rine took on a still darker cast, withnincidents of officers and NCO’s murdered,ncivilians abused and killed, drugnaddiction of epidemic proportions.nA.11 this is part of the story toldnin Everything We Had, but the book isnnot only of American nightmares. JonathannPolansky, a rifleman with then101st Airborne Division, tells of a villagendestroyed, the inhabitants all killednby the Viet Cong because they werensuspected of being American sympathizers.nRobert Santos saw the bodies ofncivilians massacred by the North Vietnamesenat Hue, corpses neatly lined up,nthumbs tied behind their backs.nThese men witnessed the communistnritual of the slaughter of innocents. Sondid Admiral William Lawrence, a Navynpilot who was shot down over NorthnVietnam in 1967 and spent nearly sixnyears in captivity, including fourteennmonths of solitary confinement in anseven-foot-square cell: “They [the interrogators]nwould talk with you, givenyou a standard spiel and start askingnyou questions and then you’d say ‘I’mnonly required to give name, rank, serialnnumber and date of birth.’ After askingnyou a couple of times, they left and sentnthe torturer in.”nAdmiral Lawrence’s chapter is certainlynthe best in Santoli’s collection.nLawrence was tortured, starved and keptnisolated from his fellow prisoners laynthe North Vietnamese. Yet the captivesndevised an elaborate language of walltappingnand coughing to communicatenand thus help preserve their sanity.nLawrence taught himself to figure compoundninterest and write poetry in hisnhead and remembered his poems whennhe was released.nAdmiral Lawrence was freed innMarch of 1973, and he found his wifenhad divorced him to marry someonenelse. Yet, looking back, he is neithernangry nor bitter about his ordeal. Henrepeats a proverb: “Bravery is not thenabsence of fear, it is the ability to keepngoing in the presence of fear.” AdmiralnLawrence is now superintendent of thenU.S. Naval Academy. He has recovered.nSo have most of Santoli’s interviewees.nHe has included brief “updates”nof them, and we find nine writersnand dramatists, seven businessmen, fivenlawyers, five social workers, a collegenprofessor, three military officers andntwo nurses. No details are given onnRobert Rawls, a black GI from Cleveland,nwhose story is among the bitterest.nYet even he says that: “This wasnabout the time that Huey Newton andnguards, in the officers we saw in camp.nThat B-52 bombing . . . they changednfrom cocky confidence to a desire tonget the war over. I could see it. Theynwere tired of fighting.”nWe do not know that bombing Hanoinin 1965 rather than 1972 would havenshortened the war and saved lives onnall sides. But it is worth considering,neven in 1981. Certainly fewer infantrymennwould have died. But bombing thenenemy’s homeland was a course of ac-n”… there is something tedious about the experience of reading [Everything WenHad].”n—New York Timesn”… there is something oddly flat about the book, a kind of emptiness at its center.”n— The Nationn”Santoli. . . subscribes to the greatest myth of all: American battlefield supremacynin Vietnam.”n— The Progressivenall them was around. But for the guysnin the bush the grunts, you know, onenof my best friends was a white guy . . .nYou can’t find no racism in the bush.”nThese people are pursuing careersnthat they only dreamed of while undernfire in Vietnam. What aftereffects didnthey suffer that distinguish them fromnveterans of other wars.” Certainly therenis an abiding bitterness in some casesnabout the politicization of the VietnamnWar. Dennis Morgan, a Marine aerialnobserver, tells how the North Vietnamesenlaunched a massive attack onnSouth Vietnamese marines at the CuanViet River as soon as the ceasefire ofnJanuary 28, 1973 took effect. However,nU.S. air support had been “turnednoff” at the ceasefire. That is the kindnof thing these people are talking about,nthe servile indifference of political andnmilitary authorities to what was happeningnin the field. Admiral Lawrence tellsnit best. “The thing that really made usnget our hopes up was when the B-52’sncame in and bombed Hanoi. Christmasn’72. That’s when we knew that the attitudenamong the North Vietnamese hadnreally changed. We could see it in thennntion relentlessly opposed by foes of thenU.S. presence in Vietnam, who professednto be most saddened by the casualtynlists. Of course, some of themnwere more upset by American battlenfield successes than casualties. Butnwhat is most important in rememberingnthe Vietnam War is that it became anpolitical seesaw, and those in uniformnsaw the agonizing effects.nOantoli’s book may be seen as anretrospective vindication of the war’snopponents, but it is nothing of the sort.nThese thirty-three brave men and womennshed tears for the bloodshed theynwitnessed, but also in anger and frustrationnat the appalling stupidity at thentop, of those of their leaders who werenafraid to protect their men, afraid tonwin. Further, Everything We Had isnan eloquent testament to the purenessence of war, a close-up on experiencesnthat cannot really be interpretednfor noncombatants. But the effort tondo so must be made. Santoli has limitednhis editing of the tapes, so the faultyngrammar, the pauses and hesitations,nthe repetitiveness, but still, in a word,nXovember/December 1981n