University of Virginia Library

Real Meaning

For the unhappy few left in
the Asian mud, the real
meaning of Vietnam goes
beyond even this
understanding of their
exploitation. It is something
more fundamental and more
personal than that. That night,
as I looked across the circle of
tents that held my friends like
tombs, I remembered the story
one of them had told me, a
young tousle-haired blond guy
from the Oklahoma dust bowl.

He was on a patrol no
different from this one, he
said, when as if by accident
they ran into ten or twelve
guerrillas. Instantly the guns
began their obscene coughing,
hissing, and spitting. He found
himself suddenly alone,
confronted by two other
human beings, "the enemy." In
a magic second-he didn't
know why-all the fear and
loathing that Americans are
conditioned to feel towards
Asians began to crack and split,
to rush away.