Tom Glenn's Blog, page 143

The Cassandra Effect in Vietnam (2)

Why didn’t U.S. Army commanders in Vietnam act on intelligence warning them that an attack was imminent? Over the years, I’ve concluded that there were multiple reasons.

First was that the National Security Agency (NSA), my employer, was very successful in keep the existence of signals intelligence a secret. Even the agency itself was so low profile that few people had ever heard of it. The employees never said that they worked for NSA. We worked for the Department of Defense. So many in the military had no knowledge of NSA or signals intelligence.

Second, U.S. Army training for its officers neglected schooling in what signals intelligence was, where it came from, or how to use it. All they knew was that they had a civilian (me) in their midst that was providing information about the enemy. Typical were the words of the commander of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, Major General William Peers when he dismissed my warning about North Vietnamese forces preparing to attack at Dak To in 1967: “So I’m supposed to believe that some kind of magic allows a bunch of shaky girbs [acronym for GI rat-bastards], distinguished more for their spit than their polish and abetted by an unknown civilian, to use a tangle of antennas and funny talk to divine the combat plans of the enemy?”

Third, we Americans are famous for our can-do attitude. We tend to ignore negative indicators and stress the positive. The enemy offered no threat. How could a little fourth-class country like North Vietnam win a war against the greatest military nation in history?

And finally, the U.S. Army never understood how the North Vietnamese chose to fight the war. They stuck to guerrilla warfare as long as they were facing us. Their strategy was summed up in Mao Tse Tung’s words: “Enemy advances, we retreat. Enemy camps, we harass. Enemy tires, we attack. Enemy retreats, we pursue.”

I also worked with Marine Corps units throughout South Vietnam. Unlike the army, Marines listened carefully to what I had to say and exploited the intelligence I provided them. But the Marines were in the minority.

Hence the Cassandra Effect. I’m told that these days intelligence operatives and military commanders are so intertwined that the effect no longer cripples or leads to defeats. I pray that that is so.

The Cassandra Effect in Vietnam

Several times early in this blog I referred to “the Cassandra Effect.” That’s the term I coined for the dilemma I faced repeatedly in Vietnam: foretelling what the enemy was going to do and not being believed.

My job in Vietnam was signals intelligence, the intercept and exploitation of the radio communications of the invading North Vietnamese. As noted several times in this blog, between 1962 and 1975, I was in Vietnam at least four months each year. I had two complete tours there and so many shorter trips I lost count. I worked with U.S. military forces, both army and Marines, in combat all over South Vietnam.

I knew North Vietnamese radio communications like the back of my hand. I’d been intercepting and exploiting them since 1960. I spoke Vietnamese, Chinese, and French (the three languages of Vietnam), and I knew what changes the North Vietnamese introduced into their communications as they prepared for combat.

Hence, I was able to foretell the enemy’s attacks by watching his communications. As the North Vietnamese prepared for combat, they followed an established pattern: command elements moved in, reconnaissance began, combat forces took their positions, a simplified signal plan was introduced for ease of communication during combat, and a forward HQ—a tactical command post—took control of fighting units.

I saw the pattern so many times that my senses were tuned to watching for them. What I wasn’t prepared for was the failure of U.S. Army commanders to believe my warning and act on it. Again and again I warned and was ignored. Disaster often followed.

As I said earlier in this blog, Cassandra and I were siblings. We were both blessed with the ability to foretell the future and cursed with disbelief. It happened to me repeatedly. Most famously U.S. Army officers failed to heed my warning at the 1967 battle of Dak To and before the 1968 Tet Offensive. But American civilians were not immune to disbelief. I alerted the U.S. ambassador in April 1975 that the North Vietnamese were preparing to attack Saigon. He didn’t believe me and forbade me to evacuate my subordinates. I did anyway, then escaped under fire after the North Vietnamese were already in the streets of the city.

More tomorrow.

Words and Me (2)

Like most human beings, I learned to think in words when I learned to talk. My mind’s ear hears a constant running commentary inside my brain translating experience into verbal expression. This morning as I awoke, my brain was saying, “What time is it? It’s light out. Must be time to get up. Do I want to try to go back to sleep?”

But early in life, I learned to think in a different mode: music. From early childhood on, music enchanted me. From 78 rpm recordings, I made the acquaintance with the standard masterpieces—Bach, Beethoven, and especially Mozart who awed me. I taught myself how to read music and play the piano and the guitar. I learned to think without words—in music.

Later, I made it my business to think in other ways. When I became entranced with the graphic arts, my mind began to think in images. When I took care of AIDS patients, I learned to think with my emotions. But through it all, that little voice in my brain kept trying to express what was happening from moment to moment in words.

Then I took up Sufi meditation. That required learning to clear the mind of all thinking to allow the soul to open to the inflow of the divine. When I was able to achieve the meditative state, my brain was stilled and attentive. I discovered ecstasy.

