The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Hello, Stranger.

Let's talk about Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's The Healer's War.

The Short of It

Plot: A nurse in Vietnam tries to navigate the everyday danger of life on the front, and puts herself at risk to care for others.

Page Count: 336

Award: 1989 Nebula

Worth a read: No
Primary Driver: (Plot, World, or Character)
Bechdel Test: Pass
Technobabble: None
Review: Turns out the Vietnam War was not that great. Turns out being a woman in a warzone is not that great. Turns out viewing your enemies as subhuman is not that great. This is a character-driven story, and is semi-autobiographical. Kitty is likeable enough, though inconsistent. There is not really a story, exactly. She is thrown from one situation to another, usually without agency of her own. Pacing is all over the place. Not a terrible book but feels like yet another war story in a long line of such.

The Medium of It

Spoiler Free!

It is a bit uncomfortable to say, "Hey, you should skip this gut-wrenching story, which it is implied is based upon the author's experiences and those of people around her." If a semi-realistic war novel is that which you seek, this is a rare example of one written by and starring a woman. If you are on the hunt for a fantasy novel, this is not it. 

There are fantasy elements in this story, and they do play a pivotal role in Kitty, our protagonist, getting herself out of a number of binds. That is, however, the extent of their usefulness: they allow a string of anecdotes which presumably came from multiple people (or stories about people who had not made it) to be bound together into the story of one person. This is also why Kitty can only be characterized in broad strokes: her motivations and choices are inconsistent because she is a chimera.

This is not to say that there are not powerful vignettes throughout. Depictions of race, dehumanization, and threats of violence are well written. Easily the most powerful scene is her description of an attack on the military base. 

It was a good thing I'd spent a little time in bed that evening, because the rocket attack started a short time later and I spent the rest of the night under the bed, in a T-shirt, panties, flak jacket, and helmet, keeping the cockroaches company, hugging the plywood.

What I was actually supposed to do, what we were all supposed to do, was grab flak jackets and helmets and head for the sandbag-reinforced bunker hunching up between my barracks and the one facing it. Usually, nobody even bothered to vacate the officers' club. We hadn't received heavy fire in so long that the bunkers were not taken seriously. During my first rocket attack, I had dutifully reported to the cavelike little shelter to find the chief of internal medicine suavely sipping a martini and reading an Ian Fleming paperback by flashlight. By the next time, he had DEROSed (left the country) and the bunker was unoccupied. I took one look at the dismal, hot little hole and thought of coiled cobras and scorpions and snuck back up the stairs to hide under the bed.

Which was what everybody else who paid any attention to the shelling did. I had the procedure perfected by now. I took my pillow, flak jacket, helmet, usually a paper fan and a Coke, a book and a flashlight.

It was a little like playing house under the dining room table when I was a kid. Usually I didn't mind it too much. The floor was hard, but you needed your mattress on top of the bed to shield you. That particular night I read the same sentence several times before giving up. I was plenty cool now, and I cursed Tony for being out there flying around making Vietnam safe for democracy when he should have been under the bed with me.

Then I thought about him flying around up there with all those rockets whistling through the air, and I wished I could be working, just to take my mind off it. Over on the wards, the staff would be moving the patients who could be moved under the beds. Those who couldn't would have mattresses piled on top of them. Several times already, I'd had to give meds on my hands and knees. The GIs with the facial injuries kept asking for their weapons, which were locked up, and I kept wishing I could slide under one of the beds, too, and huddle next to someone till morning. Even though I was supposed to be protecting those guys, I felt better knowing that they were there, under the beds.

You could joke your way through a shelling over on the wards, and act tough. It was less funny to lie alone listening to the shrieking rockets, the mortars crumping like God stomping around out there thoroughly pissed off.

Excellent writing and extremely vivid. Scarborough does a very good job of capturing Kitty's thoughts racing, her mingled resignation and fear, her feeling of powerlessness. 

It is a portent scene which also exemplifies the issues with this book - it is a string of such scenes, some powerful, some not, rather than a story. I can toss in a 500 word chunk of the book without it giving away anything, other than that there is a dude named Tony involved. 

