Masters Of War-Bob Dylan
Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death
planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets
higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins
How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its
toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re
lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your
grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re
dead
Copyright © 1963 by Warner
Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music
Joshua Lawrence Breslin
comment:
This story was originally
published as Kenneth Edward Jackson’s
“Masters Of War” with names and
places fictionalized for many reasons (including literary license) but it is
actually the story of Peter Paul Markin’s military service. We have decided to
leave it in the original as it retains all of its power whether told as a
Jackson or Markin story.-JLB]
As I mentioned in an earlier sketch,
courtesy of my old yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster
fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, who seems to think I still have a few
things to say about this wicked old world, recently, in grabbing an old Bruce
Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod I came across a
song that stopped me in my tracks, <i>Brothers Under The
Bridge</i>. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it
brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles
for the now defunct <i>East Bay Eye</i> (California, naturally) on
the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another,
could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like
those a great depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the
hobo, bum, tramps camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the
ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los
Angeles, and created their own “society.”
Not every guy I interviewed,
came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of
the air from was from hunger, most were,
yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this sketch
had a nuanced story that brought him down to the ravines. The story that
accompanies the song to this little piece, Bob Dylan’s Masters of War, is
written under that same sign as the earlier pieces.
I should note again since
these sketches are done on an ad hoc basis, that the genesis of this story
follows that of the “Brothers Under The Bridge” story previously posted (and
now is developing into a series).The editor of the <i>East Bay
Eye</i>, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done
a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam
veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of
that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside
trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one
piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not
been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the
fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in
running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down
near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of
my 1960s generation who had clued me on the psychic cost of the war so I had a
running start.
After making connections with
some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where
to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in
the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A couple of weeks ago,
after having no success in retrieving the old <i>Eye</i> archives,
I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early
files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a
batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the
<i>Eye</i> went under before I could round them into shape.
The format of those long ago
stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel,
spill what he wanted the world to heard, and I would write it up without too
much editing (mainly for foul language). I have reconstructed this story here
as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the
voice and how things were said. This is Kenneth Edward Jackson’s short,
poignant, and hell for once, half-hopeful story, a soldier born under the thumb
of the masters of war:
********
Hell, you know I didn’t have
to go to Vietnam, no way. Yah, my parents, when I got drafted, put some
pressure on me to “do my duty” like a lot of the neighborhood guys in my half-Irish, half- French- Canadian
up the old New Hampshire mill town of Nashua. Maybe, you’ve heard of that town
since you said you were from up there in Olde Saco, Maine. Hell, they were the
same kind of towns. Graduate from high school, go to work in the mills if they
were still open, go into the service if
you liked, or got drafted, come home,
get married, have kids and let the I Ching cycle run its course over and over again. You laughed so you know
what I mean. Yah, that kind of town, and tight so if you went off the rails,
well it might not be in the <i>Nashua Telegraph</i> but it sure as
hell got on the Emma Jackson grapevine fast enough, except if it was about her
three boys. Then the “shames” silence of the grave. Nothing, not a peep, no
dirty linen aired in public.
See though I was a little
different. I went to college at the University of New Hampshire over in Durham,
studied political science, and figured to become either a lawyer or teacher,
maybe both if things worked out. So Emma and Hank (my father) were proud as
peacocks when I graduated from there in 1967 and then announced I was going to
Boston University to pick up a Master’s degree in Education and be on my way.
That’s where I met Bettina, my ex-wife, who was studying for her Master’s in
Government at the time but was mainly holding up a big share of the left-wing
anti-war universe that was brewing at that time, especially as all hell broke
loose in Vietnam when in early 1968 the North Vietnamese and their southern
supporters ran rampaging through the south. That’s around the time that LBJ
(Lyndon Baines Johnson, President of the United States at the time) got cold
feet and decided to call it quits and retire to some podunk Texas place.
