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Episode 534: Shoeleather Reporting and Exploring the Riddles of America with Wil Haygood
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"The mission of a nonfiction writer is to get the damn thing done," says Wil Haygood, author of several books, including his latest The War Within A War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home.
I’m so thrilled to welcome back Wil Haygood to the show to talk about and celebrate his latest book The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home. It’s published by Knopf.
Wil is one of the most accomplished journalists and authors working in American letters and just a good-ass dude. He’s the author of several books including The Butler (which was made into a movie), Showdown, The Harlem Renaissance, In Black and White, Sweet Thunder, and Colorization.
He and I both have ties to the Goucher College MFA in Creative Nonfiction Program and he was generous enough to blurb my first book, Six Weeks in Saratoga, and it’s those little things like that that can make an insecure, low-on-confidence person like myself feel like a king for a day.
Had a great time catching up with Wil. He was on the podcast back on Ep. 295 when I interviewed him as part of Goucher’s winter residency, so that’s a fun one to check out. When we spoke, the U.S. had just started bombing Iran in a senseless barrage of violence that appears to have been a monumental loss for the U.S., so that is some of the context of this conversation as we talk about Vietnam and how this country still wrestles with the legacy of it. Wil is one of the good ones and so happy you get to hear him chat about:
- How he needs the research to be finished before he writes
- Exploring the riddles of America
- His encounters with the late great David Halberstam
- How luck and fortune come into play
- Shoeleather reporting
- Tape recorders and notebooks
- The stirring cover of this book
- Why this country still grapples with the Vietnam War
- Highlighting untold stories of women who served during Vietnam
- And what kept him going through the doubt
Stick around for a parting shot Chuckanut conference prep and an update on the forthcoming audio magazine.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Announcements
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, hey, so on July 2nd at 7 p.m. at HodgePodge Books and Taps in Eugene, I'll be interviewing author and journalist Matthew Wolfe for a live recording of the podcast to talk about his new book, Fires in the Night. Come on down, pack the joint, and be part of the podcast.
00:00:19
Speaker
Oh, and hey, CNFers, I probably don't say this enough, so I'm going to say it right off the top here. Thanks for listening. Thanks for making this show worth doing. And an especially big thanks to the Patreon gang. I have a CNF and patron AMA scheduled for Tuesday, June 30th from 2 to 3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time over Zoom. It was the Monday, but I had to change it to accommodate a reporting call.
00:00:45
Speaker
Check out the post at patreon.com slash cnfpod. Oh, and sometimes the best idea you can come up with is the thing you wish you had when you were starting out. That's what Pitch Club is. at Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. I was such a frustrated freelancer, still am, not knowing how to pitch, not getting any traction. Some truth to that still. So Pitch Club is that thing that 2010 me could have used.
00:01:11
Speaker
Pitches ranging from agent queries, feature stories, and off-the-cuff, unhinged essay pitches, and more. Forever free. You read a little, you listen a little, and I think you're going to learn a lot. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com.
Interview with Will Haga
00:01:27
Speaker
But the mission of a nonfiction writer is to get the damn thing done.
00:01:38
Speaker
Hey CNF, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I talk to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. I'm Brendan O'Meara, your host, founder, embittered writer.
00:01:49
Speaker
And I'm so thrilled to welcome back Will Haga to the show to talk about and celebrate his latest book, The War Within a War, The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home.
00:02:01
Speaker
It's published by Knopf. Will is one of the most accomplished journalists and authors working in American letters and just a good-ass dude. He's the author of several books, including The Butler, which was made into a movie, Showdown, The Harlem Renaissance, In Black and White, Sweet Thunder, and Colorization. He and I both have ties to the Goucher College MFA program in creative nonfiction.
00:02:25
Speaker
And he was generous enough to blurb my first book, Six Weeks in Saratoga. And it's those little things that can make an insecure, low-on-confidence person like myself feel like a king for a day or two days.
00:02:38
Speaker
it We'll dig into a lot more stuff with Will in a moment. So show notes to this episode and more at brendanomera.com. Hey, hey. where you can read blog posts, search the deep, vast archive of the podcast, and sign up for Pitch Club or the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter for recommendations of sorts. Books and other cool things I've curated over the course of the month, I made it a werewolf so it publishes when the full moon hits Pacific Standard Time. Nose to the wind, baby.
00:03:07
Speaker
You may also browse patreon.com slash cnfpod if you want a few extra perks, like AMAs, and to support the podcast. Podcast is free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap. And the show's Instagram handles, at Creative Nonfiction Podcast, if you want to follow along there.
00:03:23
Speaker
Had a great time catching up with Will. He was on the podcast back on episode 295 when I interviewed him as part of Goucher College's winter residency. So that was a fun one.
00:03:35
Speaker
And it's a good one worth
Vietnam War Context & Themes
00:03:37
Speaker
checking out. When we spoke... For this podcast, for this issue, this issue, this episode, um the U.S. had just, maybe within a week or so or whatever, had just started bombing Iran in a senseless barrage of violence that appears to have been a monumental loss for the United States.
00:03:56
Speaker
So that is some of the context of this conversation, too, or at least the sort of the world that this conversation inhabited. as as we talked about Vietnam and how this country still wrestles with the legacy of it.
00:04:08
Speaker
yeah Will is one of the good guys, one of the good ones, and I'm so happy for you that you get to hear him chat about how he needs the research to be finished before he writes, exploring the riddles of America.
00:04:19
Speaker
His encounters with the late great journalist David Halberstam, how luck and fortune come into play, shoe leather reporting, tape recorders and notebooks, the stirring cover of this book, why this country still grapples with the Vietnam War, highlighting untold stories of women who served during Vietnam.
00:04:36
Speaker
and what kept him going through the doubt. Stick around for a parting shot about my Chuckanut Writers Conference prep and an update on the forthcoming audio magazine that's themed codes. I've dragged my feet long enough on it. I have an update.
00:04:52
Speaker
You're going have to stay to the end to those momentous parting shots. But for now, let's cue up the montage riff.
