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Vietnam Veteran Visits Upper School English Class
Students in eleventh-grade English classes are required to read Tim O’Brien’s war novel The Things They Carried. In the book, O’Brien discusses his comrades from the Alpha Company during the Vietnam War and the things they brought along with them during their combat missions.
Some items were tangible, like matches, morphine, and M&Ms. Others carried intangibles, like fear and guilt.
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As a culminating experience for this novel study, Upper School English Instructor Michael Madron invited former United States Marine Frank Corcoran to speak to his class about his time in Vietnam during the war. Mr. Corcoran, a retired elementary school teacher with 20 years of classroom experience, led a discussion regarding elements from the novel and related the text to the realities of war as he experienced it in 1968.
As a member of the local chapter of Veterans for Peace, Mr. Corcoran has spoken to dozens of local schools about anti-war novels and poetry and facilitated interesting and important class discussions with many students. Echoing O’Brien’s key takeaway from his novel, Mr. Corcoran made the topic of his talk clear from the beginning: “My mission is to expose the lies that young people are sold that leads them down the path to war.” To that end, Corcoran not only addressed recruiting propaganda, but also the complex social pressures that young people are exposed to in modern American culture. “Just like O’Brien describes, many of us went to war because we were embarrassed not to,” Corcoran revealed.
As a member of the local chapter of Veterans for Peace, Mr. Corcoran has spoken to dozens of local schools about anti-war novels and poetry and facilitated interesting and important class discussions with many students. Echoing O’Brien’s key takeaway from his novel, Mr. Corcoran made the topic of his talk clear from the beginning: “My mission is to expose the lies that young people are sold that leads them down the path to war.” To that end, Corcoran not only addressed recruiting propaganda, but also the complex social pressures that young people are exposed to in modern American culture. “Just like O’Brien describes, many of us went to war because we were embarrassed not to,” Corcoran revealed.
Mr. Corcoran has revisited Vietnam many times, including living there for a year to act as a liaison/facilitator for American families involved in the adoption of Vietnamese children. On several of his visits, he delivered medical supplies to remote villages. Most recently, Mr. Corcoran was in Vietnam for the 50th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre.
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