Fragging the Chains of Command: Gl Resistance Poetry and Mutilation Michael Bibby In 1966 Cpl. John Morgan announced his refusal to serve in Vietnam at an antiwar rally in New York. City, stating, “T intend to go back and face whatever ‘charges the Marine Corps will bring... I will not serve even ome more day as a Marine—in conscience I cannot” (qtd, Lowenfels 154), The ‘Marines later arrested and court-martialed Morgan for being AWOL and refusing to fight in Vietnam, Cpl. Morgan was.not the first soldier to refuse duty in the Vietnam War; resistance to the war within the military can be traced to the earliest involvement of US troops. In a 1964 article, an AWOL Aftican- American soldier highlighted the paradox of belng asked to fight for freedom in Viemam when blacks had lite freedom in the U.S. (“Letter”), Lt, Henry ‘Howe, Jr, carried placards reading “Let's Have More than a Cholce between Petty Ignorant Fascists in 1968” and “End Johnson's Fascist Ageression in Vietnam” at a 1965 El Paso, Texas antiwar demonstration; he was later‘court-martialed for “disrespectful utterances toward public: officials” (Hayes 127). In 1966, three privates stationed at Ft ‘Hood gained national media attention for their refusal to fight in Vietnam; many in the antiwar movement hoped the Ft. Hood Three, as they became known, would mark the emergence of a troop revolt which would quickly end the war. Although such hopes were not realized, troop dissent during the war spread to an extent ‘unprecedented in U.S. military history and had a ‘profound impact on the course of the war. 1 draw attention to Morgan, however, because he ‘was one of:the first soldiers who published poetry against the Vietnam War. Morgan's poems appeared In an antiwar poetry newsletter printed at Camp Lejeune in 1966. His poem “The Second Coming” appeared in a special joint-issue of thé New York alternative journals Kauri and The Gargoyle, and later was reprinted in Walter Lowenfels’s important antiwar anthology, Where is Wemam? A three-part poem indebted to Beat style, “The Second. envisions the apocalypuc rise and fall of America. In its second part, Morgan portrays the church and state as inter-related forms of repression: Dovninus vobiscum, Dominus go fis ‘em, ‘Shake "em down, god, they might have something dangerous hidden in their ‘these fire-headed youth scrambling under ‘your shocked and wary eyes, these angry lambs whose only truth is now, and ooly sin is love, ‘You fear their love, cand rightly for itis their very compassion ‘forthe living that wil hang you on the cross of ‘your own making, ‘and leave your corpse roting in tomorow’ air. ‘Sancif, sancti, sanctt the sheep ofthe strects ‘with wolves in their bellies, Invoking Christlan symbolism and the Roman Catholic Latin mass, Morgan contrasts the church/state with the pacifists, the “lambs” who follow Christ's teachings, The church, police, and ‘military are represented in the rhyme in Hines 1-2 as related forms of the power that represses the disempowered. The “god” (“Dominus”) called upon to fitsk the pacifists 1s conflated withthe police. Just as the Latin mass 1s profaned in Une 2, “god” can be read as an expletive in line 3; written in the lower case, “god” represents the profane authority of ‘earthly powers (the police, the state) rather than the divine, Like Ginsberg's “angel-headed hipsters,” the “fire-headed youth” are the true divinities lost in Moloch. Morgan warns the powerful that these seemingly meek sheep hide “wolves in their bellies.” Their corning bodes both a figurative and Uteral death to the “god” of church, state, and police; this “second coming” will crucify this profane god and leave his “corpse rotting in / tomorrow's air.” Tn the poem's third section, the poet prays even more pointedly for the violent overthrow of the church/state power:30° Journal of American Culture {sing death to you, king, ‘My words like a common butcher's knife lash through your ears. all forthe weeping sun and the exploding air to find you cowering; and cary you to the darkening fields of your church, : for your own vultures to dip their savage beaks into the dust of your soul, and shriek with untamed feeding in the roaring dawn, until te calm of noon shall sd flowers sprouting again in the canyons of America, (Lowenfels 94-95) ‘The victims of oppresston—the pacifists beaten by the police, the antiwar soldier forced to fight an unjust war—will become the victors in this poem through the oppressor's mutilation. The speaker's words, like the butcher's knife, become'a tool for disrupting class oppression and redirecting violence against the ruler, ‘The graphic images of the knife through the ear, the rotting corpse, and the vultures pecking the king’s soul rearticulate the experience of war's violence; aé the old leftist phrase went, Morgan's representations seek to “turn the guns around.” Compared to the cliché imagery in the last lines of “flowers / sprouting,” the tmages of ‘tilation resonate with the insight of expérience. Much of the poetry written by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War demonstrates an obsession. ‘with the graphic portrayal of mutilation, of bodies lacerated, blown apart, tom open, Critles Of Vietnam War literature often dismiss the war-era poetry of soldiers for its insistence on realistically representing the ‘war's atrocities. Such eritics unfavorably compare this poetry's depictions of war to the work of canonized soldier-poets, such as ‘Wilfred Owen and Randall Jarre. Jeffrey Walsh, for ‘example, praises Owen for his