00:05:06
Speaker
That's not so good. That, you've created a problem. Like, fuck it, just name the thing. Just say what you want to say. Fondue forks, an inflatable kiddie pool. It's going to have to interest somebody, someone.
00:05:32
Speaker
that you like, Will, that you'd like to set up around yourself when you know when you're in the throes of a writing project? I need quiet. I absolutely need quiet.
00:05:43
Speaker
And actually, when I'm starting to write, I want to have all of my research finished. So I write straight through. And I often ask myself, how do I know when I finish with the research?
00:06:02
Speaker
And I know when I can ask myself something and I can answer it very quickly. And then I say to myself, okay, I've done enough
Black Soldiers' Stories & Impact
00:06:13
Speaker
research and I don't wanna continue to go down into some rabbit hole looking for an answer that's really not there because I already actually have the answer to the best of my ability.
00:06:27
Speaker
And now it's time to get busy and it's time to write. because let's face it, the kind of nonfiction wide angle books that I do, you can spend eight years studying studying Sammy Davis Jr. or studying Thurgood Marshall's confirmation hearings or or studying how Sugar Ray Robinson became so great.
00:06:53
Speaker
But the mission of a nonfiction writer is to get the damn thing done. Yeah. Yeah. Novelists can wait and wait, you know, throw it away. yeah They start all over, but no.
00:07:09
Speaker
With nonfiction, you have a set of facts and then you have to use your own creativity. Then you have to get the damn thing done. Unless you're Robert Caro and you might just take the final book to your grave.
00:07:21
Speaker
ah Yeah, I doubt it. You know, i'm glad I'm very glad to, Brendan. You know, some of my books could have been two volume books, but I'm glad I was able to synthesize my research and write these books, which often cover a sweep of history. I'm glad I'm, I'm so glad that I've been able to synthesize my research and my writing into one volume.
00:07:56
Speaker
but When it comes to writing books, and you've written several great books. and you know What still excites you about a book project and getting it off the ground?
00:08:08
Speaker
Knowing that as learned as I sometimes appear to be, there are riddles and stories to this country that I would like to explore.
00:08:24
Speaker
that I would like to dive into. I mean, like, well, let's take Sugar Ray Robinson, for instance. he was He was battling forces inside the ring, and yet he was also he was also but he was also battling the mob outside the ring who controlled the fighting game in this country in the 40s and 50s, and even some of the 60s.
00:08:52
Speaker
And so... I think I'm on this eternal quest to answer questions like, for instance, why is America in another war?
00:09:04
Speaker
I just wrote about a war that lasted 12 plus years, the Vietnam War. And here we are again another war. And someday somebody will write about Iran America and why did it start And what was the motivation behind it?
00:09:26
Speaker
And what the hell is Trump doing the of the nation, our nation? You know, we're supposed to be a land of liberty. And a lot of liberties have been have been snatched away.
00:09:42
Speaker
i think that the founding fathers who said it is a republic if you can keep it, think that they were giving charge to writers that when you have big questions, nonfiction, nature,
00:10:01
Speaker
of an object to your nature, go out and try to research and answer those questions for the public. For sure. And when you're putting together and when you're looking to maybe yeah address a riddle or or a book and you're drawing up your proposal and so forth, you know what has been your experience of getting a Project Altitude or maybe even dealing with rejection after putting in a whole lot of work for a proposal?
00:10:27
Speaker
If you are meant to write the book, it will get written. but But that's an excellent question because the Vietnam book, Brendan, started out as a proposal about race in the century from the viewpoint of the White House. All of the occupants from 250 years ago, I was gonna write about race, how each president viewed race.
00:10:58
Speaker
Now that probably would have been a three volume book. And so my editor Peter Gathers said, well, Will, let's narrow the focus.
00:11:10
Speaker
Let's like zero in on something that hasn't been written about in a great deal or at great, great depth.
00:11:22
Speaker
and and and And I thought of the Black soldier in the Vietnam War, that's almost totally unexplored territory.
00:11:34
Speaker
And when I told my editor that 45% of the frontline troops in combat were Black, yet Blacks only made up 10% of the American population at the time, he said, whoa.
00:11:50
Speaker
He said, no now that's the book, Will. du you know There's something going on there. if if if Blacks only made up 10% of the population in the early mid 60s and they're 47, 45, 47% of the frontline troops.
00:12:08
Speaker
That's very disproportionate to their populations. Why is that? Why has that happened? Why didn't nobody bring that And of course it said that the American military thought that the black soldier was more expendable than a white soldier.
00:12:26
Speaker
And so that's a big human story right there. And so that's what I went after. Why did that happen? Yeah, and then, of course, of that fraction, a disproportionate fraction of black soldiers who were over in Vietnam compared to the population here, of those soldiers, more of them were going to the front lines ah in in more, in increasing harm's way, or disproportionate amount of harm was thrust upon them as well, which you reveal in the book.
00:13:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and I think that once, I think that once Martin Luther King Jr. came to understand that his story was so uneven and he came out against the war, he started to realize that the war was having a direct impact on civil rights in America. And that, Brenda, is another engine of the book
00:13:34
Speaker
No one has ever intertwined civil rights with the Vietnam War. And I think I know why. I think once you get in the tunnel of telling a Vietnam narrative, it's such a big narrative.
00:13:49
Speaker
I think that you tend to stay in there as a writer. Many narrative writers stay in there. But my goal was to go into that tunnel and then do a curve over to civil rights tunnel. And then when I stayed in the civil rights tunnel for a period,
00:14:11
Speaker
I would come out of it and go back over into the Vietnam tunnel. I came across that great quote from David Haberstam who said,
Journalistic Techniques & Insights
00:14:18
Speaker
who had been in Vietnam and had, he had covered both Vietnam and Mississippi and, and, and he just very casually said, there are a lot of links between Vietnam and Mississippi when it comes to blacks.
00:14:36
Speaker
And whoo! that That really, I mean, I think I was like a third of the way into the book when I came across that quote. And then I just knew I was on the right path.
