Born on the Fourth of July: The Long Journey Home

Editor's Note: Ron Kovic served two tours of duty during the Vietnam War. He was paralyzed from the chest down in combat in 1968 and has been in a wheelchair ever since. Along with Oliver Stone, Kovic was the co-screenwriter of the 1989 Academy Award-winning film based on his book, Born on the Fourth of July (Akashic Books). The following is the introduction to the new edition of the book.

It was exactly forty years ago this past September that I left my house in Massapequa, New York to join the United States Marine Corps and begin an extraordinary journey that was to lead me into a disastrous war which would change my life, and others of my generation, profoundly and forever. There are times in the lives of both individuals and nations when we cross certain thresholds where there is no going back, no return to the innocence we once knew; the change is utter and irreconcilable. We often sense these moments. I know I did that day.

I can still remember leaving my house that morning, saying goodbye to my mother, my father driving me down to the Long Island Railroad station with only a few words being said between us--Dad was always that way--and then that long and contemplative ride into the city, being sworn in at Whitehall Street, holding my right hand up proudly with all the other young men, taking the oath of enlistment, and swearing our allegiance to the Constitution of the United States.

The fall of 1964, September 2, a lifetime ago. That last bright and beautiful morning when everything was to change forever, that last moment of lighthearted innocence and youth, of Massapequa and the backyard before the shock, the chaos, and the deluge. I had just turned eighteen that summer, and there are some old black-and-white photographs of me from those days. It's amazing that I still have them, considering I have misplaced them many times over the years, thinking them lost forever, only to later find them in some unexpected place, like a deeply disturbing dream that I have been trying to repress.

I remember seeing those photos on several occasions after I came home from Vietnam and each time having terrible nightmares that shook me badly. I couldn't look at them, could not face that young man I had been before the war and my injury. I would always promise myself to never look at them again. My trauma was still very deep, and that beautiful boy, that body, had been destroyed, defiled, and savaged. My wounding in Vietnam both physically and emotionally haunted me, pursued me, and threatened to overwhelm me.

I wrote Born on the Fourth of July in the fall of 1974 in one month, three weeks, and two days, on a $42 manual typewriter I had bought at Sears & Roebuck in Santa Monica, California. It was like an explosion, a dam bursting, everything flowed beautifully, just kept pouring out, almost effortlessly, passionately, desperately. I worked with an intensity and fury as if it was my last will and testament, and in many ways I felt it was. I continued to suffer from nightmares, constant anxiety attacks, severe heart palpitations, and a powerful, almost obsessive feeling that I would not live past my thirtieth birthday. I was living each day as if it were my last, as if everything had been compressed together by the war, and now every second counted.

I wrote all night long, seven days a week, single space, no paragraphs, front and back of the pages, pounding the keys so hard the tips of my fingers would hurt. I couldn't stop writing, and I remember feeling more alive than I had ever felt. Convinced that I was destined to die young, I struggled to leave something of meaning behind, to rise above the darkness and despair.

I wanted people to understand. I wanted to share with them as nakedly and openly and intimately as possible what I had gone through, what I had endured. I wanted them to know what it really meant to be in a war--to be shot and wounded, to be fighting for my life on the intensive care ward--not the myth we had grown up believing. I wanted people to know about the hospitals and the enema room, about why I had become opposed to the war, why I had grown more and more committed to peace and nonviolence.