Tom Glenn's Blog, page 136

The Gift: Foreseeing the Future

Continuing my rethinking of blog posts from several years ago:

A blog reader back then questioned me about the ability of Chuck, the protagonist of Last of the Annamese, to foresee the future. How could that be? How did it work?

In Last of the Annamese, I describe Chuck’s ability to study current intelligence and foretell what the enemy was about to do as follows:  “. . . he’d let his consciousness rove over patterns and trends and the flow of events until he knew what was going to happen next.”

That description is derived from my own experience. How does it work? I have no idea. The best I can tell you is that I’d discovered how to let my consciousness blur while I studied events. I’d let my mind wander over the data. Then, sometimes suddenly, I’d know what would happen next. I don’t know how I did it. Others with the same gift were equally puzzled.

One result was that I and other members of our team developed over the years a series of indicators. When the North Vietnamese did x, y followed. We were so successful that we predicted accurately every major offensive undertaken by the North Vietnamese during the war.

Our system was too vague to be called scientific; it was intuition at work. I’ve always thought that the best analogy was the sense of smell: it was almost as if when a certain combination of scents appeared, I’d foresee the next event. My guess is that the gift springs from an ability to be in touch with one’s unconscious. That ability dominates my writing.

But reading the future was confined to my intelligence work. It didn’t function in ordinary living. So I’m like every other human being: I’m regularly surprised by the turn of events in everyday life. I may have been a talented professional at work, but I remain the clunky amateur at home.

Return to Vietnam?

It’s time to resurrect some thoughts I expressed when I first started this blog several years ago. Not too surprisingly, my thinking has changed over time, so I’ve revised some of my earlier thoughts. First off, about going back to Vietnam:

So many people ask me if I’ve returned to Vietnam since the war ended. 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. I was there on and off for thirteen years. I witnessed and participated in brutal acts of combat, then survived the fall of Saigon, escaping under fire. That left me spiritually scarred.

A good many men I knew 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 there are beautiful places in Vietnam. The natural splendor of Cam Ranh Bay, for example, and the beauty of many places in the highlands are like shining stars in my memory. But there are also some ugly ones that the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (the new name of the country, replacing the old name, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) does 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 would 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.

The Deck (3)

As a writer and book reviewer, I spend a great deal of time reading. During daylight hours, I do my reading on the deck. Trees stretching overhead provide plenty of shade, but just enough sunshine splashes through the leaves to assure scattered spots of light. It is peaceful and welcoming.

But it is not quiet. The squirrels rustle through the leaves and chatter. Birds chirp and chatter and squawk. And at certain times of the day and night, insect sounds dominate. What I take to be crickets raise a ruckus that from moment to moment grows and diminishes in volume.

To my surprise, butterflies are plentiful all through the woods and over the pond. They flutter to and fro over the whole scene at some times and disappear at others. Yesterday, when I ate lunch on the deck, a large black butterfly joined me. He flew and settled here and there, apparently unconcerned about my presence. He even lit on the newspaper I was reading. He showed no interest in my food but seemed to be exploring. He was there from the moment I sat down and was still flitting about when I went back inside. I haven’t seen him since.

At night, the deck is transformed into a world of mystery. When the moon is out, it bathes the pond with its blue light. When there is no moon, total darkness is relieved only by occasional lights from distant houses. Sometimes, frogs croak.

So I have found a place of peace and goodwill to read, reflect, meditate, and create. It is a place of solitude. Although I can see a paved walk and a park bench a couple of hundred feet across the water from me, I rarely see any people. It is as though I’m alone in the wild.

I need that peace. My soul is still troubled by memories of combat from Vietnam and the men killed by my side. That’s a wound to the psyche that will be with me always. I need times and places to calm me and restore my balance. My deck gives me that. And it offers a writer’s seclusion and the peace and harmony found only in nature. I am the most fortunate of men.

