“Rhythmic, visceral, laconic, powerful, Levy’s stories will haunt the reader long after reading them.” Nguyen Ba Chung, William Joiner Center “… Any family member, any therapist, who wants to know something of the pain that vets carry in their heads and hearts…should read this book.” Hamilton Gregory, author of MacNamara’s Folly “His quiet voice details […]
My Books
Dreams, Vietnam
“If ever you find yourself wondering about what Joyce meant when Stephen Dedalus said he was trying to wake from the “nightmare of history,” you can begin with this book.” Fred Marchant, author of The Looking Glass “This book is a rare gift. Using a spare style that startles with its directness, Marc Levy transforms […]
Other Dreams
“You are about to read a rare and valuable gift to human understanding and to dream research. Other Dreams consists of several hundred dreams the author, an infantry medic in Vietnam, recorded from 2016 to 2017. Reading this book, may you be moved, troubled, informed, puzzled. May you benefit from reading the dreams of a […]
Books by friends of Medic
Tom Laaser: No One Can Win Here
Medic met Tom at the Salem Veteran’s Writers Group in 2017. We have kept in touch ever since. Tom wrote the piece below for CounterPunch, which published it on 25 August 2021.
“No one can win here,” I found myself whispering as I looked at the distant mountain peaks surrounding Bagram Airfield. Single file out of the C-130 we came. It was 2013, a point at which we were told the war was all but over. We were not here to fight; we artillerymen were here to train the Afghans to shoot their Soviet-era howitzers and supervise. Most of the younger soldiers were disappointed, feeling as though they’d missed the war and were relegated to cleanup crew. I was one of them, itching to be a part of history, active history. At the back of my mind were the memories of watching the towers fall, watching the news coverage as soldiers entered Afghanistan. The silence surrounding my father’s Vietnam Era service. I hadn’t joined right out of high school, but the urge to be a part of history never went away. The urge to do rather than to speak. I found myself in my mid-20s, with a wife and children back home, surrounded by mountains larger than I’d ever seen, with a duffel bag on my back and an ill-fitting boonie cap on my head half a world away just so I could feel like I did something. I believed in America. I believed in democracy. And a healthy democracy demands participation. This was my service to the country. My civic duty. My moral duty.
“Looks exactly like Arizona!” echoed back and forth between the Arizonians in our platoon. They felt oddly at home. I felt foreign. The terrain very unlike my native New England. Speaking a non-native language. Carrying a gun. I felt a defiance in the mountains. You do not belong here, they were saying in chorus. Nowhere else have I felt a terrain more alive than Afghanistan. The glowing purple mountains, the stark lines in the rocks, the snow that fell so unnaturally slow. Every rock pulsed with a soul. I fell in love with it instantly. I fell in love with the sunsets, the snow, and the defiant mountains. A bittersweet romance from the moment boot touched tarmac.
Equally alive are the people whom the mountains have chosen. A selection of tribes who mirror the mountains in beauty and complexity. Prior to deployment, I had immersed myself in Afghan history and politics. I’d read every book I could. I also received an abbreviated training in Dari, which alongside Pashto are the two official languages of Afghanistan. The idea was that every platoon, regardless of job, would have one Dari and one Pashto speaker. With only so many interpreters and since we were no longer technically fighting, but training, having someone around at all times with a passing knowledge of terms was thought to be helpful. My elementary level Dari proved to be an open door to the Afghans I met. My faulting attempts at speaking with them was always met with surprise and enthusiasm.
I found myself torn between so many differing sides of reality. I was madly in love with Afghanistan – its people, its land, its soul – All of which both embraced me and held me at arm’s length. You do not belong here, said the mountain chorus. Most of my fellow Americans did not share my love. Uninterested in the humanity of the land, they were content to stay to themselves, get the job done, hopefully kill someone, and then get the fuck back to ice cold beer and football on tv. I don’t blame them.
