After reviewing Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War on his website (2010), Andrew Liptak concludes that the novel, despite its plot, isn’t military science fiction.  It’s not a “good romp with powered armor and shooting” that focuses on ordinance or military theory.  There are several parallels with Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein.  Haldeman and Heinlein focus on first-person characters involved in wartime activities, Heinlein’s Johnny Rico against the Bugs, and Haldeman’s William Mandella against the Taurans.  Also, both integrate future technologies, armored war suits, and other military advances.  However, Haldeman says his novel isn’t a reaction to Starship Troopers, which he felt was well-crafted and honest, although he disagreed with how it glorified war.  Influenced by Heinlein?  Sure, but not reacting to him.

I partially disagree with Liptak’s assertion.  Haldeman indeed did craft a war novel, just not a traditional one filled with gung-ho and boo-yah.  Instead, Haldeman uses his experiences from Vietnam, offering a statement about war’s futility, the emotional effects on soldiers, and the overall sense that good and evil aren’t so clearly defined.  Writing for The Guardian (April 14, 2011), Sam Jordison takes these themes one step deeper, homing in on one particular military experience, coming home from war, and asserts that Haldeman infuses his personal experiences from Vietnam into Mandella’s narrative:

Like so many others, Haldeman was conscripted against his will, plunged into horror, wounded and dropped back into a society that now felt alien to him. The Forever War is a clear attempt to come to terms with that experience – even if it’s set light years away. In 1997, the novel’s hero William Mandella (a near anagram of the author’s full name Joe William Haldeman) becomes one of the first batch of recruits sent into the far reaches of space to do battle with a clone-based species called The Taurans.

Society felt alien because Einsteinian time dilation alters the course of time for Mandella and his colleagues.  They fight battles on distant worlds reached through collapsars, which slow time considerably for them.  Through the novel’s progression, years pass for Mandella while hundreds of years pass in real space.  Jordison continues describing this phenomenon and how it relates to coming home:

[Mandella] hates fighting – but finds the return to earth even more upsetting. Only two years have passed for him, but thanks to a quirk of relativity and the fact that he’s been travelling near the speed of light, a full decade has passed on earth. He can’t fit in. It’s too violent, too many customs have changed (even his mother has adopted the kind of homosexual relationship encouraged by authorities eager to control the population) and too few people understand what he has gone through.

The above refers to Mandella’s first return home during a section Haldeman calls “You Can Never Go Back,” but that Ben Bova thought was too negative for inclusion into the version that first appeared in Analog.  Later, Ted White would publish it in Amazing, and in 1991 this portion became included in what Haldeman feels is the definitive version of The Forever War.

Mandella returns after a decade has passed back home to find that the population has exploded so sharply that homosexuality is promoted to control birth rates. Crime is soaring so many employ bodyguards even for simple trips to the market.  Food has become so limited that governments have converted economies to ones based on caloric currencies.  Eventually, Mandella winds up living with Marygay Potter, his fellow soldier and love interest, and her family in a remote commune.  After the brutal deaths of Marygay’s family and the death of his mother, Mandella and Marygay opt to re-enlist, earning promotions to lieutenant, sort of a reenlistment bonus.  They had been adamant about not re-signing, but they couldn’t adjust back into the world.

Mandella and Marygay are promoted to majors and are separated into different areas of conflict, and when the war finally ends, they return to Earth again, now during 3143, quite a span from when they first left in 1997.  Humanity has evolved into clones of a single individual collectively called man.  Although only a few years had passed for Mandella, the war, which lasted 1,143 years, had ended 221 years ago.  What to do with soldiers returning home so far out of time and culture?  After describing the cloning process and how humankind operates, Man explains Mandella’s options:

There are some planets, however, on which humans are born in the normal, mammalian way.  If my society is too alien for you, you go to one of these planets.  If you wish to take part in procreation, I will not discourage it.  Many veterans ask me to change their polarity to heterosexual so that they can more easily fit into these other societies.  This I can do very easily. (260)

Mandella and Marygay opt for Middle Finger, a planet set up under the standards Man outlined, and continue with their lives.

So, the coming home experience plays an important thematic role throughout The Forever War, and we remember that Sam Jordison asserted that Haldeman is attempting to “come to terms with that experience.”  I can’t speak directly about Haldeman’s experiences coming home, but a sizeable body of recollections exists online that features Vietnam veterans describing their experiences.  How do these measure up with Mandella’s despite Haldeman’s presenting them through a fantastical science-fiction lens?

Arguably, the most prominent attempt at cataloging Vietnam veterans’ coming-home experiences is Bob Greene’s Homecoming: When the Soldiers Returned From Vietnam (1989).  After hearing stories about people spitting on returning veterans, Greene asked via his newspaper column: “Were you spat upon when you returned from Vietnam?”  He wanted to know if these stories were true or myths, and he wanted “approximate dates, places, and circumstances.”  He tells us what happened next:

The response was astonishing. From every section and corner of the country, well over a thousand people took the time to sit down, put their thoughts on paper, and tell me what happened when they returned to the United States from Vietnam. Virtually no one sent a letter with a simple confirmation or denial of being spat upon; the letters were long, sometimes rambling, invariably gripping essays on what it felt like to come back home after that war. These are the stories — some shocking, many disturbing, some loving — that I have compiled in Homecoming.

