Tom Glenn's Blog, page 189
January 18, 2018
The Long Silence of Vietnam Veterans (2)
Yesterday, I described my years of silence about my time in Vietnam and my sense of shame about the war and the way Americans reacted to it.
Though I didn’t know it for decades, I was not alone. Countless other Vietnam vets went through the same travail I did. They, too, were silent. But, as noted in yesterday’s blog, the American public has changed the way it sees Vietnam. Now people want to know what happened. Now we vets speak openly about our war experience. When I do presentations or readings on my time in Vietnam, men who did time in-country hurry to talk to me. We compare notes about where we were and what we did. We share a kinship that others who were not there can’t understand.
But most of the time when I’m with other Vietnam vets, we don’t talk much. There’s a deep understanding among us about what we’ve been through. We each know that the others feel what we feel. A handshake, a look in the eyes . . . it’s enough.
Next month, the circle will close. I’ve been invited to give my presentation about the fall of Saigon to a chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America in Vienna, Virginia. We will speak publicly to one another about our hurtful memories. And I’ll be at home with my brothers.
January 17, 2018
The Long Silence of Vietnam Veterans
When I returned to the world (the U.S.) after the fall of Saigon, I didn’t talk about my years in Vietnam. It had been a shameful war, and no one wanted to hear about it. I was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury with all the symptoms—panic attacks, flashbacks, nightmares, and irrational rages, but I couldn’t seek therapy because I held top secret codeword-plus security clearances. Talking to a therapist would have led to the withdrawal of my access to classified information, and I would have been fired. So I talked to no one about my hideous memories. It was the lowest point in my life.
Eventually, I realized that other Vietnam vets were as silent as I was. They’d been jeered as butchers and baby-killers and spat upon when they returned to the world. Now it was best for them to say nothing. These were men who’d risked their lives for their country. And now they were shamed.
The attitude of the American public toward war began to change a few years ago. My stories and novels drawn from my thirteen years in and out of Vietnam began to sell. I now have seventeen short stories and four novels in print. People want to know what happened in Nam.
About four years ago, I was invited to a welcome home celebration for Vietnam vets, something I’d never heard of before. When I attended, young people greeted me and shook my hand. I heard the words that I had always so yearned to hear: “Thank you. And welcome home.” I cried.
More tomorrow.
January 16, 2018
Grit (2)
The story of Angela Duckworth’s book Grit is my story: a neglected child labelled as a slow learner who nevertheless wouldn’t quit. Discouraged from going to college because I wasn’t smart enough, I did it anyway. At the Army Language School, I graduated first in my class because I worked harder than anybody else. During the fall of Saigon, I wouldn’t leave until I got all 43 of my subordinates and their families safely out of the country despite an order from the ambassador not to evacuate my people. Struck with lung cancer that should have been fatal, I refused to die. In short, I did all these things because I had to. The alternative was giving up.
My worst days with cancer are illustrative: After regaining consciousness from the surgery that removed the upper lobe of my right lung, I saw myself lying beside a dark stream. I knew I could end my suffering by reaching out and putting my hand in that black flow. I could choose to die. Instead, I redoubled my determination to go on living, no matter how much it hurt. I did survive and am now well on my way to returning to complete health.
That experience informed a conversation I had a couple of days ago with another veteran who has colon and prostate cancer. We agreed that survival so often depends on the will to live. I’m persuaded that if this man lives, it will be because he is fiercely determined to cling to life. I’m doing all I can to encourage him.
Judgments of others to the contrary notwithstanding, I firmly believe that I started out with no better than average intelligence. Granted, I have a distinct flare for languages and writing. But my success as a writer is due more to my passion and fierce determination than to talent. Something like 10 percent of my writing time is spent drafting new text; 90 percent is taken up with revising. I typically go through ten drafts—sometimes more—of each of my books before I consider them finished. That takes me, on average, fourteen years per book, although I am usually working on more than one book at a time. I realize that as I age, I won’t be able to afford that long for the books I’m writing now. I’ll have to improve my writing speed. I’ll do it because I have to.
January 7, 2018
The LOTA Glossary (2)
Continuing my discussion of terminology used during the Vietnam war cited in the glossary to Last of the Annamese:
Cyclo was French slang for the three-wheeled pedicabs that thronged the streets of Saigon. The Vietnamese borrowed the term, which they spelled xích lô. Whenever I had time, I travelled by cyclo and talked to the drivers, invariably older men, wizened by time and, most often, military experience.
