'A PIECE OF MY HEART'

A series of essays.....

ANNIE RUSSELL THEATRE ~ MAIN STAGE
AWAITING THE OPENING ACT OF 'PIECE OF MY HEART'

.....as seen through my eyes!





By: Jacqueline E. Hughes

What, at first, seemed like such a simple little play~~six women, few props, and no elaborate set~~'A Piece of My Heart' by Shirley Lauro is often billed as "the most enduring play about Vietnam!" After attending a local production of it this past Saturday evening, I can see why.

When the country of Vietnam is casually mentioned today, it probably conjures up several different thoughts or memories depending upon the age of the people within the conversation. For example, if you are too young to remember the 1960's and '70's, you may know it to be a beautiful vacation destination today. You may have been taught about the confrontation there, which included the United States, in high school history class. Maybe a parent or grandparent fought the Viet Cong there and were able to return home with stories about it they were, initially, unwilling to share because they feared having to relive their horrific experiences. 

'A Piece of My Heart' tells the true stories of the many women who served their country in Vietnam through six characters. We meet Army and Navy nurses, an enlisted intelligence specialist in the Women's Army Corps, a Red Cross volunteer, and a U.S.O. singer. The women unravel how a twelve-month adventure could have such an effect on the rest of their lives.

In the "background" are the American men: the ones who hurt them, are loved by them, are healed by them, and the ones lost to unspeakable injuries. These women signed up for adventure, for glory, for money.....but, often, they returned home completely shattered and unwelcome by a society who openly mistreated them because they were the convenient scapegoats for a very angry and war weary nation during a most turbulent time in its history.  As Bob Dylan sang of the times, “The times, they are a-changin,” and  “there’s revolution in the air.” 

In the background we can hear the music of this war in haunting measure delivered by Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cream, and Janis Joplin herself! This was the musical soundscape to the Vietnam War. This war may have deeply divided our country but the music was a coping mechanism for the thousands of Americans who served there. The music, music, music!! Thank God for the music that propelled us along!

Most importantly, 'A Piece of My Heart' was seen through the eyes of the many women who experienced the war first-hand. Not everyone acknowledges the fact that thousands of women served during the Vietnam War. Many served in hospitals in the Philippines, Japan, Okinawa, Hawaii, and many served in the field in Vietnam itself. The play portrays each of its six young woman before, during, and after her tour in the war-torn nation and ends as each leaves a personal token at the memorial wall in Washington D.C.

THE MUSIC OF ONE U.S. SOLDIER IN VIETNAM ~ 1969

Although there have been numerous plays dealing with Vietnam, the renowned author, Shirley Lauro, I would say, has handed-out a direct, emotional impact to her audience as she was able to bring most of us to tears while gaining a standing ovation at curtain call. 'A Piece of My Heart' was riveting and intense and I have to hand it to the amazing staff and students of Rollins College and the Annie Russell Theatre, once again, for offering us a memorable performance. 

Yes, I stood there clapping for the students on the stage of the Annie Russell Theatre on the Rollins College campus in Winter Park, Florida with tears in my eyes and 1960's music filling my senses while vivid memories of my friends returning from the war in Vietnam flashed before me. The tears I was shedding, I knew, represented a job well done....so difficult to beat the hard work contributed by everyone associated with this beautiful theatre! In addition, my tears affirmed an often stressful, confusing, rankling feeling in the pit of my stomach that, even to this day, continues to be painful.

Friends returned with their very troubled stories to relate. Some returned withdrawn and clinging to drugs and liquor to quench the horror they had lived through. And, some returned in pine boxes with twenty-one gun salutes that shattered a cold December afternoon and scattered feathered creatures living among the cemetery flora high up into the cold, blue sky. Standing on the hard, frozen earth during these military services, I wondered if they had been the lucky ones.

