Tom Glenn's Blog, page 107

Rerun: Injury, Not Disorder

In this post, I return to the malady that plagues me, Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). I’ve blogged about it a number of times in the past and probably will in the future. PTSI never goes away.

I suffer from PTSI as a consequence of my time providing intelligence support to army and Marine units in combat during the Vietnam war and my survival of the fall of Saigon. It’s a condition common among those who have seen combat. A reader recently asked me again why I refer to the ailment as Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) and not Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The word “injury” connotes to me the idea of an externally inflicted wound; “disorder” suggests an internal malfunction. To me there is no question that what I and many others suffer from is an extrinsically delivered wound to the psyche, so severe that the injury is indelible.

The form of the affliction I’ve observed and am subject to is that which combatants face. But PTSI can result from any experience so brutal that the soul is permanently damaged. Rape victims, people who have survived or witnessed violent destruction, and those who lived through bloody catastrophes all show signs of an enduring wound to the soul. Its symptoms are panic attacks, flashbacks, nightmares, irrational rages, and depression.

It’s worth pointing out that reacting with horror to grisly events is healthy. Only a deformed soul could be unmoved or fail to respond to experiences as ghastly as combat.

The wound is permanent. It’s incurable. The victim’s only recourse is to master the ability to cope. I’ve learned to mediate my emotions so that I can face the memories head on without breaking down. Among other things, I write about what I lived through. Last of the Annamese was created in part to vent my recollections about the fall of Saigon. And The Trion Syndrome is a fictionalized version of my struggle with PTSD.

Learning to live with the unbearable takes time and work, but it can be done.

Rerun: “Thank You for Your Service. And Welcome Home”

I return to words I wrote years ago about a subject close to my heart.

“Thank you for your service. And welcome home” Say these words today to every veteran you know.

When I came back to the world (the U.S.) after the fall of Saigon, I so yearned to hear those words. Returning from earlier trips I’d been called a baby killer and a butcher. People spat on me. It sickened my already ailing soul.

I came home in May 1975 after escaping under fire when Saigon fell. I was a sick man with amoebic dysentery, hearing damaged from shelling during the assault on Saigon, and pneumonia brought on by inadequate diet, sleep deprivation, and muscle fatigue from the time I was holed up in my office while the North Vietnamese attacked. The worst was Post-Traumatic Stress Injury. I had top secret codeword-plus clearances, so I couldn’t go for therapy—I would have lost my job. My wife and the children were in Massachusetts at her father’s house. She refused to return to Maryland until I got our house back. We’d leased it to another family until 1976, when our tour in Vietnam was due to end. She and the children finally came back the following July. So I was left to cope with my nightmares, panic attacks, irrational rages, flashbacks, and depression by myself. It was the lowest point in my life.

No one wanted to hear about Vietnam. It was a shameful war, and I was shamed for having participated in it for thirteen years. For decades, I never spoke of my years in Vietnam. I was ashamed for myself and for my country.

Then, about six years ago, I was invited to an event like none I’d ever heard of—a celebration of Vietnam veterans. Not anxious to be abused yet again, I decided not to go. At the last minute I changed my mind.

What I found was a gathering of mostly young people, who hadn’t even been born when Saigon fell. They were smiling and welcoming. They hugged me. They said to me, “Thank you for your service. And welcome home.”

I wept.

So talk to your veterans today. Tell them you’re grateful for their sacrifices. Let them know you’re glad they got back alive. Use those sacred words: “Thank you for your service. And welcome home.”

The Death Penalty (2)

Beyond expense and the lack of deterrence, the death penalty is meted out unfairly. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “The death penalty system in the US is applied in an unfair and unjust manner against people, largely dependent on how much money they have, the skill of their attorneys, race of the victim and where the crime took place.  People of color are far more likely to be executed than white people, especially if the victim is white.”

But far and away the strongest argument for elimination of the death penalty is that it is unconstitutional and immoral. The ACLU states the case: “The American Civil Liberties Union believes the death penalty inherently violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantees of due process of law and of equal protection under the law. Furthermore, we believe that the state should not give itself the right to kill human beings – especially when it kills with premeditation and ceremony, in the name of the law or in the name of its people, and when it does so in an arbitrary and discriminatory fashion.”

In sum, capital punishment does not discourage murderers. It is expensive, unfair, and an unacceptable denial of civil liberties, and it is inconsistent with the fundamental values of our democratic system. The United States is the only Western country to still use the death penalty. The United Nations General Assembly adopted in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2018 resolutions calling for a global moratorium on executions, with a view to eventual abolition. Yet we maintain the death penalty.