00:14:48
Speaker
A telling story needed to be told. Did you have much experience with Halperstam? Did you guys ever overlap in meat? yeah Yes. I did an interview. he wrote a book about rowing, about rowing.
00:15:05
Speaker
about the rowing crew at think it was Harvard and, and i did an interview with him, but I always have been a big fan of his big take, take downs of serious subjects, be it the media or be a, uh, or be it, or be it the man who worked for John F. Kennedy in his book,
00:15:33
Speaker
the best and the brightest about the Vietnam War, of course. I just think he was an amazing journalist. Yeah, he was interesting in that he would do like a heavy book and then usually intersperse a sports book every day. That was kind of the seasonality of his book writing. But you are right.
00:15:53
Speaker
You are so right. He wrote a book, Brendan, about the Portland Trailblazers, a basketball book. he You know, it was 450 pages of the big, thick book about the Portland Trailblazers. I mean, and he would dive deep.
00:16:10
Speaker
He would go, he would interview like 300 people, you know, just deep dives and really made his books rich.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's a degree of sports writing and even biography that's really hard to pull off these days. The access you could get maybe back in that time versus the access you might be granted now. And I'm sure you've experienced that over your career as well of just trying to just trying to gin up access for biography or whatever kind of story or narratives you're working on. you know How have you um seen maybe the trends of access change and how do you work around access if you're not granted ah the people you so desperately want to talk to?
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah, there's always, I don't know how to say this, but in so many instances, there's a little bit of luck involved, a little bit of fortune. Like I interviewed in this general business,
00:17:09
Speaker
He was too young to have gone to Vietnam, but he knew a lot of Vietnam era soldiers. And so he helped me find some people.
00:17:21
Speaker
And then I took him out to dinner and he asked me if there was anyone else who I wanted to talk to who I hadn't been able to reach.
00:17:34
Speaker
And I said, now this was like four years ago And so the first African-American secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, was in office.
00:17:47
Speaker
and And I told this general, I said, i would have loved to have gotten to to the secretary, Lloyd Austin, even though I'm still about eight months from finishing the book.
00:18:05
Speaker
And I would have loved to have gotten to him because he had a couple of uncles who served in Vietnam and they inspired him to go into the military. And this general, who I was talking to, started to grin. There's this big, wide grin flowered on his face. And I asked him if something was wrong or something was up.
00:18:25
Speaker
And he said, will. Secretary Austin is one of of my dearest friends. that interview and bam, two weeks later, I'm going to the Pentagon and I'm in an office with Secretary Lloyd Austin. And if I had written him 10 letters, who knows if any of those letters would have actually reached his hand as busy as he is.
00:18:54
Speaker
But because I had you know met this general through shoe leather, That paid off because he got me to Lloyd Austin, and Lloyd Austin, of course, is a major figure at the end of the book.
00:19:10
Speaker
Big time. And you bring up, yeah once you got that access, you flying to the Pentagon, you just bring up shoe leather. And ah nowadays, is' in reporting, it's so due to resources, due to time, perhaps. We're very digitally interfaced. And so maybe most people be like, oh, maybe I can get him on a Zoom or I can get him on the phone. Even phone is...
00:19:31
Speaker
rare these days too. yeah um But ah I love getting people to articulate the importance, if possible, to be face-to-face, to shake hands, and to be in the same room together for reporting. like How integral is that to you in your repertorial and research process?
00:19:48
Speaker
One of the most stunning studyning dives in the research during this Vietnam book was was the history of West Point.
00:20:01
Speaker
you know You know, the first black West Point was Henry O. Flipper. He was the only black there.
00:20:13
Speaker
in the late eighteen hundreds and none of the other cadets spoke to him. He was given the silent treatment. He came out of Thomasville, Georgia. Fast forward many, many, many, many years and I'm at the Pentagon interviewing Secretary Lloyd Austin.
00:20:30
Speaker
And I noticed a gigantic photograph in his office. When I walked in, Uh, back was to this photograph, so I didn't see it until I got up to leave.
00:20:45
Speaker
And I turned around and the photograph, the photograph, Brendan, was of Henry O. Flipper, first black graduate of West Point. And I, I noticed that right away it was a life-size photo.
00:21:00
Speaker
And i noticed it was Henry Flipper. And I asked the secretary who went to West Point and I said, wow Henry Flipper, he must mean a lot to you.
00:21:13
Speaker
And he said, well, me and Henry Flipper came from the same small town in Georgia. Wow. i mean If I'd have been doing that on the Zoom,
00:21:27
Speaker
I wouldn't have been able to angle over into his office to see the picture of Henry O. Flipper on the wall.
00:21:38
Speaker
And so it really helped that I was up there in the Pentagon in his office looking at Henry Flipper and looking at him, look at Henry Flipper as I'm writing down, you know, the look on his face.
00:21:56
Speaker
It was priceless. It was just priceless. Yeah, that's such a great ah great evidence or a great case for being in person, getting into those rooms, because there are those ornamental stuff around the room that say so much about a person. and Yeah, when you're in when you're in person, are are you ah a tape recorder person are you just a notepad and pen kind of reporter?
00:22:22
Speaker
Here's what I use. I use old-fashioned notebooks. Awesome. Cool, I got a, yeah, we got similar. Yeah, that is exactly how I roll, man. I've never used a tape recorder in my life.
00:22:38
Speaker
And and then then when all ah then when all of the Watergate, Nixon, he was secretly taping people, you know, that sort of proved to me that those things are harmful.
00:22:56
Speaker
You know, and I don't think people, maybe I'm wrong, I don't think people talk as freely into a tape recorder as they might just having a normal conversation and looking across and seeing you writing notes down.
00:23:16
Speaker
You know, yes, old fashioned notebook is the way I go. And how do you navigate inevitably losing material because you can't either keep pace or your handwriting gets the best of you? And it's just like, ah shoot, i'm I'm losing stuff here because I can't keep pace or whatever.
00:23:39
Speaker
i think it's a craft. have to learn how to ask somebody a question and you're still writing down the last eight words they said.
