Are MOMA staff liberal?

Or only ignorant of American history?

Regarding a work entitled F-111:

“Rosenquist began the painting F-111 in 1964, in the middle of the Vietnam War (Emphasis added). He positioned his main subject, the F-111 military plane, which was in development at the time, flying through fragmented images of consumer products and references to war. Through its expansive network of colliding visual motifs, F-111 addresses the connections between the Vietnam War, income taxes, consumerism, and advertising.”

https://www.moma.org/explore/f111

“…in the middle of the Vietnam War.”

http://www.americanwarlibrary.com/vietnam/vwatl.htm has American military in Vietnam 15 years -- 1959-73. For 1964, the total of US forces was 23,300.

Well, why let some silly facts get in the way when one’s focus is on the self-decided connection between “the Vietnam War, income taxes, consumerism, and advertising.” The MOMA writer might well have agreed with Mick Jagger on “who killed Kennedy.”

A way to look at Democratic/Progressives: “I am not pleased to meet you, because I know your name.”

The first time

Staff Sergeant Reid said it was a good shot, the gook running and fifty meters away.

“Where’d you hit him?” he asked.

Tom touched the center of his chest. “Right here. He was at an angle. The bullet went in at an angle. Probably right through his heart.”

Sergeant Reid nodded. “Good shot.”

Tom said, “He was on fire.” Sergeant Reid looked at Tom. “That’s why I shot him when I did,” Tom said. “He was on fire. I mean, I would’ve shot him anyway, even if he hadn’t been on fire. But he was on fire.”

“Yeah,” Sergeant Reid said. “I saw him running through the napalm.”

“He cut left,” Tom said. “He was running fast.”

Sergeant Reid looked toward the black line, but not at it. “In Korea, Third Division, we went up a hill. Chinks were at the top. Artillery tore everything apart, but when we got near the top, a Chink jumped up, maybe seventy-five meters away.” He made a small shrug. “It was automatic, you know? I brought up my rifle, snapped shot him. Head shot. When we got to the Chink, he was lying face down, back of his head gone. I wanted to help him. I killed him, but I wanted to do something for him.”

Tom said, “I guess that’s the way it is.”

“The first time,” Sergeant Reid said, “the first man you kill, you want to do something for him. You know you can’t, but you want to anyway.” He lit a cigarette. “Willie Joe pissed at you?”

“Kind of.”

Sergeant Reid smiled. “He’ll get over it.”

“He said they’re supposed to fry. They fuck with us, they fry.”

“There it is,” Sergeant Reid said. “He’ll get over it.”

Every day

One step at a time. Put this foot in front of that foot, that foot in front of this foot. Forget about the heat. Ignore the pain that started five minutes after you moved out, the pain in the lower back, the pain that worked its way up your back, to your shoulders and you want to arch your back and transfer the pain somewhere else, except there is no other place, because every place hurts.

The hurt is the same pain you put up with yesterday, the day before yesterday, the same pain you will put up with tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. You will put up with the pain until the day, the hour, the minute you climb the ramp and get on the plane that takes you home. And when you climb the stairs on the ramp, you will take the pain with you, a passenger on your back.

You put up with the pain because you don’t have a choice. You put up with the pain just as you put up with the cuts and scrapes and bruises, chipped fingernails and the dirt and grime beneath what’s left of your fingernails, the dirt and grime that won’t wash out maybe until you’re in a place where civilized people don’t have that dirt, that grime.

Every part of you hurts, places you didn’t think could hurt. Your feet and ankles and knees, sure. You walk for a living, don’t you? That’s your sole purpose, to go from here to there, and the only way to get there is to walk. Every part that supports your feet and ankles and knees -- those parts hurt. Your fingers hurt. Your ears hurt. And your eyes, when you haven’t had enough sleep, when you know you could sleep all day and most of the night.

Every part of you hurts, okay?

Ben Noonen one day said, “My face hurts, Man. My face hurts.”

Phu Bat 2

Phu Bat is -- or was, I don’t know these days -- a small city on the coast of the South China Sea, population around 15,000. National Route 61 connected Phu Bat with Nha Trang to the north and Cam Ranh Bay to the south. Regional Highway 13 ran into town from the western mountains.

The 15,000 population did not include American soldiers and airmen, civilian engineers, representatives of the U.S. government and civilian volunteer organizations. You might think that there weren’t all that many American civilians in Vietnam. The books you read or the movies you saw most likely didn’t mention civilians other than State Department employees and CIA spies and killers.

