Someone Else's War

Phil Davis, Gary Burdelski, and Urban Forster are roommates at Pioneer College in Pennsylvania. It is 1966. The Vietnam War is raging and anti-war sympathies are brewing. Yet Davis has few worries; he is the starting quarterback and holds thousands of dollars of gambling IOU’s from the faculty. Only girlfriend Pam Fahey’s constant questions about commitment keeps Davis from enjoying the perfect college experience.

Along with Monica Mumford, Forster forms the Pioneer College chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. Burdelski, infatuated with Monica (who despises him), is drawn into plans for an anti-war protest, but the demonstration fizzles when the sound system goes haywire and nobody even gets arrested. So Monica torches the ROTC building and implicates Burdelski for the deed. Although there is no evidence to convict them, Pioneer’s Dean of Students – a regular loser at Davis’ poker table – sees the opportunity to get off the hook. All three are kicked out of school and quickly find themselves in Vietnam.

Mission after fearful mission deposit the three young men into an abyss of despair, interrupted only when they are captured by Viet Cong and tortured in unusual ways. Back in the states, news of Davis’ MIA status plummets Pam Fahey into a similar abyss. When an American attack wipes out the entire village, the three Americans and their Viet Cong captors Tuan Tek and Kee Loc are the only survivors. Drained of their will to fight, they join together to build a recreational facility, CHIMERA, essentially a Club Med in Cambodia. Pam flies in from Pennsylvania and proves a valuable accomplice in the forgeries, bribes, and incriminating photos which enable the club to be built.

Soldiers from all sides become members, then become teammates on baseball teams or in bridge tournaments, then become friends. And as national distinctions are forgotten and disillusionment with the fighting continues to grow, so too does the membership of Chimera. Soon, so many men are vacationing at the camp that fighting deteriorates to virtually nothing. Reported casualties are embarrassingly low, so chickens and dogs are added in. Finally, both the American and North Vietnamese commands figure out what is happening, and Operation Sanctus Guerre (“The Sanctity of War”) is launched. Its purpose: To eliminate the army's unrelenting foe — the ugly specter of peace.

Combined American and North Vietnamese forces attack Chimera, while camp forces (consisting of Americans, North Vietnamese, and South Vietnamese) try to defend their stronghold of peace. Davis cannot ignore the irony of the situation, but by the end of the day, it is clear that Chimera is finished. Yet a fateful reunion with an angry American Colonel leads to a tragic ending.