University of Virginia Library

Robert Gillmore

Lieutenant Calley And
The Transparent Enemy

One reads the dispatches from
Fort Benning, Ga., ponders the
testimony that Lieutenant
Rusty Calley shot children to death
and doubtless wonders what kind
of man he is.

One supposes he is guilty of at
least some murder.

But I would guess, for many
reasons, that he is not at all an evil
man.

Lieutenant Calley is a graduate
of the Army Infantry Officer Candidate
School - what we called
sarcastically, in song, "the Benning
School for Boys."

And when I was there most
the men around me were like Lieutenant
Calley: men without the
self-direction for study and who
therefore dropped out of college
and therefore found in the Army
the purpose and discipline they
could not provide for themselves.

Mind-Breaking Absurdity

While they may have complained
about all the mind-breaking absurdity
of nearly constant cleaning
and polishing of everything in sight,
they nevertheless accepted it with,
one thinks, a secret bit of joy.

For they were working, you see,
for that precious "gold bar." They
had at last found a goal; and more,
they had found someone to tell
them precisely how and when to do
everything necessary to attain it.

They were men who adjusted
readily, who accepted "the program,"
who always obeyed and
who feared more than anything
being left behind "the program."
The other half of their wholeness
was the Army.

And then there are the Vietnamese.

Vietnamese Parasites

For them we have contempt and
suspicion. For to the American
soldier in Vietnam, all the Vietnamese
are parasites. Vietnamese
are "hooch maids," K.P.'s, laborers,
bar girls and prostitutes - or else
they clog the streets and high ways,
seeming to dare you to run them
over. Whatever they are the relationship
is always buyer-seller: they
provide and you pay. And they are
always wanting. And what you
don't give them they try to steal.

The Vietnamese I trusted as
much as I would trust a stranger
number less than half a dozen -
and even of them I was never sure.

One night I was in Hue taking
pictures for a story on the Nhi
Dong (Children's Festival) celebration.
The streets were thick with
crowds, and I was trying to watch a
camera and a pistol and forgot
about my wallet. It and its contents
are now, I presume, on the black
market.

Taking Pictures

Another time, also in Hue, I was
leaning out of a jeep taking pictures
when suddenly a little brown hand
grabbed the camera and started to
run away with it. Happily, the strap
was around my neck, but the
skinny culprit was gone almost before
I saw his face.

Every American in Vietnam can
tell a stories like these and dozens
more.

And this contempt and suspicion
easily turns into hatred.

Another story, more dire: A
friend, a forward observer, and a
couple enlisted men were patrolling
with an ARVN (Vietnamese) company.
My friend and his party
spotted a VC, platoon; so informed
the ARVN and proceeded to call in
artillery fire. Just before the firing
was to start, my friend turned
around and saw that the ARVN had
left - leaving three lightly-armed
GI's in the middle of nowhere
beside 30 enemy soldiers.

Endless Variations

These stories, too, have endless
variations. And they all come to
one point: that the ARVN are
invidious and incompetent.

When I first arrived in Vietnam
everyone was talking about the
"gooks" - a word I had heard for
the first time. I thought it applied
to the enemy VC. But no: it applies
to all Vietnamese, friend and
enemy alike. For friend and enemy
alike are regarded with logically
absurd equality, with contempt,
suspicion and hatred.

Building A Democracy

The Vietnamese, the ARVN -
those skinny, dirty, ugly, parasitic,
deceitful treacherous species whose
language is like the chatter of
monkeys - these "gooks" are
supposed to be our Allies, people
who are supposedly capable of
building a democracy in Asia, a
people whose military and political
efforts are supposed to be worthy
of the lives of 40,000 American
soldiers. The very words are so
monstrous they stick in the throat.

But these poor people, for
whom Americans must be killed,
are themselves so easy to kill.

For if Konrad Lorenz is to be
believed, our moral sense - or
whatever it is that which makes it
easy to "kill" a cabbage, a little
harder to kill a rat, harder still to
kill a dog and hardest of all to kill a
human being - that moral sense
places the "gooks" too often above
the level of dog but beneath that of
human being.

Friend Or Foe

And at whatever level they are
placed, no one knows until too late
whether the "gook" standing on
streets in Hue or in front of huts in
My Lai is friend or foe, or if he is
both or neither, or, if he would
steal your camera and sell it, would
he steal your secrets and sell them,
or if he is ready to drop a
homemade bomb into your pocket
after you give him some candy. For
in Vietnam, when the enemy is not
invisible he is transparent.

And so, in sum, it is not too
difficult to imagine a man like
Rusty Calley shooting down some
"gooks" after the "program" had
allegedly called for it.

All of this of course does not
exculpate any of those who may
have turned their weapons on the
people of My Lai. Law is precisely
to serve where the moral sense fails,
and in the interest of life, the law
should be enforced - which means,
if he is guilty, that lieutenant
Calley must be punished.

Bloody Hands

But the tragedy of My Lai and
its trial is precisely that Lieutenant
Calley and his men may be found
guilty and punished and the Army
and the nation may thus believe
that they have washed their bloody
hands.

For such a catharsis would be a
cleansing of only the tip of an
iceberg, as My Lai's big and small,
purposeful and accidental are the
way of war in Vietnam.

And the only escape from such
dilemmas is to leave them behind us
in Vietnam.