00:23:51
Speaker
I've been at this a long time and you know what I mean? I'm very good at writing sort of short hand to get whole sentences. you know And you know I don't think that you have to use every quote that you get.
00:24:13
Speaker
I kind of use quotes as like it's like somebody going fishing. you won to catch the big ah You want to catch you The small quotes, you know one can throw back in the water, just like the small fish. You can throw it back in the water.
00:24:32
Speaker
Oh, I love it. and um So yeah, like with ah with respect to ah the war within the war, so it's got this really striking cover image. and tell me the story about yeah this photograph of this young soldier.
00:24:46
Speaker
Yes. When I was a kid and and I grew up on North Fifth Street in Columbus, Ohio, there was a guy who lived right across the street from me.
00:24:58
Speaker
named Skip Dunn. He was in high school. I was in like the sixth and seventh grade and he waved to me, hey Will, how you doing? And I waved to him, hey Skip.
00:25:10
Speaker
He was going off to high school and I was going off to the sixth grade. And one day, this was in the mid 60s, Skip was gone, just poof, vanished. And a week later, I asked my sister who went to high school with Skip, I said, hey, Diane, where's Skip?
00:25:28
Speaker
And she said, Skip is going to Vietnam. And of course, I really didn't know a lot about Vietnam. I'd seen newsreel footage on TV.
00:25:39
Speaker
ah But Skip had gone to Vietnam And five other guys who I knew in the neighborhood had also gone to Vietnam. And since my family moved to another side of town at the end of that year, I never saw Skip again.
00:25:58
Speaker
And so years go on and and I start writing this book and then I finish it after five years. And I woke up one morning, Brendan, and said to myself, I should have interviewed Skip Dunn.
00:26:13
Speaker
the guy who lived in the street for me, so let me go find Skip. And then I started making some phone calls back to my hometown and found out that Skip had passed away and maybe it was Agent Orange, but he had passed away and I asked his widow, Mrs. Dunn, if she could send me a photograph of Skip and she said, sure.
00:26:39
Speaker
Now this was after the book was finished and it already had photo in the works from the art designer up in New York. But I saw the photo and it was so striking, it stunned me. And even though the book was finished and they had already had their idea what they wanted to put on the cover, I immediately sent the Skip Dunn photo to my editor.
00:27:02
Speaker
He was knocked out by it. He asked me who it was and I told him it was Skip Dunn. and And my editor said, well, there's nothing in the book about this skip done.
00:27:14
Speaker
And I said, no, no, i didn't I didn't really want to write about him, but he lived directly across the street from me. And my editor said, Will, you have buried the lead.
00:27:27
Speaker
Are you serious? And there were five other Black cats who went to Vietnam and you personally knew all of them? And I said, Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I And he said, oh well, you have to go back into the book.
00:27:44
Speaker
We're going to give you some more time, but I want you to rewrite the opening of the book because I don't think I could find another young black kid who lived on the street with five African-American children.
00:27:57
Speaker
going off to the Vietnam War. And my editor said, that is a profound revelation. And so I went back into the book and wrote Skip into the book. and And then my editor and the art designer surprised me and said,
00:28:16
Speaker
we've we're We are sending you a new book jacket and a new book jacket, Skip Dunn. That is Skip Dunn. Miracle of all miracles, that's Skip Dunn. I woke up in the middle of the night, thought of him, and here we are, 19 weeks after the book has been published, and now the whole country is getting treated to the imagery of Skip Dunn, who represents the whole Vietnam War when it comes to black soldiers. He's only 18 years old in that photograph. He is a young He is a young Marine. He volunteered.
Militaristic Directions & Historical Parallels
00:28:49
Speaker
Look at Donald Trump, who complained about bo bone spurs and didn't have to go to the military, did not go to the military. He had somebody who was powerful, who interceded on his behalf.
00:29:03
Speaker
And Skip Dunn, or so many Black soldiers, did not have that option. They had to go. I mean, they went. They volunteered to go fight for their country. They didn't hide behind money.
00:29:14
Speaker
for prestige with money or their race or their connection. They volunteered. and And I think we really need to give people who did that a lot of respect.
00:29:29
Speaker
These young guys were already, you know, so often being treated as second class citizens, and yet they still loved America and they believed in America and they wanted America to be better.
00:29:44
Speaker
Yeah, and to your point early in the book, you know, you you wrote like growing up, we rarely saw black policemen or black firemen. By default, war became a necessary career consideration for so many black men. And like this was a way to maybe become upwardly mobile if you could just get through the war.
00:30:03
Speaker
If you could just get through the war. I mean, that's why I enjoy telling the story of Marvin Gaye. Marvin Gaye's brother, Frankie Gaye, had went to war and came back with all kinds of problems, issues, mental health problems, substance.
00:30:22
Speaker
I don't know if he had any substance abuse problems himself, but a lot of the black soldiers who came back became hooked on heroin because when you were in Vietnam,
00:30:34
Speaker
you could find heroin very easily. And simply because the 1964, 65, 68 civil rights bills were passed, didn't mean that everybody wanted to treat blacks equally.
00:30:50
Speaker
this' right The books, I mean, the law was on the books. But it took money to enforce those laws. And now a lot of that money was going to the ever endless Vietnam War.
00:31:06
Speaker
Yeah, and which really has echoes ah to to our current moment as well. Yeah, and like at the end of the at the end of the book, I think it's kind of like going back ah going too far forward, but you do write like the year 2026 is America's 250th anniversary. The years ahead will tell if the Trump-induced rupture is an aberration on the way to a more perfect union or if the nation has altered the course of its recent military dynamism and racial progress, all the behest of a malevolent political force.
00:31:34
Speaker
ah Just like, what is this, um you know, our current moment, ah how does this current moment really inform ah your book? I have been on a tour. I have been traveling around the country and I have spoken on several college campuses.
00:31:51
Speaker
And a lot of students are extremely worried that there might be a draft at some point. Yeah.
