Tour of Duty & the Vietnam War

Larry Heinemann, in "Tour of Duty," argues primarily that the veterans of the Vietnam War experienced more troubling after-effects from combat than the veterans of earlier wars. The result has been a larger group of suffering individuals than in other wars. The author makes a convincing argument.

For example, Heinemann notes that in World War II, soldiers were with the same group of men from basic training through the end of the war, while the Vietnam War "was a war of individuals. You went through Basic Training with one group. Advanced Individual Training with another. You shipped overseas with a planeload of total strangers. . . . " (546). This isolation and alienation is repeated upon sudden release from the war and from the military. There were no parades awaiting returning Vietnam vets. During the war itself the most important factor was not a camaraderie of ideals aimed at an evil enemy, but simple survival: "You don't care about anything but finishing your tour---you just don't care" (547).

Suddenly the soldier is out of the war, out of the military, and back home with his family. He finds it difficult to adapt back into society, into work, into relationships, after the horrific experiences of the war. Drugs and alcohol beckon as ways out of the pain and rage and nightmares of the war.

Heinemann's essay offers no hope for the returning Vietnam vet. It is designed not to fix the problem, but to simply acknowledge it. The article is effective in that acknowledgement,

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tively speaking standard English will be deprived of socioeconomic opportunities. Jones' argument is most realistic in its assessment of the state of the society and the economy of the United States today. The fact is that the young black man or woman entering the job market today will be seriously hindered if he or she can only speak black English. He or she will find the doors closing all across town if he or she opens his or her mouth and is able to speak only the dialect of black English. For better or worse, the person hiring employees or listening to the speaker of black dialect in career-oriented situations (aside from the rap music industry) will judge the speaker negatively. There are certainly black and whites who would argue that black dialect is an important cultural part of the black experience. However, Jones does not make the argument that it is not valuable. She would be wrong if she did make that argument. What she does argue is that black Americans will not advance socially or economically in this society, whether or not they speak black dialect, unless they also speak standard English effectively. One of the ways in which Jones makes her argument effective is by pointing out that those individuals who have long

Category: History - T