Opinion

The Living Dead

By Douglas Lummis

A few years ago I met a fellow who had been with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam. Remarkably, he was willing to talk about it. Usually people who have been to war don't talk about it, except vaguely. Maybe it was because he knew I had been in the Marines myself, though not during wartime.

Whatever the reason, he was not only willing, it seemed as though he had an urgent desire to tell me how it was. He told me story after story of things he had experienced. They were very different from the stories we usually hear.

I didn't take notes, so the following example is from memory.

"One thing that really got me was, we would have these people we called 'The Living Dead.' Say, we go on patrol in the jungle, and we come under attack. We're fired on, and grenades start coming in. We dig in and fire back, and pretty soon they go away.

"We look around and see that we'ｖe got a few dead and a few wounded, and then there's this guy sitting there dazed, moaning. He looks all right from the front, but from behind you can see that the back of his head has been blown off, probably by a grenade. You can see the brains inside. He's got maybe 10 minutes to live, but he doesn't know it.

"We've got to get out of there fast; the VC could come back any time. We can't take him with us; he's all confused and moaning, and there's no way we can get him out alive anyway. So somebody sits him on a rock and gives him a cigarette, and says, 'Look, you're dead, OK? You just don't know it yet. Just sit here and enjoy this cigarette, and wait. We can't take you.'

"But he won't do it. We start back, he follows us, staggering along, screaming and moaning. You can't do a jungle patrol with somebody in it screaming. So somebody sits him down on a rock again and gives him another cigarette, and says, 'Hey, man, now listen to me. HELLOOO! You're dead. You think you're alive, but you're not. You're dead. STOP FOLLOWING US! Just sit here, OK?'

"But he still won't do it. We start off, there he is behind us again, yelling and moaning. So we have to do something."

I can't remember what words he used to finish the story. Something like, "So there was nothing to do but finish him," words meant to say, a bit indirectly, that they would shoot him, transforming 'The Living Dead' into the simple dead dead.

I remember this story whenever I hear people discussing whether a military will protect non-combatants and war prisoners, or whether it will sacrifice them for its own safety. What a question! In the heat of battle, they can't even protect each other.

Shukan ST: Feb. 18, 2005

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