Tom Glenn's Blog, page 110

Rerun: Abandonment (2)

My briefing for CINCAC (Commander-in-Chief, Pacific) at Pearl Harbor didn’t go well. I passed out when I sat down after coughing through my presentation. I knew I was ill, but instead of going to a doctor, I booked a flight to Maryland. I can’t tell you how much I yearned just to go home.

When I got to Maryland, a doctor diagnosed me with ear damage from the shelling, amoebic dysentery, and pneumonia due to inadequate diet, sleep deprivation, and muscle fatigue. I telephoned my wife. She and our children had flown out of Saigon twenty days before the city fell. At her insistence, they went on a grand tour through Asia and Europe, arriving back in the states after I did. She knew that Saigon had fallen, but she didn’t know if I had gotten out alive, nor did she make any attempt to find out. When I got through by phone to her at her father’s house in Massachusetts and begged her to come to Maryland—I told her I was very sick and needed her—she turned me down. She told me she wouldn’t return until we got our house back (we’d leased it to another family for the length of our tour in Vietnam). It was July before I was able to repossess the house. Only then did she and the children come home.

It was the beginning of the end of the marriage.

When I finally returned to NSA in late May 1975—I had escaped from Saigon on 29 April 1975—I found that the war in Vietnam was seen as shameful, not to be discussed. That was a continuation of what I had been facing for years. During the 1960s and 1970s, when I trundled regularly between Vietnam and the world (the U.S.), I and the returning troops were regularly greeted by mobs who called us butchers and baby killers and spat on us. Now, after I returned from the fall of Saigon, I felt that the whole of the U.S. was spitting on me.

Three things got me through. One was the bond I had with the men who had worked with me in Vietnam. We stuck together and helped one another. The second was my determination not to give in to adversity. The third was writing. I wrote about what happened. By writing down what I’d lived through, I forced myself to face my unbearable memories.

More tomorrow.

New Book Review

My latest book review, of a book about combat in Vietnam titled A Quiet Cadence, is now online. You can access it at http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/a-quiet-cadence-a-novel


Please let me know what you think.

Rerun: Abandonment

Once again, I return to a blog of several years ago: the sense of having been deserted in Vietnam in April 1975. Here are my thoughts, brought up to date by my most recent thinking.

As I said several years ago, I’ve talked at some length in various places in this blog about my feelings before, during, and after the fall of Saigon. What I haven’t wanted to talk about is my sense of abandonment.

As the North Vietnamese encroached on Saigon and I struggled to hold together what was left of my mission and my organization, I was doing it alone. I managed to get forty-one of my subordinates and their families out of the country, even though the ambassador had forbidden me to evacuate them. The embassy and CIA not only didn’t help me; they threw roadblocks in my path. I lied and cheated and stole to save the lives of my guys and their wives and children. I succeeded. The only help I received was from the two communicators, Bob Hartley and Gary Hickman, who volunteered to stay with me through the fall of Saigon. The three of us propped each other up through the days when we were being shelled. We had nothing to eat and no time to sleep.

After I got Bob and Gary out as the North Vietnamese were moving into the city, I escaped on a helicopter under fire. I flew to a ship of the U.S. 7th Fleet which eventually set sail for the Philippines. Though I didn’t know it until I got back to Maryland in late May, I was suffering from severe ear damage from the shelling, exhaustion, amoebic dysentery, and pneumonia brought on by muscle fatigue, inadequate diet, and sleep deprivation.

From Subic Bay I caught a flight to Honolulu. The senior National Security Agency (NSA) official in the Pacific region met my plane. I was a wreck—I’d lost weight and was still wearing the clothes I’d escaped in. I was unshaven, in desperate need of a haircut, and physically ill. Instead of asking how I was or suggesting I look for a doctor, he said, “You can’t be seen around here looking like that.” He turned me over to one of his subordinates who saw to it I looked respectable for my briefing at CINCPAC (Commander-in-Chief, Pacific).

I can’t tell you the name of the man who met my plane. It’s still classified.

More tomorrow.

Rerun: Return to Vietnam?