Here is a compact history lesson and backstory of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam:

The Viet Cong, VC for short, were the guerrilla force that, with the support of the North Vietnamese Army, the Viet Minh, fought against South Vietnam in the late 1950's through 1975 and the United States from the early 1960's with direct U.S. military involvement ending on August 15, 1973. The Viet Cong were South Vietnamese supporters of the communist National Liberation Front in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, known in Vietnam as the 'American War.'  They were allied with North Vietnam and the troops of Ho Chi Minh, president of North Vietnam, who sought to conquer the South and create a unified, communist state of Vietnam.  

According to my research, 1949 is about when the United States began caring about what was going on in Vietnam.

The U.S. got involved in the Vietnam War because it did not want another country going to communism and, ultimately, be controlled by the Soviet sphere of influence, after what happened in China. Firstly, the Viet Minh were communists. Secondly, in 1949, the anticommunist government of the Republic of China fell and was forced to flee to Taiwan and the communist People's Republic of China took over the mainland. 

President Truman was accused of "losing China" to the communists. And, the United States had become afraid of what was then known as 'the dominoes falling effect' so, it increasingly became United States strategic policy to contain communism. 

The future of many young men and women was to be held in the balance by the decisions that were made at home in Washington D.C.  

SELECTIVE SERVICE SYSTEM'S
BLUE VIETNAM DRAFT LOTTERY CAPSULES

We didn't give a shit about all of the above at eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old! We were thinking more along the lines of which movie should we see on Saturday night? When will the Beatles put out their next album? And, what colleges should I apply to? Near the end of the 1960's, our boys were required to enter the draft. Three hundred and sixty-six plastic capsules that could determine their fate. Right or wrong. Love or hate. Life or death. 

Each blue capsule contained the birthdays that would be chosen in the first Vietnam draft lottery drawing on December 1, 1969, and young men gathered in college dorms and homes of friends to listen to live television and radio broadcasts of the U.S. Selective Service System drawing lottery numbers to determine who would and would not be drafted. The first birth date drawn that night and assigned the lowest number, lottery number 1, was September 14.

Males born on September 14, between the years of 1944 and 1950, you will forever be our Number One!!

Women, as Ms. Lauro suggests in 'A Piece of My Heart,' were not drafted. They signed-up for this roller coaster adventure, often because there was real danger in 'not knowing' what our boys were going through in this strange, obscure country called Vietnam. 

Most Americans had never heard of Vietnam before! Then Ho Chi Minh declared to turn it into a communist nation. Our troops quickly saw that South Vietnam was a jungle. It was very hot and humid. Hauling troops in from all over the Pacific held many challenges and limitations that were marked by difficult local weather conditions.

As with any war...no matter which reasons are chosen to justify it in the eyes of a government, public and private factions, or independent thinkers.....It remains a war, a state of armed conflict between societies that is generally characterized by extreme aggression, destruction, and mortality. Our young men and our young women quickly understood this lessen in Vietnam. The quest for freedom was awash with the horrors that had to be endured by these brave souls. In the name of good or evil, their young lives were literally bathed in Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

My sincere appreciation goes out to Ms. Lauro. Your timeless play, performed and engineered by an amazing cast and crew of The Annie Russell Theatre, has been able to reintroduce me to intense memories, stimulating song lyrics meant to open our eyes to a new revolution, and recapture the fervor and passion that my generation allowed into its soul in order to cope with the philosophical norm that 'two wrongs don't make a right.' 

As we wander through 'Trumpland' today, mostly dazed and confused, I hope that many of the same principles that we understood and cherished back in our youth in the '60's remain prominent today. May we all work together again, no matter what our age or background is, to apply them towards continuing the full fight against blatant greed, hatred, and yet another war, as well as the preservation of our fragile planet. 

To be able to achieve this common ground among us today, I would, gladly, volunteer a piece of my heart.....once again!   #Persistence #Resist!

Protest songs that shaped the Vietnam Era:

https://youtu.be/LNYT1J8Fop4

Author's Note: In case you were wondering....no, we did not win the war against communism in South Vietnam and, ultimately, left that country in the hands of the North. The Republic of South Vietnam was dissolved in July, 1976 when it merged with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) to become the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The SRV remains a communistic country. 

Copyright © 2017 by Jacqueline E. Hughes

All rights reserved