Memoir Writing Prompts with Tom Keating, Author of Yesterday's Soldier

During the Covid19 lockdown this spring, Tom Keating sent over some videos for writing prompts on memoir. His new book, Yesterday’s Soldier tells of his time in Vietnam as a Conscientious Objector. Below he reads excerpts from his book, followed by writing prompts.

Excerpt One from Yesterday’s Soldier
Prologue

Tom Keating Reads from Yesterday’s Soldier - Prologue

Struggling to live a holy life, I watched others leave the seminary, some close friends. It was painful to say goodbye to them as they left, one after another. Of the twenty-seven in my freshman group of postulants, and after five years, only five of us remained. My friends from Bridgeport began to leave the seminary, too, which was extremely upsetting to me. First it was Ted, then Dan, and finally Mike and Jim, whom I had been very close with. It set me adrift, and disrupted my junior year and my religious life. It was noticed by others, especially Father Superior. I was late to prayers, sullen at times, and distant from others.

I was looking forward to being sent to Notre Dame University for theology studies and then ordination. I had finally made the Dean’s list academically, and my activities on campus with the college newspaper and yearbook were in line with the new attitude in the Church—going where the people are, being a witness to the Lord among them. Near the end of my senior year, I was called into Father Superior’s office to receive my assignment to theology studies at Notre Dame University.

It was a shock, then, when he said, “Tom, we don’t think you have a true vocation, and we will not send you to theology. You have what is known as a ‘temporary vocation.’” Father Superior had one more thing to say that would really change my life. “Tom,” he said. “We are required by law to notify your local draft board immediately of the change in your status from II-D, studying for the ministry, to I-A, available for military service. We have to send the letter before you leave here after graduation.”

Just like that, my life changed. I was not going to be a priest. I could be sent to a country 10,000 miles away, and could be carrying a rifle, walking in rice paddies. I had a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a I-A draft classification, a prime target for the draft.

Writing Prompt One
Temporary Assigned Duty

Write about a time someone drastically changed your plans, or a time you trained for something you never got to do.

Excerpt Two from Yesterday’s Soldier
Basic Combat Training

Tom Keating Reads from Yesterday’s Soldier - Basic Combat Training

When I came back and walked up the stairs to the platoon area that Sunday everyone stopped talking, and watched as I walked toward my bunk. It was torn apart, the blankets, sheets and mattress on the floor; my footlocker busted open, and the contents thrown everywhere. Dexter stood by his bunk stifling a giggle. I looked across the room at Larry who tried hard not to smile, waiting to see how I would react. The rest of the platoon paused, waiting.

My rage inside me exploded, my face turned bright red. I reached into my wall locker for my bayonet, and ran over to Dexter, tackled him, put my knee on his back, pulled the bayonet from its scabbard, pushed his head down and put the cold steel edge of the bayonet against his neck. I shouted, “If you ever fuck with me or my stuff again, Dexter, I am going to kill you.

So help me God! Right here, right now. Got it?”

Dexter didn’t move. The barracks were funeral quiet. Blind with rage, time had stopped for me. After a scary pause, and with a shaky voice, Dexter said, “Yeah.”

My hands stopped shaking after a few minutes, and my body twitched as I cooled down. I could not believe what I had done.

Oh my god, I was going to kill that kid! I shivered again and realized that Basic Combat Training was working; I had learned how to kill. Five years of God, prayer, love, and kindness was gone. The Army had done its job. I cleaned up the mess and got ready for the next day.

Writing Prompt Two
A Fight

Write about a physical or emotional conflict. Think of a time when a course of events changed due to someone's word or preferably action. Have you been in a fight? What happened?

Tom Keating Biography

Tom Keating is a graduate of Stonehill College, where he studied for the priesthood at Holy Cross Seminary for five years before serving in the United States Army, including a tour of Vietnam from 1969 to 1970 as a conscientious objector. He served with the 47th Military History Detachment, then served with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Logistical Command, and Headquarters Company, US Army Vietnam, (USARV) also in Long Binh. His service earned him two Army Commendation Medal for his work. His memoir of his military experiences in the US Army, “Yesterday’s Soldier,” the story of his journey from Infantry Officer Candidate to conscientious objector, is available on Amazon.