Reality was, every department of the government had people in Vietnam, and Phu Bat was no exception. State and Labor, Interior and Justice, Agriculture and Post Office, Transportation and Treasury, each and every one intent on bringing civilization to the indigenous peoples.

The way the government saw it, if the indigenous peoples really believed in freedom and democracy, they wanted to be just like us, right?

So to make the indigenous peoples just like us, every American had his, or her, job to do, from the Labor Department people who organized pedicab unions, to the Post Office representatives, who taught the locals that neither wind nor rain nor sleet nor snow nor dark of night, etc. Okay, they left out the sleet and snow part, maybe added nor mortars nor ambushes will keep these couriers from their appointed rounds.

The State Department guys we figured were really spooks in disguise, although everybody was a spook of one kind or another.

Treasury people tried to keep the local economy from inflating out of control, attempting to stabilize the currency and all that. They were fighting a losing war, though. See, your South Vietnamese basically is a capitalist, believing that if you put in a little money on this end, you get more money at the other end. And, like good capitalists everywhere, the South Vietnamese types believed in cheating everybody.

Concepts of Vietnamese capitalism, with a bit of Confucianism added in, ran smack into ideas of American fair play. Americans had a sort of theoretical understanding of Confucianism -- the part of a place for everything and everything in its place -- but almost none of the whole.

Also, in trying to convince merchants of the evils of rampant inflation, Treasury people faced basic Oriental manners. Treasury people did not understand that merchants would show agreement when discussing economic theory, but at the same time hide their true thoughts. In short, Treasury people were told what they wanted to hear, then were surprised when actions did not match words. The funny part is, the Treasury Department people actually believed Vietnamese and Chinese merchants were telling the truth in negotiations and conferences.

Justice had its work, too, trying to set up an American-style police department and a court system.

Interior wanted to convince the local woodcutters not to destroy virgin forests; Agriculture brought in new kids of rice, gasoline-powered tillers to replace water buffalo, and diesel generators to supply electricity to villages.

Transportation Department people did do a good job on repairing district and regional highways, although forgetting that graveled roads and paved roads made movement of VC supplies much easier than before.

There were American women in Phu Bat, too. Round-eyes with the American Red Cross, YWCA and the Health Department. Their jobs were different, but all with one goal in mind -- civilizing the indigenous peoples.

The Red Cross girls -- Doughnut Dollies -- went where American soldiers were. Large base camps, artillery fire bases, Special Forces outposts -- anywhere GIs were stationed, Doughnut Dollies in teams of two or three would come out and supply a day when guys could remember crisp white blouses and blue skirts, blue eyes and green eyes and gray eyes, catch a small wisp of perfume, study brown hair and blonde hair, red or black. In the 407th Truck Company, I saw the Doughnut Dollies only when the women came onto the compound to catch a helicopter somewhere. The women from the YWCA and the Health Department I saw only when driving through town.

Other than the Doughnut Dollies, American civilians had little to do with us. We -- the military -- were an impediment, an obstacle between their good deeds and the indigenous peoples. Getting a helicopter to take American civilians somewhere or a truck to a village -- then the civilian departments needed us. Otherwise, as far as they were concerned, we should just stay out of the way and let them get on with winning the war.

(Phu Bat is a fictitious town between Cam Ranh and Nha Trang. On a previous post I said the fictitious Phu Bat was north of Nha Trang; actually it is south.)

I dig rock'n'roll bayonet training

On the road to Little Rock last week and I popped in a CD British invasion type, called Mod Rock or something, somebody word-playing or maybe didn’t know those are separate beings, as in the John Lennon pseudo interview in Help, winsome reporterish girl asking, “Are you a Mod or a Rocker?” and Lennon replying, “I’m a mocker.”

The songs were pretty good, 1963-67, of the best of times/worst of times decade. Some had it worse than others – Vietnam in person vs. Vietnam in protest, VC guerrillas or DC cops; sucking some PX beer on small times off with guys your age who, like you, wear jungle fatigues or sucking MJ smoke with a cute thing wearing a mini-skirt or tight jeans, after a hard day of sign-carrying in the continuing struggle against baby killers and other Enemies of The People; going out into the heat every day, busting jungle, watching for people who want to kill you or going to class every day and saying that if we just talked about things we would fix all the shit that’s wrong with the world and getting good smiles from cute things in mini-skirts or tight jeans. Yeah, at times the world sucks.

