Blacks in War
Terry, Wallace
BOOKS Blacks in War BLOODS by Wallace Terry Random House. 311 pp. $17.95. In 1967, Wallace Terry, then a correspondent for Time, was assigned to cover the war in Vietnam from the viewpoint of...
...For some, the war was the event of their lives...
...Twenty black veterans tell their stories, and the result is a powerful and riveting work brilliantly edited by Terry...
...Bloods offers us that chance...
...Fear and uncertainty were the staples of life for these soldiers, and they exacted a toll...
...white racism had followed them to Indochina...
...During the war's peak years, riots of anger and despair erupted in black ghettos across the land...
...We all can learn from them...
...In 1967, Wallace Terry, then a correspondent for Time, was assigned to cover the war in Vietnam from the viewpoint of the black American soldiers who fought it...
...Some men experienced nervous breakdowns in the heat of battle...
...Others, years later, are still haunted by nightmares...
...Others were restrained and reluctant fighters...
...A few of the men tell of destroying entire villages and killing scores of women and children often with the complicity, or even at the command, of higher officers...
...Some developed a contempt for the Vietnamese people, while one soldier from Baltimore fell in love with the people and their culture and married a Vietnamese woman...
...He didn't do that on his own to My Lai...
...Many of them echo the familiar sentiment that the United States did not devote its full attention and resources to the war effort...
...Yet when black soldiers returned to the bunker, they sometimes stepped onto another battlefield...
...Among the men here are the likable, the despicable, the enterprising, the passive, the contrite, and the arrogant...
...King was right...
...Like most soldiers in most wars, the Bloods were in solidarity with their country against the "enemy...
...Robert A. Watts (Robert A. Watts is a free-lance writer based in Baltimore...
...Because the war featured few formal battle lines, American soldiers were under continuous fire...
...And they called themselves 'Bloods.'" On its surface, Bloods offers a firsthand account of what it was like to fight in that war...
...Even among those who experienced major tragedy, some were utterly devastated, while others were spurred on to a deeper search for growth and meaning...
...In the early years of the war, black soldiers accounted for almost one-fourth of American fatalities...
...The role of the black soldier in Vietnam was particularly problematic...
...The war was wrong, and the burden it placed on many young black men was unconscionable...
...So despite getting the worst assignments, the Bloods often received little respect from their white comrades...
...It is about life itself in its many forms and guises...
...Yet manipulated or not, these men have a story to tell...
...King called it "cruel manipulation of the poor...
...it came at a time of heightened tensions and polarization at home...
...A highly disproportionate number of them were placed "on point," which meant that they were the first of a line of soldiers walking through a trail or path...
...He was told to do that...
...One need not condone the war or its drafting of those at the bottom of the social ladder to appreciate Bloods...
...Bloods is subtitled "an oral history of the Vietnam war by black veterans...
...For others, the war was just one of many events and situations in their lives...
...The wide range of personalities and war experiences recorded here reflects the diverse reality of humanity...
...The reader will literally cringe at many points in the book...
...They chose not to overlook the racial insults, cross burnings, and Confederate flags of their white comrades," Terry writes...
...Castrations, decapitations, skinnings, and other vile acts are all recounted here down to the most gory detail...
...In his famous denunciation of the war at Riverside Church, Martin Luther King Jr...
...As one Blood says, "It got to be a game between the communists and ourselves to see how many fingers and ears we could capture from each other...
...Not only did the war encounter the opposition of such prominent black leaders as Martin Luther King Jr...
...I know because I used to be in the field...
...Some of the Bloods became animals in war—purposefully performing acts of cruelty...
...One officer bitterly recalls his attempt to press charges against a white soldier who called him "nigger...
...He was met with the opposition of higher ranking officers who discouraged him in the name of "morale" and "unity...
...When the Bloods became angry or outspoken, they were given dishonorable discharges, which disqualified them from receiving veterans' benefits...
...They called for unity among black brothers on the battlefield to protest these indignities and provide mutual support...
...Says one Florida veteran, "Lieutenant Calley really didn't do nothing, man...
...Thanks to the brute honesty of the men interviewed, we get a view of the war that is often horrifying...
...Tales of atrocities on both sides abound...
...It may surprise many readers that most of the Bloods supported the war...
...noted how the nation was "taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem...
...They lost friends, suffered injuries, or experienced trauma which simply overwhelmed them...
...But Bloods is much more than a book about atrocities or racism...
Vol. 49 • August 1985 • No. 8