The Deck (2)

The section of Columbia I live in, known as Hickory Ridge, is in the path of planes taking off from and landing at Baltimore-Washington International (BWI) airport. When I sit on my deck, I hear them, loud as thunder, flying over me.

For reasons I don’t understand, I see (and hear) many more outgoing aircraft than incoming ones. The planes leaving the area fly very high from east to west—I have to strain to see them. Sometimes clouds obscure them, but the sound—a mix of powerful droning in the middle range of my hearing to a deep roar—is always deafening.

All the aircraft I see are very large, jetliners that carry well over a hundred passengers. Sometimes, they’re shining silver, flashing in the sunlight. Sometimes they look gray and largely colorless. I see blue and white, too, but most often planes I see have much of their body orange. I assume these planes are Southwest Airlines because that airline features orange-painted craft.

Incoming flights come south towards me, then turn east toward BWI directly over my house. They are much lower than the outgoing flights. Sometimes they look as though they are barely clearing the treetops, but I know that is an illusion. The oddity is that flights headed for BWI are much quieter than those leaving. I conclude that’s because they require much less power to descend and land. The outgoing planes are pushing their engines to make them ascend.

My favorite time to watch the flights is at the end of the day when the sun is sinking in the west. I watch the outgoing planes lit from the west by the low-lying sun. They seem to be reaching for the light as they fly towards it.

At that time of day, the aircraft look as though they are above the level of the sun, looking down at it. All the trees on the ground close to me seem to be turning their faces at the very tops for one last look before the sun disappears.

More tomorrow.

The Deck

Writers need a place to ruminate. Much of our writing time is spent thinking through ideas and the visions our imagination presents to us. Some writers prefer a plain space, devoid of distractions. I like a spot replete with beauty and peace.

I now have such a spot. It’s the deck on the back of my new house where I moved last June. The deck and its view were the major reason I bought the house.

The deck is a story above the ground and overlooks a pond, green with algae and half filled with water reeds. All around it are lush trees of multiple varieties. I know there are houses beyond the trees, but I can’t see them. I know they’re there because I can occasionally hear the residents talking, and I can glimpse lights through the trees at night. By day, most of the time it feels as though I am alone in the wilderness.

My pond is filled with life. I see birds of every kind, from tiny things that would fit easily in my hand, to big ones with a wing span half the length of my body. They are in constant motion and call to one another as long as there is light in the sky. But at night, when I can’t see them, they’re silent.

High up in a tree to the northeast (the right side) of the deck is a raccoon nest. I discovered it one day when a motion near the top of the tree caught my attention. It was two raccoons going up and down the tree. One eventually climbed almost to the top of the tree while the other settled in the nest and proceeded to watch me. He (or she) stayed there for the whole time I was on the deck. I haven’t seen either of them since that day.

From the deck, I’ve seen deer, rabbits, a fox, and what I believe was a possum. But the most common animal is squirrels. They race up and down the tree branches, chattering to one another. And, as I discovered, they’re aggressive.

I take all my meals at a picnic table on the deck, weather permitting. Before dinner, I often allow myself a gimlet and snacks (popcorn, nuts, chips). Until recently, I often left the snack food on the table between meals. Then I noticed that a small candle in a stemmed glass that is always on the table was regularly overturned. The chip bag was open, even though I had closed it earlier. One day, the plastic top to the can of nuts had been chewed open. I looked up into the trees and saw the squirrels watching me. The next day, as I was preparing to go out on the deck, I saw a squirrel on the table trying to get into the nut can. He ran when I opened the deck door. Ever since, I always see to it that no food is left on the table when I’m not there.

More tomorrow.

Veteran Suicides (2)

The terrible irony is that if a veteran refuses to face combat memories and forces them into his unconscious, the recollections can lie dormant for decades and then resurface. The only way to cope with them is to bring them into the conscious mind and train the emotions to respond less violently. That worked for me. These days, I have an occasional nightmare, and the worst emotional reaction I allow myself is to cry. It can be done.