use of the Romantic ‘raditlon: Such a resonant literary language supplied Owen with locutions in which he could speak compassionately, ditterly and ironically in turns and write poetry. ‘counteractive.to the dead rhetoric of slogan makers and politicians... What clearly is lacking {in Vietnam-cra soldier poetry] is an available arstic mode of a sustained kkind, an extended formal utterance or discourse in which the war's distinctive technical nature as well as its moral ‘nature can be realised. (204) Similarly, Philip Beldler contrasts the “dogged concreteness (and] attempt to render the experience of the war in all its brute sensory plenitude” of soldier-poetry published during the Vietnam War with later veterans" poctry that “could be called ‘notes toward a new mythic Lconography” (75). By measuring GI antiwar poetry according to New Critical standards and canons expressive of pre- Vietnam U.S. culture, both critles overtook the cultural contexts unique to this poetry and help to ‘perpetuate its neglect in the academy, Indeed, of the ‘numerous studies published since Beidier’s ‘work, soldler-poetry written during the war has recelved little or no attention (Walsh ‘devotes barely two pages to it). Yet the Vietnam War 1s the only war in U.S. history to have generated ‘oth a substantial body of antiwar poetry by active- duty soldiers and a well-organized culture of resistance among troops. Its preclsely in its attention to the bodily extremities of the war that GI antiwar poetry seeks to articulate resistance. Rather than dismiss GI Resistance poetry for its obsessive attempts to depict the mutilation of human bodies, we should attend to how these obsessions register the cultural and political imperatives dissident soldiers address. ‘Mutilation—the cutting off or destruction of limbs ‘essential parts—defines not only bodily damage, Dut it also signifies the war experience for GI poets. Moreover mutilation can serve as a metaphor for the project of GI Resistance poetry, a radical alteration Of the military “corps” and its hegemony over the discourses of the war. The war's “distinctive ‘echalcal nature” 1s realized through representations of mutilation, and an “extended formal utterance ar discourse” in GI Resistance poetry derives from the specific condiuons of soldier-expertence during the ‘Vietnain War, Through a poetics of mutilation, soldier-poets sought to foreground what Elaine ‘camry has called “the incontestable reality” of the ‘product of war: mutilated human bodles (62). More than simply testifying to atrocity, however, this attention to the mutilated body subverts the authority of the military and the body politic. By Insisting on the corporeal fragmenlation obsessively produced in a war driven by the body count, GI poetry offers a counter-narrative that seeks to “frag” the signifying chains of command established by ‘military discourse. In the argot of the war, to “frag” meant to assassinate an officer ot career soldier (“lifer”), usually with a “fragmentation device.” a ‘gonade, In the same sense, GI antiwar poems mean to explode the official narrative of the war. GI Resistance poetry’s refusal to mythologize the conflict, its Insistence on the war's atrocities, itsfocus on the “brute sensory plenitude” of the war ‘stems from the brutality of a “corporate war” in which the production of mutilation took precedence ‘over any morally defined objective, ‘The attention to representing mutilation in GI poetry can be Unked to U.S, military imperatives to read mutilation in the Vietnam War, The insistence on body counts as a measure of military success epitomizes U.S, policy in the Vietnam War, James ‘William Gibson's study of the war shows how soldiers’ military success depended on the production of high body counts (112-128). Gen, Jullan Ewell, for example, rated military units for leaves and R&R according to a system of Kil ratios, in which 1 Allied killed to 50 Enemy killed designated a unit as “highly skilled.” The 25th Infantry Diviston conducted “Best of the Pack” contests which rated platoons in the division according to the number of bodies counted (112- 114), The military's emphasis on the body count encouraged soldiers not only to produce needless slaughter but also to falsify numbers of enemy dead. ‘As the war progressed and the body count became more important, Gis became skilled at reading a complex semiotics of the body in order to produce Satisfactory numbers for shllitary management. The “inferential counting rule” became standard operating procedure, This unofficial rule was used by accompany “to infer sumbers of enemy dead according to some found object or sign—an enemy ‘weapon, a blood trail, a dismembered body part, ot other mark of enemy presence.... Severed limbs signified a whole body for counting purposes” (Gibson 126). The U.S. military's fetishization of body parts as “proof” demanded that soldiers read ‘mutilated bodies as a narrative of numbers and ratlos. GI Resistance poetry's focus on bodies lacerated, broken, mangled by the war relterates the experiences of Vietnam-era soldiers and yet, defies the military imperatives to see bodies only as numbers. ‘The GI Resistance occupies a unique place in the history of American radicalism, According 10 James R. Hayes, soldiers have manifested insubordination and voiced dissent throughout U.S. military history, but organized resistance was unprecedented before the Vietnam War. Hayes points out that “The social movement characteristics ‘exhibited by the movement, e.g., a sense of group Identity and