Title
Marlantes Vietnam journal excerpt
Description
An excerpt from one of Karl Marlantes' journals from his time in Vietnam. The series of entries included here contains poetry (original and transcribed) and Marlantes' prose journal entries.
Subject
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--personal narratives, American
Creator
Karl Marlantes
Date
1968~
Format
PDF
Type
Text
Rights
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
For questions about rights statements, or access to the original document please contact Lewis & Clark College Special Collections and Archives http://specialcollections.lclark.edu
For questions about rights statements, or access to the original document please contact Lewis & Clark College Special Collections and Archives http://specialcollections.lclark.edu
Collection
Full Text
[PAGE 1]
Can a thing of beauty be born of something so terrible?
Christmas folds itself around us, hugging us with monsoon fog and mist
enfolding us within barbed wire and
[illegible] behind fields of fire
we are encysted with the sounds
of Christmas past as man turns
Christmas present into only a thing of
fear, of nonsense
a stalking enemy to whom Christmas
means nothing
why does he want to kill me?
Re-up, + get a brand new can
Re-up, show what an ass you are
Re-up, I'd rather throw up
So take your re-up, you never can
And shove it up your ass
(to [illegible] on [illegible])
To be warm and dry
To be loved not hunted
To love not fear
To build, to sing
How simple the building stones of happiness
How complex our structures of sorrow.
[Page 2]
The miracle of sunlight
A bug that looks like a stick
A bird that sounds like a siren
A platoon of rock apes
a tiger's [illegible]
An Oregon message
When we moored here, pulled
the trees in around us, curled
our backs to the wind, no one
had ever hit the moon--no one.
Now our trees are safer than the stars
and only other people's neglect
is our precious and abiding shell
pierced by meteors, radar[on?], and the telephone.
From our snug place we shout
religiously for attention, in order to hide;
only silence or evasion will bring
dangerous notice the hovering hawk
of the state on the sudden quiet stare
and fatal estimate of an alerted neighbor
This message we smuggle out in
its plain cover to be opened
quietly: Friends everywhere--
[MARGINAL: William Stafford -->]
we are alive! Those moon rockets / have missed
millions of secret / places! Best mates.
[PAGE 3]
I laid me down upon a bank
Where love lay sleeping.
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping.
Then I went to the heath and the wild
To the thistles and the thorns of the waste.
And they told me how they were beguiled
Driven out and compel'd to be chaste.
Arch[?]-lights rolling thunder
[Illegible] was killed yesterday. Command detonated directional. Blew off both legs. Hole right through heal [sic]. If that wasn't bad enough shrapnel went through his wallet, wiped out his pictures very neatly; also of his girls. Kraut was 19. [Illegible] got the bastard with his 79 shotgun [illegible]. We killed four for him. There will never be enough killing to even the score. Death doesn't add points, it only leaves holes.
Big Canada was on point. Carrying a 16 instead of his usual modified M-60. Arkansas was number two. Apparently they'd set up an ambush, but the gook made a mistake. He moved out form behind the banana tree to five, the minute he moved Canada got him with a long burst
[PAGE 4]
on automatic. The gook was greased right off the spot, his little friends opened up with a machine gun, a Chinese 7.62 open link, and AK's. Canada fired out the rest of his clip, then Arkansas took over while Canada reloaded. How Arkansas kept his head waiting to cover for Canada I'll never know. It probably saved the patrol. They alternated while everyone pulled back. No one was even wounded. We shot first.
Charley got a huge cache. 300 75 mm rockets, 500 82's, a battalion hospital. They probed us good but never hit us. Lucky. We'd all been blown to hell sitting on all that shit. 100 RPG's. Wow. I slept on the pot racks[?] above the old stove of the cooking hooch. Really well built. Must have been at least battalion eye. We had to blow an LZ so all the big wigs could fly us and take pictures. They flew out all the medicine.
