Tom Glenn's Blog, page 162

Presentations

These days I spend more time than I want to giving presentations. I do a lecture on fiction craftsmanship and a remembrance of the 1967 battle of Dak To in Vietnam’s western highlands. But most often, I tell the story of the fall of Saigon which I survived, escaping under fire after the North Vietnamese were already in the streets of the city.

The heavy public speaking schedule gets in the way of my writing. It takes time to rehearse the presentations, organize the slides, and travel to the venues where I am invited to speak. And I always refuse offers of money for the presentations on Vietnam. These are sacred stories for me. I want people to know what happened.

My presentation on the Dak To battle emphasizes one aspect of my years in Vietnam: U.S. troop commanders so often didn’t believe or act on the intelligence I was able to provide them through the intercept and exploitation of North Vietnamese communications. I was nearly always able to locate enemy units and determine what they were doing. The refusal to accept my information happened so frequently that I coined the term “Cassandra Effect” about my ability to foretell what was going to happen and the dilemma of not being believed.

The fall of Saigon story is far and away my most popular presentation. I’ve now given it more than sixty times. What happened in Saigon was one more example of the Cassandra Effect—the U.S. Ambassador, Graham Martin, didn’t believe my warnings that the North Vietnamese were preparing to attack Saigon and failed to call for an evacuation. By the time he was countermanded from Washington, it was too late to save the 2700 South Vietnamese soldiers who had worked with the NSA organization. They were all either killed or captured by the North Vietnamese.

I still grieve for them.

Hill 488 (3)

I end my reverie about Hill 488 with a quote from James Jones. He was well-known for portraying the ugliness of war without flinching. His best-known books are From Here to Eternity (1951) and The Thin Red Line (1962). He, like me, wanted people to know how ghastly combat is. He would have approved of Hill 488. Here’s what he had to say about how writers before him had portrayed combat:

“I don’t think that combat has ever been written about truthfully; it has always been described in terms of bravery and cowardice. I won’t even accept these words as terms of human reference any more. And anyway, hell, they don’t even apply to what, in actual fact, modern warfare has become.”

He was right. But writing has changed. These days I read books that describe the horror of the battlefield in naked truth. Hill 488 is one such book.

Hill 488 (2)

My admiration for Hill 488 derives from the excellence of the writing and the willingness of the authors to depict combat unreservedly in all its hideousness. I recommend the book because I want people to know how ghastly combat is. I want Americans to understand what they are subjected their young men and women to when they decide that we must go to war.

The men I served with in Vietnam were very young. The average age was nineteen. These were kids. Some were barely shaving. Some had never tasted alcohol before they went into the service. Some had never before been away from home. And they died on the battlefield beside me.

Toward the end of Hill 488, the authors offer some statistics and interpretation of the numbers. That paragraph, quoted below, brought tears to my eyes:

“Contrary to popular opinion, most Vietnam casualties-—-70 percent—were volunteers, not draftees. The army suffered the most casualties—38,179, or 2.7 percent of its force. The Marine Corps, however, lost the largest percentage of its force——14,836, or 5 percent. Forty percent of all Marine enlisted casualties were teenagers. Statistics are cold numbers. Names on a slab of marble tell little about the men or how they lived and died. It is my hope that this book brings to life the circumstances and drama of the men who defended Hill 488 that terrible night in 1966, of the six men, heroes all, whose names First Platoon contributed to ‘The Wall,’ and, by extension, of all the honorable men in all the various services who gave so much to the Vietnam war.”

 

Hill 488

I just finished reading Hill 488 by Ray Hildreth and Charles W. Sasser (Pocket Books, 2003). The man who recommended it to me is in prison. We have been corresponding by letter since May 2017 after he read my novel, The Trion Syndrome, about a Vietnam vet suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI).

This man—I refer to him as “John” to preserve his privacy—joined the U.S. Navy as a teenager. At nineteen, he was assigned to act as a medic to Marines in combat. Specifically, he was a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman-Field Medical Service Technician (HM-8404/0000) with Charlie Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, the same unit described in Hill 488. He joined the recon company immediately after the battle which is the subject of the book. He replaced the corpsman killed on the hill whose death is so vividly portrayed by Hildreth. Wounded twice, John received a Purple Heart, a Gold Star (for the second wounding), and a Bronze Star with “V” for valor.

