Tom Glenn's Blog, page 151

What Is Courage?

Another post I dredged up from years ago:

When I tell the story of the fall of Saigon, listeners come up to me afterwards and accuse me of having courage. I plead not guilty. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, courage is facing danger without fear. Believe me, I was scared the whole time.

Men and women I’ve talked to who are, by my standards, heroes for their acts of bravery, often say something similar: all they did was what was required by the circumstances at the time. And I remember reading somewhere long ago a description of a man standing in front of a mirror and watching himself tremble with fear after carrying out an act of bravery and thinking wryly to himself: “This is the portrait of a hero.”

What the protagonist of Last of the Annamese, Chuck Griffin, does at the end of the book [during the fall of Saigon] could be described as courageous. But he clearly doesn’t see it that way. He’d use words from his friend, Ike: “You do what you have to do, whatever it takes.”

Looking back on the last days in Saigon, what I remember most vividly is my determination to get all my men and their families out of Saigon safely before it fell. It took every scrap of strength I had; I didn’t have time to dwell on my fear that I might not make it out. Toward the end, I wrote a letter to a neighbor of ours back in the states and told her to deliver that letter to my wife if I didn’t make it. At the time, I really didn’t see how I was going to get out of Saigon alive. That letter was another thing I had to do, whatever it took. When I made it back to the world [that is, the U.S.] alive, the marriage collapsed. I burned the letter unread.

So what is courage? I honestly don’t know. What Chuck and I had doesn’t fit the description. Maybe what drives people to risk their lives is more like determination or focus on a goal of overwhelming importance. Maybe some things are more important staying alive.

If any of the readers of this blog can enlighten me and others, please leave a comment.

End of quote. More tomorrow.

Dark Writing and the Audience

Another quote from a blog of several years ago. This time, I have nothing to add:

A friend and I had again yesterday a discussion we’ve had several times over the years. He told me he reads for entertainment, and while he admires my writing skill, my topics are too dark for him. If I’d lighten up, I’d sell more books. My answer has always been and still is that I don’t write to entertain. I write to delve into the human condition with its up and down sides. That puts me into a writing tradition that goes from Shakespeare through Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann, Steinbeck, Hemingway to Ian McEwan. My friend points out [erroneously, as it happens] that few of those writers produced best sellers during their lives. But I don’t write to sell books, I tell him. I write because I have to.

Last of the Annamese is a prime example. My time in Vietnam changed me as a human being. I lived through unspeakable events that permanently damaged my soul. Even today I still can’t talk about some of my experiences, but they show up in my writing.

On the one hand, writing forces me to face my grisly memories which in turn helps me come to terms with them. I learn to channel my anguish into my writing, not into my living.

On the other hand, I write to inform readers of experiences they may have never encountered so that they can understand what others have suffered. No-Accounts relates the ugliness death from AIDS. The Trion Syndrome describes what it’s like to go through Post-Traumatic Stress Injury. And Last of the Annamese tells what really happened during the fall of Saigon.

Maybe my readers will come to feel what my characters feel. Maybe they’ll be less condemning of other human beings different from themselves. Maybe we can even learn to love one another a little. I devoutly hope so. But even if we don’t, I still have to write. And maybe more to the point, I don’t get a choice about the subject matter. My soul commands me, and I obey.

Could the U.S. Have Won the Vietnam War? (2)

Yesterday, I quoted from an early entry in this blog. But since I wrote that post more than two years ago, I’ve done considerable reading and thinking about Vietnam. Here’s where I stand today:

Could we have won the Vietnam war? Probably not, even if we had (a) been willing to risk war with China by invading North Vietnam, (b) continued the war for many more years, and/or (3) resorted to nuclear weapons.

Winning would have meant effectively conquering the country and removing the communist government by an invasion of North Vietnam. That would have invited the Chinese to rush to the defense of the North Vietnamese.

