From the WSJ Opinion Archives
WONDER LAND
Faith and Fiber
One man's play about the Medal of Honor transcends politics.
The American people may have "Iraq fatigue," but that doesn't mean they've stopped paying attention. A few days ago, the Gallup/USA Today poll reported that, over the past four weeks, belief that the extra troops in Iraq were "making the situation better" rose to 31% from 22%. The percentage who say the new troops don't matter dropped to 41% from 51%. Somehow people have found their way to reports that Gen. Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy is toting up gains on the ground.
Here in the U.S., any such news a half-world away from the troops in Iraq will be processed immediately into the chopped meat of our politics. Example: If the Iraq commitment turns steadily positive, the Democratic leadership's domestic antiwar strategy may leave the party's candidates on thin ice as they slip and slide toward the primary season. This ensures that the war, the one in the U.S., will be fought with recrimination and accusation.
Imagine the surprise, then, when the most cathartic experience I've had recently in matters of war or peace was seeing a stage play about . . . war.
The play is "Beyond Glory," written and performed by Stephen Lang at the Roundabout Theater in New York. In barest outline, Mr. Lang, who originated the role of the accused Marine colonel in the Broadway production of "A Few Good Men," brings to life eight recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor from World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Without interruption for 80 minutes, Mr. Lang recreates eight different men, who relate the hellish events that earned them the Medal of Honor. As described recently by Journal theater critic Terry Teachout, this is "acting of the highest imaginable quality, a performance that will sear its way into your mind and linger there forever after." An understatement.
After seeing "Beyond Glory" the first time a month ago, curiosity sent me to the Web to learn more. New York theatergoers normally would expect to wait 'til Manhattan turned red for a play about the Medal of Honor. And as always, you're waiting for the inevitable footlight political lecture. Never came. Stephen Lang plays it straight. No "message." In a conversation about the play last weekend, Mr. Lang said this play's about "humility."
So how did this happen? What emerged from the effort to reverse-engineer "Beyond Glory" were so many "good news" stories, all tied to the subject few want to think about nowadays--war--that one hardly knows where to begin. The beginning itself was just luck.
Several years ago Mr. Lang came across a new book by a suburban New York basketball buddy, Larry Smith. A former managing editor of Parade magazine, Mr. Smith had managed to draw forth first-hand oral histories from 24 recipients of the Medal of Honor, an astonishing feat given the traditional reluctance of veterans to talk about the details of combat experience. So for starters there was this fine book, published in 2003 by W.W. Norton, called "Beyond Glory."
Stephen Lang transformed eight of them into dramas to tell out loud. The play, "Beyond Glory," opened in 2004 on the edge of Arlington Cemetery, at a small theater inside the Women in Military Service Memorial. Some nights only three people showed up. He played on. Then he got a strong review, and lots of people started attending. One was a program director at the National Endowment for the Arts, Jon Peede.
Mr. Peede had been asked to direct a new NEA program called Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience. Its intention was to help soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, or their families, to put their experiences into writing--fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The idea was suggested to NEA Chairman Dana Gioia, a poet, by Connecticut poet Marilyn Nelson, who'd recently served as a visiting writer at West Point. Good for the poets.
Reluctant to wait years for Congressional funding or to divert money from other NEA programs, Chairman Gioia sought private funding for Operation Homecoming. Quietly, the Boeing Company stepped up, ultimately giving $1.2 million. The soldiers' tutors at NEA's workshops included writers such as Barry Hannah, Tobias Wolff, Mark Bowden, Victor Davis Hanson and Tom Clancy. The result is a book, "Operation Homecoming" (Random House), which--again some understatement--is breathtakingly good.
One of the chanted mantras of our time is, "But I support the troops." Terrific. Now read "Operation Homecoming" to find out who they are, what they think, feel, want, have learned, won and lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stand in a bookstore and start with chapter five, "This Is Not a Game."
But we're ahead of the story. Jon Peede told Chairman Gioia he'd just seen a pretty amazing play about Medal of Honor recipients that would make a nice fit with "Operation Homecoming." Result: Stephen Lang was able to put the Medal of Honor's reality in front of soldier audiences all over the world--in Europe, at Pearl Harbor, the DMZ in Korea and of course in the Middle East, memorably aboard the aircraft carrier USS Vinson in the Persian Gulf.
He performed on the Vinson three times in a day, losing 10 pounds. Two shows were done on the flight deck, each time before 500 to 600 sailors. In the evening he did it in a smaller room for about 100 officers. Some wept.
Here's why one person wept at "Beyond Glory." I didn't know who the eight MoH soldiers and Marines were the first time I saw the play. The fourth man portrayed is Adm. James Stockdale. In the 1980s, I worked with Jim Stockdale (and later met him several times) to shape a long, remarkable feature that he wrote for The Wall Street Journal on the meaning of his seven years as a prisoner during Vietnam at Hoa Lo, the Hanoi Hilton.
Stephen Lang, using Stockdale's words, revealed the reality of Hoa Lo prison--the torture known as "the ropes," the years in isolation, the ruined but never-broken man. When Stockdale/Lang slits his wrists to avoid being "taken down," and describes why, it is unbearable.
Last Saturday after he'd finished the matinee performance (the play closes a week from Sunday), I asked Stephen Lang: You've now spent several years with these eight guys; what do you think "Beyond Glory" is about. "For the longest time," he said, "I couldn't give it a name. I finally concluded that what binds these men is faith and fiber." Pretty simple. Faith and fiber.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Thursdays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
