By Michael Aaron Rockland
(Hansen Publishing Group, 175 pp., $15)
All too often, writers, particularly new writers, foist memoirs upon us.
Sure, everyone has a story; a newborn has a story. But to make a memoir interesting, you need to have weathered some rough patches. Whining about the class bully from fourth grade, or how motherhood is messy, is rarely enough to sustain an interesting book.
Serving in the military, however, pretty much guarantees some good stories. In his 14th book, Michael Aaron Rockland, a professor of American studies at Rutgers University and a longtime Morristown resident, writes about his two-year stint in the U.S. Navy.
Rockland served as a medical corpsman in Japan, between the Korean and Vietnam wars, from 1955 to 1957. Already married at 21 and a college graduate, he was drafted.
He rejected the chance to become an officer because it meant serving one more year and wound up working in the psychiatric unit of a decrepit hospital in Yokosuka.
"I've often wondered: could there be as much, if not more, mental illness in the military during peacetime as during wartime, another kind of PTSD, Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Or to put it another way, is it possible that some of our patients were so hungry for war they could have used a little trauma?"
Given that this was the 1950s and the military, care was not exactly warm and fuzzy. Homosexuality was considered a mental illness, so gay men were held there, as were catatonics, those who failed at suicide and others.
Each essay is interesting, and my only quibble is his use of long, direct quotations from conversations held 59 years ago.
In one, he tried befriending, Billy, a bookish patient. Rockland could not comprehend why Billy was in the ward. Usually when people say they’re living on black coffee and cigarettes, they’re exaggerating. Billy wasn’t. Billy drank 60 cups of coffee a day and, not surprisingly, slept once every four or five nights. He smoked five or six packs of cigarettes a day.
Rockland was determined to help Billy and asked him to eat:
"You wanted to occasionally feel you had made progress with a patient – you weren't just his 'keeper.' And if I could do that with Billy, who I liked so much – perhaps even set him on the road to getting out of the ward – it would be especially satisfying."
Rockland anticipated seeing Billy on his next shift to find out what he finally ate. Razor blades. Billy told Rockland:
"I figured I might be a little anemic with just the coffee and cigarettes. Lots of iron in razor blades."
Michael Aaron Rockland's memoir of serving in the Navy, in Japan, between the Korean and Vietnam wars, is an engaging read.
In boot camp, the petty officer cursed and screamed at everyone:
"From what I'd seen thus far, the challenge would be in keeping the Navy from turning us into mice. I resolved there and then to put all emotions on hold indefinitely and not let the bastards get to me. Boot camp was like a cult. And I was damned if I would drink the Kool-Aid."
Like any book of essays, some stories are stronger than others. One Rockland is fond of, about living off base when his wife visited and how his landlord constantly invited them to dinner, is probably a very good family story. It does not translate as well here.
Others do, such as “Friendly Fire,” during which one of the patients crawled through the air ducts to the roof. Rockland eventually made his way to the patient, but also nearly died when the patient nearly hurled him off the roof.
The most touching moments are of Rockland trying. He tried to get through to patients when others didn’t seem to care. Toward the end, he writes about Andrew, a handsome guy who was catatonic.
Rockland had to feed, dress, shave and tend to the catatonics, but he thought that Andrew could be reached. He worked with him, tirelessly, just to get Andrew to say “socks” and then to put on socks. Andrew grasped the concept and finally talked again. He asked which sock to put on first. Rockland said it didn’t matter and Andrew retreated into the morass of his illness.
"Freedom is tricky. None would admit it, but there's often comfort in being told what to do rather than being given a choice."
Decades later, Rockland returned to Japan and toured the hospital. None of it was the same and neither was he, which is why he had the perspective to write a fine memoir.
Jacqueline Cutler: jacquelinecutler@verizon.net