Tom Glenn's Blog, page 186

The Bond

I’ve written here a number of times about the bond that forms between men who fight side by side. I’ve said that it is the strongest bond I’ve ever experienced. But I’ve never devoted a blog post to that bond, what causes it, and what it’s like.

I’m not a psychiatrist or sociologist, so I can’t talk in scientific terms about the bond. I can only tell you how it affected me.

I have to start by stressing why men fight in combat. They may have been put in harm’s way because of their desire to defend their country or their devotion to God or their determination to fight evil. But on the battlefield, men fight for each other. In combat, they fight for the lives of their brothers fighting at their side. They are determined to keep their fellow combatants alive even if it means giving up their own lives.

The feelings among men fighting by each other’s side is the strongest love I’ve ever experienced. Soldiers and Marines don’t call it love—that’s too sentimental. But that’s what it is.

I’m sure I didn’t experience that bond to the depths that other men in combat did. I wasn’t there to shoot and kill the enemy. I was there to provide information about the enemy—where he was, the size and identity of his units, what he was doing, what his intensions were. The men by my side were the fighters, intent on destroying the enemy and defending each other.

I have no doubt that what I did saved lives and hurt the enemy. But I didn’t personally kill enemy soldiers. I had no way of directly protecting the men who fought by my side. I was armed with a .38 revolver to defend myself, but I never used it in combat. That wasn’t why I was there. So my sense of kinship with my brothers fighting at my side could not have been as strong as it was between those actually doing the fighting.

And yet it is the most intense love I’ve ever felt. Emblazoned in my memory are the moments of death of men who fought next to me. I can’t talk about them. It hurts too much. Those hideous events, along with the ghastly happenings during the fall of Saigon, are the source of my Post-Traumatic Stress Injury. The memories never fade. They will be with me always.

When I’m with other veterans, especially those who served in Vietnam, I know the bond is still strong. A quick nod, a brief look in each other’s eyes, a handshake—we recognize each other. Nothing needs to be said. We each know we put our lives on the line for each other and we’d do it again.

Presentation for Vietnam Veterans

Last Thursday, I did the fall of Saigon presentation for a gathering of Vietnam veterans and their wives. As usual, I had finished setting up and greeted audience members as they arrived. Before I talked, each veteran stood and stated where he served in Vietnam and what year. The audience turned out to represent all services; members had seen duty in all parts of South Vietnam. I knew the areas and battles they spoke of. I was among brothers.

No sooner had I started to speak than I felt the rush of emotional support from audience members. When I said, “Let me show you what I looked like back then” and projected a slide of a photo taken of me in Saigon in 1962, I got a good laugh. Next I put up a slide of me holding my baby daughter during the Tet celebration of 1963. I said, “I want to tell that kid—and I mean the man, not the little girl—to go back to the high school he escaped from and turn himself in.” That brought down the house.

As I told the story of the warnings I gave the U.S. ambassador that the North Vietnamese were preparing to attack Saigon and how I wasn’t believed, I could feel the tension in the room rising. I related how I struggled to get my 43 subordinates and their families out of the country despite the ambassador’s refusal to allow evacuation. When I talked about the South Vietnamese officer who shot his three children, his wife, and himself rather than be taken by the North Vietnamese, I choked up as I nearly always do. The audience was dead silent. Every eye was on me. I told of the last days when two communicators and I, the only ones left from my office, ran out of food and couldn’t sleep because of the shelling. I described my escape under fire after the North Vietnamese were already in the streets. The audience gasped.

These men had been there. They understood in a way most don’t. They knew what it meant to put their lives on the line. The knew what it was like to come back to the U.S. and be labelled butchers and baby killers and be spat upon. They, too, had spent decades in silence about their time in Vietnam. And here was one of their guys—me—telling what happened at the end.

When I finished, they gave me a standing ovation.

Folk Group Church Music in Saigon

My doctorate is in Public Administration (the functioning of the government bureaucracy), and my masters is in Government. But my BA is in Music. I was a composer—and occasionally still am.

