The Forever War

Potter enters the narrative as acting corporal in charge of Mandella’s platoon during training exercises. From the start, it is apparent that Potter doesn’t relish her leadership role. When she tries to remind Sergeant Cortez that they can take more than one Tauran prisoner alive, implying that they spare as many as possible, he relieves her of her command. She acknowledges the demotion, and “[t]he relief in her voice was unmistakable” (67). What starts as a casual sexual relationship with Mandella soon grows into genuine affection. Potter’s empathy toward the creatures they encounter and her instinctual aversion to killing give her and Mandella common cause. The stress and trauma of combat bring them ever closer, their intimacy both a coping strategy and a release valve. Mandella doesn’t appreciate the depth of his feelings for Potter until she is nearly killed in a malfunctioning acceleration shell. The possibility of losing her draws his feelings out into the open.

For all her empathy, Potter is a hardy soldier. She weathers near death and the loss of her arm with the same aplomb as Mandella. During their brief time on her parents’ farm, she doesn’t shy from physical labor, and even when her father is killed and her mother mortally wounded, she has the presence of mind to defend their home and kill the “jumpers.” Potter’s love for Mandella reaches across both time and space. After they are separated, she comes up with an ingenious plan to reunite with him. By using her ample back pay to purchase a starship, she is able to use its hyperspeed as a time machine to remain young while she awaits his return. With no guarantee that he will ever find her or that he will still be young himself, she offers herself as either lover or nurse so long as they can reunite. 

The quintessential, tough-as-nails drill sergeant, Cortez serves as a narrative archetype as well as a foil for Mandella. Few war stories are complete without the scowling sergeant whipping the troops into shape. Haldeman’s own military experience lends authenticity to the character and suggests that he is more than a cliché. In the heat of battle, the discipline that Cortez has instilled into his troops likely saves lives. He is a leader without the qualms of Potter or Mandella. As such, he understands that second guessing decisions will hinder efficiency and possibly cost lives. There is, however, a sadistic streak running through him. He longs to kill as many Taurans as possible, seeing them as nothing more than the enemy: “I don’t understand anybody who wants to spare them’” (68), he tells his troops after Potter suggests restraint. He also triggers the post-hypnotic suggestion that sends his platoon into a killing frenzy. Cortez is, above all else, a career military man. His world is the chain of command and a strict adherence to it. Flexibility and openness are not part of his lexicon, and rules are meant to be obeyed without question. 

Stott, a decorated veteran of past conflicts, is Mandella’s first commanding officer. Like Cortez, he is career military and enforces military protocol. Unlike Cortez, however, he does not fight alongside the grunts; rather, he commands them from a distance. While the troops may resent Cortez’s hardline discipline, they grudgingly respect his authority. They understand that, in the heat of battle, his knowledge and experience may get them out alive. Stott, on the other hand, garners no such respect. Mandella dislikes him intensely. As part of the bureaucracy, Stott sees his recruits as cannon fodder, just so many bodies to be tossed into the intergalactic meat grinder: “Then I remembered how I had felt about Captain Stott that first mission, when he’d elected to stay safely in orbit while we fought on the ground. The rush of remembered hate was so strong I had to bite back nausea” (240). He doesn’t see morale boosting as a high priority, choosing to denigrate and punish the soldiers over a failure rather than focusing on the positive. When Mandella’s platoon survives a mock battle simulation, Stott damns them with faint praise: “You did fairly well today. Nobody killed, and I expected some to be” (30). When Mandella is promoted to major, he is naturally inclined to cut his troops some slack, but that tendency may also be a response to his time serving under Stott. Mandella wants to be a different kind of officer, and for him that means being as anti-Stott as possible. 

Margay Potter’s parents, like many of the characters in The Forever War, exist on two levels: as narrative elements designed to move the story forward and as a platform for social commentary. On a narrative level, Richard and April’s farm provides a temporary refuge for Mandella and Margay when the stress and battle fatigue become overwhelming. Although the work is long and hard, Mandella feels rejuvenated by it. Compared to the dangers of interstellar combat, plowing a field in the fresh air is a virtual paradise. However, the harsh reality of Earth life intrudes soon after when a gang of marauders attacks the farm and kills Richard and April. This scene of violence, juxtaposed against the idyllic farm setting, is a shocking wake-up call and one of the final motivations that push Mandella and Margay back to the army.

On another level, Richard and April represent the hippie subculture of the 1960s. The back-to-the-Earth movement was a direct response to what the hippies saw as both the toxic industrialization and the rigid conformity of the 1950s. Living on communes where everything—food, chores, sex—was shared without the capitalist culture of private ownership, those in the movement imagined a new path forward for American society. Haldeman implies a dark side to the movement, however. Many members of Haldeman’s communes are prisoners, trapped into forced labor as an alternative to prison. The image of Richard Potter, communal farmer, sitting in a watchtower with a loaded rifle is striking indeed. With the Potters’ brutal massacre, Haldeman suggests the hippie movement wasn’t the paradise its devotees aspired to, and perhaps even the communal philosophy underlying it was corrupt from the start. 

Like Richard and April Potter, Mandella’s mother, Beth, represents a bridge between Earth’s pre-war past and its present. Living in a high-rise apartment on the outskirts of Washington, DC, Beth proves remarkably adaptive to the harsh new living conditions on Earth. She never leaves home without a bodyguard. She encourages her son to do the same, or to carry a loaded weapon. She is nonchalant about the crime, the job market, and the food rationing, seeing it as simply her new reality. She is even resigned to her own death when her “priority rating” is not high enough to provide her life-saving care. Living in these conditions day to day even gives her a greater tolerance for sexual fluidity—her roommate, Rhonda, is occasionally her lover. It’s a level of tolerance her son is reluctant to embrace. When Mandella is shocked, Rhonda chastises his outdated mores, saying of her relationship with Beth, “It’s perfectly normal. A lot has changed these twenty years. You’ve got to change too” (146). Also, like the Potters, Beth’s death provides the final incentive that drives Mandella back to military service. Haldeman uses her life and death not only as plot points but as opportunities for some wry observation. Everything changes, he suggests—the way we live, love, and even die. Change is inevitable, and it’s a waste of time and energy to fight it. Beth’s life is a case study in social and cultural flexibility.

As Major Mandella’s executive officer, Moore is both Mandella’s friend and his military advisor. The two are just as likely to share a drink as they are strategic advice. Mandella allows a certain amount of insubordination from Moore because, in the absence of Margay, he needs a friend. Moore and Mandella are nearly always on the same page, tactically and philosophically. Mandella respects Moore’s advice even when he doesn’t abide by it. They only disagree about Mandella’s reluctance to assert his command authority. When Mandella refuses to execute Private Graubard for his assassination attempt, Moore becomes angry, implying that showing mercy is tantamount to weakness. When Mandella leaves the safety of the base during the final battle with the Taurans, he sees it as a noble gesture, “tak[ing] the same chance as everybody else” (240), but Moore sees it as a foolish risk. Moore, with a clear gauge of the soldiers’ emotional barometer, fears Mandella’s own troops, not the enemy, will rise up in mutiny and kill him. Both Moore and Lieutenant Hilleboe understand this, but Mandella, sequestered in his office with his maps and paperwork, has no idea. In that sense, Mandella is little better than Stott, and Moore, like a good XO, pulls his commander out of his ivory tower and plants his feet firmly on the ground.