B
ettina, a girl from New York
City, and not just New York City but
Manhattan and who went to Hunter College High School there before embarking on
her radical career , first at the University of Wisconsin and then at B.U. was
the one who got me “hip,” or maybe better “half-hip” to the murderous American foreign policy in
Vietnam. Remind me to tell you how we met and stuff like that sometime but for
now let’s just say she was so smart, so different, did I tell you she was
Jewish, so full of life and dreams, big dreams about a better world that I went
head over heels for her and her dreams carried me (and us) along for a while.
[Brother Jackson did tell me later the funny details of their relationship but,
as I always used to say closing many of my columns, that is a story for another
day-JLB.]
Bettina was strictly SDS,
big-time SDS (Students for a Democratic Society, 1960s version. Look it up on
<i>Wikipedia</i> for more background-JLB), and not just some
pacifist objector to the war, she really thought she was helping to build “the
second front” in aid of the Vietnamese here in America, or as it was put at the
time Amerikkka, and I went along with her, or half-way along really in her
various actions, marches, and rallies. Later, 1969 later when SDS blew up into
three separate and warring factions she went with the Revolutionary Youth
Movement (RYM) the group most committed to that idea of the second front. But
that is all inside stuff and not really what was important in 1968. The summer
of 1968 when I got, via my parents, notice that my friends and neighbors at the
Nashua Draft Board had called my name. And me with no excuses, no draft
excuses, none.
So that is when things got
dicey, my parents pulling me to do my family, my Nashua, my New Hampshire, my
United States, hell, my mother pulled out even my Catholic duty (my father, a
deeply patriotic man, in the good sense, and a proud Marine who saw plenty of
action in the Pacific in World War II, but kept quiet about it, just rolled his
eyes on that one). Bettina, and her friends, and really, some of them my
friends too, were pulling me to run away to Canada (she would follow), refuse
to be inducted (and thus subject to arrest and jail time), or head underground
(obviously here with connections that may have rivaled, may have I say, my
mother’s neighborhood grapevine). In the end though I let myself be drafted and
was inducted in the fall of 1968.
Bettina was mad, mad as hell,
but not as much for the political embarrassment as you would think, but because
she, well, as she put it, the first time she said it “had grown very fond of
me,” and more than that she had her own self-worth needs, so we were secretly
married (actually not so much secretly
as privately, very privately, her parents, proudly Jewish and heavily committed
Zionists and my parents, rosary-heavy Catholics who were a little slow, Vatican
Council II slow, on the news that Jews were not Christ-killers and the like
would not have approved ) just before I was inducted.
I will spare the Vietnam
details, except to say I did my thirteen month tour (including a month for
R&R, rest and recreation) from early 1969 to early 1970, a period when the
talk of draw-down of the American troop commitment was beginning to echo
through the camps and bases in Vietnam and guys were starting to take no
chances, no overt chances of getting KIA (killed in action) or anything like
that. I, actually saw very little fighting since as a college grad, and lucky,
and they needed someone, I was a company clerk and stayed mainly at the base
camp. But every night I fired many rounds any time I heard a twig break on
guard duty or in perimeter defense. And
more than a few times we had bullets and other ammo flying into our position.
So no I was no hero, didn’t want to be, I just wanted to get back home to
Bettina in one piece. And I did.
But something snapped in
Vietnam, sometime in having had to confront my own demons, my own deep-seeded
fears and coming out not too badly, and to confront through my own sights the
way my government was savagely conducting itself in Vietnam (and later in other
parts of the world) that made me snap when I came back to the “real world.” I had only a few months left and so I was
assigned to a holding company down at Fort Dix in New Jersey. And all I had to
do was stay quiet, do some light silly busy work paper work duty b.s., have a
few beers at the PX and watch a few movies. Nada.
I guess Bettina really did
win out in the end, the stuff she said about war, about American imperialism
being some two-headed vulture, about class struggle and guys like me being
cannon fodder was kind of abstract when she said it at some meeting at B.U., or
shouted herself silly a t some rally on Boston Common or got herself arrested a
few times at draft boards (ironic, huh).But after ‘Nam I knew she was on to
something. Better, I was on to something. So, without telling Bettina, my
parents, or anybody, the day I was to report to that holding company at Fort
Dix I did. But at that morning formation, I can still see the tears rolling
down my face, I reported in civilian clothes with a big peace button on my
shirt and yelling for all to hear-“Bring The Troops Home.” I was tackled by a
couple of soldiers, lifer-sergeants I found out later, handcuffed and brought
to the Fort Dix stockade.