John wrote to me because he recognized that the author of The Trion Syndrome was also a man who suffered from PTSI. In the pages of the novel, he saw himself. That makes John and me brothers in arms. We know without words that we share the anguish that living through combat inflicts.

Hill 488 is beautifully written. It depicts in grisly detail the battle for Hill 488, otherwise known as Nui Vu, between the Marines and North Vietnamese attackers trying to destroy them after they deployed secretly to the hill to spy on the communist units in the valley below. The battle took place on the night of 13-14 June 1966.

What made the book so gripping for me was the reaction of Hildreth to combat. He could have been describing me. And yet I was very different from the soldiers and Marines I stood beside in combat. My job was signals intelligence support. I was armed with a .38 revolver, not a rifle or ka-bar (a combat knife), and I never fired a shot at an enemy troop. But I saw men die in the same gruesome ways that Hildreth describes. And I responded to combat as he did. Like him, my enthusiasm turned to terror, then blankness. Like him, my training took over. I became an automaton acting as programmed.

More tomorrow.

“A Salute to Vietnam Veterans”

Last Saturday, I attended and spoke at a celebration called “A Salute to Vietnam Veterans” at the Dewey Loman American Legion Unit 109 in Halethorpe. Maryland. It was sponsored by the Legion Auxiliary of the post. I came away deeply moved.

Throughout the first part of the event and while we ate lunch, the Maryland Military Band played patriotic music and medleys of tunes popular during our wars, particularly World Wars I and II. The music, to my surprise, sparked strong emotions in me.

As the meal finished, the post commander and post president spoke briefly. Then it was my turn. I was there to tell my story about the fall of Saigon.

With my emotions already unleashed, I found tears in my eyes as I told of Bob and Gary, the two men who volunteered to risk their lives and stay with me to the end as Saigon fell. When I spoke of the South Vietnamese officer who shot his children, his wife, and himself rather than live under the communists, my voice cracked. At the end of the presentation, I told of the unknown danger that Bob and Gary and I faced—a North Vietnamese regiment that was preparing to attack us but was delayed by the collapse of bridge. We choppered out at the end never knowing how close we came to capture or death. My voice went raw as I told of our escape under fire.

As I spoke, I scanned the faces in the audience, well over a hundred veterans and their wives. Every eye was on me. I saw no movement. When I paused to take a breath, I heard nothing. The people in the room were with me.

When I finished my story, I got a standing ovation. An endless line of people came up to thank me. I then helped distribute the Vietnam War Commemoration pins to some fifty Vietnam veterans present. To each one, I said the words I had so longed to hear—and never did—when I came home from Vietnam a sick and broken man after the fall of Saigon: “Thank you for your service. And welcome home, brother.”

 

Headlines Gone Awry

As a writer, I particularly enjoy the ambiguity of the English language. Many jokes, including puns, rely on our ability to understand words more than one way. Newspaper headlines which require minimum words are notoriously susceptible to being interpreted in two different ways. Below are examples I collected many years ago. They still make me laugh.

Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Say

Police Begin Program to Run Down Jay-Walkers

Miners Refuse to Work after Death

Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant

War Dims Hope for Peace

If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile

Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures

Enfield (London) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide

Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges

Man Struck By Lightning: Faces Battery Charge

Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft

Kids Make Nutritious Snacks

Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors

Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Veterans and Me (6)

Thanks to my years in Vietnam, I know the silent pain of Vietnam veterans. Because we were blamed for participating in a shameful war, we said nothing about our time in Vietnam for decades. Then, as a younger generation of Americans matured—those who were born after the fall of Saigon—the attitude of Americans toward the war in Vietnam has changed. The younger Americans want to know what happened in Vietnam. Why is the generation that preceded them so unwilling to talk about the war? These kids—they are young enough to be my grandchildren—ask questions and want answers.

Four or five years ago, I was for the first time invited to a “welcome home” gathering for Vietnam veterans. I attended, unsure of what to expect, my guard up. Younger folks there showed no signs of the hostility I had learned to expect from the American public. They went out of their way to assure that I was comfortable and treated me with honor.