The CD has a sing-along quality, if you are of an age and still remember all the words. A couple of the songs I specifically remembered because of place and time – Bus Stop heard at Fort Meade in summer 1966, Sunday afternoon riding around that part of Maryland with Gene Johnson and we did our best at ridding the world of a six-pack of whatever beer we had bought at a liquor store in Boomtown; and Sunshine Superman, played on a Vietnamese radio station in December 1966 and the DJ was a sweet-sounding young woman who dedicated all songs to brave allies saving the Vietnamese people from godless Communists. It was to chuckle at, but not to disparage through laughter.

Singing along with some of the songs became remembering other things, related things if you’ve been there.

“There are two kinds of bayonet fighters! The quick and the dead!”

Vertical butt stroke, horizontal butt stroke. Short thrust and recover, MOVE! Long thrust and hold, MOVE!

And you have to yell while butt stroking or thrusting – “YAHH!” or something. If you have to stick somebody with a bayonet at the end of a rifle, chances are you won’t do it silently. And, yelling produces more impetus.

Here’s the deal: You have to BELIEVE in what you are doing. You have to BELIEVE that your bayonet is all that stands between you and death. The quick and the dead, Soldier! The quick and the dead. You have to BELIEVE!

Hand-to-hand combat, you’re squared off against a friend. You learn the fighting position, hand movements, foot and leg movements. Kick, strike, throw, take the enemy’s leverage and use it against him. You’ll throw some and your friend will throw some and you’ll both look like you know what you’re doing. And you yell a lot.

The end.

Phu Bat

Rick told Jake how Major Pancik got to be executive officer of 407th Truck Company in Phu Bat.

“Before he got here, he commanded some ash and trash stateside battalion,” Rick said.

Rick and Jake were on perimeter duty, occupying a sandbagged bunker on the airfield’s northwest perimeter. Likelihood of VC or NVA sappers coming through the wire was somewhere between slim and non-existent, but for appearance sake, all bunkers were manned between 30 minutes before sundown and 30 minutes after sunrise.

“Something like the 45th Messkit Repair Battalion,” Rick said. Rick and Jake had drawn short straw on bunker assignment, which, in the unusualness of things that made Phu Bat SOP, meant they got first choice. The bunker was dug in almost underneath a big tree that shaded the bunker and ten meters all around. The tree looked like an oak, but it was some other kind, some foreign, Vietnamese tree.

“The 45th, or whatever it was, was at Fort Meyer,” Rick said. He took a Budweiser from the Coleman cooler and the church key that was attached to the handle with a small chain. The wind changed direction, blowing in easy from the bay. The sun was above the western hills, now about 10 minutes from going down. Rick punched two holes in the can.

“Before Pancik got to the 45th, the NCOs and officers pitched in a few dollars each and set up a coffee and donut stand in headquarters building. They made enough money to buy more coffee and donuts, pretty soon started selling sandwiches.” Rick took a short swig, then continued. “Well, with selling sandwiches, they had a good stash of what they call petty cash. All off the books, of course.”

“I’ve heard the terms,” Jake said.

“Sure,” Rick said. “Anyway, when Pancik was assigned there, the sergeant major explained how things worked, and Pancik said he didn’t have any problems with the petty cash fund as long as inspectors didn’t find out, and as long as he could deny he knew it existed. But, our good major is a little greedy.”

“You got that right.”

“Yeah. What he started doing was, he’d stop by the sandwich stand and ask the Spec Four or Pfc. if he could cash a twenty-dollar check. Whoever was running the stand that day would always say, ‘Yes, sir.’ I mean, what else is a Spec Four or Pfc. going to say? Battalion commander asks something like that, you say, ‘Yes, sir.’ Then, Pancik would check his pockets and find out he forgot his check book. ‘Just let me have twenty, and I’ll pay it back tomorrow,’ he’d say.”

“But tomorrow never came.”

“Oh, it did,” Rick said. “But not the way the major figured.” He settled into the story then, grinning. “There was a second lieutenant got assigned to the battalion. A by-the-book second lieutenant. He found out Pancik was taking money, but he -- the lieutenant -- was in the same position as the Spec Four or Pfc. There wasn’t shit he could do.”

“But...”