After his military service, Tom attended Boston University and completed his Master’s degree in Education, and taught at the high school in Burlington, MA for eight years. A career in corporate communications and learning with companies like Wang Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM and EMC Corporation followed. He also produced news and public affairs broadcasts for local Boston television and national cable television programs.

Tom joined the AGAPE writing program for veterans at the Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College under the direction of Roxana Von Kraus. He attended the Joiner Institute Master Writing Program at the Joiner Institute Writers’ Workshop Festival held at the University of Massachusetts, Boston in 2017 and 2018.

Excerpts from his memoir have appeared in national anthologies such as “War Stories”, an anthology edited by Sean Davis, and “Shakedown” published by Warrior Writers Boston in their book “Complacency Kills”.

Tom and his wife, the artist Kathleen Keating, live in Massachusetts where he is an active member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and is committed to assisting veterans of all ages.

Write a Letter to La David Johnson

The week after four American soldiers died in Niger, Kevin Bowen asked a Warrior Writers workshop at the Suffolk Poetry Center to write a letter to La David Johnson.

At the time a faction of Social Media bots and lemmings circled the fact that Johnson was left behind. The official story is murky, and I’m skeptical of anyone claiming to know the truth. There are quite a few possible narratives, but it’s worth meditating briefly on the effects of racism and colorism and otherism.

Some media mavens rave about the dangers of Islam, as though ancient narratives have the power to kill. As we often hear from gun enthusiasts, “People kill people.” Still one only needs to glance into history to see how dogmatism in any form can get dangerous: Branch Davidians, The People’s Temple, White America, Inc. No law is divine, and if there is a heaven we’re probably not invited. Laws are only as good as the people holding them up.

Since soldiers (and police) stand on the front lines of law enforcement, overcoming “otherism” within the ranks seems to me to be of value. Whatever the reason that La David Johnson faced his death alone under a thorn tree, whether he ran away from the convoy on his own, got ignored in the chaos or both, whatever narrative you believe, try to focus on this one media personality. Try writing La David Johnson a letter.

Alternatively, you could write to any other one of the soldiers who fought that day. Maybe even write a letter to one of the enemy soldiers, or to one of the Nigerien government forces that fired on the American Convoy first before recognizing it as friendly. If you're not feeling any of this, write a letter to a family member.

Here are pictures of the five immediate responses from the five people who were at that workshop:

Here's my considered response:

Dear La David Johnson,

The Army says you ran fast for cover, and then fought to your death alone under a thorn tree. I imagine you died standing. I'm a vanilla veteran, made it on one cruise in the navy. Still, in my head, had I been there, your body (at least) would have made it into the truck, or else there'd have been two dead men left behind for two days.

So I play the hero in my thoughts, like I did with my brothers in my parents’ backyard. You look so young in those videos the Army made, showing comradery for CNN et al. I’m always skeptical of news, no matter the source. Maybe the official narrative mirrors the truth, but human foibles are beyond belief.

I remember how segregated the galley would get, and a lot of casual racism on cruise. I can imagine, since you were not a green beret you might have been seen as second class. Every now and again fights between special operators hit the newsfeed. It’s a prideful club you rode with that fateful day, when you died in Niger. I have a big imagination.

Since I started organizing Warrior Writers workshops in Boston, starting in 2014, I've been curious about its origins and intent. Participating in these workshops has triggered me in odd ways. Sometimes I wonder what compels me to keep scheduling events, to keep showing up. Lovella (the founder) says it all started during an anti-war conference in 2007, and I believe her. I think peace is a value worth keeping, but I’m not always antiwar. I like a good fight. I hope to die standing, like you.

I believe in Biblical justice, in the psychological power of blood. Still, if God exists, that image is in us. As the lemmings say, “Where we go one, we go all.” This is why I don’t claim a disability at the VA. I like to work for money. Free money makes me anxious, like a rat in a trap. I’d rather die in a ditch than in a hospital bed anyway. A long tradition associates immigrants with ditches. I'm with Abraham. Smash all the old Idols. Leave home. Find yourself.

I think everyone who cannot work for whatever reason could be accommodated, if we cared. Nobody needs to be homeless. Nobody needs to be hungry. Earth creates enough resources for everyone to live fat. For some reason, we’re stuck in a clusterfuck, building a bunch of war weapons or other subtle (obscene) eugenics experiments, and not figuring out how to give people food and shelter. Instead of coexisting (YOLO) and improving in peace we feed our weaknesses, get stoned, drunk, choke each other out.