solidarity, consciously articulated ideologies, movement organizations, distinguish it from other more spontaneous and transitory uprisings such as the ‘Back Home Movement’ in the aftermath of World War II” (126). Encompassing Fragging the Chains of Command 31 several organized groups of active-duty soldiers and veterans who opposed the war and advocated democratic reforms in the military, the GI Resistance threatened to destabilize the U.S. military, and it significantly endangered U.S. operations in Vietnam. Dissident soldiers published underground sewspepers, organized small press and developed networks for the dissemination of thelr literature to soldiers throughout the country and in military bases around the world. By 1971, st least 144 different GI newspapers were being produced on U.S., European, and even Southeast ‘Asian bases (Hayes 132). These underground papers Printed articles, poems, and artwork by Gls and ‘were surreptitiously passed on to other soldiers, thus generating s globally connected.culture of GI dissent. Although most underground GI papers focused on news and-information relevant to dissident solders, poetry served as a prominent means of ‘niaginative expression in the GI press (Tischler 25). In a survey of over 25 different GI Resistance periodicals, 1 found a rich source of activist-postry which testifies to both the will to resist among soldiers and the significance of the body in their imagination. The antagonisms portrayed in these ‘poems reiterate oppositions typical of the proletariat poetry of the carly 20th century; the Oppressors are represented as the bosses, the “brass,” politicians, businessmen, while the Oppressed. are. the Vietnamese, soldiers, workers, minorities. (Characteristically, early poems in the GI Resistance press tend to rearticulate the violence of the war 50 that the Oppressors become its target, not the Oppressed. Images of violence are used to dramatize the plight of the soldiers or the Vietnamese, but they also are used to express the poets’ anger and desire for revenge against the military, the state, of “the establishment.” These poems often represent relations of power between oppressed and oppressor {In terms of mutilation. ‘A poem by an anonymous soldier stationed:in ‘Vietnam exemplifies this discourse. This poem first appeared in a 1969 issue of the GT Resistance paper A Four-Year Bummer, it also appeared in two other GI papess that year: Rough Draft (August 1969) and Eyes Left (September 1969). Signed “A Peace Lover” it begins by focusing on images of spectacular, nightmarish violence which foreground the suffering of the war's victims: ‘When laughter ceases—loud—hideous laughler Comes the silence. ‘Thea the crying and screaming.32. Journal of American Culture "The legless and the mind blown far into the midst of abomb; Consuming lifeless, headless babies with hysterical ‘women, ‘The war's victims are drawn into the machinery of its atrocities and consumed by its catastrophic ‘madness. The poem ends, however, by blaming such atrocities on “Men in business sults,” depicted above the fray on “two hills.” The poem's final Unes describe these businessmen: Feeling no pain ‘Seeing no blood Losing no arms. ‘They say, “Stay and Fight” Tsay, “Go to Hell.” (4) ‘The poem sets up an opposition between the ‘mutilated and the whole. Those who experience war may be disfigured, mutilated, even destroyed; those ‘who wage war through policy and business from a safe distance remain whole, undamaged, unaffected. ‘The distinction between oppressed and oppressor becomes a difference forcibly Inscribed on the body. In the signifying chain of the poem's last lines, what really matters 1s that the “businessmen” remala ‘whole, while the Viemamese and American soldiers bear the disfigurements of the war. The poet exposes the “incontestable reality” of the war and then defies ‘those who engineer this reality. In the last line, his ‘biome impérative not only ‘explicitly expresses the soldier's refusal to carry out orders but also implicitly threatens those in command with violence. The poem, then, disrupts the “chain of command” secured by each soldier's compliance ‘with the hierarchical order, Greg Laxer’s poem “For My Still Imprisoned Comrades,” appearing in a 1971 issue of The Bond, praised antiwar soldiers imprisoned at Ft. Leavenworth and celebrated the disruption of military order. every time a yellow infant explodes forth unto the word, from the womb-darkness to greet the sun, \homgh bsioged on very se by nnpal-phesphorme ‘nother nail is driven into the coffin of capitalism... comrades, do not despair, though the lackey-mindless ‘guards may taunt you unceasingly for the ime is not far off when the bones of the capitalist shall lie bleaching inthe sun and up through the hollow eye-sockets shall push flowers and the earth shall again bustle withthe joy of life... (7) Representing the birth of a Vietnamese child as an explosion inverts the tragic reality of the war. Rather than a victim of U.S, artillery, the newborn child symbolizes victory over oppression, presaging the death of capitalism. The graphic images of the “capitalist’s" skeleton in the last lines recaats, ‘mutilation so that, rather than a Vietnamese child, it is the body of the oppressor that is mutilated and abandoned. ‘These poems express the desire for vengeance that dissident soldiers often felt towards “the brass” and the military ducing the war, Other GI Resistance poems have focused on graphically representing ‘how muutilation radically disturbs the meaning of