By age six, I knew I was born to write stories, but I struggled against my vocation. I tried various other professions. Music and foreign languages took precedence for a while, and thanks to my flare for languages (I’ve worked in seven different ones other than English), I spent my working years as a spy. Through it all, I never stopped writing. I retired as early as I could to write full time. I now have four novels and seventeen short stories in print.

But my passion for music has stayed with me. I play the piano every day and nearly always have music going on my several stereos throughout my house. As I type in my office, a Sibelius symphony plays in the background.

Throughout my life, I’ve dabbled in church music. I’ve sung in choirs and directed them, but even though I was a classically trained musician, I much preferred the church folk music to the standard hymns. So I established and ran folk groups to provide music during services. During my last tour in Vietnam, I played guitar and sang with a folk group at the Catholic church in Saigon that catered to Americans and featured mass in English.

That experience found its way into my writing. In the novel Last of the Annamese, Molly, an American nurse at the U.S. dispensary in Saigon, sings in the folk group during masses at Cité Paul-Marie. I described how moved she is by “Hear, O Lord,” one of my favorite folk hymns.

I still remember sitting in church in April 1975 while the group sang that hymn, accompanied by the sound of distant artillery as the North Vietnamese closed in on Saigon. The memory still brings tears to my eyes.

On Aging

I’m getting old. No point in pretending otherwise.

I’m not complaining. The alternative to aging does appeal to me. But the gradual decay of the body is a challenge I wasn’t expecting and didn’t prepare for.

My approach to living is as youthful as ever. I’m very active. I spend my hours—never enough to get everything done—in writing, promoting my books, speaking publicly, taking care of my large house and yard, reading, and exercising (weight-lifting).

For years I was a runner and have always lifted weights, not for health reasons, but because I enjoy it. Then, five years ago, I had botched knee replacement surgery. Now I have trouble walking, and running is a thing of the past. But I still lift weights regularly. I can’t manage the heavy weights I used to when I was younger, but I lift a respectable amount.

The challenge of aging is that the body can no longer do everything it used to. I’m not as physically strong or agile as I once was. When I do a presentation that has me on my feet for more than an hour, my legs ache, and I have trouble walking. As a result of my lung cancer, I have a persistent cough, and I tire easily. That means I have to nap every day, whether I want to or not. Since I’m not as physically active as I used to be (e.g., no running), I have to watch my diet to avoid gaining weight.

But far and away the worst part of aging is the effect on the brain. Memory is the biggest problem. Typical was this morning when I heated myself a cup of coffee, did a few chores, then came back and heated another cup of coffee. I’d forgotten I already had a steaming cup waiting for me. I have trouble remembering the routes to various places I drive. And I have no recall for names.

But the odd aspect of aging is that as the brain slows, the mind becomes more expansive and resplendent. I can see, understand, process, and crystalize facets of being human far better than I ever could before. The new facility in thinking addresses primarily the nonmaterial aspects of living—creativity, morality, the nature of love, the breathtaking beauty that surrounds us.

Most important to me is that what I care about most—writing—is flourishing as never before. My use of language is better than it has ever been. I’m more facile with words and write faster than I once did. The right words come to me like flashes of lightening. I grasp and express connections and relationships I was blind to when I was younger.

So I have no complaints. As long as the mind grows and flourishes, the aging of the body is more than tolerable.

The Trump Administration and Intelligence (2)

No sooner had I posted my blog on intelligence than the Washington Post published a similar article. You can read it at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/12/sarah-sanderss-disingenuous-defense-of-how-the-white-house-handles-classified-material/?undefined=&utm_term=.274e170c4227&wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1

The Trump Administration and Intelligence

News reports these days are filled with stories about how President Trump and his subordinates handle intelligence. I’m deeply concerned.

I spent my entire professional career, before retiring to write fulltime, in intelligence. I learned early that the exposure of sources and methods to the intelligence target destroys the flow of information. During the Vietnam war, I saw repeatedly that ignoring intelligence led to deaths.

If current press reports are to be believed, many in the Trump administration have not received final clearances but nevertheless have routine access to some of the country’s most sensitive intelligence. Some of the clearances have been withheld because people being cleared “forgot” or hid information about contacts with foreign governments or other damaging data. Such omissions have in the past always led to the permanent withdrawal of clearances.