Why was an invasion required? Because the North Vietnamese were committed to what they considered national independence—that is, freedom from foreign domination—even if every one of them had to die in the process. We were astonished at the number of casualties they willingly suffered while continuing to fight against a militarily superior American force. Westmoreland’s “war of attrition” was doomed to failure.

And even if had been able to destroy the government apparatus in Hanoi, guerrilla activity throughout the country would have continued unabated, just as it did all through the war. We had been unable, for eleven years, to locate and destroy North Vietnamese military forces because they used guerrilla tactics as described by Mao Tse Tung: “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.” Hence, the U.S. military spent a great of time looking for the enemy and not finding him. It would have been a very long war, far beyond the tolerance of the American population.

So now, two years after the original blog I cited yesterday, I’ve concluded that the U.S. could not have won the war, even if we committed huge forces to the effort and spent twenty more years trying.

Ho Chi Minh’s tale of the tiger and elephant, quoted yesterday, accurately described the war as it played out. We Americans lost. And if the war had continued another twenty years, we still would have lost.

Could the U.S. Have Won the Vietnam War?

More than two years ago, I stated here my belief that we could have won the Vietnam war. I no longer believe so. Let me start by quoting what I said earlier:

To me, the final days during the fall of Saigon were hours of shame. Not only did the U.S withdraw from Vietnam in disarray, we also abandoned our allies who had fought at our side. Was that defeat inevitable?

Militarily, no.

Until 1968, the U.S. had followed the Westmoreland strategy of search and destroy, assuming that if we killed enough Vietnamese Communists, they would give up. We underestimated the will of North Vietnam to win the war no matter what the cost. Ho Chi Minh had told the French, “It will be a war between an elephant and a tiger. If the tiger ever stands still the elephant will crush him with his mighty tusks. But the tiger does not stand still. He lurks in the jungle by day and emerges only at night. He will leap upon the back of the elephant, tearing huge chunks from his hide, and then he will leap back into the dark jungle. And slowly the elephant will bleed to death. That will be the war of Indochina.”

More succinctly he said, “You will kill ten of us, and we will kill one of you, and in the end it is you who will be exhausted.”

When Creighton Abrams took over the command of U.S. forces in Vietnam in 1968, he altered the way the U.S. fought to stress working with the population, shifting the focus from body counts to population security, that is protecting the people from the Communists. He emphasized small unit operations aimed at defending villages and hamlets, forcing the North Vietnamese to attack U.S. forces in places and at times advantageous to the U.S.

It was working. But by then the U.S. population had turned against the war, and, after the peace accords of 1973, Congress eventually stopped even our air support to the South Vietnamese and withheld weapons, supplies, and funds from the South Vietnamese military, assuring that the North Vietnamese would win the war.

Whether the U.S. could have had the wisdom to shape Vietnamese politics so as to assure democracy and the rule of law in South Vietnam is another question entirely. But militarily, we were on our way to victory when the people of the U.S. decided the war must end, even if that meant shame and defeat.

That said, if we as a nation have learned nothing else from our failure, let us learn not to abandon the allies who have fought at our side and leave them to the mercy of our joint enemy. Our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq suggest to me that we have not learned that lesson.

End of quote. More tomorrow.

Why I Served So Long and So Often in Vietnam

More quotes from early in this blog:

A reader asked me why I was sent to Vietnam so often over a thirteen-year period. The answer is two-fold.

First, I have an inborn knack for languages. I was comfortable in the three languages commonly spoken in Vietnam—French. Vietnamese, and Chinese. That made me a rarity. The U.S. government had a real find in me and sent me as often as I would go.

Second, few civilian signals intelligence experts were willing to risk the danger of combat. I was. To this day I don’t know why [I was willing when others weren’t]. Part of it was patriotism; part was my sense that it was my duty to share the danger combatants faced. I knew I could be killed, but I didn’t know that repeated exposure to combat would sicken me with Post-Traumatic Stress Injury. But I would have done it anyway. Somehow it was a sacred calling: I was gifted with a flair for languages. It was my obligation to use the gift for the good of others.

