There is the mythology of the Green Berets, of their clandestine,
special operations as celebrated in story and song. And then there is
the reality of one soldier's experience, the day-to-day loss and
drudgery of a Green Beret such as H. Lee Barnes, whose story conveys the
daily grind and quiet desperation behind polished-for-public-consumption
accounts of military heroics. In When We Walked Above the Clouds,
Barnes tells what it was like to be a Green Beret, first in the
Dominican Republic during the civil war of 1965, and then at A-107, Tra
Bong, Vietnam. There, he eventually came to serve as the advisor to a
Combat Recon Platoon, which consisted chiefly of Montagnard irregulars.
Though "nothing extraordinary," as Barnes saw it, his months of simply
doing what the mission demanded make for sobering reading: the mundane
business of killing rats, cleaning guns, and building bunkers renders
the intensity of patrols and attacks all the more harrowing. More than
anything, Barnes's story is one of loss--of morale lost to alcoholism,
teammates lost to friendly fire, missions aborted, and missions
endlessly and futilely repeated. As the story advances, so does the
attrition--teammates transferred, innocence cast off, confidence in
leadership whittled away. And yet, against this dark background, Barnes
still manages to honor the quiet professionals whose service,
overshadowed by the outsized story of Vietnam, nonetheless carried the
day.
H. Lee Barnes is a professor of English at the College of Southern
Nevada. He is the author of several collections of short stories,
including Minimal Damage, and a novel, The Lucky.
