The World Played Chess (94)
Mostly, though, I recall they were good men.
My work on the construction team that summer, and thereafter during every break from school, helped finance my college tuition at Stanford. I could not have afforded to attend had it not been for that employment. My boss could have let me go any number of times when the work got too light, but he never did. He always found work for me, and he always paid me. I have tried to find him, without success, to thank him for what he did for me. I hope someday I have that chance.
In college, I found the book Nam by Mark Baker, true stories of men and women who served in Vietnam. I read it cover to cover, then a second time. I still have my first edition. The stories fascinated me, in part, because I felt as though I had heard so many of them that summer between high school and college. I rushed to find other books and read accounts equally as raw and honest. I watched Apocalypse Now and Platoon and Full Metal Jacket and many other movies on the Vietnam experience multiple times. I watched The Deer Hunter just once, but I have never forgotten it.
When I set out to write this novel, I had no intention of writing about Vietnam. I intended to write about that critical moment in every boy’s life when he goes from being a boy to being a man. There is no set timetable, but it seems the moment society expects this transformation to occur is when the boy graduates high school. We are expected to go off to college and come home a man. Or go off to work in the real world or join the military and magically understand what it means to be a man, a husband, and a father. There are no classes to help us. At least, there were none in 1979. Most of us, I assume, learn by emulating the men we know. Mostly I emulated my father, a good, decent, and moral man.
I also emulated a big brother who came into my life when I was in the eighth grade, a young counselor. Chris took me under his wing and helped me to grow up. He liked to say, “There’s no owner’s manual.”
And I emulated the two men I worked with that summer. I did not have a choice. They did not treat me as a boy and did not allow me to act as one. They did not have that luxury when they were my age. They depended on me to be at work every morning on time to do my job and get the work done, because they knew the dire consequences that could occur if one man failed to do his job. They expected me to earn my paycheck. And they relied on me because they needed me to be reliable.
When I sat down to write this story, I told my friend Dale what my intent was, and he responded, “It’s like that adage. The world played chess while I played checkers.”
I had never heard it, so I looked it up.
Sometimes we know so little, we are not even playing the same game everyone else is playing. Chess is complex and strategic and requires that we think several moves ahead of our opponent. We need to map out our future and be prepared to make unexpected deviations when necessary. In 1979, I was still deciding whether to jump the checker in front of me and get crowned. That summer changed me.
When I realized my novel was really about three men—Vincent, the father of an eighteen-year-old son; Vincent, the eighteen-year-old boy; and William, the marine—I knew I had to do a lot more research, but that was okay because the subject interested me. I read more than a dozen firsthand accounts of soldiers serving in Vietnam. I read articles, treatises, and military papers on the marine experience in Vietnam. I watched just as many movies and documentaries, including Ken Burns’s legendary documentary. Neither William nor Todd is any one person; they are an amalgamation of the stories I heard in 1979, the stories I read, and the stories I witnessed on television, in theaters, and on my computer.
Even with all that information, I knew I had more work to do. So I called up a friend of mine, Gunnery Sergeant Bob Mannion, a United States Marine, who served during Vietnam, and I asked for his help. Bob, who is also a talented writer, never hesitated. He sent me manuals and documents to help me understand the marine experience in Vietnam, and he read my manuscript front to back multiple times, making sure I got the weapons and terminology correct, the marine procedures accurate, and the Vietnam experience, hopefully, authentic.
I owe Bob a huge debt of gratitude. I am certain I got some things wrong simply because I misinterpreted what he told me. Those mistakes are mine and mine alone.
I also want to thank Joe, my son. It was Joe who suggested the book would be stronger if I could re-create an authentic Vietnam experience, and do so through a journal documenting a soldier’s powerful tour of duty. Joe has helped me now with three novels. He sees things at a ten-thousand-foot level, and his observations and suggestions are usually spot on.
I have had the chance to go to Washington, DC, half a dozen times in my life, and each time I go, I visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I run my hand over the names etched in the black stone monument, and I try to remember those etchings are more than just letters. Those etchings represent real people who lost their lives far too young—deaths that forever changed the landscapes of their respective families, possibly this country, and maybe the world.
This novel is written with the utmost deference and respect to all those men and women who fought in Vietnam on both sides, as well as the Vietnamese people who lived through it. That includes my father-in-law, Dr. Robert Kapela, Major, United States Army Medical Corp on ground as medical doctor and recipient of the Bronze Star for his “meritorious achievement in ground operations against hostile forces” from May 1969 to May 1970. I have never had the chance to visit Vietnam, but Joe and other family members have, and each has said, to a person, that there are no finer people.