Nowadays, time, age, and deafness (from artillery hits during the fall of Saigon) have weakened my ability to work in other languages. And I no longer have the physical stamina required for the battlefield. Instead, I write. I earnestly wish people to know what combat veterans have suffered through, and I want other Americans to know what happened in Vietnam, especially during the fall of Saigon. That’s why I wrote The Trion Syndrome and especially Last of the Annamese.

End of quote. Readers ask me if I volunteered to go to Vietnam. Between 1962 and 1975, I was in Vietnam for at least four months every year. I had two complete tours there with my family, my wife and eventually my four children. Did I have a choice?

Yes. Each trip to Vietnam was voluntary. I could have refused to go. I could have stayed out of combat. My sense at the time was that it was my duty to do what I could to help my brothers on the battlefield.

The costs were formidable. First and foremost is my life-long battle with Post Traumatic Stress Injury. The memories never fade. I’ve learned to cope.

The other cost was born less by me than by my children. As they grew up, their father was so often absent. I admit now that at the time, I thought little about that aspect of my time in Vietnam. Now I realize that they suffered. When I reconsider my past, I conclude that I would have volunteered to go to Vietnam anyway. The work I was doing was too important. But now I recognize that my family paid a price.

Military Pride

My perusal of early posts in this blog unearthed yet another worth repeating. It is from more than two years ago:

My posts for the last two days stressed the pain so many veterans suffer as they recall what happened in combat. What most noncombatants don’t understand is that in combat, in those moments when men fight one another to the death, those deaths are grisly. I’ve confronted my memories, but I still have experiences I can’t talk about. Men died by my side in hideous ways. Why them? Why not me?

The other side of the coin is intense pride. We risked out lives, willing to die for the good of our country. We didn’t question our orders or shirk from mortal danger. That’s why the jeering crowds who spat on us and called us butchers and baby-killers [when we returned from Vietnam] hurt so much. I was shamed. I didn’t speak of Vietnam for many years after the fall of Saigon. And my writing about what happened in Vietnam was uniformly rejected by editors [although now, in 2019, my three books on Vietnam are all published].

But my pride and my love of the men who fought at my side survived intact. Soldiers and Marines don’t use the word “love”—it’s too sentimental. But that’s what it is. The strongest bond I know of is between men who fight side by side. We share a pride and honor totally unknown to the vast majority of Americans who have never seen combat.

End of quote. My Post Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI)—the unbearable memories that come from going through combat—is still with me. But so is my pride. It is strongest when I am among veterans who know what it means to pledge one’s life for the good of the country.

A Night at the Garden

I invite all readers to take a look at the video, “A Night at the Garden.” You can see it at https://anightatthegarden.com/ Notice the swastikas above the stage. Notice that the speaker has a German accent. Notice that the crowd gives the Nazi salute. All this at Madison Square Garden just before Germany began World War II.

The man who tries to protest is a Jew who thought the gathering was immoral.

I’m struck by the similarity between this gathering and rallies I see reported on these days.

Feel free to comment.

Administration Handling of Classified Information

For those of us who risked our lives to obtain intelligence vital to the U.S., the Trump administration’s careless handling of that data is worse than an insult. Wikileaks reports that “President Donald Trump discussed classified information during an Oval Office meeting on May 10, 2017 with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, providing sufficient details that could be used by the Russians to deduce the source of the information and the manner in which it was collected, according to current and former government officials. The disclosure was first reported in the Washington Post on May 15, 2017. White House staff initially denied the report, but the following day Trump defended the disclosure, stating that he has the ‘absolute right’ to ‘share’ intelligence with Russia.”

One is forced to ask how often such revelations occurred. The president’s avowed fondness for Vladimir Putin and other dictators suggests that he may have given intelligence details to our enemies on many occasions that we know not of.