Frequent Wind was the code name for the evacuation as Saigon fell in April 1975. Frequent Wind Phase Four was declared after the North Vietnamese shelled the airport at Tan Son Nhat and made fixed-wing evacuation impossible. Those of us still there at the end went out by helicopter.
Gunji or gunjy was one of the words used only to refer to Marines during my years in Vietnam. As an adjective, it meant “tough and ferocious.” As a noun, it meant any Marine, but especially one good in combat. Other terms for “Marine” included gyrene and jarhead. A splib is a black Marine; a snuff is a young Marine.
Montagnard was the term used to designate members of the various tribes of mountain people, ethnically distinct from the Vietnamese, who populated the highlands along the Laotian and Cambodian border.
Mufti, a word borrowed from Arabic, meant civilian clothes, or “civvies,” when worn by military personnel. The only people I ever heard use the term were Marines.
Nonlinear, an adjective used only by intelligence personnel, meant “irrational.”
More tomorrow.
January 5, 2018
The LOTA Glossary
My novel, Last of the Annamese, ends with a glossary comprised of words, some Vietnamese, some French, some English, used in Vietnam during the war but probably not familiar to most Americans. Those terms evoke vivid memories for me. Here are some of the recollections those words call up:
Alamo was the code name for the Special Planning Group, an ad hoc unit set up in April 1975 by the U.S. Defense Attaché, General Homer Smith, to secure and defend the Defense Attaché Office (DAO) building and compound at Tan Son Nhat on the northern edge of Saigon as the fall of the city loomed. Most important, Alamo coordinated with the 7th Fleet, cruising in the South China Sea, to assure the successful evacuation of personnel as the North Vietnamese captured Saigon. It was Alamo guys and the Marines from the 7th Fleet that made my escape under fire possible.
Amah was the term used to designate female Vietnamese and Chinese caretakers assigned to look after children. The word comes from the Portuguese noun ama meaning wet nurse. On both tours with my family in Vietnam, (1963-1965 and 1974-1975), my wife and I hired amahs to care for our children. It was the amah of my daughter, Susan, along with our other two servants, who protected her from shelling during the 1963 coup d’etat against Ngo Dinh Diem.
ASAP if not sooner, as used by the U.S. military, meant “instantly,” with no waiting. “ASAP” by itself stands for “as soon as possible.” The full term was sometimes defined as “get it done yesterday.”
Bulkhead was the Marine and Navy word for “wall,” and deck meant “floor.” I remember my confusion when I first worked with Marines and struggled to understand their lingo. Among other things, I was not familiar with the Marine practice of showing respect for a superior by using only the third person in reference to the person spoken to. So when a Marine enlisted man asked me, “Would the gentleman care for some coffee?” my response was, “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them?”
More tomorrow.
January 4, 2018
The Nature of Leadership Revisited
My recent blog post about General Al Gray and the arrival of the second volume of the three-volume biography of General Gray by Scott Laidig (Al Gray, Marine: The Early Years 1968-1975, Vol. 2 Paperback – December 1, 2017) got me to thinking about leadership, what it is, and why it works. At the risk of repeating myself, I want to recap what I’ve written here before and adjust my thinking.
General Gray never articulated his leadership principles to me. But three things stood out: (1) accomplishing the mission was always the first priority; (2) taking care of his followers was equally important; and (3) never asking a follower to do anything or take any risks that the leader wouldn’t do or take undergirded everything he did.
The testimony of John McCain from last year in the colloquy with Bob Woodward at the Naval Institute Conference on Military and Politics led me to add one factor to my original thinking—McCain’s belief that a true leader must always do the right thing.
McCain’s dictum adds a moral dimension that I see is essential. The leader cannot succeed over time if he or she is willing to compromise his or her own ethics and those of the followers. Put differently, leadership only works to achieve goals that all agree are morally good.
I’ve wondered over the years of my long life why we fail to stress leadership in civilian work life to the same degree that we do in the military. Instead, we focus on management. It’s as if we didn’t know that management works with things while leadership works with people.
I conclude that the major reason for our failure is that leadership is monumentally difficult. It demands humility and putting the good of others—the followers—above our selfish needs. It requires passionate devotion to a cause. It downgrades competition and rivalry in favor of looking after the welfare of others. And it demands absolute devotion to moral rectitude.
So leadership is like sanctity: it demands the very best a human is capable of and fails if moral goodness is compromised. No wonder it’s so rare.
