 |
| Angus & Robertson Publishers first Australian edition, 1975 |
'Lost his left leg and hip,' answers the medic closest to me.'And his balls,' says the other medic not taking his eyes off the huge burn dressings he is using to try and stem the blood flow.'Will he make it?' asks the captain. I notice that two watery lines are drawn on his dusty face.'Not if Jesus came down and held the saline bottle himself,' mumbles the other medic from behind clenched teeth.The dying face; tears pouring, nose running, blood spitting. Remember when you thought, what if he does make it, what if they give him a nice new tin leg and get him on his feet again, how do you tell some randy typist that you're sorry you can't screw her because you lost your manhood on a dirty road in a place called grid reference one-eighty-three-one-nine-six? She'll look sorry in her sweet suburban way and she'll be busy the next time you ask her out:'Sorry I have to wash my hair,' or 'I'm having dinner with my girlfriends'… Excuses, excuses.Half a man. And so much more of a man than the smug bastards safe at home who stand in the streets and scream to stop the war. Ask him if he'd like to stop the war, smug bastards. At least he came. No fair weather protests for him. And you knew that every dust-covered, sweaty one of you on that road that day felt the same way…'We've lost him,' says one of the medics, standing up and wiping the blood from his hands in a piece of burn dressing. Remember, you almost felt glad for him. In fact you did.
The Novel: Despite what Hollywood would have us believe, the United States did not fight the Vietnam War singlehandedly. The US was one of nine countries belonging to the South East Asia Treaty Organisation –– the others being Taiwan, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, New Zealand and Australia –– all of which sent troops and advisors to battle the Chinese-backed North Vietnamese Army and its clandestine guerrilla offshoot the Viet Cong. Australia and New Zealand were America's largest western allies, with Australia sending a total of 7672 troops to assist US/South Vietnamese ground forces, beginning in 1962 with the deployment of 30 specialized military advisors and ending in 1970 with Australia's withdrawal from the conflict, a process not fully completed until 1973. A total of 521 Australian troops were killed in the war, with more than 3000 having been wounded in action –– small numbers compared with the more than 58,000 American service personnel estimated to have lost their lives, but a significant number to the men themselves and, of course, to their heartbroken friends and families.
As it did in the United States, the war polarized Australia's civilian population, many of whom believed the country should not have been supporting a US-backed war of political aggression to begin with. The introduction of conscription by Prime Minister Robert Menzies in 1965 –– Menzies was a longtime puppet of the US Government who had been obeying its orders more or less without question since World War Two –– saw the outbreak of widespread public protests across the nation, often on its university campuses as had been the case on politically charged American campuses like Kent State University in Ohio and the University of California in Berkeley. Like their US counterparts, returning Australian servicemen were often treated with contempt by their countrymen, many of whom accused them of 'complicity' for having 'agreed' to fight in an unpopular and ultimately futile war. It was not until October 1987 that these veterans were honoured with their own 'Welcome Home' parade. Only in 1992 was their sacrifice officially recognised with the construction of the Vietnam Forces National Memorial in Canberra.
 |
| Film Poster, 1979 |
Nagle handles the flow of time just as skilfully, showing us how expectations and attitudes change as his narrator's tour of duty progresses and the idea of professionalism –– these men are career soldiers, not conscripts whose naivete they occasionally deride –– gives way to the desire for survival at any cost. The language is minimal, even terse at times, but it's as though Nagle is asking us to read between the lines, to imagine fears and horrors which can only be endured by adopting a flippant attitude to the fragility of life and the ever-present prospect of death. There's none of the bravado or drug-tinged weirdness which so often characterizes Hollywood's efforts to come to grips with the US serviceman's experience of the war. These are normal scared men who have to trust each other because trusting each other is the only insurance they have against catastrophe, good mates who have a job to do and go about it with a mixture of humour, larrikinism, pragmatism and sometimes brutal honesty. No one wants to be a hero. No one is trying to win a medal. They simply want to do their job and end the war so they can go back to the pubs and the girls and a life where tinea isn't the constant bane of their existence and the chance to be ambushed by the 'nogs' while they're out on patrol in the jungle will no longer be an ongoing daily threat.
What soldier anywhere, it could reasonably be argued, wants anything else? Soldiers fight because governments (or would-be governments in the case of rogue organisations like Islamic State) expect them to unquestioningly obey orders and refuse to tolerate even the slightest hint of dissent. But wars are not won by politicians any more than they're won by opinion polls. That job is always left to the enlisted men and to officers who, if the troops they command are lucky, are smart enough not to get them slaughtered.
The Odd Angry Shot is both a moving depiction of Australia's all too quickly forgotten past and a timely reminder that, for many Australian personnel still serving in the Middle East, war remains a grim everyday occurrence while the rest of us go about the mundane business of paying our bills, complaining about our jobs and barracking for our favourite football teams. It's a short, impressionistic novel that cries out to be rediscovered not just by Australians but by a world all too eager to let bullets, bombs and mortar shells replace common sense and the increasingly threatened diplomatic arts of negotiation and mutually beneficial compromise.
 |
| WILLIAM NAGLE, 1975 |
In Vietnam, Nagle was disciplined by his superiors for the ludicrous charge of refusing to prepare an egg custard when requested to do so by one of them. This earned him a 14 day sentence in the guardhouse along with an accompanying forfeiture of pay. He returned to Australia in March 1967 and requested a transfer from the Catering Corps to the Royal Australian Infantry, in which he served as a signaller until his request for a permanent discharge was granted on 12 September 1968.
Following his discharge, Nagle worked in television and as a member of the Melbourne Theatre Company, which he continued to do until the publication of his only novel, The Odd Angry Shot, in 1975. The book, which received positive reviews and went on to win the 1975 National Book Council Award, was written in just six days, Nagle going without sleep and regular meals to get it down on paper before his memories of the war faded along with the desire to write of what he'd experienced.
Although he never wrote another novel, Nagle was the author of the screenplays Death of a Soldier (1986) and co-author, with Tony Johnston, of The Siege of Firebase Gloria (1989), both of which also deal with the Vietnam War. He died in Los Angeles, California on 5 March 2002, having moved there some years previously in order to work in the US film and television industries.
The Odd Angry Shot (1975) was re-published by Text Classics Australia in 2013. Click HERE to purchase a copy of the book in print and digital formats.
 |
| The Text Publishing Company Australia, 2013 |
 |
| Reel DVD Australia, 2013 |
You can also click HERE to read a post about the film, illustrated with many of its production stills, on the excellent Australian film website OzMovies.
You might also enjoy:
DAVID IRELAND The Glass Canoe (1976)
CHARMIAN CLIFT Peel Me A Lotus (1959)
JAMES JONES To The End of the War (2011)
