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A PATRIOT'S POETIC PROWESS
"Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light . . . a battleship . . . searching
in diminishing circles . . . until it challenges it's own eyes?" Thus begins
the ordeal of Beach Red, (Random House) a sixty minute battle for an
insignificant island in the South Pacific.
You lounge with intense casualness, waiting for the company
to emerge from the wardroom where lights burned all night
and low voices had planned and exhorted and said Amen.
Published in 1945, one would imagine the publisher took a great risk on the author and his book.
Beach Red is not a romantic tale. Nor does it glorify war. Contrary to the
euphoria sweeping the US at the close of World War II,
Beach Red is a poetic look at what battle was like
for an army private, and its author Peter Bowman makes no
apology for sketching a grim picture.
Dedicated to the unreturning, Beach Red begins in the
preparatory stages of battle. It is early morning; the soldiers are
anxious to get started. Time moves at a snail's pace, an experience brought home
to the reader through the layout of the book. There are no chapters in Beach Red.
Instead the book is divided into minutes, indicated by big
red numerals every few pages.
. . . Time was inducted into the Army, relinquishing, as a matter of
course, its
nonessential civilian occupation.
. . . Time trained in accordance with War Department
circular 187,
which states that after any similarity it may have had to
its past, present or future is rendered purely coincidental,
it shall be promoted in rank and authorized to wear the
uniform recognized as denoting 24 hours instead of 12.
. . . So Time now expresses itself from midnight to midnight
in groups of four digits ranging from 0001 to 2400 . . .
Would there be armies if clocks had never been invented?
Bowman takes the reader into the moment-to-moment
thoughts of a young, nameless private. He could be your
favorite uncle, or the boy next door. Hell, he might even
be you, from a life you once lived but would never want
to live over.
The reader learns much about this unknown soldier. We know he
has a wife in the states which he misses terribly. Although he
enlisted, our soldier's no war-monger, and we're left with
the sense that he doesn't fit in very well. But it's World War II,
and the last concern of the commanding officers is whether or not the boys
fit in. They're just grateful to have them.
. . . You walked through the jungle and Lindstrom
and Egan and
Whitney were in front of you and you
were behind them, and between you there was connecting tissue.
It was not because of any similarity you may have had in thought or behavior or habit
or belief, but because you had groped for it and found
it
and it had drawn you close . . .
Lindstrom is the confident Sergeant who leads his men with genuine concern. His optimism
might be contagious in a less life-threatening situation.
As it is, he serves to take the edge off the insanity with humorous
gibes and encouraging cracks at his men. "Leave us look good
in the newsreels!" he tells them as they prepare to descend
upon a Japanese stronghold in the pre-dawn light. When he
takes a bayonet in his midsection he observes, "Looks like
I've sprung a leak!"
"Everything men have
done to improve themselves has
been a perversion of original
purpose . . . Jungle law . . .
is the root they will stumble
over in the end."
Whitney is a soldier of battle. He looks forward to taking Beach Red,
and once on the island eagerly seeks orders to take, and fight,
and kill. He is in a soldier everything the soldier telling
us the story is not.
In Egan we have the heart of our soldier. "You read an unanswerable question in the
eyes of Egan, and you wonder if he sees the same in yours."
We are left suspecting he does.
It's 1945. The battle thoughts are filled with racist slurs.
The Japanese foe are reduced to Japs, Nips and savages, while
the Americans remain good ol' G.I. Joes. Of course,
we're never given a glimpse into the enemy's thoughts.
Our soldier is an incredibly human one. He is nervous.
He is frightened. He is angered, and too he is apprehensive.
In a span of five minutes his thoughts range from militant,
"Murder is your sixth sense . . . We're free men. They can shoot
us without consent," to philosophical, "Everything men have
done to improve themselves has been a perversion of original
purpose . . . Jungle law . . . is the root they will stumble
over in the end." Discouraged and scared, he is internally
embroiled.
The real battle story here is not the taking of Beach Red.
The real story is the war being raged in our soldier's head. Forced
to weigh the good of his country against the sanctity of
human life, he resorts to running propaganda tapes through
his mind regarding the yellow menace. He is a soldier
who's been instructed not to fear, but fear he does, thus he finds himself
embattled with the dubious task of reconciling his emotions with his sworn duty.
He comes to the rueful conclusion that "Courage is fear singing a hymn arranged for four voices."
. . . Attack. Defense. Counterattack. Retreat. Pursuit.
. . . Put them all together and what do they add up to?
A soldier. An anonymous guy in a uniform. A body without
a face. A number without a
name. A statistic coming to grips
with the enemy.
A card in an index file bleeding to death.
G.I. Joe, they call him. "G.I. Joe," they say, as if it
were something cute
and cunning to be smiled at
patronizingly. Sure, lots of laffs . . .
It could be any arena. Vietnam, Korea, The Persian
Gulf or even Grenada. It could be Panama or El Salvador.
Beach Red is a theatre where soldiers perform acts of war.
A fictional account of a terrifying hour in the life of the US war machine.
It is befitting that a name is never given to our soldier,
for in the end what Peter Bowman gives us is a compassionate tribute to the Unknown
Soldier. Not a tribute that strums at patriotic chords, but
one of tragic consequences resulting in a genuineness about the Unknown Soldier,
making him real, human . . . accessible.
And you can't submerge tragedy that takes lessons in swimming.
posted 01/24/01
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