A Vet's Welcome

WE DON'T give it much thought, but when Vietnam veterans returned home, people didn't go out of their way to greet them. Unless they were POWs, there were no brass bands or ticker tape parades, and the soldiers didn't march in platoons before cheering crowds as in World War II news clips. Such pageantry would have seemed ludicrous in light of the bitterness the war created. But even if they weren't hailed as conquering heroes, the vets could have received some acknowledgment and practical help for their sacrifice, especially when it inflicted such brutal psychological wounds. Instead, trickling back a few at a time, they were met with odd looks or derisive comments. Relatively recently, the peculiar predicament of the Vietnam veteran has caught the eye of writers--in the press, in David Rabes plays Sticks and Bones and The BasicRaining of Paulo Hummel, now in Tom Cole's Medal of Honor Rag.

This portrait of a sergeant plagued with survival guilt is more a case history of one veteran's psychological trauma and withdrawal symptoms from a war than a theatrical piece.

Sergeant Dale Jackson returns to his Detroit ghetto home in a morphine induced stupor, drained by emotional stress and battle fatigue. After an initial feeling of release, he grows despondent, spending most of his days lying in bed staring at the ceiling. Tortured by a recurring nightmare in which he stands looking into an immense gun barrel, he is finally admitted to the Valley Forge Army Hospital. Essentially, Jackson can't understand why fate or circumstance or coincidence has allowed him to live when his war buddies became charred heaps during an ambush; why he was decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor for killing 20 enemy soldiers in a fit of rage after seeing his friends destroyed: why his mother who brought him up as a Christian is so proud of his being honored for killing: and why the medal should transform him overnight from a down-and-out "spade" to a privileged citizen estranged from the rest of the poor black community. At the same time he clings to the medal, for it distinguishes him and protects him.

JACKSON'S anguish is revealed, in an hour long conversation with a psychiatric specialist, in a way that makes Rag more of a documentary than a structured dramatic work. There is no real interplay between the patient and doctor--who seems to be no more than a vehicle for exposing Jackson's story to the audience. Jackson offers an incident or impression and the doctor probes until we have learned the significance. From such an intense, personal conversation we would expect some rapport to develop between the men, but the only development in the play is that the story becomes more complete and meaningful as Jackson keeps talking.

Because the psychiatrist serves as little more than an interrogator assembling the pieces of Jackson's life, we never know why he is so interested in curing veterans like Jackson. The only apparent affinity between the two men is that the psychiatrist is a Polish Jew who suffered similar survival guilt when his family was killed by the Nazis--he was spared as part of a business deal with a German officer. It seems that other elements in his character must also fuel his interest in Jackson, but if Cole considered them at all, they remain hidden.

The acting is generally very sharp and sustains the play despite structural problems. Gustave Johnson plays Jackson with a self-depreciating, off-the-cuff with that evolves into passion and outrage, bordering on frenzy when he tells of the horrors he witnessed and the frustrations he felt. David Clennon is an adequate psychiatric sounding board, although he sometimes moves and gestures in a stiff and awkward way.

The only major shortcoming is that the scene is somewhat overplayed. Clennon takes an eternity to light cigarettes, shuffle folders, and perform other simple tasks that would go unnoticed were they not performed with such tedious, painstaking care. Too often, these just create empty gaps in the action. Similarly, jokes are often belabored by both actors as if they are asking for a laugh. Consequently, all they get is a nervous titter.

From the epilogue we learn that Sergeant Jackson goes AWOL from the hospital--an expression of frustration and spiritual languor--and gets himself shot to death in a grocery store stickup. The ending comes too fast and seems to pat as if Cole couldn't resist the temptation to tie up the loose ends, but it indicates that there is no ample cure for Jackson and veterans with similar problems. And if they deserve our attention, to does Medal of Honor Rag, not because it is a flawless play, but because it presents the veteran's predicament with an eloquent directness and honesty.