Word: sergeanting
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This interpretation works well, aside from a few jarring notes. One is Eric Duncan's disembodied portrayal of the black sergeant who brings the Vietnam veteran. David home; speaking in harsh clipped tones, more like a robot than a man, the sergeant seems to belong to a different play. Another, more annoying problem is the cast's general difficulty in dealing with Rabe's overtly symbolic passages. Because of Browner's naturalistic handling of the play it's starting at times to hear characters suddenly hurting into literary effusion or even conscientiously using the formal "do not" in place...
This portrait of a sergeant plagued with survival guilt is more a case history of one veteran's psychological trauma and withdrawal symptoms from a war than a theatrical piece...
...Sergeant Dale Jackson returns to his Detroit ghetto home in a morphine induced stupor, drained by emotional stress and battle fatigue. After an initial feeling of release, he grows despondent, spending most of his days lying in bed staring at the ceiling. Tortured by a recurring nightmare in which he stands looking into an immense gun barrel, he is finally admitted to the Valley Forge Army Hospital. Essentially, Jackson can't understand why fate or circumstance or coincidence has allowed him to live when his war buddies became charred heaps during an ambush; why he was decorated with the Congressional...
From the epilogue we learn that Sergeant Jackson goes AWOL from the hospital--an expression of frustration and spiritual languor--and gets himself shot to death in a grocery store stickup. The ending comes too fast and seems to pat as if Cole couldn't resist the temptation to tie up the loose ends, but it indicates that there is no ample cure for Jackson and veterans with similar problems. And if they deserve our attention, to does Medal of Honor Rag, not because it is a flawless play, but because it presents the veteran's predicament with an eloquent...
...imagine they have their own good reasons, but I feel betrayed by the South Vietnamese government," said Staff Sergeant Vale D. Short, 25, who is stationed at Fort Jackson, S.C. Short was a crew chief and a gunner on an assault helicopter flying out of Pleiku. "I wish we could go back over and do it right this time. I don't mean under the old rules, but in a real...