Word: viet
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...Stones lived in Manhattan town houses and Stamford, Conn., homes; Oliver went to Manhattan's tony Trinity School and the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa.; he summered with his maternal grandparents and spoke French before he learned English. (From Viet Nam, Oliver would write his grandmother versions of the letters that Chris reads in Platoon.) At five he composed skits for a marionette show, casting his French cousins in the parts. At seven he wrote stories. To earn a quarter for a Classic comic book, he would write a theme each week for his father. And at nine he started...
...mold. Then I read Lord Jim. Conrad's world was exotic and lush; it exercised a tremendous allure for me." It also propelled Oliver into a teaching job at a Chinese Catholic school in a Saigon suburb. It was 1965, the year a half million Yank soldiers landed in Viet Nam, and Stone was 18 years old. "I woke up in Asia," he says, "and it became an orphan home for me. It was everything I thought it would be: the heat, the green seas, the bloodred sunsets. In Saigon, the G.I.s from the 1st Infantry Division were just arriving...
...felt the solution was total anonymity. I had to atone. So I joined the Army. They'd cut my hair, and I'd be a number. To me the American involvement was correct. My dad was a cold warrior, and I was a cold-war baby. I knew that Viet Nam was going to be the war of my generation, and I didn't want to miss it. I must say, my timing was impeccable." If the young man had failed as Rimbaud, he might make it as Rambo...
Nope. "My first day in Viet Nam," Stone says, "I realized, like Chris in Platoon, that I'd made a terrible mistake. It was on-the-job training: Here's your machete, kid; you cut point. You learn if you can, and if not you're dead. Nobody was motivated, except to get out. Survival was the key. It wasn't very romantic." Each of the three combat units he served in was divided into antagonistic groups, as in the film: "On one side were the lifers, the juicers ((heavy drinkers)) and the moron white element. Guys like Sergeant Barnes...
Most of Platoon's starkest events come from Stone's backpack of Viet Nam memories. "I saw the enemy for the first time on my first night ambush," he recalls, "and I froze completely. Thank God the guy in the next position saw them and opened up. The ensuing fire fight was very messy. I was wounded in the back of the neck -- an inch to the right and I'd have been dead -- and the guy next to me had his arm blown off." He emptied his rifle clip at a man's feet, as Charlie does...