Time To Go Home

MWSA Review

John Rowe grew up in Dover, NJ and attended Rutgers University. During his freshman year he met Kate, the daughter of an admiral. Upon graduation in 1966, the Army commissioned him a second lieutenant. John chose Armored Calvary and departed for the Armor school at Fort Knox. Kate and her anti-war activist boyfriend departed for California. Ying and yang, yet a love story to be told.

But, I get ahead of myself. The story begins at 2000 hours (8 p.m.) on November 5, 1982 at the Viet Nam Veteran’s Memorial where John is looking at the nearly completed granite wall. Peter, one of the ghosts who haunt the wall, appears and John learns Peter was the first American killed in Viet Nam.

The story switches between the ghosts at the wall and John’s deployment to Germany and later to Viet Nam. Stories are told at the wall, some true, some not, and some leave out details, requiring them to be revisited. Flash backs to 1969 Viet Nam are not in chronological order and tend to confuse the reader. Bear with the story and the reason slowly emerges. We all tend to leave out parts of a story and then include them at a later telling.

John and Kate finally get together in Paris in 1968 and Kate attempts to come to grips with the war. Waiting for orders to Viet Nam, John and Kate discuss the war. John wonders if he can kill a man—is that evil? Kate asks about giving the enemy a fair chance, “What if the guy doesn’t have a gun?”

John arrives in Viet Nam in January of 1969 and the 365 day countdown begins. During the next year John is introduced to war, the corruption inherent to third world countries, and comradeships only forged in combat. Slowly John begins to see the fallacy of a limited war with no objective to win, and the futility of propping up a people who are not committed to winning. Lessons applicable to Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the story switches between ghost stories at the wall, and John’s experience as an armor advisor at the Viet Nam Armor School, he slowly grasps the reality of the war. In a letter to Kate he writes, “So now I have finally determined the purpose of this stupid war. It’s not to defend democracy, not to protect the Vietnamese people, and not to make money for the ‘military-industrial complex.’ Certainly not to defeat communism, no, it is to defend the Water Tower.”

The book is filled with insights, including the importance of “face.” Some episodes are funny, many sad, and most piercing.

John says to Peter, “Peter, here’s how I see the problem. After World War Two, the guys had time to talk things through. Some of them spent a month or more going from their front line unit back to the States. They had that time t tell stories about the sad things, the funny things, and the things that only their comrades would understand. They had time to hear stories from the other guys, to get all the stuff out and to decide what was good and what was bad and what just needed to be forgotten.”

Veterans returning from “the Nam” arrived in the States within a couple of days to be met by anti-war protesters and an indifferent public. Not the hero’s welcome afforded WWII vets. There was no opportunity to sort out “what just needed to be forgotten.”

Time to Go Home is a ghost story unlike anything I have read. And it is a story I plan to reread, for I believe it will take two or more readings to grasp all the insights and wisdom the book contains. For those who have not heard the sounds of guns up close, it will prove to be a difficult read, because it paints a realistic picture of the Viet Nam war not often told or described.

Reviewed by: Lee Boyland (2014)

Author's Summary

My name is Peter Dewey. John Rowe and I met at the Viet Nam Memorial late one night in November 1982. John came to visit The Memorial before it was dedicated, before the politicians showed up, while it was still clean. We seemed to hit off, both of us Viet Nam vets and both of us natural-born story-tellers. That’s how this book began. Soldiers tellin’ war stories, one after the other, some of them mostly true, others maybe not. But that’s what soldiers do, we tell stories, using rough words that speak of sex and ways to die. And drinking cognac and coffee to refresh our memories, loosen our tongues. We talked about the bad things, about ‘the ditch’, about Mortar Man, and the ‘killing zone.’ We talked about the good things, especially about our friends. The best friends we’d ever have. We talked about our wives and how they fought their own wars. Right along with us. And nobody thanked them. Not the Country. Not the Army. Not us. Shame on us all. John wanted to know where God was in all of this. I wanted to know why the politicians let it happen. We both wanted to know why death was haphazard; a mortar round out of the sunrise and the soldier on the motor bike becomes a hole in the ground. Yes, we told war stories, but also going-to-war and coming-home-from-war stories as well. Because war is not an event. It is a continuum that begins at home and then ends at home. The soldier does return to join either the quick or the dead. But John never did come home, not really. He just sort of settled in. And that’s the hardest story to tell, when you’re an old man standing in a graveyard far from home, just talking with ghosts.