Early in the evening, three or four of these kids (by my standard) approached me smiling and shook my hand. “Thank you for your service,” they said. “And welcome home.”

Those were words I had yearned to hear for so many years. When I heard them, directed to me, I cried.

Veterans and Me (5)

As a result of my years of working with Marines and soldiers on the battlefield, I have an abiding reverence for veterans. I know that they were willing to give up their lives for their fellow combatants, including me. And I was ready to die for them. There is no stronger bond.

When veterans congregate, there is among us an unexpressed but deeply felt fondness. Nothing needs be said. We recognize one another as if by instinct. We are blood brothers together. It was the spilling of blood that brought us together.

Vietnam veterans are especially close to my heart. By chance, I have not, after the war, come across any men I served beside on the battlefield. It doesn’t matter. Vietnam vets and I share not only memories of the battlefield but also scenes of rejection when we came back to the world (the U.S.). We remember the dishonor our fellow Americans subjected us to after we risked our lives in defense of the U.S. and each other. We remember being called butchers and baby killers. We remember being spat upon. We remember our decades of silence about being Vietnam veterans.

And the civilians I served with in-country after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam in 1973 were all veterans. The 43 guys in the NSA covert operation in Vietnam from 1973 until the fall of Saigon in 1975 were all former military, as was I. We shared the bond veterans feel. And each of us was willing to sacrifice his life to save the others.

More tomorrow.

Veterans and Me (4)

One of the funny outcomes of those photos of me when I was under cover as a Marine or army soldier in Vietnam came years later.

In 2013, Maryland Public Television (MPT) chose me to be among the sixteen veterans they featured in the three-part Vietnam war documentary to be aired in 2016. When they first interviewed me in 2014, the fact that I was really a civilian working for the National Security Agency during my years in Vietnam was still classified. So I simply didn’t mention what my parent organization was. MPT found photos of me in both army and Marine uniforms and finally concluded that I must have been an army officer. They produced eight-foot banners on each of us vets to be displayed in their travelling exhibit. Mine shows two of those shots of me in an army uniform and proclaims that I was an army intelligence officer.

After the final declassification of my work in Vietnam in 2016, I informed MPT of my true status. It was too late. The documentary was already scheduled for broadcast in June. The traveling exhibit, still on display at the MPT studios, shows me as an army officer.

After so many years of avoiding any public knowledge of my work in Vietnam—it was so deeply classified that NSA redacted my name from its public document—my moment in the sun of public recognition for my service in Vietnam was tainted by misidentification. I don’t mind. I was so used to pretending to be someone I wasn’t that permanent display of me in my cover role is somehow poetic justice.

More tomorrow.

Veterans and Me (3)

I lost a good many buddies on the battlefields of Vietnam. The worst for me was the grisly deaths, so common in combat. They are a principal source of my Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI), which will be with me always.

The oddity of my experience is that all my time in combat was as a civilian. I had finished my military service before NSA sent to Vietnam in 1962 to support U.S. military forces fighting the war. I was there on and off for the next thirteen years. Between 1965 and 1973, nearly all that time was taken up with signals intelligence support to army and Marine units on the battlefield. After 1973, I headed the covert NSA operation in Vietnam. On 29 April 1975, I escaped under fire as Saigon fell.

During the years I supported troops in combat, I was always under cover as an enlisted man belonging to the unit I was working with. I lived with the enlisted men and went into battle with them.

The soldiers and Marines invariably found my presence hilarious. Here was a civilian who sometimes outranked their commanding officers humping along side them and pretending to be one of them. It sometimes took as much as a week for them to accept me and call me by my first name. After that, I was one of them but blessed with skills and knowledge that could save their lives.

They loved to take pictures of me in their uniforms. As a result, snapshots of me in army and Marine uniforms were frequent and became the source of much amusement. Fortunately, I’ve always looked younger than I am—I was still being carded in bars when I was in my early thirties—so I looked the part.

My love for those men stays with me today. I call them “men,” but they were really kids. The average age was nineteen. And I will never cease to grieve over those killed by my side.

More tomorrow.