the body. The opening up of a body, the production of ‘gashes disrupting the body's coherence, transgresses militaristic representations of the soldier as a seamless totality, an impenetrable masculinity (Thewelelt 98-107). Ronald J, Willls’s ironically titled “Victory,” from a 1969 issue of Gigline, represents the penetration of a soldier's body in detail: Biolet has muzzle velocity, so great, 1235 feet per second and 1.2 seconds later it meets Stee! Helmet ‘on'rushed Bullet 1.204 seconds ‘after leaving Muzzlo— Jagged edges behind bim he met ‘Hisir who beld hon up nowise in is Journey ‘Skin gave way to mushroomed Built and ‘Bones deformed at his will 6671 feet a second he went ase tore ‘vessels oo surprised to bleed then Bullet nosed through soft gray-white stuff ‘badly bard as bater ‘This pocm anthropomorphizes the bullet, helmet, and body parts, while the buman body the bullet has penetrated is rendered inert and inhuman, Only military gear and body parts have agency—the ‘whole body hardly exists. As the poem narrates the bullet's destructive path, It represents the soldier's ‘memories as objects the body expels, similar to tissue or bone: First be eut through the memory of Mom. then a small gray dog through a fist car, a wreck but the hell itma ‘rough a huge area of scraped knees and palld pigtail then Alitle bit of fear...‘The poem catalogs the thoughts and memories that detail the soldier's experiences. The sentimentality of the images used to describe the soldict’s ‘memories 1s defused by the poem's matter-of-fact, style and its focus on the bullet’s agency; the sentimental has been made senseless by the insensitive bullet. Alongside this poem in Gigline is, a drawing of a helmet witha hole in it, When the oem was reprinted in OM, a graphic drawing of 8 soldier's limp body, his exploded head thrown back against 2 rock, his mouth gaping open, appeared on the same page. Underneath thls drawing are lines fom Sophocles: “Who is the slayer, who the victim? Speak” The exposure of the body's insides, the disruption of its borders by a bullet or shrapnel throws subjectivity into question. The flesh thet ‘once determined Inside and outside, subject and object, breaks and gives way; the bodily contents ‘once internal to the-subject now become external, neither object nor subject but what Julla Kristeva calls the abject. The appearance of the abject attests to the provisional nature of subjectivity. As Freud and Lacan have argued, the formation of an ego derives’ from the individual's mapping of corporeal ‘coherence, delimiting boundaries between self and ‘other (Grosz 82-85). For Kristeva the individual also ‘establishes these boundaries through revulsion, a rejection of “impure” bodily matter, such as blood, pits, feces, a process which allows the individual to identify its “own and clean self" in opposition to what has been rejected (Kristeva 53). As Grosz: ‘explains, “The subject must disavow part of itself in ‘order to gain-a stable self, and this form of refusal marks whatever identity it acqulres as provisional, ‘and open to breakdown and instability” (86), The involuntary emergence of bodily contents radically threatens the subject with the impossibility of self Abjection is caused by “what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules” (Kristeva 4). The laceration of a body by shrapnel, for example, exposing tendons, muscles, veins, blood exposes the disorder the ‘undamaged body seems to contain; it dramatizes the horror of the body's otherness, The mangled corpse, especially, epitomizes the Intolerability ofthe abject. According to Kristeva: “The compse, seen without God and outside of science, is the uimost of abjection. tis death infecting life. Abject. It is something ejected from which one does not part, from ‘which one does not protect oneself as from an object. Imaginary uneanniness and real threat, it beckons to us and ends up engulfing us. G-4) ‘Fragging the Chains of Command 33 ‘The mutilated corpse signifies a fissure, a broken boundary between life and death; images of mutilated bodies in GI Resistance poems attest to the abjection constituting the soldier's trauma. GI poems ofien use such images to represent the psychological experience of the war, blurring the lines between inner and outer, mental and physical. ‘Umojo Kwaguvu's “A Vet Raps to a POW,” from a 1973 isiue of The Bond, biterly compares his retum to the U.S. as a combat soldier to the hero's welcome for a recently released POW. Kwaguvy represents his psychological. experience of the war ‘through images of physical mutilation: “The war was under my feet, over my head, / stabbing my eyes, raping my ears, choking my throat, / and ‘sipping my stomach” (8). While poems in the GI press often display ‘mutilation in order to redirect it back at the state the poems in Winning Hearts and Minds (1972) tend to focus on the experience of witnessing disruptions of the body's boundaries. The speaker in Stan Platke's “Gut Catcher,” for example, iMustrates abjection by focusing on the fallure to contain the disorder of the ‘mutilated body. The poem opens by asking, “Have you ever seen / a gut catcher?”: ‘You catch the guts of your buddy ‘As they spill out of his body ‘And wy to stiff them back in ‘But they keep sling out For a face blown in For an eye blown-cut Foran am blown off For a body blown open. A gol catcher, (21) ‘The “gut catcher” is a soldier or his hands, represented here as a plece of military equipment that doesn’t work: in this poem, the mutilated body of the “buddy” renders even