Negotiating Veteran Identity in “Unless It’s a Sucking Chest Wound”

In this section, I examine the ways in which reified military identity is ruptured by the act of remembrance in “Unless It’s a Sucking Chest Wound”. The rupture caused by remembrance also demonstrates the military unconscious’s capability of generating counternarratives that challenge the hegemonic soldier through countermemories which challenge the official hegemonic memory and provides an opportunity for the authentic remembrance of the soldier subject.

The question of warrior identity and its underlying multiplicity is a central theme throughout Redeployment. In many cases, such as in “Money as a Weapons System” and

“Two Kliks South”, Klay presents characters working in support roles, foregrounding previously marginalized voices drowned out by the hegemonic portrayal of the American soldier as combat infantry. The warrior identity of these characters is rooted in the contradictory nature of the hegemonic representation of the soldier as combat infantry and their own role in a more mundane support role. In other words, their warrior identities oscillate between the two extremes of their military reality and the hegemonic representation projected onto them by civilians. This state of ‘in-betweenness’ mirrors a central theme in

Iraq War veteran literature as identified by Peebles: “in these stories, many veterans return to the United States to discover the unexpected pain of being “in between” war and home, not able to fully exist in either state”, resulting in a “blended identity” (3). The recurring theme of alienation from the civilian populace will also be explored in sections 3.3 and 3.4.

These questions form the thematic locus of “Unless It’s a Sucking Chest Wound”.

The narrative explores the dynamic between combat and non-combat veterans and the effect this dynamic has on the soldier subject’s forming of a post-war veteran identity. The text achieves this by presenting the narrative through a voice usually marginalized by the discourses of the hegemonic soldier, an adjutant working in clerical duties in office inside a secure base in Iraq. The narrator’s difficulties in the formation of a coherent post-war identity are rooted in the internalized discourse of the hegemonic soldier, leading the narrator to question whether he really is part of the veteran community.

The purportedly problematic relationship between the non-combat veterans and combat veterans is summed up by Bourke who notes that “during the Vietnam War, combatants suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder were appalled to find themselves sitting next to veterans who were suffering flashbacks of battle, despite never having served in the frontlines” (9). Granted, Bourke’s is an extreme example, but it summarizes the central problematic surrounding the narrator’s relationship (or lack thereof) with the veteran community: can a non-combat veteran claim a sense of belonging to a community of combat veterans? The difficulties of defining veteran identity as a concept has been noted by Gade and Wilkins who write that veteran identity “is an underdeveloped concept in the social science literature” (273). Gade and Wilkins do however take steps in defining a foundation for the concept, which also informs this section’s approach to veteran identity. First, veteran identity is considered a binary construct, meaning “you either served in the military or you did not” (Gade and Wilkins 273). Second, veterans “view themselves as a special and distinct

class within society. In that way, Veteran status goes beyond a person-based social identity and becomes a group-based social identity” (Gade and Wilkins 274). In addition to challenging the hegemonic representations of non-combat veterans, the text also fragments the hegemonic soldier’s representation of combat veterans as a monolithic bloc: the singular and reified combat veteran is fragmented into a flawed multiplicity through the characters of Boylan, Deme, and Vockler. By doing so, “Unless” ruptures the reified representation of the American veteran and opens up the possibility for resistance by foregrounding the non-reified voices of the military unconscious.

Klay establishes the dynamic between combat and non-combat veterans, and the effect the hegemonic soldier’s discourses have on it from the very beginning. The power dynamic of the relationship between combat and non-combat veterans becomes clearly visible in the phone call between Boylan and the narrator: “When the call wakes me and I see the name

‘Kevin Boylan’ glowing in the middle of my phone, I don’t want to answer. [...] With a guy like Kevin Boylan, captain in the USMC, it’s not just an old friend calling. It’s my old gods”

(“Unless” 237). Here the name carries with it the ‘higher authority’ of someone who was there, a trait typically attached to individuals who have participated in combat (Bourke 9).