A couple of days later my
name was called to go the visitors’ room and there to my surprise were my
parents, my mother crying, my father stoic as usual but not mad, and Bettina.
The Army had contacted my parents after my arrest to inform them of my
situation. And Bettina, in that strange underground grapevine magic that always amazed me, found
out in that way, had called them in Nashua to say who she was (no, not about us
being married, just friends, they never did know). They had offered to bring
her down to Fort Dix and they had come down together. What a day though. My
parents, for one of very few times that I can remember said, while they didn’t
agree with me fully, that they were proud and Nashua be damned. They were
raising money on their home to get me the best civilian lawyer they could. And
they did.
Of course for Bettina a
soldier- resister case was just the kind
of activity that was gaining currency in the anti-war movement in 1969 and 1970 and she was crazy to raise
heaven and hell for my defense(including money, and money from her parents too
although they also did not know we were married, and maybe they still don’t).
She moved to hard town Trenton not too far from Fort Dix to be closer to the
action as my court-martial was set. She put together several vigils, marches,
rallies and fundraisers (including one where my father, a father defending his
own, spoke and made the crowd weep in his halting New England stoic way).
The court-martial, a general
court martial so I faced some serious time, was held in early 1970. As any
court proceedings will do, military or civilian, they ran their typical course,
which I don’t want to go into except to say that I was convicted of the several
charges brought against me (basically, as I told the guys at VVAW later, for
being ugly in the military without a uniform-while on duty) , sentenced to a
year of hard labor at Fort Leavenworth out in Kansas, reduced in rank to
private ( I was a specialist, E-4), forfeited most of my pay, and was to be
given an undesirable discharge (not dishonorable).
I guess I do want to say one
last thing about the trial thought. As any defendant has the right to do at
trial, he or she can speak in their own defense. I did so. What I did, turning
my back to the court-martial judges and facing the audience, including that day
my parents and Bettina was to recite from memory Bob Dylan’s <i>Masters
of War</i>. I did so in my best stoic (thanks, dad) Nashua, New Hampshire
voice. The crowd either heckled me or
cheered (before being ordered to keep quiet) but I had my say. So when you
write this story put that part in. Okay? [See lyrics above-JLB]
So how come I am down here in
some Los Angeles hobo jungle just waiting around to be waiting around. Well I
did my time, all of it except good time, and went back home, first to Nashua
but I couldn’t really stay there ( a constant “sore” in the community and worry
to my parents) and then to Boston where I fit in better. Bettina? Well, my last
letter from her in Leavenworth was that she was getting ready to go
underground, things with her group (a group later associated with the Weather
Underground) had gotten into some stuff a little dicey and she would not be
able to communicate for a while. That was the last I heard from her; it has
been a few years now.
I understand, and I feel
happy for her. We were fond of each other but I was thinking in the stockade
that a “war marriage” was not made to last, not between us anyway. Then after a
few months in Boston, doing a little or this and a little of that, I drifted out here where things might pop up
a little (it’s tough even with millions of people hating the war, hating it until
it finally got over a couple of years ago to have an undesirable discharge
hanging around your neck. I’m not sorry though, no way, and if I do get blue
sometime I just recite that Masters Of War thing and I get all welled up
inside).
I hear the new president,
Jimmy Carter, is talking about amnesty for Vietnam guys with bad discharges and
maybe I will check into it if it happens. Then maybe I will go to law school
and pick up my life up again. Until then
though I feel like I have got to stick
with my “band of brothers” who got broken up, broken up bad by that damn war.
Hey, sometimes they ask me to recite that <i>Masters Of War</i>
thing over some night fire.
[The last connection I had
with Kenneth Edward Jackson was in late 1979 when he sent a short note to me
saying he had gotten his discharge upgraded, was getting ready to start law school and that he was publicly getting
re-married to some non-political gal from upstate New York . Still no word from
Bettina though.-JLB]
