I write all the time. It is what I do, both for a living and for fun. I write to my friends using email, holiday cards and even hard copy (yes, honest to God letters). I prefer the hard copy letters, and I write them with a fountain pen. For people who write a lot, a fountain pen is a valuable tool, as it eases the pressure on one's fingers. A ballpoint requires pressure, while, after you get good at it, the fountain pen can be held lightly and allowed to glide across the paper. Good paper is important, like Rhodea or Cambridge produces, not that dime store junk. Anyway, when you write, even though you do write for an audience, that audience is never very large...the one that sits in the bleachers of your mind while you concentrate, anyway. My first novel comes out in June of next year and it will have a large readership, I am sure. Much larger than the small band I conceive of writing to when I am at work. That band has no faces, no real identity at all. It is composed of young and old, male and female, although I do not consciously see the audience at all (or maybe I would be writing from within an institution). On my blog here, I write thinking of only a very few readers, yet my work somehow permeates farther than I imagine. And that always takes me by surprise. I have received comments from people as well known as Krauthammer (he was really pissed at what I had to say about him), William Kristol (he was even more pissed) and a whole bunch of others. I never get any response from important people who agree with me or like what I have written. I wonder why that is.
I just found out this morning, from Herbert's column in the New York Times, that the Iraq and Afghanistan Veteran's of America (IAVA) is running new ads about post traumatic stress in order to get veterans so suffering to seek help or view their site. The ad is a graphic portrayal of an Army veteran in his combat fatigues wandering an Airport by himself. All alone. He appears lost until he encounters an ex-Marine in civilian attire who greets him: "Welcome home, man," the Marines tells him. I read the column, and then smiled. My short story, called Daisy, and published here weeks ago on this site, has made it into the big time! Oh, you could read my story (about a returning Army veteran at the Phoenix airport encountered by an ex-Marine in civvies) and conclude that it was simple coincidence that the ad by the agency hired by IAVA is so similar to elements of the story, but come on! Nope. They stole 'Daisy.' Those writers at the ad agency are probably not veterans, and, even if they are, they do not have PTSD. So they went online and started looking for stuff that might help them portray the emotional expression of the disorder. Voila! They found Daisy. Their theft is everyone's gain. I bear no malice toward the fact that I was not credited. I have gotten used to that. I wrote "End of the Runway" and it became the movie "Eight Below." No credits. No money. I wrote my novel "The Boy" and sent it off to the same agent who represented Jean Auel. Part of my novel was lifted for her "Shelter of Stones," book. No credits. No money. It is just part of the business. You either pursue that sort of thing or get on with living and writing. And smile. At least I am good enough to be stolen from!
I had dinner last night with some very wealthy people. Our conversation turned eventually to the economy and the potential effects for the future. All of them have placed their hopes on Barack Obama. He is now their savior. Three weeks ago they wanted him assassinated. Now he is all they have. Ironic, don't you think? I feel like my Barack has been stolen from me. He was all mine, along with some of him being owned by the others who occupy this site, and I felt special. I sent money. I campaigned. I believed. I was doing all that while those white wealthy people (at dinner) were hating him and predicting utter social and financial disaster if he got in. Now he is their's. I guess that is the way it is supposed to work. But I felt a loss. I am not sure why. Oh, I don't think Obama can save us, or anybody he hires to help him. He is here to make us feel better while we go through this. I made one small attempt at dinner to let those people know that America is not mad yet. In Mexico the wealthy people are hiring more and more guards for their families and homes. It is not going to work. Many of the wealthy Mexicans are coming up here for safety, but that won't work for long. My recommendation last night was that these people ditch their Mercedes and Bentleys and huge fortress chateaus. The 'ratty robe and Motel Six' look is going to be in, and very soon. But they did not believe me. America is going to get mad. Really mad. And the people who took all this money are going to be their target. Unfortunately, there is also this combat term called collateral damage. So I shut up. I don't need to alone. A wealthy woman told me, a couple of years back, after I had made a telling verbal point in public about something she had said: "Jim, you can be right....and you can be alone." God, was she correct in that analysis.
I was right about Captain Ridley and the Bridge at Dong Ha. None of the whole mythical Marine Corps charade makes any sense at all. Ridley was a captain. Captains have enlisted guys to do their real grunt work. They do not haul 'five hundred pounds of explosives' on their back to blow up a bridge. Captains are ruling commanders in combat zones. They have 'people.' They don't use "TNT" and blasting caps to do the job either. Not in Vietnam and not in 1972 when this event occurred. They used composition B or C-4, which were stable and available all over the place (TNT is a weak, timid and a much more volatile pyrotechnic, much less the fact that we just did not have it in the field). And we didn't use blasting caps that we 'crimped with our teeth,' either. We used 'Det Cord,' another really stable way to set off explosives in the field (if you crimp blasting caps with your teeth you will soon have no teeth). The story that continues to circulate is idiotic, like all urban myths. It falls completely to pieces when you apply any scientific study to it. Then, after all the explosives were set, Ridley blew up the bridge. That was it. Oh, and he got the Navy Cross for it. For extreme heroism in combat. The entire SeaBee force of WWII should have gotten the Navy Cross, time after time, as they blew up many many more bridges all over the place. But Vietnam was special. We did not have any eventful things to do. We just sort of muddled around in the jungle and shot what moved, or shot through the brush at something that shot at us. And we needed a mural entry for the wall at West Point. And we needed some entry for our piece of mythology (we Vietnam Vets, I mean). So we have "Captain Ridley and the Bridge at Dong Ha." Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick would be just as applicable, but not nearly as dramatically moving.
So, I have received bad mail for that analysis. I am not of the "Marine Corps fabric," and I have "tread upon the great traditions of the United States Marine Corps." And so on. Well, all you detractors, and since I really do have PTSD, I have this to say. I was there. I was that Marine Combat Veteran you hold yourself out to be. I bled across that field outside of An Hoa. I spent that year of surgerie'd nightmare in Japan afterwards. And I don't buy phony war stories whatsoever, although I seldom comment on them because of this kind of reaction to my comments. I was never a Marine like you and I am not an ex_Marine like you.
I love my country and the Corps. But I love Christmas, Thanksgiving, Barack Obama, Lake Geneva, Kahala Beach, licorice, prime rib, Harvey, my cat, and much much more, as well. And I love the truth, whenever and wherever I can find it. That truth, outside of the hard sciences, is damned hard to come by, if you have not yet noticed.
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