I’m quoting the above from an article Greene wrote for Deseretnews.com that includes examples of the responses he received.  These were not monolithic, of course.  Greene separated the letters veterans sent him into sections from those who had been spat upon and those who hadn’t.  A third section, then, records those who were shown kindness upon returning home.  Beyond spitting, veterans described insults, bullying, and other unkind acts. Interested readers can find Greene’s article here.

On Ranker.com (2019), Melissa Sartore lists several narratives from veterans relating not only occurrences similar to Greene’s respondents but also emotional turmoil.  I’ll share a couple that caused me to reflect upon William Mandella’s fictional situation, whether or not they jibed with his reality:

• Michael Ball, a 21-year old veteran from Midland, Michigan, found himself in what Life magazine called “limbo.” Reporter John Olson did a profile on Ball in 1971, detailing the struggles he faced upon his return. Ball bought a car when he got back to the United States with the $3,000 he saved in Vietnam. With half of the money going to “the down payment on the car… monthly insurance, rent, school bills, beer and food soon ate up the rest.” Ball’s “$175 a month under the GI Bill for school tuition and expenses, and another $46 disability for [a hurt] knee and bad nerves” didn’t “cover his expenses.” Unable to find a job after eight months, he was left with his past dreams and a new existence defined by Vietnam sapping him of “the potential for making new plans and having dreams.”
• David Perry had a different reaction after seeing how his fellow Americans treated returning veterans. He recalled walking through the airport in 1969 in California after his first tour: “Man, my chest was puffed out. I was proud of my service in Vietnam . . . I thought to myself, all the people I saw get hurt, all the people I saw [lose their lives] was all for nothing. At that moment I was not really proud of my country. After that I did not have much respect for our government for many years because they let that happen to us.”

Michael Ball’s limbo mirrors William Mandella’s before he and Marygay decided to re-enlist at the end of “You Can Never Go Back.”  Like Ball, Mandella has back pay, albeit exceptionally more given that time dilation expanded his time served so mightily.  Still, inflation made Mandella’s pay not so abundant.  Mandella does, however, struggle with his mother’s latent homosexuality, changes with the monetary economy, and how aggressive society has become, until finally deciding to re-enter the military.

Unlike David Perry, Mandella feels no pride in his wartime associations.  He doesn’t puff out his chest.  Instead, throughout the novel he illustrates how authorities use hypnotic techniques to increase bellicosity among the troops.  And when he elevates to major, he undergoes conditioning that rapidly “inserts” military knowledge and skill into his psyche — quite inhumane and dehumanizing by most standards.  Both Perry and Mandella do lose respect for their governments springing from having witnessed people losing their lives for nothing.

Finally, on USWings.com, SFC (Ret) David Hack posts the following statistics:

• Vietnam Veterans represented 9.7% of their generation.
• They have a lower unemployment rate than the same non-vet age groups.
• Their personal income exceeds that of our non-veteran age group by more than 18 percent.
• 87% of Americans hold Vietnam Veterans in high esteem.
• There is no difference in drug usage between Vietnam Veterans and non-Vietnam Veterans of the same age group (Source: Veterans Administration Study).
• Vietnam Veterans are less likely to be in prison – only one-half of one percent of Vietnam Veterans have been jailed for crimes.
• 85% of Vietnam Veterans made successful transitions to civilian life.
• 97% of Vietnam Veterans were honorably discharged.
• 91% of Vietnam Veterans say they are glad they served.

Hack doesn’t offer much about how he gathered these numbers, but they paint a different picture than imagery about spat-upon souls painfully striving to reintegrate back into “the world.”  I could conclude that there were many responses to returning home depending on individual outlook and perspective.  I will conclude, however, by outlining my non-veteran encounters with those dealing with these issues.

Over my decades being a suicide-prevention counselor, I’ve encountered many returned soldiers struggling with PTSD, long-term physical disability, and mental distress.  Hack’s findings don’t mean we should ignore those not finding their landing gear – we should honor them and help them.  I wonder if many would jump at the chance for relocation to Haldeman’s Middle Finger or some similar world because though they lived through no physical time dilation like Mandella and his colleagues, they did encounter an emotional time dilation from having been out of the world, one which kept moving while they were serving in-country.  So much changes over so little time.  When I returned from nearly three years serving in Peace Corps Ukraine, I required nine months to fully integrate, or rather adapt, to what greeted me.  The economic crisis of 2008 left me with extended unemployment, important friends had moved past associating with me, and even smartphones had proliferated.  So, for nine months I waded through crises until finally reestablishing myself.

But, you know what? No one was shooting at me.  I was not witnessing friends killed daily.  No one was shooting at me. So what happened to me most assuredly was less intense than what individuals coming home from Vietnam or other war venues might endure.  This is what Haldeman so deftly portrays, and while The Forever War doesn’t fulfill Andrew Liptak’s conceptions about military novels, it gives us a symbolic representation of another layer, an unglorified stratum that enlightens readers and hopefully inspires compassion for any not-so-fortunate to fall into Hack’s statistical catchment.  War is Hell.  Let’s never forget that.