I return to a post I did several years ago because I’m still getting asked if I have gone back to Vietnam since the North Vietnamese conquered the country in 1975. The answer is no. I have no desire whatever to go back. Vietnam is the place of my nightmares. I don’t want to relive them.

A good many men I know there have revisited the places where they fought, and a few have even gone to Hanoi. They talk about what a beautiful country Vietnam is and how happy and welcoming the people are.

I agree that Vietnam is an astonishingly beautiful place, filled with glorious wetlands and amazing highlands. But there are also some ugly locations that the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (the new name of the country, replacing the old name, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) do not allow tourists to see.

I am inclined to remind the visitors that the population is under the strict control of the government. It is, after all, a police state. The people are required to look content and friendly to support the tourism industry. They have no personal freedom at all. Were tourists allowed to go to off-limits locations, for example the slums and the highlands, they might encounter a very different reality.

But I don’t speak my mind. Let those who return reach their own conclusions. Let my nightmares remain private. I vent them in my writing.

Father-Son Relations: Masculinity

My post about Gene Westmoreland’s relationship with his son, as told in my novel Secretocracy, reminded me of one of my fascinations: the masculinity inherent in relations between a father and his son.

I have three daughters. Being a father to them meant tenderness and caretaking and feelings very much like those I felt for my wife, minus the sexual aspects. My job as a father to daughters meant protecting them and looking after their needs. It brought out my gentle emotions.

Fathering a son is different. The presence of another male in my family called for gentleness but also aroused a set of emotions quite different from those I felt for my daughters. I was responsible for helping my son become a man. I was required to encourage his masculine traits—physical strength, dominance, aggressiveness. I had to be a model male for him to imitate. But I also had to teach him the finer attributes of masculinity: love, tenderness, and devotion. I had to model those virtues for him. And I had to help him learn which traits were appropriate to any given situation.

Raising a son, I knew, was going to be more difficult than raising daughters. But I had a powerful aid: my overwhelming love for him. That love made me realize that I had to be the best model of masculinity I was capable of. The result was that I worked hard to be a better man to offer my son an example he could follow.

Having a son, it turned for me at least, was finding the fulfillment of my own masculinity. Over time, we, the men in our family, found ourselves coming together to fend off the feminine power of those family members who outnumbered us. We learned together how to be the best men we could be.

So having a son taught me manhood. I’m grateful.

Secretocracy: Father and Son Bonding (2)

The reason I spent so much time in Vietnam under cover was that I was the best man for the job. I knew North Vietnamese radio communications intimately—I’d been intercepting and exploiting them since 1960; I spoke Vietnamese, Chinese, and French, the three languages of Vietnam; and I was willing to go into combat with the units I was supporting. I felt it was my patriotic duty to do all I could to win the war. We lost the war. My wife and children were evacuated secretly from Saigon twenty days before the city fell. I escaped under fire after the North Vietnamese were already in the streets.

I can’t talk about my work after the loss of Vietnam in April 1975 because it’s still classified. Suffice it to say that I had proven my usefulness, and NSA exploited my ability and willingness to work in dangerous situations in places other than Vietnam. I was comfortable in seven foreign languages. I’ll let my readers guess where I was sent and what I did. Once again, I was all too often an absent father.

While I’m proud of my service to my country, I’m mindful that my children suffered from my repeated and extended absences. All four of them grew into adults I’m proud of. And the two who have children of their own have proven to be better parents than I was.

So writing about Gene, my protagonist, and his son in Secretocracy was deeply personal to me. Gene, who like me grew up fatherless, is deeply shamed that his son, Michael, sees him disgraced and banished by the Trump administration. One of the moments that I wrote in tears is that in which Michael tells Gene that he is proud to be the son of a man who risked everything to do what is right.

So writing of Gene Westmoreland’s relationship with his son was deeply personal for me. My sense is that fatherhood is the noblest and most demanding of a man’s roles. It requires less the manly traits most men cherish—physical strength, dominance, aggressiveness—than the finer attributes of masculinity: love, tenderness, and devotion. Being a father is the final test of a man’s worth.

