In a war where anything could happen, even a storm that made electronics mess up while bodies piled, I still wonder how literature was affected. Many people write things like poems, lyrics, and even scripts for plays. People back then and even today look at literature everyday, and people pull out so much feelings. Every writing is written from events. They want to convey their feelings into words. The Vietnam War made people write sad, cringe-worthy, and sometimes scary things. The Vietnam War started in 1985, when Northern Vietnam began attacking Southern Vietnam over government issues. They had just become independent, and Northern Vietnam wanted to be a communist state. Southern Vietnam didn't really like that, thus a civil war started. Because the United States was and still is an anti-communist country, we decided that we should help the Southern Vietnam. In the beginning, the U.S were just giving a helping hand. They sent in only around 2,000 troops. By 1963, that number grew to 16,300, and to 536,000 in 1968. Around that time, the U.S. elected a new president. This president started pulling troops out of Vietnam. This left a big weight on Southern Vietnam's back. In 1973, Southern Vietnam surrendered and Vietnam reunited. In the end, there were 60,000 American death's and around 2 million Vietnamese deaths.
One poet from the Vietnam War was Bruce Weigl. Bruce Weigl was born in 1949 and was a poet, Bruce was an English professor before he later joined the army. Bruce had a first hand experience in the Vietnam war. He wrote a well written poem called, "Song of Napalm". The poem showed a shocking scene in the form of poetry. He went on to explain in detail some things that were experienced. It was clearly a horrific incident, because he sees it when he closes his eyes, "Still I close my eyes and see the girl running from her village, napalm stuck to her dress like jelly." This sentence stood out to me.