Maybe all of that virtue signaling is my absurd attempt make sense of my melancholic brain chemistry.

I’ve had suicidal thoughts for as long as I can remember. Sometimes the thoughts are funny. Often they’re violent. They’re self-righteous, and generally they’re accompanied by deep depression. So many people fight for life, and here I go wallowing in morose thoughts. I don’t like how Warrior Writers sometimes drapes itself in the suicides of its participants, though I understand why it's politically useful. I don't like brands that associate themselves with warriors that they send to their deaths. I don't like wallowing in failures and weaknesses.

I believe that we should remember the past, understand the pain, and detail it in private so that we might better understand. We can’t fix our errors with headstones. We can learn from mistakes. But let the dead rest. Nobody wants a spot on a wall of failures.

I’ve digressed into grandiose posturing for the sake of a nutty blog. La David, I believe you existed. You held up your honor like the king you were named after, and I see online how your family loved you. Thank you for living well and building our American family. Your death is only a period. Before that you lived like a mortal. Now you are remembered.

To you La David Johnson, and to your brothers Bryan Black, Jeremiah Johnson, Dustin Wright, Bagué Soumana, Abdoul rachid Yerimah, Yacouba Issoufou, and Goubé Mahamadou Issaka: all I know is I that know nothing. Platitudes abound. I admire your courage, and your sacrifice.

Sincerely,

Caleb Nelson

Writing Prompt from Zero Dark Thirty (Fall 2016) - First Day in Theater

Sometimes the first days are the worst days, as one Air Force veteran described during an interview how mortars hit Camp Bucca on his first full day assigned to guard duty in Iraq. Other times little memories, simple things stick out. An Army veteran who showed up for the Warrior Writers workshop at The Suffolk Poetry Center last Wednesday wrote about her first day back from Afghanistan. After reading what she’d written on the fly, she described noticing the smell of the rain at the airport. She put her face out of the window of the car as she left the airport, heading home.

Reading a poem by John Rodriguez published in a journal of war art and writing, Zero-Dark-Thirty, we discussed first experiences, how we describe them and how they take shape in our memories.

First Night in Country

by John Rodriguez

Packed like sweaty sardines
Body armor and helmets
Big men in tiny seats
The bird twists and turns
Corkscrewing to land
Mouth waters
Bile in the back of throat
Dinner wants to say hi.
Just heat and motion
Or nerves?

Ramp lowers, and escape.
Greeted by a hot blast of air
And darkness.
A sky black as all blackness
Punctured by the control tower lights and
Bright blue jet cones
Racing down the runway,
A roar and rumble fades,
Never leaves, never stops.

Guided to a tent, in briefing orientation
Welcomed by word of Wanat
Nine killed, twenty-seven wounded
A platoon decimated.

Walk to the pisser,
Alone with my thoughts
Confronted by mural to the fallen
”Living a life worthy of their sacrifice.”

John Rodriguez is an infantry officer in the United States Army. He served on active duty from 2006-2012 and currently serves in the Maryland National Guard. John served in Afghanistan as a rifle platoon leader and rifle company executive officer in Kunar Province from 2008-2009.

(Fall 2016, page 57-58)

Notice how Rodriguez splinters his language using the present tense, and sentence fragments, conveying some detachment in his memory of landing in Afghanistan. He writes in the frank way one might speak in conversation.

First Day in Theater is published by The Veteran Writing Project, founded by Ron Capps. You can read all of the old pdfs on the journal’s website, and the fall 2016 issue with Rodriguez’s poem here: https://odarkthirtydotorg.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/odt_4-4_web_version.pdf

At Warrior Writers workshops we generally start each prompt by reading a piece of flash fiction or a poem, like First Day in Theater, discuss it and then we write for 10 or 15 minutes straight. Often writing with a group helps discipline the mind to focus on the task at hand. But if you have the warewithal to write alone, maybe post whatever you come up with on Reddit.com/r/warriorwriters for friendly comments and revision suggestions.

Write about a first day: leaving on a deployment, a first day home, your first time jumping out of an airplane, launching off a carrier, cooking in the galley, on watch or patrol, whatever. Think about the sights, the smells. How did your senses react to the new environment? Maybe you’d rather write about the first day that pops to your mind. Go with it. Explore that memory. Set a timer to write for 15 minutes. Don’t stop.