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By Frank Zeller, Agence France-Presse
HANOI: Talisman, tool, keepsake, weapon—the
Zippo lighter was a daily companion for US soldiers fighting in
Vietnam, who used it for everything from lighting up marijuana
joints to burning down villages.
An American icon, the tough metal lighter with
the distinctive click became a symbol of death and destruction, but
also a canvas onto which GIs engraved their thoughts and feelings,
ranging from the profane to the profound.
At roadside stalls in the former Saigon,
soldiers had their lighters emblazoned with combat slogans and
social protest, peace signs and marijuana leaves, rock lyrics,
Biblical psalms, cartoons and sex scenes.
Some mottos reflected wartime bravado, such as
“Army lifers never die, they go to hell and regroup.” Others
reflected antiwar sentiment, such as “When the power of love
overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”
Taken together, the Zippos are a collage of the
1960s and 70s conflict when war rained death on Vietnam even as the
peace movement and the “Summer of Love” counterculture spilled
into US army bases in the conflict zone.
Californian artist Bradford Edwards, who
describes himself as a Zippo fanatic, started buying the battered
lighters 15 years ago, drawn by their dark symbolism and a style
that makes them at once pop art and military artifact.
“The engravings are like tattoos on a
stainless steel-plated brass lighter that happens to be an American
icon,” the 53-year-old artist said.
“It’s trench art. The soldiers put these
sentiments and ideas and longings on their lighters. It reflects
what those soldiers are going through, the good the bad, the joyous
and the tragic.”
More than 60 engraved lighters from Edwards’
collection have been photographed for the book “Vietnam
Zippo—American Soldiers’ Engravings and Stories 1965-1973"
by Sherry Buchanan.
Synonymous with burning
“The themes of the period are all there,
reflecting the Zeitgeist and the sensitivities of the 60s and 70s,
the dominant images of that time,” said Edwards, sitting in a cafe
near his Hanoi studio.
Some mottos were used many times, such as this
adaptation of a Biblical psalm: “Yea though I walk through the
valley of the jungle of death, I will fear no evil for I am the
evilest son of a bitch in the valley.”
Some are grimly comic, such as: “If you got
this off my dead ass I hope it brings you the same luck it brought
me.”
Others, such as “Napalm sticks to kids,”
reflect the sheer horror of the war, or the anger at having to fight
it: “We are the unwilling led by the unqualified doing the
unnecessary for the ungrateful.”
“As the conflict got bogged down and as there
was a chorus of dissent, there were people in the military that
basically joined that voice,” said Edwards.
The Zippo itself became infamous when a 1965
television news report showed US Marines on a search-and-destroy
mission setting bamboo huts ablaze.
“Zippo came to be used as a noun but also a
verb—to Zippo a village,” said Edwards. “The flame thrower
trucks and the portable flame throwers were also referred to as
Zippos.’Zippoing’ became synonymous with burning.”
Edwards, the son of a Vietnam War pilot, has
reproduced Zippos in lacquerware, oil, metal etching,
mother-of-pearl, stone carving, graphite drawing, silver leaf and
photography.
He says he is no war junkie and understands
Vietnam is a country, not a war, and an inspiring one as that.
“I’m here to make artwork,” said Edwards,
who has lived in Vietnam on and off for around 15 years.
“I actually do a lot more artwork on the
dynamic of contemporary Vietnam. It’s the spirit of the people,”
he said. “It’s the speed of recovery and how rapidly adaptable
the Vietnamese are, and how today you have to be almost diligent to
find much evidence of the war.”
Genuine Vietnam war Zippos have almost
disappeared from Vietnam’s streets although fakes are widely sold,
said Edwards, who estimates he has handled about 100,000 of the
lighters over the years.
“Now I’ve kicked the habit,” he said. “I
haven’t bought a Zippo since 2001.”
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