the “gut catcher’ body a meaningless fragment of the military ‘machine that ultimately falls to secure coherence. ‘The “gut catcher” resides om the borderline between death and life; his abjection emerges in the contradictions of the dying and the living, the vital ‘organs sliding through his fingers. Many of the poems in Winning Hearts and Minds express abjection by focusing on the mutilated body's otherness. Paquet's “In a Plantation,” for example, resembles Willis's “Victory” in its attention to the effects on the body of abullet:34 Journal of American Culture ‘Tho bullet passed ‘Through his right temple, His let side (Could not hold ‘Against the metal, His last “Tam” exploded Reed and grey on a rubber tee. (12) The bullet penetrating the soldier's head ejects subjectivity, challenging a Cartesian notion of subjectivity by insisting on the corporeal. limits of being; the once sentient brain ssue exists only as an abject ‘sign of the body's violation. Another Paquet poem, “They Do Not Go Gentle,” rewrites Dylan ‘Thomas's famous poem and its celebration of the ‘human will to survive, Hore the mutilated body is represented a8 convulsive, devoid of any sentient will: ‘The halfdead comatose Paw the ar ike cats do when they dream, “They perform isometries telesly. ‘They fall he nis with a vengeance ‘You know they cannot have, ‘Afterall, their multiplication tables, ‘Memories of momma, and half thelr id ‘Lies in some sbell hole Or plop! splatcr! on your jangle boat... (3) ‘The speaker's portrayal of brains tying in a shell hole or falling out of a body foregrounds the abjection which disrupts the stability of notions such as will and identity, As Elizabeth Grosz. has written, “The corpse signifies the supervalence of the body, the body's recalcitrance to consciousness, reason or will” (92). In W-D. Ehshart's “The Sniper's Mark” the body is similarly rendered “brainless” by the ‘war. The poem's speaker, the sniper, watches his ‘victim's death throes: “A brainless savage flurry / Of arms and legs and chest / And eyes at once” (12). ‘The soldier’s body has bea emptied of the content ‘which makes subjectivity possible (Le,, the brain); It lacks identity, totality, agency, or will and has been rendered utterly alien, other, abject. The representations of mutilated soldiers in these poems subvert the cultural norms of soldiers as active, self- reliant, endowed with certainty of will. By focusing on the soldier's dismembered body GI Resistance poetry evokes the crisis in masculinity that the Vietnam War would come to signify in U.S. culture. Images of mutilation and ‘castration express the contradictory position of the soldier, who epitomizes the ideal male body in dominant ideology, but who is often emasculated by the war, Castration renders the (male) soldier body ‘meaningless, Incoherent (lacking orderly continuity) {n the symbolic order; the male body penetrated and broken by fragments of grenades and mines, or high-velocity bullets is transgressed in a way that defies the phallic discourse perpetuated by the military and militaristic culture, Paquet’s “Basket Case” Illustrates how castration becomes paradigmatic of the war's effect on the soldler and ‘his status in American culture, a culture which fetishizes the unity of its military “corps.” The speaker begins by recounting how he stepped on a mine after his first sexual encounter at 18 with a ‘Vietnamese prostitute: felt the rip at te walls of my thighs, ‘A thousand meta seythes cut me open, ‘My le fish sbot twenty yards Into aswamp canal, [fathered only this—the gendertess bitterness Of ewo stumps, and an unwanted ity ‘That binhs the faces ofall ‘Who will ee me till die deliciously From the spreailng sepsis that was once my balls, (Winning 20) Jn Paquet's poem an image of castration, represented fas falled fertility, expresses how the war “frags” rather than bullds masculinity, In the opening tines, sex collapses into mutilation: “But I wish T never felt the frst wild / Gliding lust, because the rage and thrust / Of a mine caught me hip high” (20). The internal rhyme (lust / thrust) emphasizes an Interrelation between masculinist sexual desire and military violence, The “little fish” wasted in “swamp canal” and the disease that replaces the scrotum also point to the loss of masculinity. fn the fist line the speaker announces, “I waited elghtcen years to become « man.” The manhood that military service and masculinist rituals promised him has been “fragged.” ‘The castration imagery signifies not only literal emasculation, but also the inadequacy of the U.S. military's ideology of masculinity In the war. In a study of military training, Vietnam veteran R. Wayne Eisenhart noted thot “The sexuality of the men [in basic training] was closely tied to the success or failure of the unit. Masculinity was affirmed through completion of the military function” (17). Recounting his experlences in basic training, Eisenhart states that drill instructors often challenged the sexuality of receults who performed poorly by calling them “faggots” and “iris.” These verbal assaults stopped only when recruits exhibited Intensely violent and aggressive behavior (16). The relationship between sexual Identity and militaryprowess and the metaphorical link between penis and rifle ts grotesquely Mustrated in the following Incident: ‘While in basic taining we were issued M-14 rifles, The breech of the weapon is closed by a bolt which is ‘continually pushed forward by a large spring with ‘considerable force. One night three men who had been ‘censured for