At last night's screening of Soul Patrol (thanks Cinematheque!), I thought about Will Williams a lot and just learned that he passed away this past June. I didn't know the man, although I did chat with him on a couple occasions and heard him speak several times. I also had the pleasure of hearing him sing with his wife, Dot, in the Madison Gospelaires.
Will was a Vietnam veteran who was active in the Madison chapter of Veterans For Peace. During his talks he would chronicle becoming a peacenik, relate what it was like being a black man shipped abroad to fight for the freedom of the South Vietnamese while he and people like him weren't free at home, et al. You can read Will's story in his own words in the book Long Shadows: Veterans' Paths to Peace printed here in Madison back in 2006.
He came to mind as Soul Patrol is a profile of the first all-black Special Ops team in the Vietnam War. It is centered around the final reunion of the remaining members where the men speak about their experiences as well as their love for one another. Director J.M. Harper, who was in attendance, uses interviews, Super 8 footage from a couple members of the team, old stock footage, and newly staged scenes to illustrate the team and the milieu from which it and its members emerged.
Ed Emanuel wrote the book which inspired this movie and he serves as something of a fulcrum around which the stories unfold. It is he who is featured in staged footage that takes place in a grocery store where he sees his younger self as Nietzsche is quoted on the soundtrack.
But we learn about several of the team members. It is the turbulent late 60s. Muhammad Ali refuses military service and the likes of Stokely Carmichael urge black men to do the same. There are riots and assassinations and protests as American society is being wrenched apart. But these men joined the military with more mundane things in mind such as avoiding jail, to get away from an abusive father, to serve their country, and so on.
They go through training and then are assembled into Team 2/6 of Company F, 51st Infantry - a team that would go deep into enemy territory to reconnoiter and bring reconnaissance info back. We get a sense of their routine and of race relations in the Army. One particular incident is described in great detail. While out on patrol with the team hunkered down in the jungle, they encounter a trio of VC platoons who eventually discern their location. But instead of killing them, the North Vietnamese spare the team.
It is a harrowing scenario and it left its mark on the men.
At its core, Soul Patrol is about change, about how these men changed. The movie gives voice to old men reflecting on their youth and how their experiences in the war changed them. They begin as young men full of piss and vinegar and gain wisdom as they get older. They also suffer greatly in the movie, both during the war and after.
Harper uses at least two quotes from Nietzsche to emphasize this theme of change including the famous, dictum "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." The movie definitely portrays these men sympathetically and shows how they didn't get the help they needed upon returning from Vietnam where they had grappled with monsters - evil - and looked long and hard into the abyss.
I don't get the impression that any of the movie's subjects became monsters, they didn't become evil but they were obviously deeply, deeply affected by dealing with the darkest elements of human nature in others and themselves.
Harper gives his audience a sense of the struggles these men have/had with PTSD, such as when Emanuel describes an incident when he flew into a rage on the highway, while at the same time he gives us a poignant portrayal of the fraternal bonds amongst these men forged in the crucible of Vietnam illustrated by the multiple times they tell one another that they've got their backs covered.
Soul Patrol covers a lot of ground from the chaos in the streets during the 1960s to the war, from a group of young men trying to prove themselves to being mature men with a lot of baggage to deal with from their wartime experiences. The emphasis is on the personal but the broader picture is not neglected.
After the screening, there was a Q&A session Harper as well as retired journalist Jesse Lewis who is in the movie briefly as he was a war correspondent and wrote a series of ground-breaking articles about the experiences of African-American soldiers in Vietnam. Sabrina Thomas, an associate professor in the UW's Department of African-American Studies co-moderated along with Craig Werner, Professor Emeritus in the same department whom I know as the co-author of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War.
Professor Thomas explained that she had seen Soul Patrol earlier in the year in Denver(?) and agitated both director Harper and the Cinematheque crew to have it screened here. So many thanks to her for her efforts. Harper gave us insight into making his movie and his relationships with the subjects. Lewis talked about his time in Vietnam and elucidated on his role in the movie, namely, as someone providing an antidote to the lilywhite coverage of the war that the mainstream press offered.
Soul Patrol is part African-American history lesson, part inquiry into humanity. Vietnam was such a cultural touchstone when I was growing up but it feels like it has almost been forgotten by the culture at large. Perhaps the movie can help give it a reprieve from the memory hole. There were a fair number of younger folk there so there's hope.
I want to end with a couple quotes from Will Williams that goes to show that the themes of Soul Patrol go beyond its running time.
Vietnam made me. I grew up fast in Vietnam. It made me look at life, at all people, as being sacred. There's the pain that I never shake from it. I know I'll never get rid of it. But I also learned that nothing can make me change the way I feel about myself, what I stand for, and what I'll do. I know that in Vietnam I wasn't myself. I'm not the person now that I was then.
...
It's really hard to talk about Vietnam. A lot of it is really hard when I think of some of the battles. It's hard. Not just talking about it but after just thinking about it. It doesn't go away right then. One of the things that is hard was, a friend of mine, Ellsworth, who died, who I was trying to save.
