In an interview on Vietnam

Fields of Fire, James Webb. 

This is a book I like because Webb understands the warrior mentality. I’m not one. I’m a citizen soldier who gets drafted and I’ll do my bit and then I want out, but there are warriors born into the world, and thank God we’ve got them – I’m no pacifist. And the hero of this book, it’s what he wanted to do since he was a child. He’s Scots-Irish and Webb is proud of his heritage and the Marine Corps is filled with these people, disproportionately from the Southern states which is where the Scots-Irish settled, and so he explores that aspect of the human psyche – a guy who wants to be a warrior. Then, obviously, as a warrior, he runs into all the issues a warrior runs into and he’s a thinking warrior. Webb is someone who does think, in spite of the fact that he’s a politician (it’s hard for me to swallow that contradiction), and he’s a good writer. A lot of people like to think that we all hate war, and warriors hate war too, but there’s something in them that makes them good at it, that makes them think: ‘I can’t wait for the next one.’ That’s the way they are and you can’t lay a moral judgment. 

Is it not addictive as well? Once you’ve been in that psychic space, as you put it, it’s very hard to get out again. 

Well, I’ve read recent stuff about addiction to war, particularly correspondents, and someone actually wrote a review of my book calling it war pornography. I’ve never heard that before but I guess if that makes Tolstoy and Wilfred Owen pornographers then I’m in good company. I think addiction to war gets bandied around. I think you can get addicted to adrenaline and work that out in many ways. One of the ways you get addicted to adrenaline is to be in combat and I myself know a great many Marine friends in civilian life who do extremely dangerous snow- and ice-climbing, surfing, sky-diving. I don’t think any of them want to go back into combat. I’m sure, though, that there are people, a few, who learn to like it, but my guess is that they are damaged. Psychotic people like to kill people and we’re not talking about normal people any more. 

No, I suppose not, but when you’ve experienced the very extremes of life, including the bonding with the people around you and the loss of them, then the mundanity of most people’s lives can be difficult to cope with. 

Absolutely. I often think about kids I knew who were 19 – they were squad leaders, they were making life-and-death decisions and having unbelievable experiences. Then they come back and they get a job making hamburgers? It’s going to be crazy-making. It’s probably why we need so much more help moving combat veterans back into the civilian space again. We don’t do a good job with that. It’s not just PTSD, it’s also this existential lack of meaning. You’re a 19-year-old and you realise that if you don’t show up and get your job done then the machine gun you are supposed to be taking out will kill a lot of the other guys in the company, people you love. You are extraordinarily important and life has meaning, in the sense that your success and failure is life and death. You don’t show up for work at McDonald’s, who cares?

People you love. These extreme situations are so passionate that even the positive feelings are so much greater than you would get in ordinary life. 

Totally. I try hard to give the reader a feel for that in my own book and that is one of the enduring positive aspects of war. When veterans get together, they’re not getting together to talk about their exploits or remember the war, which is the cliché, they are trying to experience that feeling that they did experience when they were younger and in that situation. To try to retouch that love, that comradeship.