00:32:02
Speaker
They don't think Trump is gonna stop with this but this one country, Iran. could start other conflicts. He has renamed the secret, I mean, the Office of Defense, he has renamed it. And so we are at a militaristic moment.
00:32:30
Speaker
in this country. And I think that that is, I think it's very, I think it's very worrisome because you are right. The price tag keeps going up and up and up.
00:32:43
Speaker
And wars don't start with the snap of a finger and they don't end with the snap of a finger. So this thing looks like it's going to go on and on and on. you You know, there's only so much money to be spent for you know, to take care of people in our country.
00:33:02
Speaker
You know, a lot of people have lost jobs, you know, with those Trumps, you know, and the federal workforce, you know, has been slashed.
00:33:12
Speaker
These things are going to hurt. These things are hurting people. And I think this book really explains to America, the folly of war.
00:33:24
Speaker
Yes, we do have to fight big wars in World War II. Hitler had to be stopped. He was a madman. He was insane. He was a murderer.
00:33:35
Speaker
He had to be stopped. And so we rightfully applaud those who served in World War two who engaged in that battle.
00:33:47
Speaker
But i I think mentally, This nation, Brendan, is still its still grappling with the Vietnam War.
00:33:58
Speaker
Why we went there, how much harm did we cause, how have we treated the veterans who were there, how why did we mistreat Black soldiers who were there?
00:34:11
Speaker
Now, there are stories of wonderful heroism of Blacks and whites together. It was sort of a forced brotherhood. And those stories were very beautiful to uncover, where you know because there's a line in the book where I say, white couldn't survive without black, and black couldn't survive without white in the Vietnam War. It really was the first time in our nation's history where when we're blacks and whites were on equal turf and fought together under one mission.
00:34:45
Speaker
You know, it wasn't South against North or North against South. It was a forced brotherhood. You didn't see that kind of comradeship every day in Alabama or Georgia or Cincinnati. You just didn't,
Women's Contributions in Vietnam War
00:35:02
Speaker
you know. And so there are many, many white heroes in this book who wanted to do the right thing and did do the right thing.
00:35:11
Speaker
many, many black soldiers who were heroes who wanted to do the right thing and did and did certainly do the right thing.
00:35:23
Speaker
It was a struggle though, it you know it was a heavy lifting struggle for the black man and woman in that war. Not that women fought, but women did.
00:35:37
Speaker
fight as nurses and orphanages, you know, and so they were on the ground. So they were part of the war effort. There are four major female figures in this book.
00:35:49
Speaker
And usually when you're reading Chronicles about the Vietnam War, you don't read about women. And so, so I was very happy to include the four women that I do in the book.
00:36:04
Speaker
Yeah, how did you find them? And yeah, and you're speaking to it now. like How gratifying was it to be able to shine a spotlight into ah just an untold, an often untold part of the the the African-American Vietnam experience?
00:36:21
Speaker
It was great. I mean, there was this lady worked in Chicago for the Veterans Administration by the name of Maude DeVictor.
00:36:32
Speaker
And I had read a little snippet about her someplace in someplace and and I knew I wanted to explore her. And so I was able to track down Bill Curtis, the very legendary Chicago TV newsman.
00:36:48
Speaker
He worked with Maude DeVictor helping her ex expose Agent Orange. Maude DeVictor was probably the first whistleblower of the Vietnam War.
00:37:03
Speaker
Another woman ah who I came across, Philippa Schuyler, she was a biracial concert pianist who went to Vietnam because she knew that there were a lot of children who had been fathered by black and white soldiers. So the children biracial Vietnamese children, and they were sped upon by other kids because they were biracial.
00:37:31
Speaker
And Phillipa Schuyler, her being biracial, she was, you know, she was very sympathetic. to their pain. And so she went to Vietnam to save some of those children and bring them back in the orphanages. And she died on one of those rescue missions.
00:37:50
Speaker
And then there was a nurse, nurse Dorothy Harris, who I spent time with in Cincinnati. She was just a very brave woman, had some very haunting stories to tell me about how hard it was to work in Vietnam.
00:38:09
Speaker
She had said something to me that was so striking. She said, well, we as a nation tend to forget how young these young men were, 18, 19, and 20 years old.
00:38:21
Speaker
And she said, a soldier who would be wheeled into my medical tent, who would be wounded wounded very badly, she said the first thing he would always ask was, am I going to die?
00:38:36
Speaker
I'm going to die. And she said, all these 60 years later, that question still hangs in the air for me because they wanted somebody to tell their mother how much they loved them.
00:38:52
Speaker
It chokes me up to that moment. in in And this goes to the shoe leather part of it. If I hadn't found her, you know,
00:39:04
Speaker
I wouldn't have been introduced to that haunting prompting quotation. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it kind of gives me just, I mean, I remember reading it, but also just like hearing you talk about it, i like got like chills on my skin because it's it's such a simple phrase, a simple question, but it goes to the very heart of the fear that all that everyone feels at that time. But when you're more potentially mortally wounded and you're there and you you want the reassurance that you're to be okay so you can just go home.
00:39:31
Speaker
Right, so you can just go home and you're right. Just go home. Everybody wanted to go home, man. You know, 12 months through duty, 12 months in Vietnam, must have felt like three years.
00:39:45
Speaker
Must have felt like three years being there, man. The hot jungle, bullets and noise and bombs and the heat and the bad food and and you're getting rained on.
00:39:59
Speaker
you know, during the rainy season and ah war. War, as Hemingway famously said, is hell. There's no doubt about it. War is hell. What I love what you sketch in the book as well, as as hellish as the conditions were, a lot of the the black soldiers could really relate to native Vietnamese people. And there was a particular street that really ah that had like a lot of a lot of music that the black soldiers could could lean into. And it that felt in some ways more home than actual home to them. and I love how you sketch that out.
00:40:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's called Soul Alley. It was like this seven block long strip of stores. And the black soldiers went over there and they asked the be in ne and they asked the Vietnamese merchants and they said, hey, can you get us things that we were...