The following passage also provides the location of the first rupture of the hegemonic soldier’s representation of a combat veteran, as Boylan’s behavior no longer conforms to the idealized version of a stoic veteran: “‘I’m coming to New York to get blacked the fuck out,’

he slurs into the phone. “Prepare Yourself.” [...] My old gods have their idiosyncrasies”

(“Unless” 237).

Despite his success in civilian life, he still desires the approval of Boylan, a recipient of a “Bronze Star with a combat distinguishing device for valor” (“Unless” 237) more than anything else, comparing himself to a tick that “would try to feed off any liquid at the temperature of mammalian blood. Law school has left me starving, and I’ll take what I’m

offered” (“Unless” 238). The use of insect metaphors to describe the difficulty the narrator has with reconciling his post-war veteran identity is repeated throughout the story. The parasitic nature of the metaphor provides the first hints of the narrator’s difficulties in constructing a cohesive post-war veteran identity that could be integrated with his civilian identity. The narrator’s sense of disconnect is further highlighted when he is prompted by Boylan’s sudden call to wonder which Iraq it is that he misses. Is it the one constructed the discourses of the hegemonic soldier or his own:

What I’m missing is the idea of Iraq all my civilian friends imagine when they say the word, an Iraq filled with honor and violence, an Iraq I can’t help feeling I should have experienced but didn’t through my own stupid fault, because I went for an MOS that wouldn’t put me in harm’s way. My Iraq was a stack of papers. Excel spreadsheets. A window full of sandbags behind a cheap desk. (“Unless” 238)

The passage also functions as an example of the power the hegemonic soldier has in defining what constitutes a supposedly proper experience of war. Despite it being the narrator’s Iraq, a lived experience, it feels less real than Boylan’s Iraq. For the narrator, an adjutant, his Iraq was “another universe from the violence Boylan lived and breathed every day” (“Unless” 240) although both serve on the same base. The physicality of combat makes Boylan’s Iraq closer to the hegemonic narrative of war, whereas the abstract nature of the narrator’s Iraq consisting of administrative tasks retreats into the background. The proximity to the ‘real of it all’ provided by Boylan’s call is emphasized by the narrator reminiscing about the sensation of physical pain afterwards: “still huffing that same old glory in the air, the taste like that first time I got popped one good in the face during training and didn’t back down while my inner lip bled past my gums. That time” (239). For the narrator, the memory of the physicality of pain connects with an idealized simulacrum not only in the form of a

training scenario, but also of combat narratives shaped by the hegemonic soldier. As Bourke notes, it is this unreal nature which gives the “archetypes of combat” their seductive power (16).

The relationship between Boylan and the narrator is rooted in Sergeant Deme’s death, a member of his platoon who was a “no-shit hero”, one “like you read about, like you see in the movies” (“Unless” 239), who died saving his fellow team member, Vockler, during an ambush. Through Deme the text constructs a representation of a veteran that seemingly conforms to the idealized narratives of the hegemonic soldier, a selfless hero who sacrificed himself to save another person. Unlike Vockler’s death in an IED ambush, Deme’s death conforms to the reified narrative of a ‘proper’ way for a hero to die, i.e., in a firefight:

“Vockler died in an IED [...] a death that doesn’t offer a story younger Marines can read and get inspired by. IEDs don’t let you be a hero. That’s what makes Deme so important”

(“Unless” 268). Here the text presents a value judgement inherent in the two modes of death.

Deme’s death in a firefight conforms to the generally perceived notion of heroism, while Vockler’s death in an IED is unceremonious in comparison. As such, military heroism comes to resemble the scripted and stylized acts of gender performativity described by Judith Butler. She notes that “gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts” (Butler 179; emphasis original), a

“constructed identity” that individuals “come to believe and to perform” (Butler 179).

Similarly, Deme’s actions in the firefight constitute a stylized repetition of scripted military heroism and a reinforcement of the hegemonic soldier, while Vockler’s death is unheroic as it does not fit the script of a traditional heroic death. As a result, Deme is transformed from an individual soldier subject to a reified symbol of the military unconscious that serves as an inspiration to future recruits.