ineffectiveness in their assigned tasks were called forward in fron ofthe assembled platoon, ordered to inert their penises into the breeches of their weapous, loss the bolt, and run the longth ofthe squid bay singing ‘the Marine Corps Hymn. (15) Punishment for “ineffectiveness” focuses on the penis, the polnt in the male body most identified with gendered subjectivity, In a study of soldiers in the German Frelkorps, Klaus ‘Theweleit argues that violence and pain define the boundarles of the soldier's body and enable him to construct an anrior constitutive of his ego: “punishments...remind (soldier males] constantly of the existence of their periphery (showing them their boundaries), until they ‘grow’ a functioning and controlling body armor, and a body capable of seamless fusion into Jarges formations with armorlike peripheries” (164). The military training soldiers received during ‘Vietnam literally Inscribed the soldier-ego-on the soldier's body through psychologically traumatic forms of corporal punishment, Those who effectively formed an “artmor-ego” could become the “killing machines” deill instructors demanded; they could envision themselves as impenetrable, {indestructible bodies, The soldier. then secures the boundaries of his ego by containing physical pain. As Theweleit puts it, “I feel pain, therefore T am” as), The guerilla warfare GIs experienced in Vietnam, however, defied tertitorial boundaries and the logic of their training, and placed them in @ pervasive and constant state of bodily danger resulting in a radical disruption of subjectivity. According to Herman Rapaport, “When ‘Charlie’ ‘castrated the corpses ofits enemy, it wasn't anything else but a sign pointing to the fact that dismemberment means a loss of sexuality, a ruining ‘of Western man's acceptability as a man in the eyes Of his peers” (145), Such disturbances are indicative of the U.S.'s insistence on rationality and the strict ‘maintenance of masculine ego boundaries. The disruption of boundaries, geographical and corporeal, characteristic of Viet Cong guerilla tactics, terrified U.S. troops, “bringing up again a forgotten trauma, the lack of a phallus, the body as Fragging the Chains of Command 35 partial object” (Rapaport 145), Guerilla warfare in ‘Vietnam, then, threatens the U.S. soldier with abjectlon, the appearance of the repressed disorder {in subjectivity. Mutilation resonates at the most fundamental level of national and sexual ideologies, By expressing this trauma, GI Resistance poetry also seeks to unmake the military training that has constructed subjectivity around the extremes of pala. Castration Images in this poetry resist the military's archetype of the soldier-male as an impenetrable masculine totality for whom the phallus is the principal weapon, Paquet’s “Basket Case,” like other representations of castration in Vietnam-era soldier Mterature, powerfully evokes the military discourses, that make mutilation (castration) equivalent to military failure and vice-versa. Postwar representations of the war have often identified its loss'as a feminizetion and castration for the U.S.; in GI Resistance poetry, however, castration de- Jegitimizes the war and critiques masculinist ideology (Jeffords 156-160). The Paquet poem, for ‘example, achieves its impact by representing the ‘speaker's body as the obverse of dominant cultural representations .of the soldier. The macho ‘braggadocio-in the opening lines crumbles into Impotency in the final Lines. The body which has “walted to become a man” becomes Instead genderless, a body. outside the symbolic order of phallic law, engendering only alienation and “unwanted pity.” Moreover, the poem portrays the war itself as the cause of castration; it ultimately contradicts the notion that combat makes a “man” of a soldier, ‘Mutilation’s pervasiveness in the soldier's life in Vietnam, coupled with its radical negation of ‘corporeal integrity, “frags” notions of subjectivity in many. GI Resistance poems. John Stulett’s “Dick ‘Nixon, T am Lt. John Stulett, U.S. Army, 1st Cav. Div,” written: only months before he was killed in action, epitomizes this “fragging.” The poem ‘catalogs scenes of bodies blown apart, mutilated, and dying. As Stulett writes early In the poem, “Hands and eyeballs still fly off in all directions forever / from the unmercy of Viet Nam" (60). The ‘Vietnam envisioned by the poem is an expanding vortex of body parts and mutilation: Fecseraswei te at ueeul a ne ‘as you read it. The 1g is our wound-up clock!! tick ck, tick tick, ides a see wnesi al aes al tog (Winning 60)36 Journal of American Culture Repeatedly he asks Richard Nixon, “What does it mean?"—finally the “it,” the death, mutilation, and ‘moral depravity of the war, means nothing more than its own processes, its own display as spectacle. John Stulett as a subject exists only as an Veye recording images of death and mutilation, drawing the reader into the experlence, and making the reader complicit. The assonance in these lines (dies, 41. write, line, hiding, child) underscores the wailing of humans that defies language: Wherever Stulett ‘urs his gaze he sees mutilated bodies: “men who blow out eyes by being slow! /...and a wrinkled ‘man scratches his back up and down on a shrivelled hut— / he doesn’t have any arms left" (61). The mulllated body has become figuratively “hard to dispose of," as Scarry has written (62). In the last lines the soldier answers his own repeated question: “What does it mean? /1’m afrald to know” (61), The war's atrocities defy meaning and