It is long since time we joined the civilized nations of the world in banning capital punishment. Trump’s reinstitution of state killing reduces the status of the U.S. to that of a banana republic. It’s time for a change of administrations and a new president.

Rerun: The Death Penalty

The Trump administration’s reinstatement of the death penalty prompted me to resurrect a series of posts from last year. I remain unalterably opposed to state killing.

On July 25, 2019, Attorney General William Barr, presumably with the agreement of and perhaps on the orders of President Trump, reinstated the death penalty for federal crimes after 16 years of no executions. The federal government also scheduled the execution of five death row inmates. The Supreme Court then upheld a stay on these executions, but a few days ago reversed course. Three executions have been carried out.

The question before us, as Americans, is do we wish to execute? My answer is no for the following reasons:

Research evidence makes it clear that capital punishment does not deter murderers. According to Amnesty International, “Scientists agree, by an overwhelming majority, that the death penalty has no deterrent effect.  .  .  .  States without the death penalty continue to have significantly lower murder rates than those that retain capital punishment.”

Besides, it costs far more to inflict the death penalty than incarceration for life does. The Death Penalty Information Center argues that “the average cost of a case without capital punishment involved is $740,000. For cases where the death penalty is sought by prosecutors, the average cost of the case is $1.26 million. In addition to the prosecution expenses, the cost of housing a prisoner on death row is $90,000 more per year, on average, then a prisoner in the general population. With the average length of time on death row at 15 years in the United States, housing a prisoner for execution may cost more than $1 million more than housing a prisoner for a life sentence.”

More tomorrow.

Deaths

The death of John Lewis, just announced, shocked me. I have admired him and his achievements for many years. Besides, he was younger than me.

Daily I hear or read of the deaths of people not yet of my age. Sometimes it’s those I’ve known and worked with. Sometimes it’s famous people. Sometimes it’s strangers. I begin to feel like it’s poor taste to have lived as long as I have. I ought to be more considerate and die off.

For all that, I’m determined to live to be a hundred. I work hard to maintain my health. During the pandemic, I’ve ventured from my home only for necessities and have otherwise stayed isolated. When I go out, I always wear a mask and assure that I’m never closer than six feet to other people. I watch my diet carefully, stressing fruits and vegetables, eating minimal quantities of meat and no sweets at all. I lift weight every other day, a routine that takes more than two hours and requires all the physical strength I have.

And yet I know that I have no assurance my life will be prolonged. Accidents happen, diseases strike, old wounds can come back to haunt us. So I survey the life I have lived and am content that I’ve done a good job with the time I’ve had on earth. I’ve worked hard to fulfil my two life objectives, to write and to help others. If my life is cut short now, I’ll have no grounds for complaint.

But if fate will just grant me a couple more decades, I’ll demonstrate how much I can really accomplish. Stay tuned.

Rerun: Bufes (2)

Here’s the scene from Last of the Annamese I promised yesterday. Early in the book, Ike and Chuck, housemates in Saigon, are entertaining a visiting U.S. Marine colonel. Also present is Molly, the nurse known for her irreverence and rangy language.

After dinner, the guests adjourned to the living room for brandy. Molly sat next to the colonel, munched chocolates served by Oanh [the Vietnamese servant], and asked for an ice cube in her snifter. Chuck gave her one without comment, but [Colonel] Macintosh laughed.

“Sorry,” she said to the colonel, “but if it’s worth snorting, it’s worth snorting on the rocks.”

Macintosh eyed the ceramic elephants—one green, one purple—supporting the glass top of the cocktail table. “I see a lot of these. Are they a Saigon special?”

“We call them bufes—big ugly fucking elephants.” Molly ignored Ike’s wince. “Yeah, you can pick them up on Tu Do for a few thousand pee [GI slang for piaster].” She held her glass to Chuck. “Would you?”

End of quote.

My bufes are prominently displayed in my new house. They get as much comment today as they did 45 years ago.

Rerun: Bufes

Several years ago, I ruminated in this blog about the Asian objet’s d’art that are scattered throughout my house. They’re all now in my new house. Here’s an update:

I have half a dozen paintings, oils and water colors painted by South Vietnamese artists, that I bought over the years in Vietnam. On the desk in my office is a coffee tile, now cracked, mounted in wood, showing the character for dao (道) in Chinese or Đạo in Vietnamese, meaning “way” or “path”—the source of Taoism. A fish basket table stands beside my piano, and rounded wooden stools with marble tops are nearby. Two white ceramic stools three feet high, that I use as plant holders for large amaryllis plants, are on my deck. One is perforated with holes in leaf patterns. The other is three back-to-back elephant heads formed into a single column—it’s reportedly from Laos, the land that once worshipped a god in the form of an elephant with one head surrounded by three faces.

