'They'll Never Be the Same Again'

In the spring 2010 issue of Sewanee Review, R.L. Barth published “Doughboys: Photograph c. 1917.” A note precedes the poem: “—found among my grandfather’s papers”: 

“Around a folded blanket seven doughboys

Intently watch the dice turn six the hard way.

Like pre-noir tough guys, three or four clutch sawbucks

Half curled, ready to shell out or increase

A conscript private’s base pay. One, raffish,

Tilts his campaign hat like an old salt.

All seven would shame Bogart with the angle

Of dangling cigarettes and arched eyebrows.

But they’re not tough guys, just heartbreakers all,

Stunning the viewer with impossible youth.”

 

The average age of American soldiers who served during World War I was slightly younger than twenty-five years. In Vietnam, the average age of an American service member was slightly older than twenty-three years. The average age of those killed in Vietnam was 23.1 years. Of the 58,220 killed, 11,465 were younger than twenty.

 

Last week, Bob sent me another poem based on a photograph, “Photo in a Recruiting Office, 1966”:

 

“Six teens, a motley group, they stand,

Diddy-boppers, civilian style.

(Behind them no recruiters smile

But stare into the lens, dead-pan.)

Look at them here while they remain:

They’ll never be the same again.”

 

Bob confirmed the photo described is real: “I’m one of the diddy-boppers with his days of diddy-bopping coming to an end forever.” He enlisted in the Marine Corps and served for thirteen months in Vietnam, first as an assistant patrol leader and then patrol leader in the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion. He arrived at the start of the Tet Offensive and returned to the U.S. in March 1969. See his epigram “Small Arms Fire” (Learning War: Selected Vietnam War Poems, Broadstone Books, 2021):

 

“Why not adjust? Forget this? Let it be?

Because it’s truth. Because it’s history.”