The Rabbi (i) in Free Fire Zone (i)

from author Barney Currer and editors Wayne Karlin, Basil T. Paquet, and Larry Rottmann at 1st Casualty Press

“Even Sergeant Coates, who had originated the nickname, was not really sure why Lieutenant Rowan was staying in Vietnam. ‘Must be the money,’ he would say sometimes. ‘Goddam Rabbi…’”

So begins the next to last story in the first collection by soldiers returned to the United States from the Republic of Viet Nam (Karlin, Wayne, Basil T. Paquet, and Larry Rottman, eds., 1973).

There are three Marines as well, and an airman, overall 18 men and 4 officers. All wrote or photographed then at a professional level but only one, Wayne Karlin, has made a career as author of books.

Wayne is a Jew and an author about Jews. If Barney Currer, author of “The Rabbi” is we don’t learn it here.

Abraham Rowan, his lead character, wears a name out of Dogpatch rather than the Lower East Side. He is a graduate in literature from Dartmouth College.

Sergeant Coates calls him a Jew as was common at the time, my childhood, to characterize with prejudice Abe's care with money. It would have gone without saying were the lieutenant openly Jewish.

But perhaps Abe had assimilated, perhaps so completely that he does not know it. The story follows him out on his own, doing his duties but away from his soldiers, learning Vietnamese language and getting to know people.

Why, his final captain at last confronts him to ask, why do you keep extending your tour here among these people,

“‘Well why don’t you put in a transfer to an Advisory unit. They’re crying for Vietnamese-speaking officers. Then you’d really be helping them.’

‘I don’t want to “help” them, sir.’

‘’But you just said…’

‘I like them. I’m interested in them. But I don’t want to help them in the sense of…’ his voice trailed off. ‘It’s hard to explain, sir.’”

Indeed. The author Currer may or may not be a Jew. But he knows all about wandering, and trying to do the right thing among the other children of god.

The Rabbi is a Jewish story from Viet Nam.

The Rabbi, by Barney Currer, was the topic of the first of 8 Viet Nam letters on those which Wayne Karlin, Basil T. Paquet, and Larry Rottmann present in Free Fire Zone.

Next came a letter each on stories from Loyd Little on April 20, 2022, about Wayne’s own sketch on May 23, 2022, then 2 about Free Fire Zone in general on July 4 and on September 17, 2022,

then 2 on a story from James R. Dorris on December 3 and on December 6, 2022, and then a letter on May 25, 2023 about a story from James Aitken.