America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction

by John Steinbeck

  Half of these dispatches are sent from his two months in England. By late August, Steinbeck was in North Africa, where he found little to engage him—a hapless congressman who posed woodenly in a cemetery, himself never having seen combat; a deserter named Slog getting home to Brooklyn amid Italian prisoners. With the invasion of Italy, Steinbeck finally witnessed action at the front; he was assigned to a force commanded by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and with that unit went to Palermo, Sicily, and, on September 9, to capture the small island of Ventotene off the Italian coast. Here and at Red Beach near Salerno he participated in the action he craved, and he did not flinch: “I do know those things about myself that I had to know,” he tells his wife, Gwyn. “I know that I can take it as well as most and better than some and that is a reassuring thing to know. And there is no way of knowing it until it happens” (18 Sept. 1943). His dispatches about the Italian invasion are among the best he wrote.

  Among seasoned war correspondents, there had initially been some resistance to a popular novelist in their midst. “To this hard-bitten bunch of professionals I arrived as a Johnny-come-lately, a sacred cow, a kind of tourist,” Steinbeck writes in his introduction to Once There Was a War. “I think they felt that I was muscling in on their hard-gained territory. When, however, they found that I was not duplicating their work, was not reporting straight news, they were very kind to me and went out of their way to help me and to instruct me in the things I didn’t know. For example, it was [Robert] Capa who gave me the best combat advice I ever heard. It was ‘Stay where you are. If they haven’t hit you, they haven’t seen you’ ” (OWW xvi). And he recalls the restrictions placed on the correspondent: “We edited ourselves much more than we were edited. We felt responsible to what was called the home front. There was a general feeling that unless the home front was carefully protected from the whole account of what war was like, it might panic. Also we felt we had to protect the armed services from criticism, or they might retire to their tents to sulk like Achilles” (OWW xvii).

  In his four and a half months overseas, Steinbeck wrote eighty-six dispatches, published first in the Herald Tribune between 21 June and 15 December 1943; twenty-three were published simultaneously under different titles in London’s Daily Express. The dispatches were also syndicated in more than forty leading newspapers, evidence of Steinbeck’s status as a hugely popular writer; The Ladies’ Home Journal and Reader’s Digest also ran a few of the pieces in 1944. In 1958, Covici urged Steinbeck to publish his dispatches with an introduction, and the writer selected sixty-eight—omitting from the selection one on the importance of letters to soldiers:

  And a man feels trapped. If something is wrong, there is nothing in the world that he can do about it. He cannot go to a sick wife, nor can he revenge himself on a creeper. He is here and helpless and one good letter can make the difference between a good soldier and a sick man. . . . Good food can be given to a man, and entertainment and hard work, but nothing in the world can take the place of the letters. They are the single strings and when they are cut the morale of that man is shattered. (3 Aug. 1943)

  Although Steinbeck’s World War II journalism is written with complete anonymity, complete detachment, this dispatch suggests the agony Steinbeck himself felt while on assignment. Because he heard so infrequently and unsatisfactorily from his own young wife, he left Europe early and when offered an assignment in the Pacific turned it down. Battered by his near escape from a German bomb on Red Beach, both eardrums broken, he’d had enough of war.

  Twenty-three years later, Steinbeck wrote about another war. The second series of “Letters to Alicia,” begun in December 1966, includes letters about Vietnam—a trip that Lyndon Johnson had earlier wanted Steinbeck and other writers to make and that, a year later, both Harry Guggenheim, publisher of Newsday, and Lyndon Johnson urged upon Steinbeck. The Vietnam pieces are, without a doubt, the most controversial writing of Steinbeck’s career. They were so when published in 1966-67. They are so now. Covering a war that polarized America, John Steinbeck took a side not congenial with the politics of the left—or, many thought, with his own liberal perspective. “These newly come harbingers of peace say we don’t belong in Vietnam and we can’t win. Well, we do belong there and we never wanted to win. But I believe we intend to make sure that Peking doesn’t win, either. That’s why we belong there” (18 Dec. 1965). Suddenly the people’s bard was mouthing hawkish sentiments, denouncing protesters, writing jingoistic prose in support of American policy in South Vietnam, and slathering on details about the machinery of war. Photos of a gun-toting Steinbeck in fatigues ran in many newspapers. Americans gagged on this new Steinbeck, seemingly a traitor to the downtrodden.

  Protecting South Vietnam was a position taken by Lyndon Johnson’s administration as the bombing began in earnest in 1965; and one backed, of course, by other prominent literary figures, among them Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Ralph Ellison, James T. Farrell, and John Dos Passos (Brinkley 27). But Steinbeck was perhaps the most vocal and most frequently denounced—and the one who went to Vietnam to see for himself. For a man who was sixty-four years old, not terribly fit, and in poor health, it was a courageous trip to take, and he spared himself no discomfort in his mission to witness this new kind of war, a “drifting phantasm of a war” (14 Jan. 1967), where you couldn’t chart progress on a map, “a feeling war with no fronts and no rear” (14 Jan. 1967). A new kind of soldier was called for, Steinbeck asserts, one who “must think for himself, must exercise judgment to survive and often enough when casualties indicate, must assume command” (14 Jan. 1967). With these soldiers, he spent five weeks of his six-week stay “in the field.” He ventured into battle on a Huey chopper with the 10th Cavalry; he visited the 23rd Artillery Group guarding Saigon; he went on River Patrol Boat 37 covering the Bassac River; and with Elaine he was fired at while leaving the Delta hamlet of Tan An. At the end of it all, he wrote Guggenheim that he’d been in all but three of the American machines of war. All in order to report the facts as he saw them.

  Several points need to be kept in mind while reading these accounts. First, Steinbeck hated communism, as is clear from all he wrote about the numbing effects of totalitarianism on the individual. After two decades of Cold War standoff, he shared with many Americans the belief that the engagement had shifted to the Third World, where “the great plan has been frustrated and staggered” by U.S. involvement. He was convinced that Peking and Moscow, selling arms to the North Vietnamese, were behind the North Vietnamese front; was certain that Asia could fall to the Communists; believed that the people of South Vietnam—like the Joads or “the people” in The Moon Is Down—needed to stand firm against the threat of political oppression. Second, Lyndon Johnson was a friend, Lady Bird one of Elaine’s schoolmates at the University of Texas, and John himself fiercely loyal to friends and even more stalwart when it came to his President and to the ideal of American democracy. Third, his shrill words about war protesters in America came from a man who felt keenly a sense of individual responsibility and accountability—he drove himself to produce throughout his life, and he lacked tolerance for objectors who whined about peace, as he saw it, without offering some solution. More than fifteen years earlier, writing about James Dean, he noted in a 1958 interview that “any young man or any man who isn’t angry at one time or another is a waste of time. No, no. Anger is a symbol of thought and evaluation and reaction.” But James Dean, he continued, “symbolizes the angry young man against, but not towards something. He’s against things, but not for things” (Fench 66). That was precisely Steinbeck’s position in the mid-1960s. Any conscientious objector to war could and should, in his mind, volunteer to help in hospitals—engage in humanitarian action. Fourth, these letters were written in 1966 and early 1967, before the antiwar movement gained momentum and attracted scores of students and intellectuals. In addition, Steinbeck waxed enthusiastic about war machinery because he had long been fascinated by weapons—odd weapons, the history of warfare, target practice wi
th his sons. The belletristic prose is, in part, sheer enthusiasm for technological progress.

  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, John Steinbeck’s reasons for witnessing the war were deeply personal. He’d seen war; he hated war; he had the highest respect both in 1943 and 1966 for the ordinary soldier—and at the time his son John IV was serving as an ordinary soldier in Vietnam. Patriotic, ideological, and familial bonds coalesced. Signing on in November 1965, John IV wrote to his father that he would send letters back recording “our (the soldiers’) impression” to read and pass on, perhaps to publish, “to do with as you see fit.” In declaring his intention to write letters to his father that he wished to be made public, in selecting precisely his father’s grassroots perspective on war, John IV wanted respect and recognition from the writer-father from whom he’d had nineteen stumbling years of love. If his words rang true, John IV wrote, “it will be true for an Era, a mileu [sic], a conscience, and America; a static one at best, but it is ours” (25 Nov. 1965). What father, burdened with guilt about his sons and his fatherhood, could resist the appeal made here? In going to Vietnam, Steinbeck made his final, and perhaps ineffective, effort to be a good and conscientious father. “And do you know the best thing,” he wrote in his introduction to the series. “We hope to see our boy in Vietnam. Wouldn’t that be a joy?” (3 Dec. 1966).

  In assessing Steinbeck’s writing on the Vietnam War, it must be kept in mind that the writer did have reservations about war, most expressed privately. To Harry Guggenheim he wrote in August 1966 that it was America’s “sloppy position” on the war—which was not then called a war, of course—that caused much of the “dissident uproar.” “How can a country negotiate for peace when by its own telling, it has never been at war?” (22 Aug. 1966). Coming out of Vietnam to Bangkok in January 1967, he wrote Guggenheim that he was disappointed in Johnson’s State of the Union speech, for “a lack of clarity has made people wonder exactly what our policy is: ‘We want to defeat the North VN but not destroy their nation.’ That’s bloody nonsense. Unless we get rid of Ho Chi Minh, we have a war. If he makes peace, he’s out of a job” (19 Jan. 1967). Later, he confided in Guggenheim that he was sure that a cease-fire would come soon, by summer he imagined. As Elaine Steinbeck has sadly noted, however, “John changed his mind totally about Vietnam while there, and he came home to write it and spent all the rest of the time dying. That’s not just an apology for John. That is true.”

  Troopship

  Somewhere in England, June 20, 1943—

  THE TROOPS in their thousands sit on their equipment on the dock. It is evening, and the first of the dimout lights come on. The men wear their helmets, which made them all look alike, make them look like long rows of mushrooms. Their rifles are leaning against their knees. They have no identity, no personality. The men are units in an army. The numbers chalked on their helmets are almost like the license numbers on robots. Equipment is piled neatly—bedding rolls and half-shelters and barracks bags. Some of the men are armed with Springfield or Enfield rifles from the First World War, some with M-1S, or Garands, and some with the neat, light clever little carbines everyone wants to have after the war for hunting rifles.

  Above the pier the troopship rears high and thick as an office building. You have to crane your neck upward to see where the portholes stop and the open decks begin. She is a nameless ship and will be while the war lasts. Her destination is known to very few men and her route to even fewer, and the burden of the men who command her must be almost unendurable, for the master who loses her and her cargo will never sleep comfortably again. He probably doesn’t sleep at all now. The cargo holds are loaded and the ship waits to take on her tonnage of men.

  On the dock the soldiers are quiet. There is little talking, no singing, and as dusk settles to dark you cannot tell one man from another. The heads bend forward with weariness. Some of these men have been all day, some many days, getting to this starting point.

  There are several ways of wearing a hat or a cap. A man may express himself in the pitch or tilt of his hat, but not with a helmet. There is only one way to wear a helmet. It won’t go on any other way. It sits level on the head, low over eyes and ears, low on the back of the neck. With your helmet on you are a mushroom in a bed of mushrooms.

  Four gangways are open now and the units get wearily to their feet and shuffle along in line. The men lean forward against the weight of their equipment. Feet drag against the incline of the gangways. The soldiers disappear one by one into the great doors in the side of the troopship.

  Inside the checkers tabulate them. The numbers chalked on the helmets are checked again against a list. Places have been assigned. Half of the men will sleep on the decks and the other half inside in ballrooms, in dining rooms where once a very different kind of people sat and found very important things that have disappeared. Some of the men will sleep in bunks, in hammocks, on the deck, in passages. Tomorrow they will shift. The men from the deck will come in to sleep and those from inside will go out. They will change every night until they land. They will not take off their clothes until they land. This is no cruise ship.

  On the decks, dimmed to a faint blue dusk by the blackout lights, the men sink down and fall asleep. They are asleep almost as soon as they are settled. Many of them do not even take off their helmets. It has been a weary day. The rifles are beside them, held in their hands.

  On the gangways the lines still feed into the troopship—a regiment of colored troops, a hundred Army nurses, neat in their helmets and field packs. The nurses at least will have staterooms, however crowded they may be in them. Up No. 1 Gangway comes the headquarters complement of a bombardment wing and a company of military police. All are equally tired. They find their places and go to sleep.

  Embarkation is in progress. No smoking is allowed anywhere. Everyone entering the ship is triply checked, to make sure he belongs there, and the loading is very quiet. There is only the shuffle of tired feet on the stairways and quiet orders. The permanent crew of military police know every move. They have handled this problem of traffic before.

  The tennis courts on the upper deck are a half-acre of sleeping men now—men, feet, and equipment. MPs are everywhere, on stairs and passages, directing and watching. This embarkation must go on smoothly, for one little block might well lose hours in the loading, just as one willful driver, making a wrong turn in traffic, may jam an avenue for a long time. But in spite of the shuffling gait, the embarkation is very rapid. About midnight the last man is aboard.

  In the staff room the commanding officer sits behind a long table, with telephones in front of him. His adjutant, a tired blond major, makes his report and places his papers on the table. The CO nods and gives him an order.

  Throughout the ship the loudspeakers howl. Embarkation is complete. The gangways slide down from the ship. The iron doors close. No one can enter or leave the ship now, except the pilot. On the bridge the captain of the ship paces slowly. It is his burden now. These thousands are in his care, and if there is an accident it will be his blame.

  The ship remains against the pier and a light breathing sound comes from deep in her. The troops are cut off now and gone from home, although they are not a hundred steps from home. On the upper decks a few men lean over the rails and look down on the pier and away at the city behind. The oily water ripples with the changing tide. It is almost time to go. In the staff room, which used to be the ship’s theater, the commanding officer sits behind his table. His tired, blond adjutant sits beside him. The phone rings, the CO picks it up, listens for a moment and hangs up the receiver. He turns to the adjutant.

  “All ready,” he says.

  Waiting

  Bomber station in England, July 4, 1943—

  THE FIELD is deserted after the ships have left. The ground crew go into barracks to get some sleep, because they have been working most of the night. The flag hangs limply over the administration building. In the hangars repair crews are working over ships that have been injured
. Bomb Boogie is brought in to be given another overhaul and Bomb Boogie’s crew goes disgustedly back to bed.

  The crews own a number of small dogs. These dogs, most of which are of uncertain or, at least, of ambiguous breed, belong to no one man. The ship usually owns each one, and the crew is very proud of him. Now these dogs wander disconsolately about the field. The life has gone out of the bomber station. The morning passes slowly. The squadron was due over the target at 9:52. It was due home at 12:43. As 9:50 comes and passes you have the ships in your mind. Now the flak has come up at them. Perhaps now a swarm of fighters has hurled itself at them. The thing happens in your mind. Now, if everything has gone well and there have been no accidents, the bomb bays are open and the ships are running over the target. Now they have turned and are making the run for home, keeping the formation tight, climbing, climbing to avoid the flak. It is 10 o’clock, they should be started back—10:20, they should be seeing the ocean by now.

  The crew last night had told a story of the death of a Fortress, and it comes back to mind.