Books like The Short-Timers

Gustav Hasford’s THE SHORT-TIMERS is my unicorn. It is the book that has eluded me for almost fifteen years. Finally, I wizened up and went to my library; I guess there are some books that will not become part of my personal collection. Enough about me. The book. My unicorn. As a kid I knew that the movie Full Metal Jacket was based on this book. (Brief interlude: most of the best lines quoted from the movie were never said by that character in the book.) My father, a veteran of Viet Nam was part of the 1st Marine Division, 5th Regiment, 1st Battalion in ’68-’69 and told my brothers and I that this movie was as close as it got to any art form depicting Viet Nam in any sense of accuracy. So, I thought I knew the story.WRONG.THE SHORT-TIMERS gave Stanley Kubrick some ideas, an outline. Had Kubrick stayed faithful to the novel I am certain that the book would still be in print today. Where Kubrick went wrong was how he took aspects of a Marine’s psychology and twisted it to show only the parts that could be sensationalized. Hasford’s novel has other ideas. THE SHORT-TIMERS wants to show how an ordinary man becomes a monster, but still maintains (or struggles to maintain) some semblance of humanity. You see, it is easy to say that the guys who humped through the jungle during that much neglected and disrespected war were crazy, but it is harder to understand why exactly they were the way they were. These men were changed. One moment at a time they were transformed into killers. Joker and Cowboy and Pyle were never given a chance to be individuals; individuals get you dead. Rather, Joker and Cowboy and Pyle were twisted and broken and shaped into one tiny metallic splinter of a cog in the Green Machine wheel. And as their individualism was erased, something else took its place. It’s hard to say exactly was this something was. Attitude? Bravery? Loyalty? Fantasy? Bat-shit craziness? But by the time these men (except Pyle; you all know what happened) reached Viet Nam, this new persona became hardened. Death was nothing to fear. Killing was to be embraced. Even when a tank commander runs over a little Vietnamese girl and a water buffalo or when some of the guys are killing rats (VC rats) in their bunks or trenches there is a moment when the grisly nature of war should become apparent, but never does because the little girl’s papasan only wants reimbursement for the dead animal, knowing that the girl’s life is worthless monetarily and he needs money to buy food, and the rats are merely a gesture by God as a means to entertain the Marines while they are waiting for that moment when Charlie and ten-thousand of his closest friends run through the wire, eager to taste the blood of American soldiers. By the time Joker meets up with Rafterman (and there is a heck of a back-story as to how Rafterman got his name) human emotion is only felt by the New Guys, the phony-tough and the crazy-brave. Once Rafterman experiences his first taste of bloodlust, once his first confirmed kill has been acknowledged, Hasford paints one of the most horrible scenes this reader has ever pictured in his mind. (I will not spoil this for you…trust me; it’s worth the wait to read it for yourself.) And it is during these times that Hasford’s novel far surpasses Kubrick’s film.Allow me to illustrate my point. There is a scene in the movie where Joker and some of the other Marines are fighting in Hue. The movie shows some destroyed buildings, rubble mounds, and military movements. Hasford describes it as such: We see the great walls of the Citadel. With zigzagging ramparts thirty feet high and eight feet thick, surrounded by a moat, the fortress looks like an ancient castle from a fairy tale about dragons who guard princesses in need of assistance. The castle is black stone against a cold gray sky, with dark towers populated by shadows that are alive. The Citadel is actually a small walled city constructed by French engineers as protection for the home of Gia Long, Emperor of Annamese Empire. When Hue was the Imperial Capital, the Citadel protected the Emperor and the royal family and the ancient treasure of the Forbidden City from pirates raiding from the South China Sea. We are big white American boys in steel helmets and heavy flak jackets, armed with magic weapons, laying siege to a castle in modern times…Metal birds flash in and shit steel eggs all over the place. F-4 Phantom jet fighters are dropping napalm, high explosives, and Willy Peter—white phosphorus. With bombs we are expressing ourselves; we are writing our history in shattered blocks of stone…Wise, like Solomon, we have converted Hue into rubble in order to save it.DAMN! THAT IS SOME WRITING! As I said, this book is my unicorn. But that’s not all; Hasford goes further into the mind of a Marine in Viet Nam. In surrealistic dream sequences, Hasford examines what it means to be a lifer, poge, or grunt through strange interactions between Joker and what can only be described as a vampire who is also a colonel in the United States Marine Corp. Great metaphor, strange (yet incredible) storytelling. There is also a scene when Joker gets knocked off his feet from an explosion and his body splits in to three parts: mind, body, and spirit. The mind and body want Joker to heal, but the Spirit only wants to leave Viet Nam, seek some other realm. I wish I could give you more detail, but that would only ruin an extraordinary reading experience. By the time the book gets to the third part, Joker is only a skin-suit. He no longer resembles himself. He has become a Short-Timer, a person that only has x amount of days and a wake-up. He has become paranoid, worried about self-preservation. In essence, he has become an animal. And that is the message Hasford successfully conveys. War is ugly. War is harsh. War is cruel. War has no survivors. And as Plato so succinctly stated: “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” to which I have to agree. For the living must carry that burden with them for the rest of their lives.HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION