W. D. Ehrhart, one of America’s best-known poets writing about the Vietnam War, is the author or editor of 21 books
& the subject of The Last Time I Dreamed About the War: Essays on the Life & Writing of W. D. Ehrhart by Jean-Jacques Malo (McFarland, 2014). Ehrhart is the only Vietnam War veteran ever featured in Vietnam: A Television History (1983), Making Sense of the Sixties (1991)
& The Vietnam War (2017) & one of only four Vietnam War poets included in The New Oxford Book of War Poetry.
See his biography below &/or more of his Vietnam poems on his Contributing Poet’s page.
W.D. Ehrhart's Vietnam Poetry
Guerrilla War
It’s practically impossible
to tell civilians
from the Viet Cong.
Nobody wears uniforms.
They all talk
the same language
(and you couldn’t understand them
even if they didn’t).
They tape grenades
inside their clothes,
and carry satchel charges
in their market baskets.
Even their women fight.
And young boys.
And girls.
It’s practically impossible
to tell civilians
from the Viet Cong.
After awhile,
you quit trying.
Souvenirs
“Bring me back a souvenir,” the captain called.
“Sure thing,” I shouted back above the amtrac’s roar.
Later that day,
the column halted,
we found a Buddhist temple by the trail.
Combing through a nearby wood,
we found a heavy log as well.
It must have taken more than half an hour,
but at last we battered in
the concrete walls so badly
that the roof collapsed.
Before it did,
I took two painted vases
Buddhists use for burning incense.
One vase I kept,
and one I offered proudly to the captain.
Making the Children Behave
Do they think of me now
in those strange Asian villages
where nothing ever seemed
quite human
but myself
and my few grim friends
moving through them
hunched
in lines?
When they tell stories to their children
of the evil
that awaits misbehavior,
is it me they conjure?
Guns
Again we pass that field
green artillery piece squatting
by the Legion Post on Chelten Avenue,
its ugly little pointed snout
ranged against my daughter’s school.
“Did you ever use a gun
like that?” my daughter asks,
and I say, “No, but others did.
I used a smaller gun. A rifle.”
She knows I’ve been to war.
“That’s dumb,” she says,
and I say, “Yes,” and nod
because it was, and nod again
because she doesn’t know.
How do you tell a four-year-old
what steel can do to flesh?
How vivid do you dare to get?
How explain a world where men
kill other men deliberately
and call it love of country?
Just eighteen, I killed
a ten-year-old. I didn’t know.
He spins across the marketplace
all shattered chest, all eyes and arms.
Do I tell her that? Not yet,
though one day I will have
no choice except to tell her
or to send her into the world
wide-eyed and ignorant.
The boy spins across the years
till he lands in a heap
in another war in another place
where yet another generation
is rudely about to discover
what their fathers never told them.
Praying at the Altar
I like pagodas.
There’s something—I don’t know--
secretive about them,
soul-soothing, mind-easing.
Inside, if only for a moment,
life’s clutter disappears.
Once, long ago, we destroyed one:
collapsed the walls
‘til the roof caved in.
Just a small one, all by itself
in the middle of nowhere,
and we were young. And bored.
Armed to the teeth.
And too much time on our hands.
Now whenever I see a pagoda,
I always go in.
I’m not a religious man,
but I light three joss sticks,
bow three times to the Buddha,
pray for my wife and daughter.
I place the burning sticks
in the vase before the altar.
In Vung Tau, I was praying
at the Temple of the Sleeping Buddha
when an old monk appeared.
He struck a large bronze bell
with a wooden mallet.
He was waking up the spirits
to receive my prayers.
Thank You for Your Service
Yes, of course; it’s what you say these days.
Like genuflecting in a Catholic church.
Like saying “bless you” to a sneeze.
A superstitious reflex, but, of course,
sincere. Or is it just to ease the guilt
of sending someone else to do
the dirty work? Whatever. I just say,
“You’re welcome,” let it go at that,
when what I’d really like to say is,
“Thank you for my fucking service
in that fucking war I’ve dragged
from day to day for fifty fucking years
like a fucking corpse that won’t stay dead?
That fucking nightmare that my
fucking country told me was my fucking
patriotic duty to fight? For what,
exactly, do you think you’re thanking me?
Service to my country? You empty-headed
idiot. You think I want your thanks
for what I did? You shallow, superficial
twit. You’ve no idea what I did, or why,
or what it cost a people who had
never done us any harm nor ever
would or could. You can take your
thank you for my service, shove it
where the sun doesn’t shine.”
But you wouldn’t understand.
You’d only get insulted if I told you
what I’d really like to say. So I just say,
“You’re welcome.” Smile. Walk away.
Celebrating the New Year 1968/1969
1.
We were bar-hopping in Hiroshima--
a strange and ghostly place,
nothing standing older than twenty-three years,
the whole city obliterated
by the first atomic attack,
scars on the hills around the city visible still.
Peace gas, Peace cigarettes, Peace candy bars:
white dove logos just about everywhere.
We’d been to the Peace Park already
where the only reinforced concrete structure
surviving the blast still stood,
a hollow, ghostly skeleton,
and the guestbook signed by visitors;
someone had written “Remember Pearl Harbor.”
A fellow American, no doubt.
2.
But we were here tonight
to celebrate the New Year:
Fat Pat, Smitty, the Big Swede, and me.
God only knows what the locals thought of us,
but they liked our money
and we didn’t make any trouble.
Somewhere along the way, we picked up
a bunch of young Norwegians,
merchant seamen, their freighter in port.
When the bars finally closed,
they invited us back to the Arthur Stove
and the party went on from there.
I remember beer, and a table loaded with food,
and a string of little paper Norwegian flags.
We somehow must have gotten some sleep,
but I don’t remember how.
3.
I do remember stopping at Miyajima
on our way back to base the next day:
the Great Torii rising out of the bay,
the floating Shrine of Itsukushima,
the Five-storied Pagoda,
Sika deer by the hundreds,
gentle as house pets, unafraid.
And the women in all their New Year glory,
finest kimonos to start the year off right,
hiding their smiles behind their elaborate fans,
two little girls in kimonos, sisters perhaps,
so impossibly cute you wanted
to curl them up in your arms
and take them home to your Mom.
How I Became an American War Hero
Navy Combat Action Ribbon:
for getting shot at
Purple Heart Medal:
for getting hit
National Defense Service Medal:
for behaving myself for ninety days
Good Conduct Medal:
for behaving myself for three years
Republic of Vietnam Service Medal:
thank you for being in our war (from the US government)
Vietnamese Campaign Medal:
thank you for being in our war (from the Saigon government)
Presidential Unit Citation:
for randomly getting assigned to 1st Battalion, 1st Marines
Cross of Gallantry Unit Citation:
for randomly getting assigned to 1st Battalion, 1st Marines
Civic Action Meritorious Unit Citation:
for randomly getting assigned to 1st Battalion, 1st Marines
Rifle Expert Badge:
for hitting a paper target with a rifle
Pistol Sharpshooter Badge:
for hitting a paper target with a pistol
The Night You Returned
A road crew was paving the highway
the night you returned from the war.
It was March; they had set up floodlights;
the black viscous tar steamed in the cold.
The workmen didn’t notice you.
Why would they?
You weren’t any different
from all the other passersby that night
or any other night, just another car.
They had a machine;
they were laying macadam
mile after mile.
Black. Viscous. Steaming.
Mile after mile after mile.
Deep into the night.
God, Guns & Ginny
Well, of course it was righteous.
Bear any burden, pay any price,
what you could do for your country.
Godless communists, after all.
You may have been only seventeen,
but you’d seen them already
in Hungary, Cuba, Berlin.
Something had to be done,
and someone would have to do it.
There is something about a thatched-roof
hut in the middle of rice fields, burning,
a mortally wounded woman softly
keening, child dead in her arms,
that can’t be blamed on Chairman Mao,
Castro, Lenin, or Das Kapital.
Heavy artillery flattened that home.
Ours. Our guns did that.
Long before I reached my thirteen months,
I discovered I had nothing to cling to
but a girl back home. A young girl.
Still in high school. Watching her friends
go out on dates, having fun, enjoying
all of the things that seniors do
for the last exuberant time together.
She must have agonized for months
before she sent me that final letter.
I hope she’s had a nice life. I mean it.
W.D. Ehrhart kindly accepted the invitation to be our first featured poet, & he has selected the above poems as representative of his work.
All have been previously published & are presented here in their original forms.
"Souvenirs," “Guerrilla War,” “Making the Children Behave,” “Guns,” “Praying at the Altar,” & “Thank You for Your Service” are from Ehrhart’s Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems (McFarland & Co., Inc., 2019).
“Celebrating the New Year,” “How I Became an American War Hero,” “The Night You Returned,” & “God, Guns & Ginny” are from Ehrhart’s Wolves in Winter (Between Shadows Press, 2021).
& the subject of The Last Time I Dreamed About the War: Essays on the Life & Writing of W. D. Ehrhart by Jean-Jacques Malo (McFarland, 2014). Ehrhart is the only Vietnam War veteran ever featured in Vietnam: A Television History (1983), Making Sense of the Sixties (1991)
& The Vietnam War (2017) & one of only four Vietnam War poets included in The New Oxford Book of War Poetry.
See his biography below &/or more of his Vietnam poems on his Contributing Poet’s page.
W.D. Ehrhart's Vietnam Poetry
Guerrilla War
It’s practically impossible
to tell civilians
from the Viet Cong.
Nobody wears uniforms.
They all talk
the same language
(and you couldn’t understand them
even if they didn’t).
They tape grenades
inside their clothes,
and carry satchel charges
in their market baskets.
Even their women fight.
And young boys.
And girls.
It’s practically impossible
to tell civilians
from the Viet Cong.
After awhile,
you quit trying.
Souvenirs
“Bring me back a souvenir,” the captain called.
“Sure thing,” I shouted back above the amtrac’s roar.
Later that day,
the column halted,
we found a Buddhist temple by the trail.
Combing through a nearby wood,
we found a heavy log as well.
It must have taken more than half an hour,
but at last we battered in
the concrete walls so badly
that the roof collapsed.
Before it did,
I took two painted vases
Buddhists use for burning incense.
One vase I kept,
and one I offered proudly to the captain.
Making the Children Behave
Do they think of me now
in those strange Asian villages
where nothing ever seemed
quite human
but myself
and my few grim friends
moving through them
hunched
in lines?
When they tell stories to their children
of the evil
that awaits misbehavior,
is it me they conjure?
Guns
Again we pass that field
green artillery piece squatting
by the Legion Post on Chelten Avenue,
its ugly little pointed snout
ranged against my daughter’s school.
“Did you ever use a gun
like that?” my daughter asks,
and I say, “No, but others did.
I used a smaller gun. A rifle.”
She knows I’ve been to war.
“That’s dumb,” she says,
and I say, “Yes,” and nod
because it was, and nod again
because she doesn’t know.
How do you tell a four-year-old
what steel can do to flesh?
How vivid do you dare to get?
How explain a world where men
kill other men deliberately
and call it love of country?
Just eighteen, I killed
a ten-year-old. I didn’t know.
He spins across the marketplace
all shattered chest, all eyes and arms.
Do I tell her that? Not yet,
though one day I will have
no choice except to tell her
or to send her into the world
wide-eyed and ignorant.
The boy spins across the years
till he lands in a heap
in another war in another place
where yet another generation
is rudely about to discover
what their fathers never told them.
Praying at the Altar
I like pagodas.
There’s something—I don’t know--
secretive about them,
soul-soothing, mind-easing.
Inside, if only for a moment,
life’s clutter disappears.
Once, long ago, we destroyed one:
collapsed the walls
‘til the roof caved in.
Just a small one, all by itself
in the middle of nowhere,
and we were young. And bored.
Armed to the teeth.
And too much time on our hands.
Now whenever I see a pagoda,
I always go in.
I’m not a religious man,
but I light three joss sticks,
bow three times to the Buddha,
pray for my wife and daughter.
I place the burning sticks
in the vase before the altar.
In Vung Tau, I was praying
at the Temple of the Sleeping Buddha
when an old monk appeared.
He struck a large bronze bell
with a wooden mallet.
He was waking up the spirits
to receive my prayers.
Thank You for Your Service
Yes, of course; it’s what you say these days.
Like genuflecting in a Catholic church.
Like saying “bless you” to a sneeze.
A superstitious reflex, but, of course,
sincere. Or is it just to ease the guilt
of sending someone else to do
the dirty work? Whatever. I just say,
“You’re welcome,” let it go at that,
when what I’d really like to say is,
“Thank you for my fucking service
in that fucking war I’ve dragged
from day to day for fifty fucking years
like a fucking corpse that won’t stay dead?
That fucking nightmare that my
fucking country told me was my fucking
patriotic duty to fight? For what,
exactly, do you think you’re thanking me?
Service to my country? You empty-headed
idiot. You think I want your thanks
for what I did? You shallow, superficial
twit. You’ve no idea what I did, or why,
or what it cost a people who had
never done us any harm nor ever
would or could. You can take your
thank you for my service, shove it
where the sun doesn’t shine.”
But you wouldn’t understand.
You’d only get insulted if I told you
what I’d really like to say. So I just say,
“You’re welcome.” Smile. Walk away.
Celebrating the New Year 1968/1969
1.
We were bar-hopping in Hiroshima--
a strange and ghostly place,
nothing standing older than twenty-three years,
the whole city obliterated
by the first atomic attack,
scars on the hills around the city visible still.
Peace gas, Peace cigarettes, Peace candy bars:
white dove logos just about everywhere.
We’d been to the Peace Park already
where the only reinforced concrete structure
surviving the blast still stood,
a hollow, ghostly skeleton,
and the guestbook signed by visitors;
someone had written “Remember Pearl Harbor.”
A fellow American, no doubt.
2.
But we were here tonight
to celebrate the New Year:
Fat Pat, Smitty, the Big Swede, and me.
God only knows what the locals thought of us,
but they liked our money
and we didn’t make any trouble.
Somewhere along the way, we picked up
a bunch of young Norwegians,
merchant seamen, their freighter in port.
When the bars finally closed,
they invited us back to the Arthur Stove
and the party went on from there.
I remember beer, and a table loaded with food,
and a string of little paper Norwegian flags.
We somehow must have gotten some sleep,
but I don’t remember how.
3.
I do remember stopping at Miyajima
on our way back to base the next day:
the Great Torii rising out of the bay,
the floating Shrine of Itsukushima,
the Five-storied Pagoda,
Sika deer by the hundreds,
gentle as house pets, unafraid.
And the women in all their New Year glory,
finest kimonos to start the year off right,
hiding their smiles behind their elaborate fans,
two little girls in kimonos, sisters perhaps,
so impossibly cute you wanted
to curl them up in your arms
and take them home to your Mom.
How I Became an American War Hero
Navy Combat Action Ribbon:
for getting shot at
Purple Heart Medal:
for getting hit
National Defense Service Medal:
for behaving myself for ninety days
Good Conduct Medal:
for behaving myself for three years
Republic of Vietnam Service Medal:
thank you for being in our war (from the US government)
Vietnamese Campaign Medal:
thank you for being in our war (from the Saigon government)
Presidential Unit Citation:
for randomly getting assigned to 1st Battalion, 1st Marines
Cross of Gallantry Unit Citation:
for randomly getting assigned to 1st Battalion, 1st Marines
Civic Action Meritorious Unit Citation:
for randomly getting assigned to 1st Battalion, 1st Marines
Rifle Expert Badge:
for hitting a paper target with a rifle
Pistol Sharpshooter Badge:
for hitting a paper target with a pistol
The Night You Returned
A road crew was paving the highway
the night you returned from the war.
It was March; they had set up floodlights;
the black viscous tar steamed in the cold.
The workmen didn’t notice you.
Why would they?
You weren’t any different
from all the other passersby that night
or any other night, just another car.
They had a machine;
they were laying macadam
mile after mile.
Black. Viscous. Steaming.
Mile after mile after mile.
Deep into the night.
God, Guns & Ginny
Well, of course it was righteous.
Bear any burden, pay any price,
what you could do for your country.
Godless communists, after all.
You may have been only seventeen,
but you’d seen them already
in Hungary, Cuba, Berlin.
Something had to be done,
and someone would have to do it.
There is something about a thatched-roof
hut in the middle of rice fields, burning,
a mortally wounded woman softly
keening, child dead in her arms,
that can’t be blamed on Chairman Mao,
Castro, Lenin, or Das Kapital.
Heavy artillery flattened that home.
Ours. Our guns did that.
Long before I reached my thirteen months,
I discovered I had nothing to cling to
but a girl back home. A young girl.
Still in high school. Watching her friends
go out on dates, having fun, enjoying
all of the things that seniors do
for the last exuberant time together.
She must have agonized for months
before she sent me that final letter.
I hope she’s had a nice life. I mean it.
W.D. Ehrhart kindly accepted the invitation to be our first featured poet, & he has selected the above poems as representative of his work.
All have been previously published & are presented here in their original forms.
"Souvenirs," “Guerrilla War,” “Making the Children Behave,” “Guns,” “Praying at the Altar,” & “Thank You for Your Service” are from Ehrhart’s Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems (McFarland & Co., Inc., 2019).
“Celebrating the New Year,” “How I Became an American War Hero,” “The Night You Returned,” & “God, Guns & Ginny” are from Ehrhart’s Wolves in Winter (Between Shadows Press, 2021).
Bio: W. D. Ehrhart was born in 1948 & grew up in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. After graduating from Pennridge High School in 1966, he enlisted in the US Marine Corps at age 17, serving three years including 13 months in Vietnam, earning the rank of sergeant & receiving the Purple Heart, the Navy combat Action Ribbon & a 1st Marine Division Commanding General’s Commendation. He has since earned a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College, a Master of Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle & a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Wales at Swansea, UK.
In his 20s & early 30s, he worked a variety of jobs including construction worker, forklift operator, newspaper reporter, magazine writer, merchant seaman & legal assistant for the Pennsylvania Department of Justice Office of the Special Prosecutor. He taught sporadically at three Friends Schools & several colleges, as well as holding an appointment as Visiting Professor of War & Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, but recently retired after 18 years as a Master Teacher of English & History at the Haverford School for Boys.
Over the years, Ehrhart has been awarded a Mary Roberts Rinehart Grant, two Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Arts Council, the President’s Medal from Veterans for Peace, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts & an Excellence in the Arts Award from Vietnam Veterans of America. His writing has appeared in hundreds of publications ranging from the American Poetry Review, North American Review, Virginia Quarterly Review & Utne Reader to USA Today, Reader’s Digest, the Los Angeles Times & the New York Times.
WDEhrhart.com
In his 20s & early 30s, he worked a variety of jobs including construction worker, forklift operator, newspaper reporter, magazine writer, merchant seaman & legal assistant for the Pennsylvania Department of Justice Office of the Special Prosecutor. He taught sporadically at three Friends Schools & several colleges, as well as holding an appointment as Visiting Professor of War & Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, but recently retired after 18 years as a Master Teacher of English & History at the Haverford School for Boys.
Over the years, Ehrhart has been awarded a Mary Roberts Rinehart Grant, two Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Arts Council, the President’s Medal from Veterans for Peace, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts & an Excellence in the Arts Award from Vietnam Veterans of America. His writing has appeared in hundreds of publications ranging from the American Poetry Review, North American Review, Virginia Quarterly Review & Utne Reader to USA Today, Reader’s Digest, the Los Angeles Times & the New York Times.
WDEhrhart.com