Missing from Action

Chapter 1

After spending almost nine months in the army, and the last three of them in the army stockade, I began to wonder if I would spend the rest of my future here. Well, at least being in the stockade was the safest place I found in the army as yet. And as I was wondering, my buddy, the lieutenant, came by to talk to me; his expression plainly showed suppressed excitement.

I have some real good news for you, he said.

You’re assigning me to the machine-gun unit.

No, that requires intelligence and level-headedness.

The federal pen?

He grinned. What would you like more than anything in the world?

A naked woman.

In ten days remind me to give you a couple of hot phone numbers.

You mean what I think you mean? My voice became excited.

I mean, he stated flatly, you will be out of here in ten days.

Out of the stockade? Or out of the army?

All the way, he smiled.

He pulled a chair over and sat down, motioning me to sit in the chair facing his. He sat there silently for a moment, his body bent towards me as if he were going to confide in me, conspiratorially. Finally he said, I suppose I should congratulate you, since you’ve been trying to get out of the army ever since you got in. But, in all honesty, I cannot bring myself, not even for friendship’s sake, to slap you on the back and say ‘go with my blessings.’

Your conduct in the army has gone against everything the army stands for and, I must say, everything I stand for. I befriended you, Bobby, because I recognized in you a certain spirit that would have been a great asset to our country had you channeled it in the right direction I thought, in time, you would adjust, that a sense of loyalty would prevail. First and foremost, I am an army man. This is my life and, as such, I have come to expect our citizens to be defenders of our country. If we can’t expect loyalty from our own countrymen, then we might just as well cave in and let another form of government rule us. You have blatantly shown complete disregard for all that is important in building and maintaining a strong army, and I cannot help but feel a sense of betrayal on your part.

Wait a minute now, I cried angrily. That’s heavy stuff! I was astonished—what I thought would be a friendly lecture turned out to be an assassination of my character. I am defending my country. Fighting the war in Vietnam is not defending my country. All that is, is throwing live bodies into a death. By protesting this war, and yes, risking the danger of being imprisoned for five years, I am one voice among millions out there who refuse to die for a cause we don’t believe in. To the military, we are just numbers. To us, the youth, we are living human beings. Loyalty? To take this risk is nothing if not loyalty. Loyalty to those who don’t have the nerve to openly fight the battle to pull out of this no-sense war.

He shook his head in negation. I don’t buy that, he commented, wryly. The only one you’re being loyal to is you. You’re out to save your own neck.

So? I quoted, to thine own self be true.

Causes, causes, he sneered. You call it ‘altruism.’ True altruism, my boy, is giving of yourself for the good of the majority.

The majority, I said, trying to maintain a cool I wasn’t feeling, is made up of youth fighting for basic principles of human dignity and of guys on the frontline fighting for their lives. It’s a shame when an elite minority, the government, dispenses with the lives of the majority simply by signing a few orders while they sit on their asses and view the war on television The uproar you hear is our only weapon. Hey, listen, those mass protests aren’t the result of formalized meetings and plans. The people you see are individuals each fighting in their own way to get our country out of participating in this war. We’re not really fighting the army. We’re fighting the government.

Look, he said with exaggerated patience, Vietnam is not the only issue. There’s SEATO and China. There’s the question of access and the United States. Why don’t you protesters read past the headlines?

Nuts. It’s Vietnam. Some jerked up little place nobody ever heard of. It wasn’t even on the map until Johnson decided to shove his big nose in and send our troops over.

You might consider Vietnam a sort of testing ground inasmuch as China is trying to see how much shoving around the West will take.

So who the hell wants to die on a ‘testing ground’? If Vietnam is not the main issue, that’s a damned good argument against sending us over. Dammit all, at least in other wars we could feed ourselves the jazz that we were making the world safe for democracy. What’s our excuse here?

America calls the bluff.

Yeah, I said dryly. After fourteen years ofbluffing, America’s being laughed right out of its olive greens.

In every war, there have been protesters and deserters, he said with authority, and you are just one person who doesn’t believe in the army way, while millions do.

Agreed. But this is the first war where the protesting has been done loudly and in a unified way by people like me.

You’re fortunate that your punishment here was not more severe.

I laughed, My punishment began the day I got my draft card. But I’ll thank my stars my struggle to get out of this crazy place paid off.

