Vietnam veteran Merson speaks out on war horrors

Island resident and author, John Merson, was 22 years old when he was sent to Vietnam to fight.

Now, at the age of 64, Merson has written "War Lessons: How I Fought To Be A Hero and Learned That War Is Terror," published last month by North Atlantic Books, a division of Random House.

"I did a lot of bad things in Vietnam, but I can't change things," he said.

Although it has been 40 years since Merson saw combat, he was inspired to write "War Lessons" because of the war's deep psychological effects on him and his concern for the United States being at war with Afghanistan and Iraq and the toll war takes on innocent citizens.

"I tried to write the book around my experiences being a foot soldier," Merson said in a recent interview. "Foot soldiers have a different perspective than policy makers and others - they see war's power up close. They see the damage being done and very often they are doing it. I couldn't have written such a reflective story just after the war. I was too close to it and I needed to move on. But seeing the U.S. go to war again in the Gulf and Iraq and Afghanistan, I had feelings of frustration and sadness as to why that happened."

"When I began [the book] in 2006, I thought maybe the Iraq War would end before the book was out and no one would be interested," he added. "Now the war continues and there seems to be no foreseeable time or way to get out of it."

Merson said the United States entered Vietnam to establish democracy, since there was a fear that Communism would infiltrate Asia. The argument was bolstered by the Domino Theory, America's foreign policy that Communism, if left unchecked, would jeopardize America's security and freedoms.

Once in active combat, Merson saw firsthand that military invasion destroyed villages, caused citizens to live in refugee camps and generally made their existence worse.

In a particularly poignant chapter of Merson's book called, "Massacre at Dai Loc," he wrote of that event, "All of the people our soldiers had killed were unarmed women, children and old men, perhaps a total of 20 people. When the squads returned to our hill, the expressions of pain and nausea on their faces were unforgettable. Images of the wounded, dead and dying piled on top of one another to crush our emotions. Burned homes, rice storage bins and villages gradually cauterized our feelings of concern for the people whose lives we were supposed to be protecting. At Dai Loc I saw that following the call of country could lead me to commit horrible crimes that I could never undo. In Dai Loc, I saw war for what it is."

Over the years, Merson came to the conclusion that war itself showed the Vietnamese why they needed to drive the foreign troops from their country.

Merson believes war undermines the very objectives it seeks to further.

"In Iraq, to many people, the United States has come to be seen as a barn invader. You see U.S. soldiers walking up to and breaking down doors of homes and terrorizing people who have done nothing wrong and who are not the enemy," he said. "I think we have to put ourselves in the position of the people whose country we have invaded. The longer we're there, the more we are turning people against us."

Merson has returned to Vietnam 11 times, first in 1995 as a tourist, with the last visit in December 2007.

While working for IBM as a software engineer, Merson was a liaison between software experts in Vietnam and the United States.

He noted many veterans want to return to the countries where they fought to see how the population is recovering and to assuage the memory of their combat actions. Merson did not go back to Vietnam because of guilt.

In the chapter, "How long is a war?" Merson asks, "What about war itself? When does that end? I believe war and soldiering finally end when people and governments no longer view war as the way to solve problems. For war to be seen as obsolete, new approaches must take its place. Collectively, these new efforts will need to be as powerfully constructive as was is destructive...U.S. deployment of military forces around the world has now reached levels that undermine the goals they are meant to achieve. Excessive investment in military forces tends, in and of itself, to replace reliance on diplomatic and consensus

building efforts." I

Merson will read from his book at the Atheneum on June 13 at 7 p.m.