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What makes a man commit unrequited acts of bravery on the battlefield? Larry Smith wrote a book to find out. Now, Beyond Glory, his interviews with Medal of Honor winners, has been adapted for the stage by award-winning actor Stephen Lang.
An interview by Pamela Renner
Longtime reporter and editor Larry Smith researched and authored his 2003 book of oral histories, Beyond Glory: Medal of Honor Heroes in Their Own Words, after a series of extensive and revealing interviews with men who served their country with acts of extreme selflessness on the battlefield. It's filled with the raw, honest oral histories of 23 veterans from three wars–World War II, Korea, and Vietnam–who have been awarded the nation's highest military tribute. Many are in their seventies and eighties now.
Not one of these men can be confused with an action movie version of a war hero. Their company includes a conscientious objector who worked as a medic during the battle of Okinawa, saving countless lives by lowering the wounded safely down a cliff; a former prisoner of war who withstood torture; and the first living African-American veteran to receive the medal, in 1997, more than a half-century after he fought in World War II with the segregated “Buffalo Soldiers” unit.
Actor Stephen Lang got wind of Smith's book because the two were basketball buddies, playing a regular pick-up game with friends. With the author's blessing, Lang adapted and starred in a one-man play–Beyond Glory–based on eight of the first-person chapters. It arrives at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre/Laura Pels Theatre on May 25, directed by Robert Falls. Author Larry Smith sat down with Front & Center to discuss his reflections on the real lives touched by the sacrifices and carnage of war.
FRONT & CENTER: What inspired you to begin working on the book?
LARRY SMITH: I was managing editor of Parade magazine, and we had done a couple of military stories. We were looking for a 4th of July angle in 2000, and we decided we'd talk to some Medal of Honor recipients and ask them what they felt about how folks ought to observe Independence Day. I ended up speaking to eight of these guys, from all over the country.
Folks who've been in combat are generally reluctant to talk about it, but these guys were extremely forthcoming. I couldn't stop talking with them. Fortuitously, that December, I retired, and I started putting this book together. There's a Medal of Honor Society that these guys are all part of, and, working through Colonel Harvey Barnum, I gained access to members of the Society. I ended up with 23 chapters, each one representing an individual.
What does it take to be a Medal of Honor recipient? Is it just that you were wounded in battle?
Oh no, Medal of Honor action has to be, most simply put, above and beyond the call of duty. It has to be witnessed and go through a chain of command. It's very, very difficult to receive the medal. Something like 70 percent of the Medal of Honor awards are given posthumously. There have been less than 4,000 awarded since Abraham Lincoln created the medal during the Civil War, and we've had millions of men and women in the service.
When you were working on the book, did you start to think of words like “heroism” or even “duty” in a different way?
I find war fascinating because it leads to wonderful stories. War itself is utterly repugnant. “Heroes” or “heroism” is a word that's made up by somebody to describe somebody else. Guys who perform heroic actions almost never think of themselves as heroic.
“Guys who perform heroic actions almost
never think of themselves as heroic.”
Wasn't it Hemingway who said in A Farewell to Arms that words like heroism, bravery, and courage just sounded hollow after you've been to the Front?
Yes. That's one of the best paragraphs ever written. In fact, I have it on file somewhere, and I've used it myself on occasion. Hemingway describes how all those fine sounding words and phrases become meaningless when you find out that war is really nasty, ugly, and terrible.
People ask me what these guys have in common. I say nothing. Some were jailbirds and some are Annapolis graduates. All types.
I read that you and Stephen Lang played basketball together, and you gave him an early copy of the book. Did you have any inkling that he might want to transform it into a live performance?
Our Sunday morning basketball game is up in Northern Westchester, and I've been playing with a group of guys for over 30 years. Stephen had been there several years; I knew he was an actor but I didn't pay much attention to it. It's one of those situations where you just meet to play and sweat, get greasy and go home. I brought a friend an advance copy one morning, and Lang asks, “What's that?”
“It's just a book Larry is doing about the Medal of Honor guys,” my friend says. Well, Stephen has done some interesting war roles, and he's interested in the military, and he took a look at it and asked if he could have one. So I had a copy sent to him, and not long after that we met over a bagel after basketball and talked about collaborating.
He had some different ideas at the outset, maybe having different actors come and read. I know he tinkered with it for a few months, and I think he felt so close to the material that he realized that he's really the best person for all the parts. Of course, I wanted to collaborate with him on putting it together, but there's a huge difference between writing a book and writing a play. The hard part was to take these eight chapters and boil each one down into a ten-minute segment. I had a hell of a time cutting my own stuff. So he ended up doing most of it himself. Almost all the words are from the book itself; he does some bridging here and there.
When you first saw Lang doing this material onstage, what was most striking about the way the stories were transformed?
One the most impressive things about Stephen was that in ten minutes he could characterize these guys so well and at the same time convey their story, their experiences.
Did the process of conducting these interviews and writing the book in any way open your eyes to the U.S. men and women who are currently overseas, waging wars in Iraq or Afghanistan?
It aroused in me a new respect for the folks who enlist in the military. It's an American tradition, really. I remember talking to kids from West Point, and I asked them why they did that. They said: “Sir, I want to serve my country, sir.” There's something in human nature that wants to serve something larger than ourselves. The unfortunate thing, from my standpoint, is that wars are put together by people who shouldn't be putting them together. You have something like Vietnam, or like Iraq, which shouldn't have happened in the first place, and here you have these wonderful young kids going out and getting killed, shot up and maimed, when they should be home playing basketball or chasing girls, or having a job. But, there you are. War has always been with us–looks like it always will be. It's appalling, but I think it's a fact of life.
Arts reporter Pamela Renner contributes to American Theatre, the “Goings on About Town” section of the New Yorker, and public radio's Weekend America.
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