My love affair with Afghanistan has given me nothing but heart break. Many 
nights I would find myself sitting cross-legged in front of a TV watching an Iranian soap opera, drinking chai and chewing sugar candies with the Afghan interpreters. The shows improved my conversation skills and the interpreters were always willing to point things out for me to pick up. These nights like any other night of friends sitting around watching TV. Except the moments they would speak Pashto between themselves, and the M4 carbine of mine I left resting on the door frame, that reminded us of our differences. Of a gap between what could be and what was. I would return to the American side those nights to snide remarks and questions regarding my feelings toward the Afghans. Many of the Afghans I worked with would say of me, “You are not American! You are Afghan!” They said this as a compliment. The truth was, I was neither Afghan, nor American. I was foreign. On all fronts.
I was, and am, a lover. I love people. I love the land. I found myself, much like all of us, trying to grapple with what it was to be a citizen of your country. What it was to be a part of a piece of the Earth. So much gray area. All one human race? One nation helping to build another? Most Afghans aligned more with their tribe than the made up “Afghan” national idea. Were we truly helping these people? Were we avenging 9/11? There were, and still are, no clear answers. An existential crisis distilled in the air of that region.
Our job, as well, was one of contradiction. We were not, as stated, training the Afghans to shoot artillery. There was a team who oversaw the Afghan battery of old Russian D 30 howitzers. On the other side of the base was our guns. When we were fired upon or needed to assist an Afghan platoon out on patrol, both Afghans and Americans would be called up. But only one fired at the enemy. The Afghans would be allowed to shoot, always before us, and never at the target. They were not trusted yet and the consensus from the team overseeing them was that they were a long way off from being ready. Our platoon was left feeling as though we were doing something, while being told we were not to be open about the something we were doing. The Combat Action Badge, that shiny piece of metal non-infantry combat men covet, was denied on the grounds that the Afghans officially engaged, not us.
No end in sight. No clarity. It felt as though, on all sides, there never had been clear cut objectives. The existential paradox of that region radiating off those mountains confused and obliterated any idea of linear goals. Reflecting those mountains, the Afghans were never clear either. Many Afghans we worked with would hoot and holler when our guns went off. They’d cheer and yell “Yes! America!” But, in the quiet of the night, in the glow of an Iranian soap opera, I would hear brief wistful talk over the chai, “Sometimes I do miss the Taliban. At least with them you knew things. No smut around. People did right.” The divide between a religious state and a liberal nation were on display. Even the Afghans were unsure of our intentions, unsure of their own leadership, and unsure of what path would give them what they truly wanted.
I’m sitting on a granite boulder on the edge of a pine forest. Woods and mountains. The only places I feel at home anymore. Only wild areas show any clarity. I’m on my phone, talking with a battle buddy from deployment. He too moved to the woods for clarity. We’ve been watching the American troop withdrawal. Seeing the bodies cling to the same C 130s that brought us there. Receiving the million and one emails from every veteran organization under the sun with links to crisis lines and resources to talk. I think about the Vietnam vets. The support they lacked. How truly on their own they were when Saigon fell. I owe them a lot. Many crying alone. Many sitting at wood’s edge alone. They found each other. They built vet centers. They advocated and lobbied so that soldiers like me would not be alone like them. I sit alone in the woods, a place I wouldn’t have been able to get to had it not been years of help from all those organizations and crisis lines they built. My friend is nonchalant about the Taliban’s quick retaking of Afghanistan. Numb, I feel. Both of us. Numb to all.
So hard to not be cynical. To shrug your shoulders and say, “Oh well, so much death and suffering for nothing.” It would be true, of course, to say that. But it feels so inhumane. However, we just experienced twenty years of people not telling the truth. Not being brutally honest and it only brought more suffering. It feels as though we all wanted a linear story. What is our purpose? How do we get to it? Without those questions answered there’s no winning, whatever winning would mean. What was it we wanted to do with Afghanistan? What is it the Afghans want?
