W.D. Ehrhart - Dead on a High Hill: Essays on War, Literature and Living, 2002-2012

Also by W.D. EHRHART
AND FROM MCFARLAND

The Madness of It All: Essays on War, Literature and American Life (2002)

In the Shadow of Vietnam: Essays, 19771991 (1991; softcover 2011)

Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War (1989)

VietnamPerkasie: A Combat Marine Memoir (1983)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

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e-ISBN: 978-0-7864-9253-4

2012 W. D. Ehrhart. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Front cover photograph: Corporals Ehrhart and Takenaga filling sandbags near Quang Tri, Vietnam, October 1967

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

For Anne and for Leela
forever and always

Some of these essays first appeared in the following publications:

The World Is Watching, Swarthmore College Bulletin, v.C, #2, 2002; Hells Music: A Neglected Poem from a Neglected War, Proceedings of the Center for the Study of the Korean War, v.2, #1, 2002; The Power to Declare, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 11, 2003; James Magner, Jr., William Meredith & Reg Saner: Reluctant Poets of the Korean War, Cycnos, v.21, #2, 2004; Whats the Point of Poetry? VVAW Veteran, v.34, #1, 2004; Carrying the Ghost of Ray Catina, War, Literature & the Arts, v.16, 2004; I Have to Go Now. Bye! War, Literature & the Arts, v.18, 2006; Concerning Memorial Day, Philadelphia Inquirer, May 24, 2007; Knock Their Jocks Off, Boys! Swarthmore College Bulletin, v.CV, #3, 2007; Words for John Balaban, War, Literature & the Arts, v.20, 2008; Sam Exler: The Poet As Historian, War, Literature & the Arts, v.21, 2009; One, Two, Many Vietnams? New Hampshire Gazette, January 1, 2010; The Pity of War Poetry, War, Literature & the Arts, v.24, 2012; Dead on a High Hill, Revisiting 20th Century WarsNeue Lesarten von Kriegen des 20 Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart: Ibidem-Vertag, 2012.

Con Thien & Dancin Jack is forthcoming in We Gotta Get Outta This Place: Music and the Experience of Vietnam Veterans, Doug Bradley & Craig Werner, eds.

Versions of Ken & Bills Excellent Adventure have been published in the New Hampshire Gazette (July 15, 2011), the Veterans for Peace National Newsletter (Fall 2011), the VVAW Veteran (v.41, #2, Fall 2011), Swarthmore College Bulletin (v.CVIX, # 2, 2011), and The Haverford School Today (Fall 2011).

Mac Hammonds The Liquor Store is reprinted from Cold Turkey, Swallow Press, 1969, by permission of Katka Hammond.

I Know a Man is reprinted from The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 19451975, 1982 by the Regents of the University of California, published by the University of California Press.

Lisa Coffmans Dog Days is reprinted from her book Likely, Kent State University Press, 1996, and appears by permission of the author and publisher.

For Anne, Approaching Thirty-five, Imagine, and The Origins of Passion are reprinted from Beautiful Wreckage, Adastra Press, 1999, with permission. What the Fuss Is All About is reprinted from The Bodies Beneath the Table, Adastra Press, 2010, with permission.

Dead on a High Hill is the sixth book Ive published with Robert Franklins McFarland & Company, Inc., over a span of nearly thirty years. Back in the early 1980s, after Id spent several frustrating years receiving rejections from publisher after publisher for my Vietnam War memoir, I heard about McFarlandthen a fairly new venturethrough Merritt Clifton, at the time editor and publisher of the small press journal Samisdat. After reading the manuscript, Robbie Franklin bravely offered me a contract for Vietnam-Perkasie: A Combat Marine Memoir, and the book was published in 1983. Other editions have since been published by Zebra Books, Orbis, and the University of Massachusetts Press, all under license to McFarland, and the book has been in print continuously since its original publication. My gratitude to McFarland and Robbie Franklin is immeasurable. Its why I keep coming back. Few writers are so lucky to have so loyal a publisher, and Im acutely aware of just how fortunate I am.

Much of what Ive published with McFarland has revolved around my encounter with the Vietnam War, including Going Back: An Ex-Marine Returns to Vietnam and Passing Time: A Vietnam Veteran Against the War. Even my first essay collection, In the Shadow of Vietnam, takes both its title and its tone from the Vietnam War; of its twenty-three essays, eighteen deal directly with the war or its continuing consequences, and most of the others are at least colored by that war.

Certainly the Vietnam War and my encounter with it profoundly altered my life and has influenced me ever since. As I wrote in the preface to my second essay collection, The Madness of It All, That experience has haunted my days. It has troubled my nights. It has shaped my identity and colored the way I see the world and everything in it.

But that is not the whole story. In college, postVietnam War, in addition to being a varsity swimmer, I earned a Four-Year Award from the Womens Physical Athletic Department for participating in water ballet. How many exMarine combat veterans can lay claim to that? I published my first book of poetry when I was 25, and have published multiple collections of poetry since. How many exMarine combat veterans can lay claim to that? (Okay, Gerald McCarthy can, but not many others.) Ive descended Smith Playgrounds giant sliding board in Philadelphias Fairmount Park with a dozen shrieking, laughing 3- and 4-year-olds joyfully clinging to me for dear life. How many exMarine combat veterans can lay claim to that?

More importantly, Ive been married for 30 years, my first and only marriage. Anne and I have raised a wonderful daughter, now 24 and an honors college graduate who has never stopped talking to me, even through those awkward teen years, and who has been singing with her mother in one performing group or another since she was five, again even through those awkward teen years. Ive voted in every electionprimary, general, and specialsince the day I turned 21 (the voting age in those days), lived in the same house for 26 years, never been arrested, and show up for jury duty every time Im summoned. I have been in and out of classrooms for much of the past 35 years, and for the past ten years Ive taught full-time history and English at the Haverford School in suburban Philadelphia, where I also coach winter track and sponsor the student arts and literature magazine, and where the Class of 2011 honored me with the 2010 Rafael Laserna Outstanding Teacher Award. The essays Ive written over the past 35 years, collected in In the Shadow of Vietnam, The Madness of It All, and in the present work, reflect the depth and breadth of my life.