However, the text also points out that Deme’s heroism might have partly been a result of recklessness, providing the second rupture for the hegemonic soldier’s representation:

As an added bit of irony, Vockler might not have even died if Sergeant Deme had left him there [...] The force of the glancing shot knocked Vockler out and sent him sprawling backward into a relatively safe position behind a marginal bit of cover in the trash-filled alley. So it’s possible Deme could have left Vockler there. (“Unless” 244)

The circumstances surrounding the transformation of Deme’s memory are emblematic of the construction of war memory, in which a dominant memory is formed around narrative conforming to hegemonic official narratives (Ashplant et al. 19). The contradictory nature of what happened and what ends up as the ‘official’ reality of the citation, the “flat, regimented prose the Corps requires” (“Unless” 243), functions as a parallel between the uncertainty and chaos of combat and the way in which the hegemonic soldier rationalizes them into a reified narrative governed by its ideological framework. Uncomfortable realities are excised from memory, giving rise to a clean narrative of dramatic heroism. However, as Achugar notes, “the existence of an official story does not limit the existence of alternative or contesting histories”, allowing for the emergence of countermemories challenging the dominant memory (13; emphasis original). Here the countermemory exists as the narrator’s alternative account of what happened to Deme’s squad, as it opens a possibility for

‘authentic’ remembrance of the soldier subject versus their reified hegemonic representation, which turns the individual soldier into a nationalized signifier, a simulacrum devoid of individuality.

In the transformation to a reified military hero, Deme becomes what Benedict Anderson terms a ghostly national imaging (9), an unreal figure who allows “living generations feel their connection with the dead who belong to the ‘same’ national

community, thus securing the nation’s imagined continuity and transcendence of time”

(Ashplant et al. 8). In this context, transcendence is not particular to the level of a nation, but rather moves to envelop the military unconscious as Deme becomes a reified symbol of inspiration for future Marines, thereby becoming a part of the military’s institutional memory. The reified aspect of the military unconscious is demonstrated aptly by Anderson, who uses excerpts from a 1962 speech by General Douglas MacArthur to illustrate the power of these ghostly national imagings: “the Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country” (Anderson 9). Here the reified military unconscious shows itself as a reified monolithic whole, visible only as an unidentifiable mass of heroic figures repeating the ideology of the hegemonic soldier that subsumes the individual soldier subject.

In this context, the narrator’s repeated insect metaphors also take on a new meaning.

Insects are often thought to lack individual ‘free will’, and as such the metaphor forms a parallel with the structures of the strict, hierarchical nature of the military institution. Here veteran literature provides another opening for resistance. American veteran literature is aware of its own history, and often “deeply engaged with the images and texts of soldiers who preceded them” (Peebles 47). In other words, it enables the possibility for the existence of a parallel ‘long grey line’ of countermemories in which soldier subjects are not seen as reified signifiers, but rather as individuals who exist outside the war, thereby allowing for the unearthing of the non-reified stratum of the military unconscious.

For the narrator, writing the citation after speaking to Deme’s squad proves to be an exhilarating experience:

The experience of talking to Deme’s squad put life into all the phrases I’d seen trotted out in all the awards I’d ever processed. And this wasn’t just any

write-up. It was for the Medal of fucking Honor, which a part of me knew wasn’t going to happen, but still, it didn’t matter [...] Just writing the words was exciting. (“Unless” 245)

Once again, a close brush with the real of the war and the violence and physicality of death provides the non-combat narrator with a vitalizing possibility, connecting him to the tradition of violence as a spiritually regenerative force: “So I wrote the citation with my every frustration melting away in the excitement of the thing. Like reaching out with my fingers and touching a god through the keyboard of my computer. My job, I felt, meant something”

(“Unless” 245-46). It also provides the narrator with a participatory connection to the military unconscious itself: he is no longer an outsider, but rather through his role in the transformation of Deme into a heroic and reified ghostly imaging the narrator assumes the role of a conduit for the military unconscious. The role allows him to take part in what was previously off-limits, the imagined comradeship and heroism implicit in the reified representations of the military unconscious.