Again, we are in an existential grey area. To feel nothing. To feel too much. Maybe my friend and I are just overwhelmed and our brains are protecting us from what could happen if we dwell on it. I am, after all, more content to be alone in the woods. “Fuck it, man, I’m just going for a hike,” my friend says before hanging up. “Me too,” I say, slide off the boulder, and walk into the woods. Only two days later we’re on the phone again, “I’m just so torn up,” he says, “I don’t know what to think or feel.” Me too. I think about the news coverage. The phone calls I’m receiving from concerned people, many of whom I haven’t spoken with in years. Why care now? Why the moral outrage now? Afghanistan’s withdrawal is just the newest outrage of the month for people.
Last month was the Uighurs (remember that genocide still happening?) and tomorrow will be something else. And the people of Afghanistan will continue to die and the veterans will continue to mourn. I never much respected moral outrage, less so now. The same inclination against it brought me to serve. I needed to do something. Action. I find that many people love to be outraged, but few are willing to follow that up with action. Moral outrage has its place, it can humanize us animals. Provided we do something to help, even something small. But it can also be addicting. Make you feel good. Feel like a good person. Then go back to your beer and tv – no sacrifice required. Sadly, this is the majority position.
I don’t blame them, though. Entering into these things, truly entering into them, 
requires a blood sacrifice. It requires your time and your effort with no hope of reward. It’s not thirty second videos you watch one after the other, it’s a rich story in which you must be a character and hold out until the end.
And me, and all of those decades of veterans. And all those Afghans. Families. Children. We stand before those mountains having offered our blood sacrifices. Years of it. Palms outstretched, waiting for an answer. For connection and honesty. To feel victory. As though we did something and won.
___________________
Tom Laaser is an OEF veteran, having served with the 10th Mountain Division in Khost, Afghanistan 2013 – 2014, where he was injured and medically retired. His written work has appeared in As You Were, Oxford Brookes’ Anthology My Teeth Don’t Chew on Shrapnel, The Best of Medic in the Green Time, and Hero’s Voices. He is founder of the Salem Veteran Writing Workshop as well as co-founder of the Salem State Veterans Playwriting Festival. He lives in Maine with his wife and three children.
Top photo: Members of Bravo Batter 4/25 FA at sunrise, waiting for final leg of journy to Afghanistan. Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base, Romania, 2013
Best of Medic in the Green Time Video Interview
In October 2020 Medic was interviewed by Bill Legault on SATV, the community cable station of Salem, Massachusetts. Running time one hour. Not for the faint heart.
Buffgrunt: memoirs of a tree vet
Tommy J Skiens
Buffgrunt walks among the baby boomers and steps into the Vietnam War with curiosity and expectation. The war upsets and traumatizes this generation who react to the cold war rhetoric and fear of nuclear disaster. The boomers watched as a president was assassinated on Television and our first step was a giant leap for all mankind as we landed on the moon. Buffgrunt is little more than a personal attempt to understand the journey. Buffgrunt contains new information and shocking revelations about combat in Southeast Asia and the emotional battles that will plaque a generation of boomers. Honest, to the point and insightful, Buffgrunt sprinkles traumatic events with a coating of humor from a grunts point of view.
Medic’s friend Tommy was an RTO with C 2/4 LIB, saw much heavy combat and is more than acquainted with My Lai. His website is http://www.buffgrunt.com/.
Of Better Blood Hardcover
Susan Moger
Teenage polio survivor Rowan Collier is caught in the crossfire of a secret war against “the unfit.” It’s 1922, and eugenics―the movement dedicated to racial purity and good breeding―has taken hold in America. State laws allow institutions to sterilize minorities, the “feeble-minded,” and the poor, while local eugenics councils set up exhibits at county fairs with “fitter family” contests and propaganda. After years of being confined to hospitals, Rowan is recruited at sixteen to play a born cripple in a county fair eugenics exhibit. But gutsy, outspoken Dorchy befriends Rowan and helps her realize her own inner strength and bravery. The two escape the fair and end up at a summer camp on a desolate island run by the New England Eugenics Council. There they discover something is happening to the children. Rowan must find a way to stop the horrors on the island…if she can escape them herself.
