Just Surrender

One page synopsis

It’s 1968 and John Kurek, the bright but reclusive son of Polish migrants, has been conscripted to serve in Vietnam. As the ‘man of the house’ since his alcoholic father walked out 12 years before, John will be sorely missed by his mother Maria and Daisy, his Down Syndrome sister and the joy of his life. Stuck in a menial public service job, John reluctantly recognizes that conscription is his only way out of his dead-end reality.

When Sarah, John’s only friend and neighbor, hears the news she’s openly devastated. She urges him not to go given her anti-war sentiments, which are spurred-on by the Save Our Son’s demonstrations she photographs for exhibition. As a way to survive army life John agrees to write frank letters to Sarah about his experience in Vietnam. In return Sarah promises to watch over Daisy and Maria and to keep them informed but buffered from the harsh reality of war.

Prior to military training John attempts to track down his father. His only lead is fruitless. Alone in a strange city John, a sworn non-drinker, finds himself in a pub where he meets Theo, who is not so keen on his future either. His parents have it all sorted out for him; “A degree from Oxford will set you up for life boy!” It’s their way of making up for their only child’s ‘inadequate education’ as they moved from one African state to another following their research and philanthropic commitments.

Theo has had enough of books and tutors and of recurring malaria. As an adventure-hungry white adolescent in South Africa he has witnessed the camaraderie that fighting for a cause can bring and he longs to belong in the same way. To his mother’s despair Theo’s romance of war has been enhanced by a childhood of summers spent with her brother Chaz, a brazen fellow, wounded and decorated in WW2 and still on the Defence payroll as a strategic consultant.

During their evening at the pub John and Theo learn what the future has in store for one another. Theo is quick to entertain other possibilities, “C’mon just think about it...you get to do what you want and I get to do what I want!” By closing time young men both are thoroughly drunk as they stagger back to Uncle Chaz’s stately river-side home.

At breakfast John vomits over the veranda balcony, interrupting Uncle Chaz’s treatise on the you-beaut things about life in the army. John returns to bed to nurse his hangover until woken by an impassioned Theo with his old but current passport and the subterfuge to go with it. John is cajoled out of bed, down to the private jetty and ultimately pushed into the water before he allows Theo’s proposition to sink in. As John comes to the surface he dares to imagine a future so far-fetched that the effort and risk to make it happen might well be worth it.