A veteran suffering from such memories often chooses to deal with it by himself. He’s inclined to believe that he’s the only one who can’t cope. That makes him a coward or weakling. His sense of shame for engaging in combat, for having survived, and for having seen others die at his side is compounded by his sense of inadequacy for failing to deal with his memories. He is ashamed to admit his failure to others.

That’s why it’s so important that we veterans come together and help one another. We soon discover that the hurt of combat memories is universal. Sometimes no words are needed. I can look into the eyes of another veteran and see what’s going on. A friendly greeting, a slap on the back, a handshake is often enough to tell me that I’m with others who understand what I’m going through because they are going through it, too. We are brothers, there to help each other.

Most important, we can show respect for former fighters. We can encourage each other to take pride in what we did. We can say to one another those words so precious to me: “Thank you for your service. And welcome home.”

Veteran Suicides

As readers of this blog are aware, I have great fondness for veterans. I’m one myself, and I honor those willing to put their lives on the line for the good of the country. As we who have served in the military die off, the proportion of veterans in the population is growing smaller.

As I reported earlier, in 2016, 7 percent of U.S. adults were veterans, down from 18 percent in 1980, according to the Census Bureau. Expressed differently, almost half of the Americans 75 or older are veterans; only 3.48 percent of those between 35 and 44 are. We are close to becoming a dying breed.

The draft ended in 1973. That change brought about a sharp decline in the number of young men and women who enlisted. So many, like me, joined voluntarily so we could choose the work we’d do in the service instead of being drafted and automatically assigned to the infantry or its equivalent. From 1973 on, that incentive was gone. Consequently, the veteran population declined.

A fact that haunts me is the number of veterans who choose to take their own lives. According to Department of Veterans Affairs data, more than 6,000 veterans killed themselves annually from 2008 to 2016. And a recent analysis found a suicide rate among veterans of about 30 per 100,000 population per year, compared with the civilian rate of 14 per 100,000.

Why? I think I know. When a man or woman has volunteered to risk death in defense of the country and has been close to or lived through combat, the memories of savage conflict can become unbearable. I know from personal experience. The recollections never weaken or go away. They can cause panic attacks, nightmares, flashbacks, and irrational rages. For some, death is preferable to enduring those intolerable episodes.

More tomorrow.

Commemorations of 9/11

I interrupt my reminiscences on the last days of Vietnam to tell of my attendance yesterday at two commemorations of 9/11.

The first was at noon in Columbia, Maryland, where I live. I was there because my American Legion post was participating in the ceremony. It was held in a parking lot that had been cleared. At the back were two fire trucks with long extension ladders parked back to back and suspending between them a huge American flag, at least eight feet in length, some forty feet above the ground. As we stood at attention, a band of bagpipers in kilts and an honor guard with flags marched forward to the accompaniment of patriotic songs. When they were in place, we listened to the national anthem sung by a baritone, recited the pledge of allegiance, and heard a brief speech on the importance of commemorating 9/11.

The second was two hours later at the Encore rehab facility in Ellicott City. I was there to visit my friend who is recovering from at attack of vascular dementia. This time the ceremony took place indoors in the vestibule. It consisted of a brief speech by a woman who passed around photos of the memorials built at each of the 9/11 attack sites. All the attendees were recovering patients in wheelchairs who encircled the speaker.

Both ceremonies brought tears to my eyes. At a time of the worst political disruption I can recall, when the country is more divided than at any time in my life, public moments of patriotism move me more deeply than they ever have before.

The Last Days of Vietnam (2)

The final days in Vietnam are hard to describe because no superlatives are strong enough. As the North Vietnamese came closer to Saigon, refugees fled by the thousands into the city. The streets were crammed with desperate people with no food or places to stay. Cars couldn’t get through. Our compound at Tan Son Nhat on the northern edge of Saigon was surrounded by mobs, ten to fifteen people deep, all demanding evacuation before the North Vietnamese seized the city. The runways at the airport, next to us, had been bombed. Deep craters meant that there would be no more fixed-wing aircraft takeoffs. Exodus from then on would be by boat—impractical because the enemy controlled the river and adjacent waterways—or by helicopter.