The Cadence of Mercy
Richard Levine
Richard Levine’s The Cadence of Mercy insists the contradictions of praise and blame, the march of events, belong to us all. “Are [we] suffering/ from loss or too much memory?” And in “Fall,” the recurring wonder of tenderness: “Didn’t we fall into that exquisite /embrace with nothing to hold / us up but each other?” This is a spirited collection, ranging from the historical fate of the Indians, the Holocaust, our melting pot America, the ritual blessing of making bread, the [Brooklyn] Dodgers, Vietnam, what we learned on the playground and in school: “Leaving for holiday, I pack / language and inventions we shaped, history/we made. All our fingerprints are there.”
Richard, a Marine’s during Tet ’68, where he was wounded, is the author of Snapshots from a Battle (2001), A Language Full of Wars and Songs (2004), That Country’s Soul (2010), A Tide of a Hundred Mountains (2012), and The Cadence of Mercy (2014). His poem “Believe This” was featured in former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s column, “American Life in Poetry”. In 2010, Levine’s poem “Picket Fences” was a runner-up for Rosebud magazine’s William Stafford Award for Poetry. A retired teacher, he is learning to steward a forest. He lives in Brooklyn.
Lamentation with June Bug
Nancy Esposito
Nancy Esposito has published three previous books of poems. She is the recipient of several awards and grants, including the Discovery Award, a Poetry Society of America Award, and a Massachusetts Arts Lottery Award as well as a Fulbright Grant, an NEH, and several grants from Bentley University to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. Her own work as well as translations of Nicaraguan poets has appeared in numerous American journals and magazines. Her own poems have been translated into Spanish and Vietnamese. She was born in Dallas, Texas, and educated at New York University. She has taught writing at Harvard, Tufts, and Bentley Universities.
Merchant Marine Survivors of World War II: Oral Histories of Cargo Carrying Under Fire
Michael Gillen
World War II could not have been won without the U.S. Merchant Marine. Crewed by civilian seamen in peacetime and carrying much of the nation’s ocean-borne commerce, the Merchant Marine became the “fourth arm of defense” in wartime, providing vital support for beachheads in all theaters of operation. Twenty World War II Merchant Marine veterans are featured in this oral history. Most had at least one ship torpedoed, bombed, shelled or mined out from under them–some of them two. Some became prisoners of the Japanese for the duration of the war, working on the infamous River Kwai Bridge. Many spent time on lifeboats or flimsy rafts under harsh conditions; one–Donald Zubrod–endured 42 days in a lifeboat with several others before their eventual rescue, close to death. American merchant mariners suffered a casualty rate that was a close second to the Marine Corps during the war.
Admit One: An American Scrapbook
Martha Collins
“A strikingly original collection that combines brilliant storytelling and compelling commentary on ethics and race. The interwoven poems begin with the speaker’s grandparents entering the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, where technological advances and artistic marvels were proudly displayed, as were examples of ‘inferior’ human beings, such as Ota Benga, a Congolese Pygmy who was later housed in the primate exhibit of the new Bronx Zoo. The poems follow his short, sad life and the rise of Madison Grant, a hunter friend of Theodore Roosevelt who created the zoo. Grant later became a key proponent of the eugenics movement. Collins, who has published seven previous books of poetry, doesn’t sensationalize the material. Exquisitely spare, these works recount some of the sinister moments of American history, quietly pushing readers to learn from those episodes and consider our collective responsibility for them. As she writes in Admit One: “hate to have to concede/ as evidence into the record/ we have to guilt mistake own/ as a right openly into.”
