Haunted by the Ghosts of Pickett’s Charge: Echoes of the Civil War in Two Novels by Vietnam Veterans

Abstract

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In Vietnam and the Southern Imagination, Owen W. Gilman Jr. writes that have an affinity for history, and thus Vietnam has been joined frequently the long span history cultivated in the South. One the more vocal critics the American war in Vietnam, Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, directly connects the southern response the Vietnam War the southern cultural memory the Civil War, suggesting that perhaps we Southerners have a sensitivity this sort thing [stalemate in Vietnam] that other Americans cannot fully share. We--or our forefathers--experienced both the hot-headed romanticism that led Fort Sumter and the bitter humiliation defeat and a vindictive Reconstruction. This historical sensitivity the echoes the Civil War, coupled with the relatively large proportion southern soldiers serve during the war, may explain why certain literature the Vietnam War contains a distinctly southern note. Historian Joseph Fry notes that: As they had done in every foreign war since 1865, southerners rallied the cause. The eleven states the former Confederacy provided nearly one-third the soldiers who served in Vietnam, even though the South was home only 22 percent the nation's population. Approximately 28 percent the military personnel who died in Vietnam were southern (15,437 55,622) and 27 percent the Medal Honor winners hailed from Dixie. Themes honor, duty, patriotism, and anticommunism predominated in postwar interviews with southern veterans. Fry goes on argue that following the U.S. withdrawal from Saigon, Dixie's response the U. S. loss in Vietnam reflected the South's previous experience with coming terms with defeat. As had been the case following the Civil War, southern leaders and most southern warriors were that their cause had been honorable and patriotic. However, this would not prove be the case for southern veterans the war with literary ambitions. Between 1978-1979, two authors and Vietnam veterans from strong southern backgrounds published their first novels: James Webb's Fields Fire came out in 1978, followed by Gustav Hasford's The Short-Timers in 1979. Each man would attempt reconcile his experiences in Vietnam with the southern identity he was raised value and each would turn the Civil War contextualixe his own service, albeit from strikingly different perspectives. (1) Webb represents a relative rarity amongst Vietnam War authors, southern or otherwise, in that he remained convinced that [his] cause had been honorable and patriotic long after his return from Southeast Asia. This likely explains why his novel provides the more straightforward treatment this uniquely southern historical sense. Fields Fire is notable for being one the few literary works emerge from the Vietnam War that maintains a hawkish stance on the conflict. In it, Webb, a Naval Academy graduate and recipient the Navy Cross for valor in combat, rages defiantly against anyone who would question the value valorous service the nation, even when that service took place in the moral nightmare that was Vietnam. Webb singles out Robert E. Lee Hodges Jr., a Kentucky boy raised on legends his ancestors' proud service their country, to show how, at least in the South, present-day persons are linked patterns larger than the individual self. Besides the obvious connection General Robert E. Lee, Hodges's name also links him another notable literary example southern honor, From Here Eternity's Robert E. Lee Prewitt. Like Prewitt, Hodges's father died young, killed in action in World War II four months before he was born. The only memories he has Robert E. Lee Hodges Sr. are stored in a dusty footlocker that contains two old uniforms and a scrapbook filled with photos of his father in an ill-fitting uniform, wearing a defiant solemn bold glare copied from some rebel ancestor, his cap cocked the side his head. …