My calling as a writer demands that I find ways to express these experiences. I do the best I can, but I know the result is inadequate. Nonverbal thinking is literally inexpressible in words. The best one can do is to refer the reader to his own experiences.

But my business is words. And while I haven’t been able to translate thinking without words into English, my understanding of the nonverbal mental state has greatly enriched my writing. I couldn’t be more grateful.

Words and Me

As a writer and a linguist (seven languages) all my life, I have developed an addiction to words, especially in English, the richest language I know.

The origin of modern English is Anglo-Saxon. It began as a group of Anglo-Frisian dialects spoken by the settlers (from what is now Germany) in England in the early Middle Ages. It replaced but was influenced by the Celtic languages that predominated previously. Over the centuries, invaders from Scandinavia and France further altered English as did the influence of the Renaissance which introduced Latin and Greek words that became embedded.

The result is the richest language ever known to man. According to the Oxford English Dictionary web site, “The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1989, contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.” I am heir, in short, to a wealth of words.

Adding to that abundance is my knowledge of languages other than English and the subtleties of meaning and underlying logic inherent in them. Particularly revealing was my study of Asian languages, Vietnamese and Chinese. The whole way of thinking that undergirds those tongues is markedly alien to western languages. They opened my mind to new ways of thinking about words and how to use them.

Of necessity, I learned to think in the languages I was working in. Early on, it became my habit to mentally express the same thought in each of the languages I knew. It became automatic. While I was thinking consciously about something else, a part of my brain was running through how to say the same thing in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Latin, Chinese, and Vietnamese. I became keenly aware of cognates, in German and English, in French, Spanish, and Italian, and in Chinese and Vietnamese. And all of my languages, even Vietnamese, were the origin of words in English.

More tomorrow.

The Steinway (3)

Continuing my series of posts, begun a month ago, about my Steinway piano:

I had the piano appraised. It’s price, new, was $85,000.

I learned later where my daughter Susan got the money to buy that piano. It came from her share of her mother’s estate. The house I had bought for our family in Crofton, Maryland, was the only thing of value my ex-wife still had at the time of her death—she had long since gone through my savings she acquired during the divorce. It was a lovely large home at the end of a cul-de-sac on an oversized wooded lot that backed onto the Crofton golf course. The big yard gave the children plenty of safe space to play in. During our years in that house, I had worked hard to improve it. The result was an increase of its value.

As I learned later, after I left the marriage, my ex-wife neglected the house. When the time came for the children to sell it, its value had declined due to disrepair. They sold it as-is because none of the four of them had the time or money to restore it.

Susan used the money she inherited from her mother, from the sale of the house, to buy me the Steinway. She’s never told me why, but I think I’ve figured it out.

At the time of the divorce, one of my four children sided with her mother. The others, Susan included, were either neutral or sided with me. I speculate that when Susan found out that her mother had arranged for one of my children to be brought into the courtroom just as I took the witness stand—and hence refused to testify against her mother—she was angry. My conclusion is that Susan used her share of her mother’s estate to buy me the Steinway as a way of evening the imbalance.

Whatever her motivation, the end result is that I own the most beautiful grand piano I have ever played.

Resumption

I have completed my move from Ellicott City to Columbia, Maryland. While the house is still is disarray, at least I’m able to find items needed for daily living.

This morning, I discovered that Readers’ Favorite, an online book review site, just issued a review of my first published book, Friendly Casualties. I was so delighted that I quote the text in its entirety:

Review #1: Review by Joshua Soule [28 June 2019]

Review Rating: 4 Stars

________________________________________

“Even now, after almost forty years, I still hurt. And I’m one of the lucky ones.” Friendly Casualties is a novel consisting of short stories compiled to create overall vivid imagery of author Tom Glenn’s experience and memories of Vietnam. As a rare strategy often not seen in literature, Glenn writes following the viewpoint of several perspectives in each story. In Part One, Triage, Glenn vividly displays the struggle in the lives of the soldiers who desperately tried to keep it together in the dreadful circumstances around them—typically by medicating with alcohol and women. An even darker reality is presented when one soldier murders another.

Glenn changes pace and follows the life of a Vietnamese woman who saves an American child and thus dooms herself to rejection and death by her own people. Glenn makes it very clear that there are no winners during this war that affects everybody. Another story follows a reporter who, despite his initial desires to merely observe and report, finds himself more emotionally devastated than anticipated. As the reading grows more death-filled and emotionally difficult to read, Part Two, Healing, takes effect. Healing begins the journey of coming together and learning to move on as best as possible after the catastrophe that has just occurred.