—Washington Post
Vietnam Wars 1945-1990
Marilyn Young
In this dark account of the political and diplomatic sides of the Vietnam wars and the psychic aftermath, the author contends that the Indochina experience refuted (temporarily) the simplistic assumptions that in foreign policy America always “meant well” and that communism was always “bad.” The epithets popularly employed to characterize the enemy in Vietnam–“indifferent to human life,” “dishonest,” “ruthless”–came to characterize our own actions as well. From counterinsurgency expert Edward Lansdale’s “cheerful brutalization of democratic values” to President Nixon’s attempt to “make war look like peace,” the moral breakdown is assessed here in disturbing detail. Young goes on to argue that more recent U.S. intervention in Lebanon, Libya, Grenada and Panama suggests that few lessons were learned in Vietnam–indeed, that the past decade has seen a dangerous resurgence of native faith in the benevolence of American foreign meddling. This, she maintains, goes hand in hand with a renewed commitment to use force in a global crusade against Third World revolutions and governments. Young, a history professor at New York University, paints a grim picture of our part in the Indochina war and its excoriating effects on the nation. Publishers Weekly
After Sorrow: An American Among the Vietnamese
Lady Borton (Author), Grace Paley (Foreword)
As an administrator for the Friends Service Committee in Quang Ngai Province, Borton (Sensing the Enemy: An American Among the Boat People of Vietnam) was one of the few Americans to work in both South and North Vietnam during the war. Much later, 1987-1993, she lived in Vietnamese villages, including a former Viet Cong base where women played a prominent role during the war. Her beautifully modulated memoir is less about the war itself than about the unique character of the village women: their formalized social interaction, use of traditional medicine, food-gathering and preparation and the Buddhist beliefs that guide their behavior. Borton’s gently compelling narrative follows the rhythm of the seasons and weather patterns and records the jarring advent of Western-style consumerism with the appearance of jeans, tennis shoes, motorcycles and VCRs. Describing her life in Hanoi (“Vietnam’s largest village”), where in 1990 she opened a Quaker Service office, she conveys her great affection for its hurly-burly pace. The author conversed with Vietnamese women fluently in their own language and thus is able to present fuller portraits than could be found elsewhere in English.
Thai Binh: Great Peace
Kevin Bowen
“Kevin Bowen’s poems are powerful, authoritative and essential. They bring news from a world much of America has turned its back on, and they do so without bitterness or rancor, offering instead profound testimony of love and compassionate wisdom. This is some of the most important and accomplished poetry I’ve read in a long time”—Sam Hamill
Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars, 1948-1993
Kevin Bowen (Editor), Nguyen Ba Chung (Editor), Bruce Weigl (Editor)
“Translation of poetry from Vietnamese to English presents difficult problems; these translations are among the best I’ve ever seen. The book will appeal to scholars and teachers in the fields of Viet Nam War studies, postcolonial literary studies, and Pacific Rim studies. It could easily be used as a course text, as well as provide important material for scholars. … A most useful and beautiful work.” – Renny Christopher, author of The Viet Nam War/The American War: Images and Representations in Euro-American and Vietnamese Exile Narratives
“The quality of the translations is excellent.” – Ngo Nhu Binh, Harvard University.
McNamara’s Folly
Hamilton Gregory
In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were desperate to find additional troops for the Vietnam War, but they feared that they would alienate middle-class voters if they drafted college boys or sent Reservists and National Guardsmen to Vietnam. So, on October 1, 1966, McNamara lowered mental standards and inducted thousands of low-IQ men. Altogether, 354,000 of these men were taken into the Armed Forces and a large number of them were sent into combat. Many military men, including William Westmoreland, the commanding general in Vietnam, viewed McNamara’s program as a disaster. Because many of the substandard men were incompetent in combat, they endangered not only themselves but their comrades as well. Their death toll was appallingly high. In addition to low-IQ men, tens of thousands of other substandard troops were inducted, including criminals, misfits, and men with disabilities. This book tells the story of the men caught up in McNamara’s folly.
Tipping Point
Fred Marchant
Introduction by Nick Flynn. With his deft and timeless blend of the lyrical and narrative, Fred Marchant explores the wars inside us and the ones we wage in the world: spiritual, familial, political.
