In his timely and original military memoir War Lessons: How I Fought to be a Hero and Learned That War is Terror, John Merson gives an up-close, illuminating account of his experiences in Vietnam, first as a Marine in the Vietnam War, and later, as a concerned citizen who revisits the country eight times. With deep respect for people on all sides of conflict, Merson ties his experiences to lessons he has learned about the nature of war, those who fight it, and those who survive it.
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As a college junior at Amherst College in 1965, choosing to drop out, enlist with the Marines, and voluntarily serve in Vietnam must not have been a typical decision for most of your peers. Why did you make the choice you did?
Serving in the military was a family tradition, as well as a rite of passage that I believed I needed to complete to become a man.
What was your experience of Vietnam during your tour of duty? What truths about the nature of war became clear to you during your time as a soldier?
As a soldier, I concentrated on trying to survive the war and the military—both were threats to me. The war was a threat to my life, and being in the military was a threat to my personality. Everything about the military told me not to think for myself, yet my core personal trait was independence.
I saw the destructive impact we were having on the villages we patrolled through. Everything we did made it harder for villagers to remain in their homes and farm their land. At times we were forcibly relocating villagers, turning them into refugees in their own country. I also thought about the way war was changing me and my fellow marines, making us both less and more human as it brought us into closer contact with death.
What was it like to return home? What truths about war became clear to you as a veteran?
I soon realized how divisive the war had become and learned that the less I said about it the better it would be for me. It helped to talk with other Vietnam Vets, but there were few of them around when I returned to college and then went on to graduate school. I tried not to think too much about the war since it seemed like such a waste of lives and money. As books and movies about the Vietnam War began to appear, I was able to talk about it with friends. This helped me begin to question what I had done and then to question war itself.
Since the war, you have returned to Vietnam eight times. What inspired your first trip back and what was it like? Why have you continued to return?
As a soldier in Vietnam, I used to tell my fellow marines that someday we would all return to Vietnam. They thought I was crazy, yet many Vietnam veterans felt the same need to visit Vietnam. I wanted to see that Vietnam as a country was recovering from the war. I also felt that seeing the Vietnamese people thrive would somehow help me to feel less guilty about having been part of the war.
What truths about war did you learn from the citizens of Vietnam?
I learned that war’s destructive effects—physical and emotional—last many decades. At the same time, when the fighting stops, people can begin to rebuild their lives even while continuing to experience the pain of losing family members. I learned that many Vietnamese feel a strong bond with Americans because of the war, and because so many Vietnamese have friends and relatives living in the U.S. For many Vietnamese, America is as much an aspiration as a country, just as for many Americans, Vietnam is as much a war as a country.
After all your experience, you have come to the position that war is generally unnecessarily destructive to everyone involved in the conflict and not necessarily valuable as a foreign policy tool. What are the most effective alternatives to war? Why are they more successful?
Diplomacy is the most effective deterrent to war. I believe that if leaders can truly understand each other’s goals and motivations they will resort to war less often. Robert McNamara talks about realizing how poorly he understood his foes. Making greater use of international organizations is another way to avoid war. UN peacekeepers are now in dozens of countries around the world and are frequently requested by nations eager to avoid war. Unfortunately, there are too few peacekeepers to meet all the requests. In addition, peacekeepers cannot be very effective after fighting has started since they often get caught in the middle.
What is your view of the U.S.’s current involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan? In your opinion, what are the best outcomes and what kind of policies are most likely to encourage these outcomes?
The U.S. is not accomplishing its objectives, either in Iraq or in Afghanistan. Military force is not reducing the level of terror in either country. In fact, civilian deaths are almost certainly increasing the level of hostility toward the U.S. and toward other factions. Civil war is taking place in both countries. Elected leaders will need to negotiate with their enemies in order to bring them into a coalition government. The presence of the U.S. military is one the greatest obstacles to negotiations, since it tilts the table in favor of one side. Also, the U.S. tends to portray its ally as “good” and the other side as “evil”; this, too, hinders progress. The longer these wars continue, the more intransigent both sides become as a result of the loss of life on both sides. Political leaders use the loss of life to justify continuing the war.
Pulling troops out of combat is a dangerous process; more lives can be lost during the process of disengagement. Since the U.S. has not achieved peace in either country, we cannot hand control to another power. We should ask our local allies to begin negotiations and, if they do not, we should quickly withdraw all U.S. troops. If peace can be achieved, then there might be a role for UN peacekeeping forces in maintaining a buffer zone between opposing aides during extended negotiations.
The title of your book makes reference to your fight “to be a hero.” Which acts in your memoir feel most heroic to you? When do you think many soldiers feel most heroic and gratified?
I felt most like a hero when I disobeyed orders and took my team into friendly villages where we could avoid killing innocent people. I also felt heroic when I walked “point” in my platoon and saved others from this job. I felt least heroic when I failed to protect the other men in my team, and when I failed to protect villagers from our violence.
I think soldiers feel most gratified when they can see that something good has come from their sacrifices. All too often, soldiers must find their own heroic moments since war itself rarely provides them. Seeking heroism is a dangerous mission: we make heroes of the dead, since we want to believe that they did not die in vain. For those who survive, heroism is equally dangerous. After all, heroes don’t need help and don’t ask for it. Yet soldiers coming back from a war usually do need help. Moreover, returning veterans soon discover that they must fight a second war: in trying to recover from the wounds of war, veterans must often fight a war against their own government. The military requires veterans to prove that their injuries—psychological or physical—are the result of military service. This is often impossible. We need not only a new GI Bill but also a GI Bill of Rights, a system that puts the burden of proof on the government to show that soldiers’ wounds were NOT the result of military service and in the meantime gives veterans all the help they need to get on with their lives.
What is your advice for Americans who disagree with current U.S. foreign policy, but want to support those who have chosen to serve in the military? What kinds of support do soldiers need the most?
Citizens need to see soldiers as men and women trying to help themselves get out of the house, off the farm, out of the neighborhood, and into a job. Soldiers rarely give much thought to the goals of war, since they have no way of knowing if the stated objectives of war are the real ones or if these objectives will ever be achieved. Soldiers only go to war when our elected officials declare war and vote to fund it. We need soldiers to do their job well, to treat each other with respect and consideration and to treat civilians and prisoners just as well. When we talk with soldiers, ask them how they’re doing and how they think the effort is going. Someday our soldiers might actually be defending our homes against invaders. Or they might be helping us recover from an earthquake or hurricane. We want our soldiers to treat civilians and prisoners the way we hope they would treat us if they were on duty here in the U.S. Above all, soldiers need us to do the one thing they cannot do, and that is to question the policy that sends soldiers to war, to make sure that the war we are sending them to is absolutely necessary.
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John Merson is currently a member of the Military Order of the World Wars, Veterans for America, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Merson left Amherst College at the end of his junior year to enlist in the Marine Corps. After completing boot camp, he volunteered for Vietnam and returned home completely changed after thirteen months as an infantryman in Vietnam. Using the GI Bill’s educational benefits, Merson finished college at UNC Chapel Hill with a BA in Economics, and graduate school at Harvard with a MBA in general management. Merson travels to Vietnam once a year to meet with government officials, veterans, business executives, and friends and speaks regularly to student and church groups on the subject of war, the experience of soldiers, and their attitudes toward war. Merson runs his own restoration project for historic homes on Nantucket Island, MA, where he lives.
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