In short, people who in the past would have been denied clearances for cause now have unlimited access to some of the most fragile and valuable information available to the U.S. government.

The press also tells us that Trump doesn’t read the President’s Daily Brief, a summary of the most urgent intelligence. Instead, he relies on verbal coaching and news from Fox & Friends on television. And the verbal briefings omit information likely to spark Trump’s wrath, like, for example, reports on Russian meddling in U.S. elections.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Trump has likened U.S. intelligence agencies to Nazis. “He mocked their judgment that Russia had intervened in the campaign to help him win. And he repeatedly accused them of leaking to the media to embarrass him and undermine the White House.” And Trump disclosed to senior Russian diplomats highly classified intelligence about ISIS that had been obtained in Syria, reportedly by Israel, and had been given to Washington on the condition it go no further.

To the degree that press reports are accurate, the U.S. is likely to be losing vital intelligence through careless compromise. At the same time, urgent reports are being ignored.

When those two conditions prevail, people die.

Strong Women

I’m not like a lot of men I know. I’m attracted to strong women. Dependent, weak-willed women don’t appeal to me. In part, my preference reflects my way of judging people—I admire physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual strength, and while I’m touched by frailty, it’s not a quality I have much liking for, in myself or anyone else.

Put differently, I want to be with independent women who want to be with me, not those who have to be with a man because they can’t manage on their own. I love the idea of two strong individuals who spend time with each other because they choose to, not because they need to.

As a consequence, the characters in my novels are most often tough and resilient. That includes the women. Two of the five principal characters in Last of the Annamese are women. One, Molly, is American; the other, Tuyet, is Vietnamese.

Both face risks because of the men they choose for lovers. Both are in peril for their lives as the fall of Saigon looms. Neither flinches.

Molly at the beginning of the novel doesn’t seem especially courageous. But she has volunteered to serve in a war-torn city (Saigon) where death is never far away. Before the end of the story, she has chosen to help others because she’s so moved by the Amerasian orphans she cares for. She has the guts needed for the job.

Tuyet is of a different sort. She is of the royal family of Vietnam, a princess, forced to marry a commoner for the good of her clan. It takes courage for her to put aside her royal pride and face the fall of Vietnam to the communists.

Both characters are drawn from women I knew during the final days of Vietnam. My admiration for their bravery in the face of severe adversity has never waned.

Rains Come, Birds Depart

Two eerie signs of the fall of Vietnam were the rains and the birds.

I wrote a few days ago about the three cities that fell as the conquest of South Vietnam approached. In each case, it rained. The first, Ban Me Thuot, was in the highlands. It was monsoon season there; the rains were not unexpected. But the other two, Phuoc Binh and Xuan Loc, were in the lowlands. Both were seized by the communists during the dry season—Phuoc Binh in January and Xuan Loc in April. And yet it rained on the day the North Vietnamese captured each city.

Thanh, the prophetic character in my novel, Last of the Annamese, remarks on the rain and the end of his beloved An Nam, the name he used for Vietnam: “Thanh’s face turned upward again. His eyelids quivered as raindrops splashed down his forehead. ‘The Heaven.’ He pointed upward. ‘The Heaven weeps. An Nam no more. An Nam was. You listen to her weep now.’”

Thanh forewarns that the departure of the birds from Saigon will signal the fall of the city: “‘Cataclysm comes closer. You can smell it in the air. One day soon the birds will abandon Saigon. When they do, the end is at hand.’”

Towards the middle of April—I don’t remember the exact date—as the North Vietnamese encircled Saigon and the fighting came closer and closer, I noticed one day the absence of chirping and bird calls. I looked up and saw that the birds had disappeared from the sky and trees. Their departure was chilling.

Then, on 29 April, the day the North Vietnamese invaded Saigon, it rained again. The monsoons were not due to start until sometime in May, but as I boarded the helicopter for escape to the 7th Fleet cruising in the South China Sea, the heavens opened up and drenched us.