Bob and Gary and I hadn’t slept for days. All we had for food was bar snacks we’d been able to scrounge from a hotel while we were still able to get out into the streets, and they were almost gone. What’s odd is that I don’t remember ever being hungry or tired. I was so focused on somehow getting Bob and Gary out safely that all other considerations were forgotten. The regular shelling knocked us off our feet. The room shifted violently. Dust fell on us.

Somehow, through it all, our communications with the National Security Agency (NSA), our boss, never failed. Gary kept the equipment working, and Bob and I reported on what was happening. I learned later that our guys who had been evacuated were on the other end, reading our reports of what was happening.

One incident at the beginning of the collapse now strikes me funny. At the time, it was deadly serious. I had stopped using normal communications, called criticom, to keep NSA informed because the system was too cumbersome. To use it, I had to type a message on the proper form and give it to the comms guys. They would then poke the text onto a paper tape which they would run through transmission equipment. Instead, I was using what we called opscom (short for “operational communications”), normally used by communicators to solve technical communications problems. That meant that I was typing directly onto a circuit that was printing out simultaneously at the NSA Operations Center (NSOC). Among other things, I was reporting the departure of my guys and their families and where they were headed—determined by where we could get tickets to. I received a criticom message chastising me for using the opscom to report on personnel, matters that were strictly limited to the more formal communications system, and ordering me to cease forthwith.

More tomorrow.

The Last Days of Vietnam

Although I’ve written about it before, the final days in Saigon as it fell to the North Vietnamese in April 1975 are worth a revisit. They are forever engraved on my memory.

Toward the end of my novel, Last of the Annamese, as the attack on Saigon begins on 26 April 1975, Chuck, Sparky, and Colonel Troiano are caught in their office at Tan Son Nhat, on the northern edge of Saigon, where they’re holed up. Here’s the text from the beginning of chapter 19:

“It started Saturday morning. Reports swamped the comms center. Long Binh was under attack, and Ba Ria fell. North Vietnamese shelling of Bien Hoa was low thunder that shook the floor. The final assault was under way. To get around the Ambassador’s edict that no one was to be evacuated, Troiano sent most of the remaining personnel out of country by air on trumped-up ‘temporary duty’ missions. The Intelligence Branch, the comms center, and the tank were now manned by five people—two comms techs who’d volunteered to stay to the end, Chuck, Sparky, and Troiano. ‘We’re just here to turn off the lights when the Ambassador gives us permission to leave,’ Troiano told Chuck. They adopted the eight-sixteen rule—eight hours of sleep, sixteen hours of work on rotating shifts, so that two people would man the tank at all times. Sparky made a food run, found out that the snack bar was deserted.”

That description matches what really happened to me. Most of my 43 subordinates were already gone, sent out the country on phony temporary duty, home leave, or vacation—all to get around the ambassador’s no-evacuation order. By the next day, Sunday, 27 April, we were down to three of us, me and two communicators who had volunteered to stay through attack. We had already been on the eight-sixteen rule but switched to a 24-hour schedule with two-hour breaks for one man while the other two worked.

It was a living nightmare. The North Vietnamese shelled us regularly. The comm center, where we were hiding, lurched from side to side. The sound of the artillery shells exploding in the building deafened us. For days we had almost nothing to eat and couldn’t sleep because of the shells detonating all around us.

I’ll never forget or stop honoring those two communicators who agreed to remain during the attack. Bob Hartley and Gary Hickman showed enormous courage. They stayed calm in the face of disaster, knowing they could be killed in the next barrage. They worked harder than I had any right to expect, doing between them the job 16 men had done when we were at full strength. When they were extracted by helicopter on the afternoon of 29 April, I knew my work in Vietnam was finished.

More tomorrow.