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, although it does not deal with the underlying difference between the World Wars and Vietnam---the American people never really supported the Vietnam War, never understood what we were doing there, and therefore never connected on a meaningful level with the returning veterans.
Still, the purpose of the essay is fulfilled in that Heinemann merely wants to draw a portrait of the emotional, psychological, spiritual and physical suffering and alienation o...