Unlike so many of the Vietnamese I knew, I was not religious, spiritual, or superstitious. I didn’t see the rains and the departure of the birds as a divine or spiritual commentary on the loss of Vietnam. But the consistent behavior of nature in aligning itself to human catastrophe was too pronounced to ignore. It reinforced my sense of irredeemable tragedy.

The Lucky Few

A few weeks ago, Jan Herman, author of The Lucky Few (Naval Institute Press, 2013), emailed me to say that he had reread Last of the Annamese and enjoyed it. That prompted me to pull out my copy of The Lucky Few and read it again. I’m glad I did. It’s a fine piece of work and well worth my time.

The book narrates the rescue operation undertaken by the USS Kirk, a destroyer escort that was part of the U.S. Seventh Fleet Task Force 76. The ships in the task force rescued evacuees, including me, during April and May 1975 when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese.

What makes Jan’s book so valuable to me is that it greatly adds to my understanding of the events surrounding the fall of Saigon. I knew in detail what happened on the ground—I lived it—but my knowledge and memory of actions taken at sea was at best sketchy, in part because I was so sick during those days that I didn’t observe much. Because of conditions I had to live under during the prolonged North Vietnamese siege of Saigon, I was suffering from exhaustion, amoebic dysentery, ear damage, and pneumonia due to insufficient diet, muscle fatigue, and sleep deprivation. I wasn’t physically competent to understand that huge naval operation.

Thanks to The Lucky Few, I now know that Task Force 76 was an enormous undertaking put together in great haste. It included seventeen amphibious ships, two aircraft carriers, fourteen escorts, and eleven replenishment ships. Beyond them, two other aircraft carriers farther out to sea provided protection.

The night Saigon fell, 29 April, I boarded a Huey belonging to Air America, a private company operating in South Vietnam. We came under fire as soon as we were airborne, but we made it. In the dark and pouring rain, we landed on the Oklahoma City, the flag ship of the Seventh Fleet. At the same time and in the days that followed, Vietnamese refugees escaped by boat and on the ships of the South Vietnamese navy. The Kirk alone rescued more than 30,000 of them.

I’m heartened by the story of Task Force 76. It was a gallant and magnificently executed operation that saved many thousands of lives. The Kirk story is a small and partial antidote to my grief over our abandonment of the hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese who had fought by our side. The loss is personal to me. Some 2,700 South Vietnamese soldiers who had worked with my organization were left behind as Saigon fell. All of them were killed or captured by the North Vietnamese. The ambassador had refused to call for an evacuation, and by the time he was countermanded from Washington, it was too late to get to those men. I will always mourn their loss.

Yuëh-Nán

The origin of the name of Vietnam and its history continue to intrigue me. The name’s source was intrinsic to the naming of my novel, Last of the Annamese.

The Vietnamese people originated thousands of years ago as a tribe in southern China ethnically distinct from the Chinese. They were a tough and resilient people unwilling to be dominated, politically or culturally.

The Chinese used the term Yuëh-Nán ( 越 南 )  to refer to these people.  Yuëh means to cross over, exceed, or transcend with strong pejorative implications; Nán means “south.” The compound means “those in the south who cross over.” The Chinese applied the name long before the Vietnamese moved south out of China. So the implication is that “cross over” here means to challenge or make trouble. The translation that seems most plausible to me is “the troublemakers in the south.” Yuëh-Nán in Vietnamese is Viet Nam.

Millennia ago, the troublesome people started moving south, into what is now Vietnam. Despite repeated wars with the Chinese, the Vietnamese established their independence. They called themselves by various names but eventually settled on Vietnam. Among the names they used for their country was An Nam, which means “peace in the south.” A resident of An Nam is, in English, called an Annamese. Hence the title of my novel.

One of the principal characters in the novel is South Vietnamese Marine Colonel Pham Ngoc Thanh. Unlike most modern Vietnamese, he understands the unflattering connotation of Viet Nam and greatly prefers the old name, An Nam. To him, An Nam comes to mean the nation and culture he loves. It is he who, toward the end of the novel as the North Vietnamese bear down on Saigon, pronounces the death sentence of his beloved country when he says, “‘The Heaven weeps. An Nam no more. An Nam was. You listen to her weep now.’”