If the entire book resonated as well as the scene above, I would be able to recommend it without reservation. The issue is that much of it is not that powerful. Side characters are weak, and thus any deaths feel trivial. Kitty is not compelling enough herself for her feelings of sadness to seep through to the reader. And because she needs to move on to the next vignette, death or trauma cannot be dwelled upon.

I wish I understood who the target audience for this novel is intended to be. There are clear morals that come through, about the value of human life, respect for others, chaos of war, the cost of compassion, and so on. But... there is nothing revolutionary here. Each time a lesson emerged, I would contemplate it for a moment, and think, "Yeah, that checks out." Is this meant to convert the "War = Good" crowd? I don't know.

The Healer's War should not be binned out of hand; it is not, by any means, bad. There are some truly wrenching moments. But it feels disjointed and unfulfilling.

The Long of It

Spoilers Ahead!

This is another book that leaves me with little more to say. Spoilers, after all, are contingent upon a cohesive plot structure. 

There are two things, perhaps, worth discussing. The first is William, the black soldier Kitty finds in the forest. The tension between him and white soldiers, when they are eventually found, is probably the second best portion of the book. However, Scarborough went a bit overboard with trying to give him a different voice on the page, to the point that it feels totally excessive. 

"They're all dead," he said when he had bitten into the M&M. He kicked a log and, when it didn't kick back, lowered Ahn to the ground and sat down himself. "My unit. I thought you was comin' to find me when I saw that bird."

"Dead?" I asked. "Who's dead? You mean the chopper crew?"

"No'm. I mean my unit," he said. Now that he'd started talking, his tone was conversational, ordinary. "We got overrun, I guess you'd call it. See, I was asleep in my bunk one night back at base and we was all in this, like Quonset hut, kinda, with a screen door? And somethin' wake me up. I always been like that, since I was a little boy. I sorta know when somethin' ain't right, like. Anyhow, I wake up and I see this shadow with a gook hat go by the screen door. And at first that don't mean nothin' 'cause the gooks, you know, they all over the place in the daytime. But then it come to me-they ain't s'posed to be no gooks there at night. And I'm just thinkin' that and I just start, halfasleep, you know, rollin' down under my bed when all of a sudden all hell breaks loose. Somebody starts afirin' in the screen door and killin' everybody. Everybody in there, all my buddies, all my friends, they get sprayed all over there, and when I crawl out, they all dead. Everyone dead and I ain't even had a chance to warn 'em. And outside the door I see fire and I hear guns and I see gooks runnin' this way and that and I crawl on my belly to the door and they're all over the place, all them gooks. Ain't s'posed to be there at night. Not at all. But they all over the place."

Casual disassociation in the face of horror? Good. Contrast between eating candy and discussing  massacre? Good. William's speech being written as if it was standard speech that suffered a shotgun blast of apostrophes? A bit much.

The second is the truly disturbing scene of Kitty's rescue, and the torture of the Viet Cong Colonel with her.

"Lookit him. You'll kill him before the general gets here, man. He's gonna be soooo disappointed."

"Ain't that a fuckin' shame. So we'll save him a piece. A tiny little piece."

I looked inquiringly at Zits. I was still having trouble talking. It had beenonly a few days, but it felt like forever since I'd heard English spoken by other Americans. It seemed to be going too fast for me. I still didn't get what they were up to. I wasn't tracking very clearly.

"You'll see, baby. Maybe you wanna play too."

Oh goody. Vietnam was so wonderful. In school nobody had ever wanted me on their team, and here the boys were, choosing me first.

"Me first, man, I found her," Maryjane said. He cut off Dinh's clothes.

"Hey, man, leave him a jock. There's ladies present."

"How can I cut off his balls if I leave him a jock? Besides, she's a nurse. She's seen it all."

"Don't cut him there yet, man. That's too much. He'll die too soon."

And, when Kitty shoots him to end the torture:

"Damn!" Maryjane threw his helmet angrily to the ground. "Ya see? Ya see? Women! Jesus! You let them in on something and they spoil everything!"

The rocket bombardment works well because it is a totally internal scene. All we are given is what is going on in Kitty's head. This, on the other hand, is almost exclusively dialogue. Scarborough leaves off names so that as the scene goes on, it does not matter who was saying what. Instead, they are a single voice of malice. Brutal to read.

Well, on that cheerful note...

How's about we treat one another how we'd like to be treated, Stranger.
And don't forget to read a book!