I'm writing inside an A-frame bunker. We really hit the jack pot. Called in gunships[?] after the fight[?] when Knaut got it. We were on a little [illegible], very steep with thick trees. Called the gunships in the chaw below us. 30 cal opened up on them. When they left Sgt. Ring + Jake went over the crest. Came running back
[PAGE 5]
More command [illegible] directionals. We could see a whole now of the. Cleared out eleven of them. The skipper shot one with his pistol. Hit it three times, never blew the cap. Finally blew it with C-4. The gook at the end of the wire [illegible] dead. They protect the chaw, we wonder all night whats in there, couldn't clean them before dark. We waited on top, the platoons huddled very tight. 3rd is down on the river with Bravo. Bravo without gear + chow for two days, trying to block the gooks we hit the day before. Next morning, 2nd goes into the [illegible]. More traps, hanging chi-coms and clay mores. Then we get word. A hooch filled with rice, another, a third. Four hooches. 24,000 lbs of rice. A regimental supply depot. The gook had enough and pulled out. Left one AK-51 behind. I'm carrying that now. Will sell it in [illegible] on Domang[?]. if I ever get back there. The [illegible] back there will pay $300-$400 for one. Especially sea bees and air force dudes. Will buy beer for the company. So now we're sitting on the rice. I was out all night on a [illegible] waiting for [illegible] to come + get some, but they must have gotten the word that we're in here and no one showed. Nearly froze to death.
Am XO now. Lt. [illegible] took over the platoon. He was hit four days after he took it over.
[PAGE 6]
A good man. I hate to leave the platoon they're starting to operate real well. He'll be good though, it's easy to see.
Wrote last night in a gook bunker with my red light, couldn't see the lines. They build really nifty bunkers. Big enough for one man to lay down in, dug into the side of a hill. A little smelly and some rats, but then I'm so raggedy-assed now it doesn't make much difference.
Thinks get pretty basic. We took the rice off the rocks[?]. Canada greased and split it. It was two cakes, already cooked, wrapped in cloth. We fried it that night. Better than what we had though. The platoon is holding[?] rice in helmets from the sacks claspped on the trail. 1-1 scored of the bearers[?] I guess.
On an ambush last night. Boring + cold + dark. Plenty of time to think. No answers. Mortality has something to do with the actions of those around us. We can only record and see deeds. Immoral thoughts are impossible, only the imagining of immoral deeds is possible. If the actions of others determine a moral deed
[PAGE 7]
what of my case. Immoral to kill, yes. But if not me then someone else. The deed is still done, the bearer of the action is judged guilty, when in actuality the action is guilty and the bearer a victim of circumstance or a man who accepts the action as his own, and commits the deed in the name of some part of responsibility. [Illegible] deeds happen in our world, there is no escape from the end, man is in the world. He makes himself responsible, somehow. Come on Karl think it out. God if I only had time to think.
What can be called evil. Something that causes pain? Why is that evil. Death? We all die anyway. Seperation of friends. Perhaps. Some sort of spiritual link is broken, human fellowship, war and early deaths break this which is built by [illegible] If the world is indifferent then evil must be the negation of something man has added to that indifferent world.
Night ambush, the thoughts are of death
the only sounds a possible victim
the night so black one cannot see the killing zone
a man's breathing--like a heavy leaden wind
a movement--the very jungle comes alive
a night of cold, of damp
a night filled with fear and cruel anticipation
[PAGE 8]
broken only by pale dawn
the sunlight bathing our [illegible] sins.
Why look for hidden meanings? Things are complicated enough as it is. [Illegible]
Thinking of Wilfred Owen + Dylan Thomas and about Chris Robb with whom the two are associated because she sent me stuff by them. They both identify love with death. The only reason I see in living is friendship--love. Everything I observe about being alive points out the supreme indifference of everything except that which is negated of humane by humans. I couldn't help but notice how inconvenient it was to wrap up [illegible]'s body and carry it out. I don't see Owens passion here at all, but then it's not the war to end all wars. There's distinction--this is one war of many, and one death of a certainty of others, meaning no more or less than the four gooks we killed to revenge it. Any-thing that happens as a happening-in-the-world (the world without mans thoughts) has no meaning, no value, no ethic. Meaning in terms of good and evil arises only from acts which are negations (or creation) of what man has fabricated upon the world of fact.
