Collateral Damage
Michael Brohm
"They drilled into my teeth to get me to talk. When they realized I didn't have anything to tell they kicked my teeth in."
I'd
been photographing and interviewing war veterans and asked if I could
talk with him about his tour. His face dropped at the request, but he
agreed to talk. The first time I visited Darryl's small apartment I
took along a heavy, metal tripod. I was afraid of Darryi. His
handshakes were too firm, his gaze at me too piercing. He was roaring
drunk by ten in the morning. I took along the tripod for protection.
Darryi
had been a star player on his high school football team in a small town
in Texas, but an indifferent student. College was of no interest to him
and there were few jobs to be had. When Darryi was given a low lottery
number in the draft he was left with few choices. Besides, he knew what
he wanted to do. He wanted "to serve his country and kill communists".
Proud to serve and eager for conflict, he enlisted in the army.
Asked
about the war, Darryi said he had "gone crazy" in Vietnam. He had been
an avid hunter in the fields near his home, but in war he had turned
these skills to hunting the enemy. When asked if he had killed in
Vietnam, he said simply, "many, many". He described details of the
experience in amazing, precise detail... the smells, the sounds, the
fight outside of a building where, one dark night he and a friend sat
smoking cigarettes until a sniper's bullet hit his buddy in the head,
killing him. He stood and screamed about how stupid they were to make
themselves perfect targets, illuminated by the light. He
It's
only fitting that Darryi lives next door to a gun repair shop. Guns
have played a big part in his life, a life that, from the outside looks
to be in dire need of repair. I'd seen Darryi walking the downtown
streets where I live, a tall, painfully thin man, bundled against the
cold, talking to himself. Most of us avoid people like Darryi, trying
our best to make him invisible. But there was something about Darryi,
something that most of those on the street won't do... Darryi would
look me in the eye.
I
was too young to go to Vietnam. The older brothers of my friends were
sent. Some returned, quiet and changed. Some never returned. Every day,
the front page of the newspaper contained photographs from the
battlefield. Printed in black & white, the photos were not as
wrenching as if the blood had been seen red and running. The impact of
the war was slow coming to me, as it was to many in this country.
I
was a junior in high school in 1968. 1968- The Tet Offensive, the My
Lai massacre, Martin Luther King killed, Bobby Kennedy killed, students
beaten on the streets of Chicago while protesting the war, Nixon
elected president. On July 1, 1969, less than two months before I
entered college, the first draft lottery since 1942 was held in
Washington. Suddenly, the distance between me and Vietnam was shortened.
On the street, in short conversations, I'd learned that Darryi was a Vietnam veteran.