen‐ flamethrower in the Pacific theater (burning Japa‐ diary air attack on civilians. That same year the nese defenders hiding in a cave). During the war Japanese frebombed Shanghai, killing “tens of Americans, using nearly 8,000 portable thousands” (p. 24). The frst sustained incendiary flamethrowers, expended one million gallons of bombing was the London Blitz of September 7, napalm.