But the items that get the attention are my bufes, that is, “big ugly f**king elephants,” as the soldiers and Marines used to call them. These are three-feet tall ceramic figures of elephants with ornamental head dresses and decorated saddles. I have them in a variety of sizes and colors.

I bought the bufes in Vietnam and displayed them in the various villas I had with my family over the years in Saigon. I couldn’t resist talking about them in my novel,  Last of the Annamese.

Continuing this post tomorrow, I’ll quote that scene from the book

Hong Kong and Me

The recent hubbub about the Chinese withdrawal of human rights from citizens of Hong Kong reminded me of my happy memories of the city.

Between 1962 and 1975, I spent more time in Vietnam than I did in the U.S. To help relieve the stress for troops in Vietnam, the government offered R&R (rest and recuperation) trips lasting several days to locations outside the country. The two most popular destinations, as I recall, were Bangkok and Hong Kong. I made it my business to get to Hong Kong as often as I could. If memory serves. I traveled there three or four times.

I loved the city. It was cosmopolitan and welcoming. The residents were more than happy to entertain us rich Americans and went out of their way to make us feel at home. I spoke Chinese, but the dialect I knew was Mandarin, the national dialect. The locals spoke Cantonese. The dialects of Chinese are mutually unintelligible, so my knowledge would have been useless except that all Chinese speak the national dialect in addition to their own local tongue. Granted, their southern Chinese accent made it difficult for me to understand them, but one way or another we managed. They were so amazed and delighted to meet an American who spoke Chinese.

Hong Kong in those days, while still a British colony, was a beautiful city. Its name (香港) means “perfumed harbor.” Its territory is composed of an island and a small landmass of the Chinese mainland. Views from all points were magnificent.

It saddens me to see the revocation of rights for Hong Kong citizens and the transformation of a great tourist attraction into one more Chinese city devoid of freedom. Like so much else that has happened in 2020, the shutdown reminds me that the world is in a new time filled with unknowns.

Words, Words, Words

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius asks Hamlet what he is reading. Hamlet answers, “’Words, words, words.” My most recent blog about books brought that scene to mind. Hamlet’s answer could have been to the question, “what do you find in books?”

As a writer and linguist, words are arguably more important to me than to other people. In English, each word contains a world of meaning beyond its accepted definition. Ours is a polyglot tongue, rooted in Anglo-Saxon, a Germanic language, but influenced by Greek, Latin, and French. So each of our words has intrinsic meanings that may differ from the dictionary definition. Many words have implications that hover beneath the level of consciousness for us speakers. And most words have multiple dictionary meanings.

Words are the tools we use to communicate with one another. They are what I, as a writer, use to do my work. And I love them. They’re erratic, deceptive, inscrutable. Their spelling and pronunciation are wildly inconsistent. Their meaning varies over decades. But they’re my work materials. It’s as though they’re part of my family. I see their flaws and failures. But they belong to me, and I belong to them. I accept them and cherish them, warts and all.

My Correspondent

For more than three years now, I’ve been exchanging letters with a man in prison. We write two or three times each week. Our communications started when he read one of my books and wrote to me. As I read his letters, I saw that he had a distinct talent for writing. I encouraged him to write articles and stories. When he sent me a finished piece, I edited it and put it in the required format and submitted it to periodicals. One of his articles is published, another accepted for publication.

This man wrote to me because he saw common ground between us—we both had a history of being in Vietnam. I was there on and off for thirteen years working under cover and supporting U.S. forces in combat. He was there as a navy corpsman acting as a medical technician to Marines in combat. We had been operating very near each other but had never met.

The bond between us was centered in our suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). Both of us had been through excruciating experiences on the battlefield that had wounded our souls. We both had learned that one cannot be healed from PTSI. The best one can do is learn to cope.

We’ve now written each other several hundred letters. He has read all my books except Coming to Terms which isn’t in print yet (it comes out this month). And I’ve sent him other books that I thought would interest him. The most recent is Mark Treanor’s A Quiet Cadence about the Marines in combat in Vietnam. That book might have been written for us. It describes combat without pulling punches. The grisliness of fighting—that damaged the psyche of both my correspondent and me—is described in detail. You can read my review of the book at http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/a-quiet-cadence-a-novel

My friend and I have never met face to face. We look forward to doing that when he is released, perhaps sometime in the next year or two. It will, for me, be like seeing a long lost brother.