Secretocracy: Father and Son Bonding

Much of the story told in my most recent novel, Secretocracy, is that of bonding between a father and son. The paternal-filial relationship is very important to me personally. I have a son who is a fine man of whom I am immensely proud. We are not as close as I’d like simply because we are both so busy. He is a fulltime teacher and has a family of his own—three rambunctious children that take up his attention. And I am a fulltime author with six books out and two more in the hopper.

But I can’t claim a good relationship with my father any more than the protagonist of Secretocracy, Gene Westmoreland, can. My father was a lawyer who embezzled $40,000 and was sent to prison. Disbarred before he was released, he became a street bum, went back to jail, and finally died in a bar brawl. I spent my childhood essentially fatherless. As a young man, after my father forged my signature and cashed checks against my bank account, I changed my bank signature and made it my business to be sure he didn’t know where I was or how to get in touch with me. In short, I had no paternal-filial relationship. I promised myself that when I had children, I’d go out of my way to be the best father possible.

The Vietnam war intervened in my plans. Between 1962 and 1975, as an employee of the National Security Agency (NSA), I spent more time in Vietnam operating under cover and providing signals intelligence support to U.S. combat troops than I did in the states. I had two accompanied tours in Vietnam, the first with my oldest daughter, the second with all four of my children. But even then, I was so busy and away from home so much that my children had to do without me most of the time. When I and my family were in the U.S., I was working twelve-hour days. And I was regularly sent to Vietnam on trips that lasted four to six months each.

More tomorrow.

Secretocracy’s Cover

Why does a book about the Trump administration show a throne on the cover? I thought the answer to that question was obvious, but I’ll answer it anyway.

The cover of Secretocracy points to President Trump’s moves toward grasping more and more power unto himself—i.e., seizing the throne—leaving less and less to the governed. A significant threshold was crossed when police pushed back protestors in Lafayette Square on 1 June using tear gas and pepper spray to allow Trump to proceed for a photo op—a violation of the Constitution.

The book cover raises the specter of a man who would be king with absolute power. Like the story told in the novel, the cover is a warning.

All the current polls that I know of show a clear citizen preference for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in November’s election. But what if Trump contests the election’s outcome? He could claim malfeasance or vote counting errors or illegally cast votes. In other words, what will Americans do if Trump is defeated but refuses to yield the presidency?

The picture of a throne on the cover of Secretocracy is a warning: get ready for the worst.

Secretocracy: Why the Title?

A reader asks: why the title Secretocracy? Because it implies what I think exists but cannot prove: a classified structure under President Trump that undertakes whatever international operations the president wants, legal or otherwise.

I used that title because I wanted to suggest to readers that the Trump administration is an unparalleled threat to our wellbeing as a nation. Because the work of our intelligence agencies and their survival under Trump is classified, we citizens know nothing of what damage may be going on even as I write. Trump has demonstrated repeatedly his willingness to violate the law of the land. He ignores and even attacks intelligence. Who knows what classified programs he may have launched? Who knows what damage he intends to inflict on our allies whom he now considers our enemies?

Secretocracy at Risk

My newest novel, Secretocracy, published at the end of March, is probably my most incendiary. It deals with the Trump administration’s attacks on an intelligence budgeteer who refuses to fund an illegal program being pushed by the president. The fiction is based on real happenings during the Trump presidency. It’s like all my novels and short stories, fiction in name only.

As I noted earlier in this blog, in normal times I’d busier than I’d like doing readings and presentations to promote the new publication. Instead, thanks to the pandemic lockdown, I’m struck at home practicing social distancing and protecting my health. Because of my age and past history, I’m a prime target for covid-19. Five years ago, I had the upper lobe of my right lung removed because of lung cancer. As a consequence, I suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). If the coronavirus attacked me, my survival chances would be less than ideal.

I’ve ordered a webcam so that I can do virtual presentations, but the delivery of the camera has been delayed by the lockdown. I don’t know when it will arrive.

As Trump becomes more flagrant in his violations of law and even the Constitution, Secretocracy would be high interest fiction right now if it weren’t for the pandemic. As it is, bookstores are closed and Secretocracy isn’t getting much attention. I hope that changes as the pandemic winds down.