AGAINST THE WAR is a historical novel examining the response of college students of the Vietnam War era to the Vietnam War and, through the prism of their experience, the effect of the war on American life and on life wherever in the world America was at that time a military or cultural presence. The effect described is a broad phenomenon extending from the theater of war overseas to the growing response to the war at home, as evidenced in the “war on poverty,” the anti-war movement, and the counterculture that arises from the anti-war movement.
The military draft, AGAINST THE WAR shows, was the underlying reason why this effect spread so widely. All military-eligible men of the students studied in this novel (graduating from college in the years 1965 to 1970) were subject to the draft. Most could avoid the clutch of the draft while they remained students in good standing, but as the date of graduation approached, they were forced, if they acted at all, to make a decision. Options available included enlisting or waiting to be drafted, joining in a reserve officer training program, staying in school to secure a new deferment, obtaining some other kind of deferment, or filing as a conscientious objector. In addition, there were the extremer options of “resisting the war,” “dropping out,” or moving to another country.
It is at this point of divergence, as these men confronted the pressure of the draft, that this novel begins its story of the behaviors evinced by this sub-group of young Americans. The four main characters represent four of the paths selected. Jim Morris enlists in the Air Force and winds up eventually as a fighter pilot in Laos. Bill O’Rourke, younger than the others, continues in school for two more years and then enlists becoming by choice a medic in Vietnam. Tom Steward, after being deferred as a VISTA volunteer in North Carolina, is accepted as a conscientious objector (“to the Vietnam war only”) and does two years of alternative service in West Virginia, Arizona, and New Mexico. Matt Brandt is deferred for two years as a Mountain Volunteer in Kentucky then secures a student deferment as a graduate student in Washington D.C. where he becomes a photographer and winds up with a common problem of the era, overuse of drugs. Through the experience and engagement of these participants in the fervor of the times, the vast web of activities documented in this novel comes into view.
Admittedly, as observed by critic David A. Willson in his review of the 2013 version of this novel, the four main men of this novel could not possibly represent the entire “Vietnam War generation,” as claimed in the Statement of Purpose in that version. More importantly, as he notes, they could not represent the immense pool of the younger men of average age 19 who had never attended college and became the front line “grunts” of the war. The group studied in this novel composed only about 2 percent of the men of the hundreds of thousands of men drafted into service. They are a “priviledged group,” as Willson observes (and which I, the author, did not sufficiently acknowledge in the earlier version, and, in fact, did not fully realize at that time). As such, however, they are a group equipped, through more education, with a more informed view of the world. This was a group, also, who had the time, and presumably as students the inclination, to form opinions about what to do before being forced to act. For the same reason, however, and this is the crucial point here, this was the group who played a primary role in the development and evolution of the American “counterculture” and anti-war movement. In the similar manner, the individuals in this group who did wind up as soldiers brought an often more informed perspective to their activity as soldiers and their interactions with foreign nationals, making for a unique prism on the war experience alongside the prism of the others who had taken an “alternative” route. Between these juxtaposed experiences of soldier and counterculture participant, there developed, as generally well known and as documented in this novel, an ever-expanding social and cultural divide.
On the counter-culture side of the cultural division, the social and cultural dynamic presented is one of growing resentment and spreading influence. Draft-deferrable programs like the Teacher Corps and VISTA (amply available in the “war on poverty” of this era) pushed many of the students confronting the draft into assignments among poor and excluded Americans;—in effect, enlisting these men (and soon their female peers) as advocates for social change against institutions like local governments that impeded such change;—opposition to the war brought interactions with other bulwarks of the status quo like draft boards and schools; and the ensuing confrontations, intended to force social change or oppose the war, provided a real-life education in the intricacy of societal control. The scope of questioning thereby expanded beyond the social structures initially identified with the war to the whole fabric of society.
Adding to this expanding inquiry, the novel shows, was the shared experience,—for both men and women,—of demonstrations, marches, concerts, defiant speeches, appeals to solidarity, invitations to drugs, cross-cultural contacts, and itinerant “searching,” coalescing into a counterculture of societal opposition, and bringing—for this generation raised in the complacency of the 1950’s—a new mentality toward cultural expression: new taking serious of politics, music, and art; new fervor in exchange of ideas; new “lifestyles;” new disregard for propriety and long-held norms.
On the war side of the growing divide, as also documented in this novel, another experience shared by many members of this group, the war itself, forced a mentality change of a different kind. Accommodations to the slaughter of combat, personal danger and deprivation, contemplations regarding the ambiguities of an impugned war, and the comradery engendered by the war situation, combined to form this mentality. As the novel demonstrates, however, for many like the character Jim Morris, this was a mentality ineffectively applied to making sense of the war and returning with no problems to civilian life.
