The First Door Is the Final Exit by Timothy Kenneth O'Neil
This is an unsettling and powerful novel about the Vietnam war. Timothy O’Neil himself calls it a love story within a war story, but it’s less sanitized than that. The chapters devoted to the war are upsetting and often hard to read. O’Neil is a veteran, so he knows not to sugar-coat what happened back then.
The protagonist in The First Door Is the Final Exit is Winston, a 19-year-old musician with absolutely no urges to fight and kill, but he is drafted and must answer the call for his country.
His first wake-up experience is the cheering he and his fellow new recruits got when they landed in Vietnam. A raucous crowd of soldiers waving and applauding and laughing. What a welcome! Until Winston realizes these soldiers’ time here was over. They weren’t cheering their arrival; they wanted their seats on the Freedom Bird which would take them home. “From then on,” writes O’Neil, “there would be only memories and nightmares.”
THE EXPERIENCES IN THE BOOK ARE REAL AND TRAGIC
There are books about the war that forget about those left behind, but O’Neil does not forget. Winston’s fiancée and love of his life, Veronica, must navigate this new life full of worry and anticipation. While her friends giggle and strategize about boyfriends and fashion, Veronica is overcome with the loneliness and fear of losing the man she loves. It’s only a year, she comforts herself. She writes him letters and reads his over and over, aching and waiting and waiting. The chapters devoted to Veronica are almost a relief from the dirt and blood of Winston’s chapters, but Veronica is living her own special hell.
For Winston, it’s total immersion. The reality of war creeps into his soul. It’s hot and fetid, bloody and scary and incomprehensible. Here is where O’Neil’s writing is best. He was there. He remembers the friends blown up into pieces, blood seeping into the ground, last words gasped, the terror of the quiet and the darkness. It shows in these chapters.
O’NEIL’S DEPICTION IS NOT HOLLYWOOD ROMANCE
Winston and his buddies refer to back home as “the world” and O’Neil makes sure his readers don’t forget the strange juxtaposition of war and “the world.” At the end of each chapter that follows Winston, there are a few paragraphs to remind us. He references Woodstock, Altamont, Charles Manson and Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. He sandwiches in the introduction of the Pill, the Concorde, and the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil. He never lets his readers forget how much Winston and his soldier buddies are missing, how truly far away they are from their home and the epic happenings of the ’60s there.
O’Neil’s depiction of Vietnam is not Hollywood romance, but there are still the incredible bonds of friendship of wartime soldiers, the black humor, the clever shortcuts and bawdy nicknames. Soldiers pop open claymore mines to dig out the plastic explosive to heat up their rations, root through the pockets of the dead for treasures and souvenirs, cry out in their sleep, and teeter between heroism and cowardice. It’s real and it’s tragic, and one wonders how O’Neil and other veterans of hard combat sleep at night. Perhaps writing The First Door Is the Final Exit helped him put the worst memories to rest.
The First Door Is the Final Exit is available for purchase here.
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About Timothy O’Neil:
Timothy O’Neil, currently living outside of Washington, D.C., is working on his next novel: a murder mystery/psycho drama.
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