00:40:51
Speaker
we would be able to get access to back in St. Louis or Memphis or l LA, things such as certain Afro pick for our hair, certain hair grease, certain foods that we like, certain music that we like, certain magazines, Ebony and Jet that we would love to read. And they said yes.
00:41:13
Speaker
And so after a period of time, this street became kind of Soul Alley. And it was where the Black soldiers went to just chill out because basic they were working with a lot of officers who were from the South and who had grown up in segregation.
00:41:35
Speaker
And not all of these officers took easily to having so many Black people around them It was John F. Kennedy at the beginning of the war he' found out that when found out that there was a disproportionate number of black troops on the front line.
00:41:56
Speaker
He called the staff meeting and told his staff, he said, hey, we have to be very careful because this is going to seem like, quote, a white man's war. that the white man was making all the chess moves and all the chess moves involved black people going to kill brown people, Asian people.
00:42:15
Speaker
that yeah yeah That was a very perceptive comment that he made early in the war because he knew something was wrong with those numbers.
00:42:26
Speaker
He just knew it. For instance, too, there was a prison called the Long Bend prison. And it was for malcontents or whoever broke laws. It was a prison for American soldiers who broke laws in Saigon, South vi Vietnam. you You know, maybe they were selling dope or maybe they stole stole somebody's gun or they did something wrong.
00:42:54
Speaker
Then they were have a brief trial like, and then they would get sent to this through this prison that was in country. They wouldn't be shipped back to the US. They would have to serve their time in country.
00:43:09
Speaker
At one time, 80% Brendan of the inmates at the Long Bend prison were black. 80%. eight percent And so something is definitely out of whack with that number.
00:43:27
Speaker
At one time, 80%. And so it's easy to understand why in in the immediate aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968, there was a riot in that prison.
00:43:43
Speaker
yeah ah And it was awful. And it was not written about a lot in the U.S. press until weeks later. But there was a vicious, brutal riot in that prison staged by Black inmates.
Fred Cherry's Heroism & POW Dynamics
00:43:59
Speaker
You know, they were so full of anger, angry for being there, and they were angry that Martin Luther King Jr. had just been shot to death, but the numbers don't lie. The numbers vary stark to me. And I came across some of these numbers and I said, whoa.
00:44:16
Speaker
Yeah, and one of the more great sketches that you bring to light in the book, it's on the one hand triumphant and the other hand supremely tragic is of Fred Cherry. And like talk about Fred Cherry and kind of the arc of his experience.
00:44:33
Speaker
He was a hero. Fred Cherry was an Air Force pilot. He was from Virginia. He had flown in the Korean War and he was flying what would what was going to be one of his last missions over Vietnam.
00:44:54
Speaker
He was bombing Vietnam and his plane got shot down and Fred Cherry, he was black. He got thrown into jail in North Vietnam. And the North Vietnamese, knowing what time it was racially in the USA, said, we'll put him in with a white southerner and they'll kill each other.
00:45:17
Speaker
Both of them. Either Fred Cherry will kill him or her or, Porter Halliburton, the white officer, will kill Fred Cherry.
00:45:33
Speaker
what happened was when Fred Cherry, when he was taken out and tortured, he was brought back. near death, it was his white cellmate, Halliburton, who were nursing back to health.
00:45:50
Speaker
And when Halliburton would be taken out and tortured, arm broken, leg broken, and would be dragged back into the cell, it was Freya Cherry, his black cellmate, who would nurse him, who would nurse him back to health.
00:46:06
Speaker
That's just an example of one of those very beautiful stories in the book that made me write that line, ah black couldn't survive without white and white couldn't survive without black in the war.
00:46:21
Speaker
And Fred Cherry and Halliburton both survived the war and they were released and they they were lifelong friends who went through hell.
00:46:35
Speaker
Yeah, and your your point ah earlier, too, about so many of these soldiers that, you know, they volunteered, they didn't dodge the draft or anything like so many, you know, privileged, fortunate sons. You quote ah Robert Marshall, I believe, and he's like, in Oakland, California, I was hated because I was a soldier. and in Fayetteville, North Carolina, I was hated because I was black. It's like that's the reward. you know, like yeah there was like you they couldn couldn't win. You think the volunteering in the in the in the serving of the country would grant grant that degree of acceptance. But instead, you came back and it was almost much the same.
00:47:14
Speaker
Much the same. You know, it was the war within a war. and it was the first war where the soldiers could have a point of view and could speak out, unlike maybe in World War II or Korea. Like they could have ah a voice and there might be a sort of rage against the machine among among the soldiers.
00:47:33
Speaker
Well, yeah. It was the first racially integrated war that this nation had fought. And it was a war where... where there was no censorship for the most
Vietnam War's Legacy & Modern Implications
00:47:45
Speaker
part.
00:47:45
Speaker
The only censorship was that the military did not want the newspaper reporters to pinpoint where units were heading off to, to do battle.
00:47:57
Speaker
And so, yes, you are right. It was a first war, first racially integrated war and first war where people could speak their mind.
00:48:08
Speaker
You're right. Yeah, and when we see so much of the adversarial nature of people in power and journalists, kind sometimes we might think that oh the it might just be a new construct. But you you say, like, LBJ, he hated the press almost as much as Trump and his cronies and and the whole MAGAverse hate the press too. like he just ah Reading that, I was like, oh, like the these guys, ah the press and the people in power have always been...
00:48:37
Speaker
ah kind of at at odds, and rightfully so. But to even see someone who was as liberal and maybe socially conscious as LBJ might have been at the time, to think that he hated the press, too. of Like, oh, this is maybe a story as old as time, too.
00:48:53
Speaker
You know, there was a hearing... And one of the generals told a senator, he said, well, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
00:49:05
Speaker
And the senator said, well, just how long is this damn tunnel?
00:49:13
Speaker
You know, like, it's hard to look back. Brendan, because I teach and I sometimes ask my students, how long do you think the Vietnam War lasted? And they would say, three years, nope four no, four, five, no, six, no, seven, no.
00:49:31
Speaker
And I finally have to tell them 12 plus years, I mean, unimaginable that we would send our soldiers on death missions for 12 consecutive years. I mean, there was nobody to just say, stop, stop the madness, stop it.