Now comes a report, in today’s Washington Post, that the president ordered the granting of a top-secret intelligence clearance to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, despite objections from security officials. This follows Trump’s long-time hostility to U.S. intelligence agencies.

Americans know little about the U.S. intelligence effort. Its work is classified, not to hide it from the American population but from our enemies. Exposure of classified information invariably means the loss of the source of that information and profound damage to the U.S. in its ability to defend itself against its enemies.

We may never know the harm already inflicted—it’s classified—but intelligence insiders welcome the demand by House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings for information on White House procedures for granting intelligence clearances. It’s long overdue. We hope this is the beginning of a congressional probe into the White House’s handling of and damage to intelligence.

My Brothers Weigh In

Something like two years ago, I wrote here about my fellow veterans who are afflicted with Post-Traumatic Stress Injury. The post bears repeating:

Since I began promoting [my novel] Last of the Annamese and started this blog, I have been receiving email notes and Facebook postings from other men who served in Vietnam. They have reinforced my memories with stories of their own and, in effect, confirmed for me that others have unspeakable memories, too.

Sufferers of Post-Traumatic Stress Injury from combat invariably go off by themselves because they can’t talk about what they did and what they witnessed. That makes them feel isolated, as if they alone are tortured by monstrous memories. When they find the courage to face their experiences directly, they nearly always go through the maelstrom by themselves, away from their loved ones. On the one hand, they feel shame for what they have done; on the other they don’t want to burden those they care most about. It makes for a lonely life.

So when other men speak to me of the combat they have been through, I come to understand that I am not alone. I am one of a band of brothers. We suffer alone, but we reach out to help each other when we can. I am comforted because I wrote both The Trion Syndrome and Last of the Annamese in part to confront my memories and in part to help others who suffer as I do. Annamese begins with the following dedication:

“This book is dedicated to those who suffered through Vietnam, were jeered and spat upon when they returned to the world, and have yet to be thanked for their service. May our country awaken, recognize your sacrifice, and honor you.”

End of quote. The next day I wrote:

Yesterday, I talked about exchanges with other veterans and quoted the dedication from Last of the Annamese. A reader reminded me that the dedication to The Trion Syndrome is even more à propos:

“To all combatants who suffered damage to their souls while serving their country.”

The Gift: Foreseeing the Future (2)

Lack of knowledge among decision-makers about Vietnam during the war was one of the two factors that led to a thing I called the Cassandra Effect. Cassandra, according to Greek mythology, was a Trojan woman blessed by the gods with the ability to foretell the future and cursed that her forecasts would never be believed. That was my fate. Over and over, I warned U.S. military commanders and civilian leaders that the North Vietnamese were nearby and planning to attack. Too often I wasn’t believed, and no action was taken. It happened, most spectacularly, before the Tet Offensive and the fall of Saigon.

Ignorance of the enemy was one reason why I wasn’t believed. The other was inadequate training of military and civilian leaders.

The National Security Agency (NSA), my employer, worked hard to keep signals intelligence a secret. A target who finds out that his communications are being intercepted can easily alter his practices and stop the intercept. Success depends on the target’s unawareness.

NSA was so good at secrecy that even some of the customers of our service knew nothing of our work. Over and over again, I encountered military commanders whose training had never covered signals intelligence and who had no idea of what it meant to intercept and exploit enemy communications. Typical was the commander of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, Major General William Peers. In 1967, we were in Pleiku Province in the western highlands, near the Laos-Cambodia border. I warned him that the North Vietnamese were preparing a highlands-wide offensive and that an attack on the Dak To Special Forces camp was imminent.

He shook his head and pointed to our camp on Engineer Hill. “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?” He waved us away. The briefing was over.

When the enemy struck, General Peers lost a battalion. That led to the battle of Dak To, one of the bloodiest in the war. To see my New York Times article on the battle, go to

My gift for foretelling the future was useless if I wasn’t believed. Cassandra and I were siblings.