The corporal began: "This is a security post! Let me tell you what that means. You are not allowed to talk about the type of construction going on here The kind of work being done The number of men stationed here. The number of planes that arrive or leave in any given week. The names of important visitors or if there are important visitors. That information is classified and not to be discussed."
"Security post" was another way of saying H-bomb test site, and most of us already knew we would not be allowed to leave our new home for even a single day before our twelve months were over.
"Atomic Times" Michael Harris
Read this book.
That's really all that needs to be said, but you probably want more. As mentioned on many other reviews this book brings to mind "Catch-22" and "Dr. Strangelove". I'd like to add "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" to the list.
For a year, Harris was stationed at the Enewetak Atoll during Operation Redwing in 1956 whil 17 nuclear bomb detonations occurred there and at Bikini Atoll. Some men were drawn to the assignment because they were told there were 2 women behind every tree - but the joke was on them because there were no trees. There was also no leave - for 12 months.
Stuck on a treeless island no more than a mile in length and dominated by the airstrip, forced to stand at attention for each of 17 bomb tests, some of which missed their target, sounds like torture enough, but the recounting of the times of fallout, listening to the Geiger counters tick, is beyond my imagination. And beyond the limits of the minds of the men stuck in this hell on earth.
This book is a study of insanity, and the real-life cast could be from Heller's and Kesey's fiction. The obsessive behaviors of enlisted men driven over the edge, the violence that occurs when the need for sexual release and mob behavior combine, the abuse incurred on the men by officers who cannot reconcile their own survival with an obligation to the military. Harris tells the stories of the victims, the aggressors, the brave and the changed with insight and dark humor while describing his own battle with the madness brought on by constant danger, daily tedium and an overwhelming sense of helplessness.
I will have to read more of Harris's work. If he can make a memoir come alive like he did this one, then what can he do with fiction?
------------------------------
An interesting note was that I was listening to this book during the same period that I read “Orange is the New Black.” One could compare the two books: both Kerman’s incarceration and Harris's time at the Pacific proving grounds seem much the same: both stays were about a year in length, organization and regulations of a military base during war time and a prison are much the same, both lived in a single gender group that included homosexual behavior, both suffered from isolation, monotony and the indifference of those in command to those who must serve their time. Kerman and Harris both tried to find ways to improve the institutional food and clothing. Service on remote military bases and incarceration - same thing?
-------------------------------
Another connection is the reading of "Alas, Babylon," a post-apocalyptic story of post-nuclear-war US. I remember being afraid to go to sleep every night when I was an adolescent. Frank says that those of us who came of age during the Cold War took the possibility of nuclear war as a given. Harris's explanation of how the public knew more about the testing in the South Pacific than the men stationed on Enewetak helps me understand my own fears. I remember the bomb drills at school, but while I don't recall the news, the images that must have appeared in the paper and on the TV must have had an impact on me as well. I'm torn between thinking we were a crazy nation to not understand all the risks or careful to be ahead of the game. But no matter how scared I was on a daily basis, it is nothing compared to the constant terror of the men put in harms way during the testing in Harris's book.
No comments:
Post a Comment