Can a thing of beauty be born of something so terrible?
Christmas folds itself around us, hugging us with monsoon fog and mist
enfolding us within barbed wire and
[illegible] behind fields of fire
we are encysted with the sounds
of Christmas past as man turns
Christmas present into only a thing of
fear, of nonsense
a stalking enemy to whom Christmas
means nothing
why does he want to kill me?
Re-up, + get a brand new can
Re-up, show what an ass you are
Re-up, I'd rather throw up
So take your re-up, you never can
And shove it up your ass
(to [illegible] on [illegible])
To be warm and dry
To be loved not hunted
To love not fear
To build, to sing
How simple the building stones of happiness
How complex our structures of sorrow.
[Page 2]
The miracle of sunlight
A bug that looks like a stick
A bird that sounds like a siren
A platoon of rock apes
a tiger's [illegible]
An Oregon message
When we moored here, pulled
the trees in around us, curled
our backs to the wind, no one
had ever hit the moon--no one.
Now our trees are safer than the stars
and only other people's neglect
is our precious and abiding shell
pierced by meteors, radar[on?], and the telephone.
From our snug place we shout
religiously for attention, in order to hide;
only silence or evasion will bring
dangerous notice the hovering hawk
of the state on the sudden quiet stare
and fatal estimate of an alerted neighbor
This message we smuggle out in
its plain cover to be opened
quietly: Friends everywhere--
[MARGINAL: William Stafford -->]
we are alive! Those moon rockets / have missed
millions of secret / places! Best mates.
[PAGE 3]
I laid me down upon a bank
Where love lay sleeping.
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping.
Then I went to the heath and the wild
To the thistles and the thorns of the waste.
And they told me how they were beguiled
Driven out and compel'd to be chaste.
Arch[?]-lights rolling thunder
[Illegible] was killed yesterday. Command detonated directional. Blew off both legs. Hole right through heal [sic]. If that wasn't bad enough shrapnel went through his wallet, wiped out his pictures very neatly; also of his girls. Kraut was 19. [Illegible] got the bastard with his 79 shotgun [illegible]. We killed four for him. There will never be enough killing to even the score. Death doesn't add points, it only leaves holes.
Big Canada was on point. Carrying a 16 instead of his usual modified M-60. Arkansas was number two. Apparently they'd set up an ambush, but the gook made a mistake. He moved out form behind the banana tree to five, the minute he moved Canada got him with a long burst
[PAGE 4]
on automatic. The gook was greased right off the spot, his little friends opened up with a machine gun, a Chinese 7.62 open link, and AK's. Canada fired out the rest of his clip, then Arkansas took over while Canada reloaded. How Arkansas kept his head waiting to cover for Canada I'll never know. It probably saved the patrol. They alternated while everyone pulled back. No one was even wounded. We shot first.
Charley got a huge cache. 300 75 mm rockets, 500 82's, a battalion hospital. They probed us good but never hit us. Lucky. We'd all been blown to hell sitting on all that shit. 100 RPG's. Wow. I slept on the pot racks[?] above the old stove of the cooking hooch. Really well built. Must have been at least battalion eye. We had to blow an LZ so all the big wigs could fly us and take pictures. They flew out all the medicine.