00:49:50
Speaker
No more flights, no more soldiers on the ground, stop it. And for 12 years, Brendan, that is a long time.
00:50:01
Speaker
to disrupt the Black community, especially, who didn't have a fair share anyway. I mean, they were just coming out of Jim Crow's second-class citizenship for the most part, simultaneously.
00:50:17
Speaker
In 1962, America still had no civil rights bill.
00:50:22
Speaker
63, no civil rights bill, but soldiers were landing in Vietnam. You know, we didn't pass the first civil rights bill in 100 years until the late summer of 1964. So, a tough man that was a tough Room to walk.
00:50:41
Speaker
and all the more enraging is just seeing the the rolling back of ah the voting rights act and everything that so many veterans have fought for and especially you know black americans who had to endure all these all these travesties over the decades and then to see it so incrementally and so fast i Fastly ah almost burnt burned down a rubble. it's ah It's the ultimate spit in the face to anyone who has you know stood behind and took an oath to serve the Constitution.
00:51:13
Speaker
but Well, when I started this book, it was shortly after George Floyd had been murdered in Minnesota. And I would be sitting and a veteran's home and something invariably come on the news about George Floyd and the white cop who sat on his neck and the other cops who just stood around.
00:51:39
Speaker
And they would be so irate 60 years later after the Vietnam War, and they would tell me, I did not go fight for this country to come home and see a black man murdered.
00:51:51
Speaker
in plain view by a law enforcement officer. I mean, and it struck a nerve with all of them. They all continue to love the country, but not some of the things that have happened to, and I mean, not any of the things that have happened to unarmed blacks by law enforcement.
00:52:12
Speaker
Yeah. And speaking of yeah the domestic agenda that LBJ you know set forth, it's like his his legacy got swamped by his mishandling of Vietnam. And like you you even say like there was no one to just say stop.
00:52:27
Speaker
And I think maybe they think the sunk cost of it, like people have died for this, so we have to keep going. It's really just the opposite. like They already died. They're not going to come back. They're not going to die anymore.
00:52:38
Speaker
Those people have already died. They they can't die anymore. they have They've died. We need to just pull out and say we messed up. And no one can ever admit that they messed up. I mean, it's hubris.
00:52:50
Speaker
Hubris. It's American hubris. It's what kept us in the Civil War. Should have been stopped after one year. i mean, who wants to justify slavery?
00:53:02
Speaker
Who wants to justify slavery? But that's what the South did. And now the South is... is redrawing all of these maps to hinder to hinder black voting rights.
00:53:14
Speaker
And the Supreme Court is letting it happen, and it's awful. For sure. and And so you spend yeah ah a good five years on on the book, and that's ah that's a long arc of being with subject matter and being with with people and archives and everything.
00:53:32
Speaker
invariably you're always going to run into a hiccups and the doubt that's inherent in writing this and ah the marathon of it all. um So just when you're, and when you see, when you look back at the arc of having created this book, you's just like, how do you approach those moments when you feel stuck or the energy is low and you're like, Oh, is this project even worth it?
00:53:54
Speaker
Invariably I'll come in to, I'll come in, I'll come face to face with somebody. who's a veteran and in this case, there was a veteran early on who who said to me, I've never spoken about Vietnam, but I'm so happy that you came to visit me because want my story to be as respected
00:54:25
Speaker
as as all the white soldiers who have had the opportunity to tell their stories. Because they there had been books, there were books in the 70s and 80s by white men who had been to Vietnam, but there was no book by nobody black.
00:54:44
Speaker
Wallace Terry had an oral history book, but that's not a nonfiction book. Okay? And so they all let me know that this book was needed.
00:54:56
Speaker
ah And even before it was published, so many of them told me that and that they thought that the book was going to be an important part of telling the whole American story.
Reader's Reflection & Book's Impact
00:55:12
Speaker
And that was the aim of the book. yeah you know, to tell the whole American story of this, of this very complex and controversial war.
00:55:26
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, I think, well, when I, before I opened the book, I wasn't sure if we were going to be following, say, you know, one person through the narrative. And then I was like, oh, this is going to be like a cross section of a lot of, a lot of the, the black representation of the Vietnam war. And I love the, um,
00:55:46
Speaker
the study of it through ah through so many different experiences that does paint this holistic and this holistic experience from the African-American perspective in Vietnam. So it was just like such a yeah such a great ah you know trip and a great experience that you have like kind of curated for us because that that that took us to a place and and gave voice to people, to your point a moment ago, who haven't been on the record and want to be heard and need to be heard.
00:56:16
Speaker
Yeah, yep that was the important thing to me. I was at someplace, Brendan and I was reading.
00:56:28
Speaker
and after my reading, a man, he was African-American. He went to the microphone and said, Will, I've just finished your book.
00:56:39
Speaker
And he said, when I started reading it, I was traumatized. And by the time I finished it, I was healed. I was healed all the pain that had happened to me in Vietnam. And that, I mean, that almost brought me to tears.
00:56:57
Speaker
He said he was traumatized. And yet, as he read through the book and he got the whole story, he said that it started to heal him. It started to heal.
00:57:10
Speaker
it started to repair some of the damage that the war had done to him. That was so stunning to hear that and uplifting for me, Brendan. It was so uplifting to me.
00:57:27
Speaker
i mean, it just was. it made me It made me very proud to have written this book, even though I ran out of money doing the book and had to teach to keep some money coming in.
00:57:42
Speaker
I'm glad I did it. I mean, somebody asked me if this is my best book. I don't know that, but I certainly know it's my most timely book. It's a timely book. It's my it's by far my most my most timely book because of what's going on in the country right now.
00:58:02
Speaker
Oh, for sure. And I think the the fact that it's exhausted a ah tremendous amount of resources into it and didn't give up on it speaks to the importance it was to you.
00:58:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You know, in those guys, you know, Skip Dunn. Steve Collins, Larry Wilson, James Bolton, Charles Bolton.