Tom Glenn has done an excellent job of providing powerful imagery of his experiences in Vietnam. It is apparent from page one that Glenn has extensive experience and education. The pain, suffering, and even the psychological health of the soldiers depicted in Friendly Casualties is exceptionally displayed and illustrated. The short story format makes it easy to read, and I found myself unable to stop reading once I started. Phrases such as “I looked into their unfinished faces and saw sweetness hidden beneath the fear they concealed by blanking the feeling out of their eyes” show the incredible writing style of author Tom Glenn. I was emotionally invested from the beginning and found myself remaining so after finishing this book. Friendly Casualties is a great work by Tom Glenn!

End of quote. You can read the review at https://readersfavorite.com/author-area/651602/reviews. Friendly Casualties is available as an ebook on Amazon.com.

Temporary Absence

I’m moving to a new home this week. Packers will be in tomorrow. So I will be temporarily offline starting today until I’m settled in my new surroundings. I should be back online in early June.

The Steinway

Some time ago in this blog, I told the story of how I came to own the most beautiful piano I have ever played. It’s a story worth repeating.

It starts with my divorce from my first wife, the mother of my four children. During the hearings, my wife had testified about me and offered evidence as to why she should be awarded the lion’s share of out joint holdings. I had just taken the witness stand to tell my side of the story and recount her misdeeds when I spotted a neighbor coming into the courtroom with one of my daughters. I clammed up. I wasn’t about to narrate my wife’s considerable failings and egregious acts before one of her children.

I learned later that my wife had arranged for one of my children to be present during my testimony. She believed, correctly, that I would not level severe criticisms against her with one of her children listening. The end result was that I lost everything. My wife was awarded all our property, and I had to pay alimony. I was destitute. I was reduced to living in a rented attic in a joint house with five other men.

As time passed, I gradually regained financial equilibrium. Then my ex-wife died suddenly. I was free of the onerous alimony.

Meanwhile, my oldest daughter, Susan, now an adult, and I subscribed to the ballet series at the Kennedy Center every year. Often, before the performance, we would visit the opera house lounge. We would arrive early in the evening before the hired pianist was on duty. I’ve never been able to resist a playing a piano sitting idle and waiting for attention, so I asked if I could try the Steinway grand that was in the lounge.

Over the years, I tried a number of different pianos. One I played enthralled me. It had the most beautiful sound I had ever encountered. I played it before each of the performances that season. The next season, it was gone—replaced by another piano.

More tomorrow.

Aging (4)

The rewards and detriments of aging notwithstanding, the final phase of aging is death. I try to push the thought away, but it won’t go away. How will I prepare?

The end of human life is inescapable for all of us. As mentioned earlier in this blog, we Americans are the only people I know of who avoid the subject of death. We never mention it. We write, live, and think as if it didn’t exist. But it’s still there.

I am comfortable in facing my end in one respect. I’ve led a long, happy, and productive life. I can be justly proud of the lives I saved during the fall of Saigon. I am gratified by my own performance during my five years of taking care of men dying of AIDS. I am fulfilled by my writing—four novels, several articles, and seventeen short stories now in print with two more books to be published early next year. I am at peace with the life I have lived so far. My expectation is that I will have more to be proud of before the end.

I earnestly wish that I had religious faith. That would allow me to see death as the end of one life and the beginning of another, far better life. I’m not so fortunate. I try, with every bit of my strength, to believe in God and the life hereafter. I pray every night in hopes that there is a God who hears me. I remain unconvinced.

So I am forced to conclude that death will mean the end of my existence. I am working, with mixed results, to find peace in that conclusion. Maybe by the time death arrives for me, I’ll accept it with tranquility. I’m moving in that direction.

Aging (3)

It’s true. As my body and my brain slow down with age, my mind functions better than it ever has.

What is the mind? It’s the incorporeal entity which Webster defines as “that which reasons,” the doer of intellectual tasks. It depends on the brain to do its work, but it is not the brain. To my way of thinking, it is close to synonymous with spirit or soul.

As my mind grows, the depth of my understand continues to expand. Concepts once alien to me are for the first time clear. I see connections I was once blind to. I am able to reason through ideas that used to confound me. All my life I have heard that wisdom comes with age. Wisdom is not knowledge but understanding. I understand better than I have at any time in my life.

Most of all, I’m better able to write. Since that is my life calling, my growing facility is the greatest blessing I could ask for. I have a new proficiency at finding exactly the right word or stream of words to express precisely the meaning, flavor, and context I seek. My prose is sleeker, more efficient.

Of greatest value, I am able for the first time to understand, cultivate, and express the palpitations of the human soul at a level never before possible. My characters emerge not just as credible human beings but as sharply individual and profound. They exhibit quirks that reflect their individual spirits. They act at a new level of subtlety. The way they see their world and other people underscores their individual humanity.

If a failing body and brain are the price of aging, the new acumen of the mind—wisdom—is its reward. I’m more than willing to pay the price in exchange for the reward.

More tomorrow.