In addition, it serves as an inversion of the approach to violence taken in “After Action Report”, where there is no spiritually regenerative aspect to violence and death. The distinction here, of course, is that unlike Suba, the narrator of “Unless” is himself physically removed from the act of violence, making it easier to approach it through a framework defined by the ideology of the American hegemonic soldier and its tradition of allegedly spiritually regenerative violence (Slotkin 486). It also provides the narrator with a connection to the military unconscious and way of asserting ownership over a group identity. He is no longer an outsider, but through his role in the transformation of Deme into a heroic and reified ghostly imaging he appears to assume the role of a conduit for the military unconscious.

The narrator’s situation can also be read as metafictional criticism of the veteran author’s role and the difficulties it places on the author as the similarities between the narrator’s situation and an author are apparent even at a cursory glance. Like a veteran author, the narrator functions as a conduit of the military unconscious in the text. By constructing a narrative of what happened to Deme by talking with the surviving members of his squad, he assumes the role of a secondary witness, someone who “who hears and responds to the survivor’s testimony and personhood” (Stumm 350; see also Whitlock 200).

Stumm goes on to note that in this relationship “the survivor’s experience is completely

‘other’ to the secondary witness, an ‘unimaginable occurrence’ beyond” (350) the secondary witnesses’ reach. Crucial to this section, Stump posits “the aspects of a survivor’s personhood determined by the trauma remain inaccessible to the secondary witness“ (350).

For the narrator, the ungraspable nature of reified military heroism present in the squad’s testimonies forms the rupture between his own subjectivity and the military institution.

While it is easy to give too much credence to biographical factors when analyzing a text, it is not hard to see how this metafictional layer also functions as a way for Klay to reconcile his own service record as a Marines Public Affairs Officer with his role as veteran author who constructs narratives from the relative safety provided by distance from sites of violence. This distance is also marked in the way text portrays the narrator’s Iraq as a space characterized by the absence of Iraqi civilians. The only time Iraqi civilians are spatially present in the story is also marked by a rare intrusion of violence into the narrator’s Iraq as victims of a suicide bombing are brought into the base hospital for treatment. As in the earlier example, the text uses the physicalicality of pain as a way of marking the intrusion of the

‘real’ of the war into the narrator’s life. However, here the sensation of pain is not tinged with any kind of honor or glory:

After the suicide bombing, some of the Iraqis we saw were in so much pain, they were just writhings. If their eyes were open, they weren’t seeing, and those whose ears hadn’t burst weren’t hearing, and I’m sure if they could have thought anything, they’d have thought about their sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, friends, but their mouths were just screaming (“Unless”

262).

The proximity and personal witnessing of the results of extreme violence make it impossible for the narrator to view the event in a removed fashion like he did with Deme’s citation. It also mirrors the narrator’s earlier separation from the war as experienced by combat soldiers, as the war only intrudes the narrator’s Iraq once again in the form of casualties.

The narrator’s removed nature is foregrounded in the manner the text contrasts his feelings concerning the five casualties the platoon had during its deployment with Boylan’s and Vockler’s reactions. While the narrator’s removed role allows him to “think of their deaths with a solemn, patriotic pride”, Boylan’s role as their commanding officer causes him fall into a pit of “self-loathing and selfdoubt so clearly tearing Boylan to shreds” (“Unless”

247) that he self-medicates with alcohol. In other words, the narrator is, once again, faced with the motif of separation, highlighting the disconnect from the ‘proper’ hegemonic experience of war, thereby making any sense of connection with military unconscious difficult, if not impossible. Vockler’s coping mechanism, on the other hand, is to seek redemption for Deme’s death through another deployment, this time to Afghanistan with a Marine unit that “boasts the highest killed in action rate in Marine Corps history” (“Unless”

248). Vockler’s deployment and subsequent death also presents a parallel to Boylan’s and the narrator’s situation, as the narrator ends up being the one signing Vockler’s transfer papers after discussing the situation with him face to face. For Boylan, it is Deme’s death that functions as his motivation for contacting the narrator, but for the narrator, no such