The four main characters of AGAINST THE WAR,— Morris, Tom Steward, Matt Brandt, and Bill O’Rourke,—in the historical record of this novel, represent the male college students of this era, the choices they made under pressure of the war and the draft, the ways they conducted themselves on both sides of the societal gulf of the war, and the results of their choices in terms of individual conscience, the indictment of the war, attitudes toward authority, distribution of political power, fulfillment of democratic ideals, changes in gender roles, and other facets of American life. These actions, when done in opposition to the war, were described as “against the war” in the jargon of the era. But all actions performed by these men, for the war or opposed to it, were done “against the war” in the sense that the war was an undismissable backdrop. Such is the wider meaning of the title and the overall theme of this novel.
Men, as said, were the ones directly challenged by the draft, but many of the women associated with this social group also became involved in the war effort, sometimes as spouses or lovers of soldiers, committed to supporting them in their war experience or in their resultant injuries, such as the character Ellen Kass Morris in this novel; and sometimes as voluntary participants in the war, such as the character Army nurse Barbara Carpenter O’Rourke. Women were also the earnest soldiers of the counterculture, as it developed, active in the war resistance, feminism, and political, social, and cultural change, as well as in the great flowering of music, writing, and art that the counterculture brought. Mary Kass Brandt, in this novel, represents the best of these women. Kristine DeSolt Steward is an example of the courageous women of the era, not consciously feminist but influenced by feminist ideas, who struggled for personal independence in face of cultural restraints. As the double surnames given here indicate, these female characters are the eventual spouses, within the story, of the four male characters listed above.
As also described in this novel, the broad phenomenon of war and response had repercussions at home and overseas far beyond the transformative experiences of the young men and women that are the focus of the central story of the novel. At home, the placement and activities of these educated idealists amidst previously ignored and desperate people created an expectation of democratic participation, civil rights, economic advancement, and educational opportunity. This expectation, in turn, led many in these populations to assert themselves, as exhorted to do by their young volunteers, creating a chain reaction that, over the course of the four and a half years described in this novel, activated individuals and communities all across America. Overseas, an effect of like magnitude occurred, in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, as the result of the insertion into these countries of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and the American machinery of war, bringing contact with American concepts of democracy and civil rights (as well as with the demonstrated belief in martial coercion), capitalization of local economies to provide goods and services to military bases and soldiers, corruption sowed by the free flow of Yankee dollars to illicit activities like prostitution and sale of drugs, and the societal burden of recovering from the widespread damage inflicted by carpet bombing and defoliation.
As for the non-college soldiers who, as earlier noted, often made the hardest sacrifices of the war while getting the least recognition, they were part of this picture, also, and they are everywhere evident in this novel in the many realistic depictions of the roles they play on the battlefield and in the support activities of the American presence. For example, they are described as fighting alongside O’Rourke in the battle of Fire Support Base Ripcord. As author of this novel, I wish to acknowledge this here again and apologize to anyone who may have felt omitted as Willson claimed he had himself as a rear echelon stenographer in Saigon and Long Binh.
“The war was a lie,” decides Jim Morris, patriot, combat pilot, prisoner of war, “true believer;”—one who, in the story, starts out with the highest of ideals;—and, indeed, as the record contained here reveals, this was a war prosecuted for many years without a hope of being won while actual people, such as Morris represents, were risking their lives for the purpose of winning the war. This was a war, as the record also reveals, involving atrocities perpetrated by American forces and kept secret, while heroic soldiers, such as depicted in this novel, were sacrificing their lives for fidelity to their nation and devotion to one another.
The counterculture of this era was, also, in the final analysis, revealed to be flawed, as it rose in what seemed at first a single voice of protest and cultural promise, then crumbled upon itself as the conflicts between its inconsistencies grew: peaceful vs. violent “revolution;” “egalitarianism” vs. the desire for possession; serious inquiry vs. “letting things be;” self-discipline vs. self-indulgence; social participation vs. dropping out. AGAINST THE WAR documents this arc of the early counterculture in the period described.
In not only this, but in all aspects, AGAINST THE WAR is meant to be historically correct. For this reason, the novel includes a comprehensive bibliography giving sources for all facts presented, and many developments in the story are tied by accurate dates to political, social, and military events. The case made here is conveyed with a documentary exactness to permit a fair judgment of the ways this era’s response to the war and building of the counterculture should be emulated or corrected by future generations.
Roland Menge (2026)