January 3, 2018
The Scrapper
My tale about the fall of Saigon, my escape under fire, and the discovery that I had no home when I got back to the U.S. underlines a quality that misfortune brought out in me. I wasn’t consciously aware of it until I began writing Last of the Annamese and discovered the same characteristic in the characters that drive the story in that novel. I termed myself and these characters “scrappers”—people who won’t accept defeat and go on fighting and surviving.
Several days ago, I heard Angela Duckworth, the author of a new book called Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, interviewed on NPR. Her definition of grit during the interview precisely matches the quality I’ve been calling scrappiness. I’ve ordered the book, and it has arrived. After I’ve read it, I’ll tell you what I think.
What made me a scrapper was my childhood. At age six, I discovered that my parents weren’t going to take care of me; I was going to have to take care of myself. The resulting resilience served me well while I put myself through college, working twenty hours a week. It was key to my survival during the fall of Saigon. And it kept me going during the AIDS crisis when I was caring for men dying of the disease.
Most of all, being a scrapper got me through the worst time in my life, when I came back to the U.S. in 1975 after the fall of Saigon. Physically ill and a psychic wreck from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI), I found that the home I so yearned for didn’t exist. I had nothing but my own bedrock resources to get me through. It was up to me. I was alone and had to fend for myself.
The grit saved me again when I cam down with lung cancer a few years ago. The disease very nearly killed me, but I fought back with all I had. Despite maximum radiation and chemotherapy and the surgical removal of the upper lobe of my right lung, I insisted on going on living. I made it. I still have sneezing spells, a cough, and low energy, but I’m back to working hard. I’ve even resumed weight lifting.
Scrappers survive.
January 2, 2018
Longing for Home (2)
I wrote two days ago about my illness following the escape during the fall of Saigon on 29 April 1975. I told the story up to the point that I passed out after trying unsuccessfully to brief CINCPAC in mid-May.
I should have gone to a doctor immediately, but instead I booked a flight for the mainland. I, like Thanh in Last of the Annamese, yearned more than anything just to go home. The day after I arrived in Baltimore, a doctor diagnosed me with amoebic dysentery, ear damage from the shelling, and pneumonia due to inadequate diet, sleep deprivation, and muscle fatigue. Worse, I was afflicted with a condition we didn’t have a name for back then, Post-Traumatic Stress Injury, brought on by my time in combat and surviving the fall of Saigon. I was subject to panic attacks, flashbacks, nightmares, and irrational rages. I was, in short, a physical and psychic wreck.
My wife and children had fled Saigon twenty days before the city fell. They had gone on a grand tour of Asia and Europe during the North Vietnamese siege of Saigon and by mid-May were in Massachusetts staying with my wife’s father. I telephoned her and begged her to come to Maryland—I was desperately ill and needed her.
My wife said no. She told me she wouldn’t return to Maryland until our house in Crofton was available. We had leased it to another family for the length of our tour in Vietnam. Sick as I was, I had to negotiate for the return of the house and pay a penalty for our unexpected return. My wife and children didn’t return to Maryland until the following July.
Like Thanh, I had longed to go home and replenish my spirit, but I had no home. My wife’s refusal to help me when I was so sick made my homelessness clear. It was lowest point in my life and the beginning of the end of the marriage.
December 31, 2017
Longing for Home
Two days ago, I quoted from Last of the Annamese a passage about South Vietnamese Marine Colonel Thanh and his quiet resilience in the face of defeat. Throughout the book, I use the character of the protagonist, Chuck Griffin, as a vehicle to describe what I went through during the fall of Saigon. But in this case, the character of Thanh stood in my stead.
The key sentence in the quote is, “He longed to go home and replenish his spirit, but he had no home.”
As Saigon fell on 29 April 1975, I escaped under fire to the flag ship of the U.S. 7th Fleet, the Oklahoma City, cruising in the South China Sea. While the 7th Fleet circled off the coast of Vietnam and then sailed for the Philippines, I was sleeping more than twelve hours a day due to lack of sleep and food I’d endured during the week prior to the escape. When I got to Subic Bay, I booked a flight for Honolulu because I knew I had to go to Pearl Harbor to brief CINCPAC, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific. The briefing didn’t go well. I had no voice, kept coughing, had trouble focusing my eyes. When I sat down after the trying to speak, I passed out. Clearly, I was suffering from something more than exhaustion. Despite all my sleep, I was getting worse.
More tomorrow.
December 30, 2017
Where-to-Go-Baltimore
Hope you can attend.