“In the spirit of Wilfred Owen, TIPPING POINT is a book seared by personal and historical fact. Many artists are eager to assume the mantle of ‘witness,’ as if will or ambition could do the work of experience and imagination. In contrast, the gravity, modesty, and moral questioning in Marchant’s poems reveal a mind committed to a version of history that is resolutely human scale.”—Tom Sleigh
“Explicit in its detailing, subtly graded in its responsiveness, TIPPING POINT is also a kind of latter-day metaphysics of morals. Marchant searches out the hidden springs of action and yet never loses sight of the larger contexts in which our deeds and gestures come to matter. An honest, earned book.”—Sven Birkerts
Keep Your Head Down: Vietnam, the Sixties, and a Journey of Self-Discovery
Doug Anderson
Starred Review. In his first book of nonfiction, Anderson tells his story in inviting, poetic prose. He begins with his dysfunctional childhood in Memphis, then offers an evocative depiction of his service in Vietnam, which included a firefight on his first day in the field and more than his share of closely observed horror. He shows the hell of war as he went through it. Only in recent years did Anderson stop drinking, find meaningful work as a poet and teacher, marry and make a life-changing trip back to Vietnam in 2000. Yet what Anderson dubs “Snakebrain” (the demons inside him) remains a part of him. His beautifully told story is one of redemption, but also one without a happy ending.
Publishers Weekly
Mother Tongue
Demetria Martinez
That it is possible to learn as much from fiction as from nonfiction is made abundantly clear from a reading of MOTHER TONGUE. Martinez focuses her story on a young woman who becomes involved with a refugee from El Salvador who is smuggled into the U.S. by members of the Sanctuary movement, advocates for the tens of thousands of Salvadorans who have been harassed, tortured, and “disappeared” by a U.S.-supported military government.
There is the truth of experience behind Martinez’ fiction. In 1987, she was charged with conspiring against the U.S. government and aiding the entry of Salvadorans into the country. At the end of her 1988 trial, she was acquitted of the charges on First Amendment grounds — the jury determined that she had a right, as a reporter for the National Catholic Reporter, to witness efforts to aid refugees as part of the Sanctuary movement. Martinez knows whereof she speaks, and writes of it with the voice of the poet that she is.
Margaret Sanborn/Publicity
Black Sunset: Hollywood Sex, Lies, Glamour, Betrayal and Raging Egos
Clancy Sigal
This a hilarious memoir of Clancy Sigal’s escapades as a young Hollywood agent on the Sunset Strip, peddling writers and actors in a blacklist-crazed “golden age” movie industry of the 1950s. Atom bomb tests light up the night sky, and everyone is either naming names or getting named in the McCarthy witch hunt. By day a fast-talking salesman, at night he’s the point person of a small circle of anarchistic oddballs. He’s dogged by two FBI agents who want to be set up with starlets and have a screen test. They trail him as he goes from studio to studio hustling clients like Humphrey Bogart, Donna Reed, Jack Palance, Peter Lorre and Stanwyck. Barred from a studio he brazenly uses a bolt cutter to break through the chainlink fence to make a deal.
Song of Napalm: Poems
Bruce Weigl (Author), Robert Stone (Introduction)
“Song of Napalm is more than a collection of beautifully wrought, heartwrenching, and often very funny poems. It’s a narrative, the story of an American innocent’s descent into hell and his excruciating return to life on the surface. Weigl may have written the best novel so far about the Vietnam War, and along the way a dozen truly memorable poems.” — Russell Banks
Poems from Captured Documents: A Bilingual Edition
Thanh T. Nguyen (Translator), Bruce Weigl (Translator)
These poems were written in journals and notebooks by ordinary soldiers who fought against American forces in Vietnam. The format of this edition is bilingual to enable both Vietnamese and American readers to appreciate these documents.
The Best of Medic in the Green Time
“Reading this collection of Vietnam-related stories and recollections is excruciatingly painful — which is precisely why it demands to be widely read.” —Andrew Bacevich, professor emeritus, Boston University – “This is a powerful tribute to a generation that was told by society to quietly put away their uniforms and never speak again of what the […]