00:58:27
Speaker
Those were the five who came back, who lived in my neighborhood, who came back. Robert Morris, the sixth member, he died in Vietnam. And I knew every one of them a kid. I knew them all.
00:58:41
Speaker
I used to carry papers to each of their homes. And so this book has been my tribute to them and to everybody, white, black, male, female who served in the war.
00:58:54
Speaker
Yeah, and it is yeah it is a fitting tribute for sure, Will. And ah and ah yeah as I bring these conversations down for a landing, I always love asking the guests for just like a fun recommendation for the reader for the listeners out there. And that can just be anything you're excited about. And I would just extend that to you, Will. Like what might you recommend for people out there to check out or to read or to watch or or whatever? Yeah.
00:59:18
Speaker
I just watched the movie, one battle after another that won the Oscar for best picture. a and it's all about all of the political gyrations that this nation has gone through. And it's about race, and it's about love, and it's about family.
00:59:44
Speaker
I had never read the book that the movie had to be inspired by, but it was a very interesting and fascinating movie with some great acting in it, too.
01:00:00
Speaker
Fantastic. Awesome. Well, well, this was so great to catch up again. i really hope we don't go like ah five, five or five plus years between conversations again, because ah I so love talking to you about how you go about the work. So just thanks again for this amazing book and a contribution contribution and to to everybody's bookshelf. They'll be ah glad they bought it. So thank you so much for
Wrap-up & Future Plans
01:00:25
Speaker
everything you do. Well,
01:00:26
Speaker
Well, certainly thank you and your listeners. It is always a treat to talk to you. Thank you so much, Brendan.
01:00:38
Speaker
Yes. Awesome. Love that guy. Thanks to Will for coming back on the show to talk shop and his latest book, The War Within a War, which is no doubt one of the favorites going into the second annual CNFE award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence. Man, I might have to make different categories for the CNFEs this year because, man, I have read some bangers this year. And how do you how do you pick one?
01:01:04
Speaker
And they're all across different genres, so I don't know, i might have to make a memoir category and maybe a journalism biography, like a reported category. and Maybe it's like ah a reported category and a personal category. and Personal might be memoir and essay, personal essay, and then reported might be like narrative nonfiction and biography.
01:01:26
Speaker
and stuff like that i don't know so maybe it's just two categories in any case it's gonna be tough the the panel of one is gonna have a hard time deciding who gets the the wooden plaque this year for the cnfe again it might be two be sure you're subbed up with the podcast of course wherever you listen to podcasts and pitch club at welcome to pitchclub.substack.com and or the werewolf rage against the algorithm newsletter And follow the show on Instagram at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Bleh.
01:02:01
Speaker
Okay, so by the time you hear this, I will have likely delivered my rage against the algorithm keynote at the Chuckanut Writers Conference about building author platform without social media. And I don't mean, like, delete your social media accounts, but by all means do.
01:02:17
Speaker
Mad respect. Mad props. But I should say, deprioritizing social media, flipping the script, agency over algorithm...
01:02:28
Speaker
I put a lot into it. I've rehearsed it a ton, drew up some good slides. Yeah, I plan on recording the audio of it and I will likely then splice in my slides to make a video of it. It won't include me necessarily, but it'll be you my voice and I'll just drop in my slides where I know I'm changing out the slides and maybe that'll make for a cool video.
01:02:52
Speaker
We'll see. And I think I will share that if I ever get around to making it with the Patreon crew. and That seems like the kind of perk you reserve for that. i'll I'll likely do the same with my Art of the Interview lecture, that which will be my little like breakout session, master class, or whatever you want to call it, on how to hone that skill and deepen your fiction or your poetry or no your nonfiction projects projects, of course. I'm not the most polished speaker, and I always worry that I'm going to come off like J.D. Vance in public, who is just this doe-faced patsy who tries so hard to be funny and charismatic, and he always comes across as this pathetic little boy.
01:03:31
Speaker
Emphasis on pathetic. Emphasis on little. Emphasis on Emphasis. Like anything, it comes down to practice and having snappy visual aids, like some hand-drawn, some screenshots, some gifts GIFs, GIFs, GIFs, that break up the monotony. Thing is, you can't teach charisma. and Maybe Vanessa Van Edwards would argue with that. She's like a science of people person. She's something of a charisma coach, if you want to call her that, and has written books about people skills like captivate cues and conversation.
01:04:08
Speaker
so I guess maybe there are elements that you can practice and foster, sharpen. and But we often falter when we try to be someone we're not, and the worry is usually how will the crowd react?
01:04:23
Speaker
yeah Will they find your humor funny? Your insight's insightful. Will they pull out their phones and start scrolling? How many people will yawn? Will they yawn in unison?
01:04:34
Speaker
Then check their Instagram accounts and I'll pine about how many people are yawning. Now, I take cues from my slides, and I have notes buried in the PowerPoint guide. So they help me.
01:04:46
Speaker
i don't memorize the entire talk, but I do have most of it committed to some corner of memory. And there's always things that just come to my mind in the throes of it, like, Every single time I practice, and something else kind of pops into my mouth or a way of phrasing it. So I just trust that in the moment as I stumble and stammer that something cool will come out. It happens every time, so I just have to trust that something will happen.
01:05:13
Speaker
Maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't. I don't know if I'm talking in front of 50 people or 300. And so we'll see. I will report back in a week or so.
01:05:25
Speaker
Also, an update on the audio magazine-themed codes. I've recorded everyone's essays. I need to edit them and then package them together and order them in a way that I feel they feed off each other.
01:05:37
Speaker
I suspect sometime in July I'll have it done. ah There have been a lot of like higher priority items that have hit me the last few months, and it has kicked this can down the road considerably.
01:05:50
Speaker
So thanks to the writers for your patience. It's coming. It's coming down the pipe very soon, this summer, we'll say. I've got six essays to share, and that'll come out in the podcast feed proper when it's all said and done.
01:06:07
Speaker
I'm not 100% sure if I'll ever do this again. We will see. That's it, CNFers. Wish me luck and stay wild. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.