I'm writing inside an A-frame bunker. We really hit the jack pot. Called in gunships[?] after the fight[?] when Knaut got it. We were on a little [illegible], very steep with thick trees. Called the gunships in the chaw below us. 30 cal opened up on them. When they left Sgt. Ring + Jake went over the crest. Came running back
[PAGE 5]
More command [illegible] directionals. We could see a whole now of the. Cleared out eleven of them. The skipper shot one with his pistol. Hit it three times, never blew the cap. Finally blew it with C-4. The gook at the end of the wire [illegible] dead. They protect the chaw, we wonder all night whats in there, couldn't clean them before dark. We waited on top, the platoons huddled very tight. 3rd is down on the river with Bravo. Bravo without gear + chow for two days, trying to block the gooks we hit the day before. Next morning, 2nd goes into the [illegible]. More traps, hanging chi-coms and clay mores. Then we get word. A hooch filled with rice, another, a third. Four hooches. 24,000 lbs of rice. A regimental supply depot. The gook had enough and pulled out. Left one AK-51 behind. I'm carrying that now. Will sell it in [illegible] on Domang[?]. if I ever get back there. The [illegible] back there will pay $300-$400 for one. Especially sea bees and air force dudes. Will buy beer for the company. So now we're sitting on the rice. I was out all night on a [illegible] waiting for [illegible] to come + get some, but they must have gotten the word that we're in here and no one showed. Nearly froze to death.
Am XO now. Lt. [illegible] took over the platoon. He was hit four days after he took it over.
[PAGE 6]
A good man. I hate to leave the platoon they're starting to operate real well. He'll be good though, it's easy to see.
Wrote last night in a gook bunker with my red light, couldn't see the lines. They build really nifty bunkers. Big enough for one man to lay down in, dug into the side of a hill. A little smelly and some rats, but then I'm so raggedy-assed now it doesn't make much difference.
Thinks get pretty basic. We took the rice off the rocks[?]. Canada greased and split it. It was two cakes, already cooked, wrapped in cloth. We fried it that night. Better than what we had though. The platoon is holding[?] rice in helmets from the sacks claspped on the trail. 1-1 scored of the bearers[?] I guess.
On an ambush last night. Boring + cold + dark. Plenty of time to think. No answers. Mortality has something to do with the actions of those around us. We can only record and see deeds. Immoral thoughts are impossible, only the imagining of immoral deeds is possible. If the actions of others determine a moral deed
[PAGE 7]
what of my case. Immoral to kill, yes. But if not me then someone else. The deed is still done, the bearer of the action is judged guilty, when in actuality the action is guilty and the bearer a victim of circumstance or a man who accepts the action as his own, and commits the deed in the name of some part of responsibility. [Illegible] deeds happen in our world, there is no escape from the end, man is in the world. He makes himself responsible, somehow. Come on Karl think it out. God if I only had time to think.
What can be called evil. Something that causes pain? Why is that evil. Death? We all die anyway. Seperation of friends. Perhaps. Some sort of spiritual link is broken, human fellowship, war and early deaths break this which is built by [illegible] If the world is indifferent then evil must be the negation of something man has added to that indifferent world.
Night ambush, the thoughts are of death
the only sounds a possible victim
the night so black one cannot see the killing zone
a man's breathing--like a heavy leaden wind
a movement--the very jungle comes alive
a night of cold, of damp
a night filled with fear and cruel anticipation
[PAGE 8]
broken only by pale dawn
the sunlight bathing our [illegible] sins.
Why look for hidden meanings? Things are complicated enough as it is. [Illegible]
Thinking of Wilfred Owen + Dylan Thomas and about Chris Robb with whom the two are associated because she sent me stuff by them. They both identify love with death. The only reason I see in living is friendship--love. Everything I observe about being alive points out the supreme indifference of everything except that which is negated of humane by humans. I couldn't help but notice how inconvenient it was to wrap up [illegible]'s body and carry it out. I don't see Owens passion here at all, but then it's not the war to end all wars. There's distinction--this is one war of many, and one death of a certainty of others, meaning no more or less than the four gooks we killed to revenge it. Any-thing that happens as a happening-in-the-world (the world without mans thoughts) has no meaning, no value, no ethic. Meaning in terms of good and evil arises only from acts which are negations (or creation) of what man has fabricated upon the world of fact.