About the Play.

Someone asked, "Is this a play against the Vietnam War?" The answer has to be, "No." It happens that Jim Bury served in Vietnam, but apart from individual references and slides which make the action specific, the experience in the play is general and one suspects that a Roman soldier in garrison duty in England 100A.D. might have had similar thoughts.

Someone else asked, "Is this a play against war?" Again the answer must be, "No." The play is not propaganda for any particular interest, although there are references to politics and protest.

It is a play about a man, Jim Bury, who in 1967 was drafted into the U.S. forces, sent to Vietnam and who on March 31st 1968 was severely wounded by shrapnal. As Bury says at one point, "There's no way I can tell you, no way unless you've been there," and so the play is also about the theatre and ways (all finally inadequate) of trying to present a man's experience.

Jim Bury lives in Northern California. At present he is working on a farm and attending occasional classes at a state college. In 1967, along with many other young Americans he was drafted into the army and sent to serve in Vietnam A very personal irony which he is quick to point out is that he departed from America on 4th July. In Vietnam he served in communications. Shortly after his service began, his unit was bombarded by mortar shells. The head was blown off the Sergeant, the Captain was degutted, and his best friend had both his legs blown off. Bury was uninjured save for a minor scratch for which he won the purple heart. But the experience changed him. His attitude moved from one of accepting life as it came to a kind of fatalism. After nine months he was badly injured in a mortar attack and mustered out of the services.