A Broken Chain

Today in class we began discussing some of the issues in  Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato. One of the issues I brought up was the apparent broken chain of command. Throughout the book no respect is given to officers by the men, something extremely different than what we have seen in the previous literature we read. Sure Achilles defied Agamemnon's authority by not fighting the Trojans, but I consider that to be an exception in a war to which defiance of a Kings rule usually led to death as a punishment. In Killer Angels not many of the uneducated soldiers even knew what they were fighting for, yet they still followed the orders of their leaders without hesitation. The chain of command was still very much intact in both of these books. However, in Going After Cacciato the chain of command is severely severed. Not once in the book is an officer given respect purely because of rank, and the word sir is not even uttered. Even worse, the men openly mock and make fun of Lt. Sidney Martin, their commanding officer. Martin is disliked by the men because he chooses to do things by the book instead of taking the easy way out. When he orders his men to search a bunker, they disobey and eventually he is forced to search the bunker himself. This kind of attitude would have been unacceptable in any other war. If it had existed in World War II or before, the disobeying soldiers would surely have faced terrible consequences. In Vietnam however, the punishment was simply being court-marshaled. This is a large reason for the soldiers abusive behavior, because they were not afraid of the consequences. In the Civil War, deserters were shot on sight, and even if they came back they were to be executed. The notion of traveling half way around the world just to bring one meaningless deserter back would be absolutely crazy for soldiers of that era. While deserters don't necessarily deserve to be shot on sight, I do believe that traveling after one is pretty useless.  Soldier's morale played a huge part in America's losing effort in Vietnam; something that would never have happened if the consequences were harsher. 

Also, the controversy of Vietnam played a role in the disrespect given to commanders. There were soldiers who did not believe in the war, yet had been thrown into action anyways because of the draft. This feeling of mal-contempt (sp?) was obviously trickled down into the soldiers attitude of Vietnam, and was displayed by giving no respect at all to officers.