Rick nodded. “Yeah, there’s a ‘but.’ Seems like this second lieutenant had an older brother, a major in the IG office at the Pentagon.”

“Ah-ha,” Jake said.

“You got it. The lieutenant told his brother, the IG major conducted a surreptitious investigation, off the books. He took the information to his boss, a full-bull colonel. The colonel did some checking around of his own. Course, they couldn’t court-martial the major for stealing twenty dollars five or six times.”

“They could have,” Jake said. “But it wouldn’t look good for the army.”

Rick slapped his knee. “Now you’re thinking like a soldier. The upshot was ...”

“Major Pancik gets transferred here, as executive officer.”

“Riiight,” Rick said, nodding. “And as purchasing officer, with five thousand dollars a month overwrite authorization.” He grinned. “Ain’t the army wonderful?”

(I made up the name Phu Bat, but it turns out there is a town by that name, in North Vietnam, SE of Hanoi. My Phu Bat is north of Nha Trang and home of the 407th Truck Company.)

The things that mattered

A long time later, I would think:

There was about the place a savagery that took all who entered, a tempestuous rage that clawed at the calm hearts of reasonable men. On some, the depravity fell as a light cloak, to be discarded when the sun of civilization again touched their shoulders. On others, the claws sank deep, darkening hearts and minds, freeing the barbarity that had so long drooled inside.

John held down the gook and said, "Kill him! Kill him, goddammit!" and I slid my knife beneath the gook’s ear and into his brain. It was an easy thing to do, a reasonable action of the time. That I threw up what was in my stomach made the event no less necessary. That John threw off the gook and fell to his hands and knees, cursing what we had done, made the killing no less reasonable. By then we had thrown up or thrown off all that was unnecessary. There were things that mattered and things that did not, and of those that did not matter, we gave little thought.

I cannot remember the things that did not matter. To live mattered, and all the words and pictures and reasons that made survival our only goal.

We thought of young women, daydreamed about girls we had known, and we put the thoughts into words, although the words did no justice to our dreams. Even those of us who in lives past, unnecessary lives, had the ability to speak our thoughts, now discovered our words lacked explanation.

We would say, "There was this girl . . . " and talk of eyes and breasts and legs, but even in our own minds we couldn't see her, not even a rational picture, only a dim, faceless figure that could have been any girl. We could speak of, say, a 1966 GTO convertible, baby blue, leather seats, 389-CID, four-in the-floor, and those to whom we talked knew. They had seen pictures of the car we described.

There were other pictures, other words. Experts of food never eaten, of whiskies and liquers never tasted, we described to each other restaurants never visited, of tables with white cloths and chairs padded soft. In those restaurants in Baltimore or Chicago or Dallas, the waiters and waitresses were mannered and sought only to please the customers.

We lied to each other, but those lied to knew the meaning of the words. In a sense, our tales transcended truth. We spoke in dreams, in hopes, of those things we wanted most, and when those dreams became, in our words, things we had once possessed, each of us understood.

Girls and women we talked of most. Our girls were tawny brown, ebony black, creamy white, with hair blonde or brown or auburn or black as midnight sky. Their eyes were green or blue or brown or black, their breasts perfect and carried high. All those girls were slim waisted. Their legs were long and their thighs round and soft to our touch.

Had those girls been there, in reality and not in our minds, we would have stared, afraid to touch. We would have stood outside their aura, basked in the smiles they gave us, sniffed the scent of purity. What we wanted was to have them near, to be near them.

To lie between their legs was, had we admitted truth to ourselves, secondary to simple nearness. What we would have done was hold their hands, touch our dirty scaled fingers to their clean skin.

Lust played no part in our dreams. There was passion, but that would have been eased had we the opportunity to only rest beside the girl in our dreams, feel her arms around us, know that when she stroked our temples and said, "It's okay," she spoke truth.

It all seems so easy now, so logical, because it was done. There was no thought to it, no conscious decision made; rather a reaction to an action. When I had the opportunity to think about what we had done and what was done to us, I remembered it in terms of that physics class in high school, one of Newton's laws, that for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. And that was the way things were. The gooks fired, we returned fire. On ambushes, we waited, and when the gooks sometimes came down the trails, we blew them away with Claymores and killed them with machine guns and rifles and grenade launchers, just as they killed our friends with mines and mortars and machine guns and rifles. In that, we all were equal.

It was easy and logical, easier now to think of than to do, but equally logical then and now.