elicit abjection in the speaker, who is “afraid to know.” Although the poet addresses his “commandér-In-chief in the poem's tile by announcing his name and rank, the official identity of a soldier, the instability of Sdentity 1s demonstrated through the poet’s catalog of corporeal fragments. Indeed, the inability to “ienow” meaning, ot to cobere the images of body fragments, signifies the collapse of identity. In Lacan's theory of ego-formation, the child's ability to forge a fictional coherence out of the pieces of the body it can perceive enables it to form an identity, to center the symbolic, and differentiate self from other (18-19), Stulett’s poem suggests the speaking ‘subject can no longer make the body parts cohere, ‘and thus, identity breaks down, The “fragging” of ‘identity, then, implicitly critiques the title's address. to Nixon, the rituals of military command, and the very notion that Nixon can be the “‘commander-in- chief” of a “corps” that no longer signifies ‘coherently. By focusing on the “fragged™ body, GI Resistance poetry seeks to “disincorporate” the master narratives of war. Official statements about the war that the military offered the U.S. public ‘constructed a narrative in which mutilated and dead human bodies were rendered as numbers. Such narratives sought to cover the brutality of the war through Jargon, circumlocution, metaphor, so that “pacifying” a Vietnamese village, for instance, bore litde relation to the brutality of that act, Dissident soldiers who came forward to testify to U. atrocities, then, sought to expose the violence elided through the Jargon of “body counts.” By exposing mutilated bodies, resistance in GI antiwar poetry paradoxically parallels what Homi K. Bhabha Identifies as a form of resistance in postcolonial discourses. Paraphrasing Freud, Bhabha argues that the postcolonial may employ a discourse typical of “melancholics” who, through “the insistent self- exposure and the repetition of loss,” belittle both themselves.and those they blame for their condition. According to Bhabha, “This inversion of meaning ‘and address in the melancholic discourse—when It ‘incorporates’ the loss or lack in its own body, displaying its own weeping wounds—s also an act. ‘of ‘disincorporating’ the authority of the Master” (65). While 1 do not mean to suggest an ‘unproblematic conflation of the U.S. soldier and the postcolonial, a relationship between the ‘melancholic, the colonized, and the antiwar soldier does seem reasonable. Throughout the Iatict years of the war and after, the Vietnam veteran has often occupied the role of a melancholic in American culture and bas been repeatedly figured as deficient, either physically or psychically, As Lorrie Smith has suggested: ‘In many ways, veterans of the Vietnam War share a similar position with women and ethnic minodties; mute, invisible, objectified by the dominant culture, blamed for circumstances which in fact have victimized the ‘Writers in this position necessarily find an authentic voice by resisting the cultural codes that define them as other, ta ty neces challenge revaling Merry sors, ‘This sonse of victimization has often surfaced in GI poetry as a strong sense of empathy for the ‘Vietnamese. According to Walsh, in American Uterature about the war, only soldier-poets have “demonstrat{ed] a profound awareness of the structure and feeling of Vietnamese culture” (qtd. Melling 2). ‘As Bhabha suggests, the melancholic role can bbe oppositional. Im the same way that the sel derogatory display of loss In the postcolonial narrative also critiques imperialism, the antiwar soldier's display of the mutilated body “disincorporates” the metanarratives that enabled the US. to wage this war. The veterans who threw their medals on the steps of the Capitol at the 1971 Dewey Canyon IIT demonstration dramatized the resistance of the melancholic. This moment drew attention not only to the veterans’ losses but to America’s as well. As John Balaban’s powerful poem, “After Our War," reminds us, the mullations of the Vietnam War are our “weeping wounds” ‘After our war, the dismembered bits —all those pierced eyes, ear slivers, jaw splinters‘souged lips, odd tibia, skin flaps and toes — ‘came squinting, wobbling, jabbering back. ‘Since all things naturally return to their source, these:snage and tatters arrived, with immigrant ‘uncertainty ‘in the United States. It was almost home, (Ehrhat 15-16) Represented in culture as physically or psychically disabled, veterans of the war became metaphors for ‘a disfigurement of the American body politic. GI poetry's obsessive display of wounds reiterates the politics of witnessing central to GI Resistance activism. Lt. Willlam Crandell’s “Opening Statement” at the 1971 Winter Soldier hearings emphasizes that by testifying soldiers seek boli to.offer evidence of war crimes. and. atone for them: We went to preserve the peace and our testimony will show that we have set all of Indochina aflame, We went to defend the Viemamese people and our testimony will show that we are committing genocide against them...We {intend to tell who it was thal gave us those orders; that created that policy; that set that standard of war bordering ‘on full and final genocide.... We are ready to let the testimony say it all. (Viemam Veterans 1-4) ‘A number of studies have shown that victims of ‘trauma often exhibit a need to tell their story. Kall ‘Tal specifies, “One of the strongest themes In the literature of trauma Is the urge fo:bear witness, to ‘carry the tale of horror back to the halls of normalcy ‘and to testify to the truth of the experience” (229). Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton’s research ‘demonstrates that antiwar veterans felt an acute need 10 expose the meaninglessness and immorality of the ‘wat, and that this need is bound up with a sense of mission and survival (60-61). As GI poet Larry Rottmann sald at the Winter Soldier hearings: LAlfer a while, it gous to the point where you have totale 10 somebody, and when I tried to talc to somebody, even ‘my parents, they didn't want to bear it. They didn't want ‘to know. And that made me-realize that no mater how painful it was for me, Thad to tell them. T mean, they bd 10 know. The fact that they didnt want to now, told me they had to know. (Vietnam Veterans 163-164) Rottmann’s assertion that civilians need his ‘estimony in order to understand the war, and that testimony is a moral and political responsibility, also motivates GI Resistance poetry. ‘Tal suggests that one way literary critics misread Fragging the Chains of Command 37 ‘Veterans’ Hterature is by reading war as symbol, ‘metaphor, or image (223). In contrast a common ‘motto and imperative of the GI Resistance press was to “tell It like it 1s” (Tischler 24-25). For GI poets, ‘the war cannot be metaphor; mutilation is the war experience. The poems of GI Resistance represent a rich and complex source of antiwar expression. ‘They reject the tendency to tmpose mythic pattems ‘on the Incoherent, rable text of the war. AS ‘Smith has written, GI poets “resist the ‘received cultural imagining’ of the Vietnam War thematically.” Indeed, other forms of cultural representation have tended to ellde the war's contradictions, casting it instead into the master narratives of past wars und leaving the deeply rooted assumptions and premises of American culture and 1ts foreign policies unexamined (53). By insisting on ‘the “incontestable reality” of the war's mutilated bodies, GI Resistance poetry, In effect, “frags” the ‘chains-of-command in dominant representations of ‘the Vietnam War. Works Cited Beidler, Philip D. American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1982. Bhabha, Homi K. “Postcolonial Authority and Postmodern Guilt.” Cultural Studies. Ed, Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler. NY:Roulledge, 1991: 56-65. Etubart, W.D., ed. Carrying the Darkness: American Indochina—The Poetry of the Vietnam War, ‘Avon, 1985, Eisenhart, R. Wayne. “You Can't Hack it Lite Git: A Discussion of the Covert Psychological Agenda of ‘Modern Combat Training.” Journal of Social Issues 314 (1975); 13-23, Gibson, James William. The Perfect War: The War We Couldn't Lose and How We Did. NY: Vintage, 1986, 1988, (Groaz, Elizabeth. “The Body of Signification.” Abjection, ‘Melancholia and Love: The Work of Julia Kristeva. Ed. John Fleicher and Andrew Benjamia, Warwick ‘Studies in Philosophy and Literature. London: Rovtlodge, 1990, 80-103, Hayes, James R. “The Dialectics of Resistance: An ‘Analysis of the GI Movement." Journal of Social Issues 314 (1975): 125-39. Jeffords, Susan, The Remasculinization of Americ Gender and the Vietnam War. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1989, Keisteve, Julia. Powers af Horror: An Essay in Abjection. NY: Columbia University Press, 1982. Kwaguvu, Umojo, “A Vet Raps to a POW." The Bond38 Journal of American Culture (1973):8, Lacan, Jacques. “Aggressivity in psychoanalysis.” Ecrits: A Selection, Trans. Alan Sheridan, New York W. W. Norton, 1977, 8-29, Laxes, Greg, “For My Sull Imprisoned Comrades.” The Bond (1971):7. “Letter from an A.W.O L. Soldier.” Negro Digest ‘Ganuary 1964): 33-37. : Lifton, Robert Jay. “Home from the War: The Paychology of Survival.” The Vietnam Reader. Ed. Walter Capps. NY: Routledge, 1992: 54-67. Lowenfels, Walter, ed. Where is Vietnam?: American Poets Respond, Garden City, NY: Doubleday? ‘Anchor, 1967. Melting, Philip H. Vieinam in American Literature. ‘Boston: Twayne, 1991, “A Peace Lover.” “When laughter comes.” A Four-Year Bummer (1969): 4 Rapaport, Herman. “Viemam: The Thousand Plateaus.” The 60s Without Apology. Ed. Sonya Sayres, et al. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984: 137-47. Searry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and ‘Unmaking of the World. NY: Oxford University Press, 1985. ‘Smith, Lomi. “Resistance and Revision in Poetry by ‘Vietnam War Veterans.” Fourteen Landing Zones: Approaches to Vietnam War Literature. Ed. Philip , Jason. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1991: 49-66, ‘Tal, Kall. “Speaking the Language of Pain: Vietmam War Literature in the Context of a Literature of ‘Trauma” Fourteen Landing Zones: Approaches to Vietnam War Literature. Ed, Philip K. Jason. lowa (Clty, IA: University of Towa Press, 1991: 217-50, ‘Theweloit, Klaus. Male Fanasies. Vol. 2: Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror, Trans. Exica Carter and Chris Turner, with Stephea Conway. ‘Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 199 Tischler, Barbara. “Breaking Ranks: GI Antiwar ‘Newspapers and the Culture of Protest.” ‘Vietnam Generation 2.1 (1989): 20-50. Viemam Veterans Against the War, The Winter Soldier Investigation: An Inquiry into American War Crimes, Boston: Beacon, 1972. Walsh, Jeffrey. American War Literature 1914 0 ‘Vietnam. NY: St. Martin's Press, 1982, ‘Willis, Ronald J. “Victory.” Gigtine (1969): np, Winning Hearts and Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Velerans. Ed, Larry Rottmann, Jan Bany, and Basil ‘T, Paquet. Brooklyn, NY: 1st Casualty Press, 1972.