W N Witzell

Cycles in the Heat W N Witzell

The year is 1971. President Richard Nixon has been promising a rapid wind-down of the Vietnam War for years. Yet day after day young men die and are maimed in battle. Ugly scenes of death, body bags, bloody wounded, and terrible confusion flow endlessly onto the TV screens of American homes. The nation agonizes, protests and seems ready to break apart. The draft churns on, the lottery a gimmick to divert American attention, while the war's terrible toll continues to mount. The 'losers' of the draft lottery wander off to graduate schools, secure jobs, and life unchanged. The 'winners' find themselves contemplating combat in a 'lost' war, taking induction physicals, and preparing to serve their country. Among those facing the reality of national service are two young men who eventually gain temporary draft deferments through service as American volunteers on an island in the Pacific. One, an accountant, is assigned to work as an economic policy adviser and labors to become effective in an arcane island bureaucracy. The other, a marine conservationist, finds himself at an agriculture station on a remote coast struggling to establish a turtle hatchery. Both are quickly overwhelmed by their environments as they deal with the inevitable difficulties of poor health, bad diet, exotic diseases, alcoholism, severe depression, and an overpowering island culture. Here are twenty-one edgy and often darkly humorous stories that capture their experiences, their demons, dreams, and the realities that plague them. These tales recreate the experiential gestalt of the 1970's post-WWII and Vietnam Pacific era, the tempo of the islands, and the cultural dysfunction existing between the young Americans who served and the Islanders who call the shores home.