After he left, a feeling of extreme gladness overcame me. I was getting out of the stockade; I was getting out of the army. Then I thought back to how it all began, and how it all unfolded into the events you are about to read.

Chapter 2

March 1969. The war between North and South Vietnam was being felt in the United States and strange things were beginning to stir in the hearts and lives of America’s youth, inspiring spontaneous action, both individual and collective. It was as if something spiritual was bringing us together. We were the kids who grew up with little or no religious background. Our parents were the Depression children, the World War II martyrs, the quick-technological-change victims, the scoff-at-religion, and idolize-the-material set. We were the products of the two-car, one-and-a-half-bath cult. Shower daily, keep your carburetors clean, and no hardship will befall you.

In high school I majored in athletics and girls. Outstanding in both, I envisioned a fun-filled future comprised of athletic achievements and bodies beautiful. I worked steadily for a brokerage firm during high school and planned to continue at the firm during and after college. I bought my first car, brand new, and gifted my parents with three shares of stock at $60 per share, which promptly dropped to $24. But, Dad, buy now, I urged. It will go up again. So he bought and it dropped to $18. Never could make a killing.

Whatever it was during the sixties that impelled me, I quit my job and quit college. Mr. Sober, Mr. Steady, Mr. Straight, the guy most likely to succeed, the Babbitt of South Florida, the fellow who achieved the peak of his ambitions when he paid for a new car in cash, the guy who thought roughing it meant sand on the bathroom floor, that’s right, me—I dropped out, turned on, and tuned in and became one of the first Flower Children.

I was banding together with other kids and really enjoying life. We smoked pot. We did Acid. We reached for God and I saw him on a few occasions. We were embracing many religions; and kids who embrace four or five religions simultaneously can’t be all bad. Ban the bomb. Make love not war. Don’t kill those you can’t hate.

Every time he walks in the door, my mother wrote a friend, I see red. And green … and purple. I’m the only person I know who can have an hallucinogenic experience just by looking at him. He is a six-foot blend of primary colors: yellow hair, red beard, blue eyes, purple shirt, multi-colored pants, white teeth, and black feet. My son, the peripatetic rainbow, with a lot of pot at the end.

She had a great sense of humor. We argued about my new lifestyle. We debated the subject constantly, mainly under the banner: specific evils menacing society.

Meaning us, your parents? my mother would say.

Meaning the whole Establishment, I would argue. All of you are so preoccupied with the almighty dollar, you don’t know how to enjoy life.

Get a job, my father would yell, and we will enjoy life.

But wash your feet first. My mother had this streak of practicality.

You are really something, I would counter. The papers are full of Cambodia, environmental destruction, prisoners of war, mass murder, law injustice, jail brutality, knuckleheads in office, over-taxation, unemployment, a war that isn’t ours, rising prices on everything except the lives of your kids, and you sit there and tell me that what will make you enjoy life is me getting a job.

Yes, that’s it, my father would say. Basically, he was a simple kind of a guy.

A week later my draft notice arrived. I was to report to an induction center for my entrance tests. I took it all in stride, figuring—what would the military want with a longhaired, pot-smoking poet? But since the Vietnam War was raging, the government, I soon discovered, was not being very selective.

With mixed emotions of wonderment, confusion, fear, and excitement, I went to the induction center. To lend strength and enlightenment to my principles, I thought it only sporting to make at least one attempt to get out before getting in. I went to see a psychiatrist to share my views concerning the military. Peace, I told him, was a positive vibe and war, a negative vibe. With that he concurred wholeheartedly and wrote a note to whom it may concern that it was of his opinion military life would not be in my best interest. The military, however, was of the opinion that what was of the best interest for me was of no interest to them.

Despite my good intentions, I was unable to flunk my entrance tests. My body was exactly what the army was looking for—alive. I was prime beef for the army. There was no point acting mentally unbalanced, I had already proven I could write my name and stand in line.

Fleetingly, the thought crossed my mind—I could steal an act from my friend Phil, who tried it out before the military in his New York induction center and got a standing ovation. He had just completed his physical. Without waiting for the findings, he dashed from the doctor’s office, sprinted dawn a hall full of business offices, all the while letting rip a primal scream that