Tom Glenn's Blog, page 191

The End in Vietnam: Shelling

Bob, Gary, and I—the last three men in our Saigon office after the evacuation of all the others and the families at the end of April 1975—were subjected to North Vietnamese shelling starting just after sundown the night of 28 April. The North Vietnamese first used rockets against us. Then, about four in the morning on 29 April, the artillery started. A C-130 on the airstrip behind us was destroyed, the building next door blew up, and two Marine guards at our gate were killed.

Several passages in Last of the Annamese describe what the shelling was like. Here’s one:

The blast toppled Chuck to the deck. Troiano, on his hands and knees, was yelling, but Chuck couldn’t make out the words. The room shifted again. The coffee maker lifted into the air, bounced, tumbled to the floor. The telephone landed beside it. The room lurched from a third concussion. A hanging light fixture on the ceiling jumped and swung, one of its posts broken. Dust from the ceiling powdered Chuck’s neck. He and Troiano both crawled under desks.

Sparky lunged in from the hall. Another blast knocked his feet out from under him. As he hit the deck, the room jumped again. He snaked under a desk.

End of quote. The artillery attacks continued through the day of 29 April. I’ve never experienced anything like that since the fall of Saigon. The closest thing to it I’ve lived through was earthquakes in the San Francisco bay area in my childhood.

What made both earthquakes and shelling so terrifying was the helplessness—one could do nothing to defend oneself or escape the danger—and the randomness of the hits. That Bob, Gary, and I survived was pure chance.

The End in Vietnam: Forgotten and Abandoned

Half way through Last of the Annamese, Ike, a Marine captain at the American embassy in Saigon, senses the change in the atmosphere. Here’s the passage that describes Ike’s foreboding:

On Friday, 14 March [1975], ARS [American Radio Service, Vietnam] reported that Congress had voted not to appropriate funds for Vietnam. The war was over. Somehow nobody in Saigon had been notified, and the North Vietnamese were ignoring the fact as they seized more territory. Ike’s country had forgotten he was here, faced daily with threats to his life.

Riding to and from the Embassy as the days warmed toward the lowland monsoon season, Ike watched the city change. The good-natured clatter of bikes and hurrying pedestrians was gone. In its place was a city much quieter and wound ever tighter. Faces on the streets showed worry. Refugees were everywhere.

The Embassy, always marked by the lilt of southern hospitality, developed an uneasy edge. Ike’s men [the Marine guards] felt the change. The boyish horse-play faded. The snuffs kept their weapons cleaned and oiled, never more than an arm’s reach away. They asked Ike what was happening. He shrugged. The Ambassador, a gentleman under all circumstances, continued to preside with grace and good breeding.

End of quote. On the rational level, I saw the end coming and warned Ambassador Martin. He ignored me. The American press, the Congress, the State Department, the CIA, even the president chose not to accept the mounting evidence that Saigon would fall to the North Vietnamese.

On the psychic level, my men and I felt the cold of aloneness and abandonment. We were voices crying in the wilderness. No one heard us. No evacuation was planned.

We were immensely comforted when, on 22 April, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency issued an estimate that South Vietnam would fall to the North Vietnamese within the week. I learned that the military side of the U.S. government was under no delusions about what was happening in South Vietnam.

And at the final hour, it was the military—the Marines and the U.S. 7th Fleet—that rescued us. On the night of 29 April 1975, I escaped under fire on a helicopter that flew me in the dark and the pouring rain to the flag ship of the 7th Fleet, the Oklahoma City.

My respect for the military has never waned.

About Writing: An Added Thought

I just came across another quote about writing:

“Writing is like carrying a fetus.” -Edna O’Brien, writer (b. 15 Dec 1930).

All I can say is, I wouldn’t know.

Writing and the Conscious Mind

Yesterday I wrote about how I create. That involves opening the unconscious and letting it flood me. Today I want to write about what the conscious mind does with that flood.

It’s called technique, style, or—the term I prefer—craftsmanship. It’s a skill that takes a lifetime to master.

To wit: writing good fiction requires both creativity and craftsmanship. Creativity is innate; it can’t be taught. But craftsmanship is a learnable skill required to produce a publishable manuscript, work that will engage a reader to the point that she forgets she’s reading. The rudiments of craftsmanship unique to fiction include how to use basic reference materials, formatting, copy editing, wording and structure, and especially the construction of dialogue.

In working on a manuscript, I first complete a draft, then start revising. The second and third drafts are usually written in the creative mode to assure that my vision is correctly and completely captured. In the fourth draft I switch to the craftsmanship mode, looking at correct spelling and formatting, overall shape and structure, pace and tension level, accurate word usage, sentence length, chapter length, correct and consistent use of point of view. I put the manuscript aside for some time—as much as a year with a novel—then do the next draft again from the craftsmanship point of view. Successive drafts shift between the two modes of writing until my creative side is satisfied that the manuscript is complete.

As a result, I spend something like 10 percent of my writing time in drafting new text and 90 percent of it in revising. It means reading aloud what I’ve written and listening for the way the words, sentences, and paragraphs come together.

I know I’m on my final draft when I start reading in the craftsmanship mode but the text moves me to the point that I read to enjoy the beauty of the words and story.

Writing and the Unconscious

My blog of two days ago, on writing as venting, led me to think further about the writing process as I experience it. The question for today is not why I write—I talked about that two days ago—but how I write.

As I’ve mentioned several times over the last year, I write in two modes, as a creator and as a craftsman. Today I want to reflect on how I create.

My characters, my stories, even my vocabulary and tone come from my unconscious. I learned early in life to tap into that secret part of my mind. As a young man, I was intrigued with the Sufis and their way of seeing life. What we call meditation is major element in Sufi practice. They taught me how to quiet my mind to a wordless, image-free state. Once in that place, the soul is open to direct communication with the deity.

After Vietnam, my soul was overloaded with unspeakable memories. At first, simply to survive, I banished the images from my conscious mind. But they came back to haunt me as flashbacks, irrational rages, nightmares, and panic attacks. I learned that I had to unleash them, face them head-on, find out how to live with them. I used the techniques the Sufis had taught me to bring them into my conscious memory. Little by little, I learned to control my emotions.

I know now that when a story or character or situation or scene arises in my imagination and demands that I write it down, it’s coming from my unconscious. So when I sit down to write, I let my soul slip into the meditative state. Sometimes, it’s like watching a movie and writing down what I see; sometimes it’s responding to a character who insists that I bring him or her into existence; sometimes it’s observing a scene play out in my imagination and letting the deepest recesses of my mind tell me how it ends.

The grisly memories from Vietnam and later never go away. They are with me always. Their presence explains why so much of my writing is about war and combat. Hence Friendly Casualties, The Trion Syndrome, and Last of the Annamese. Writing my memories into stories puts me in charge—I control them instead of them controlling me. Unburdening myself by telling what happened, even in fictionalized form, eases my soul.

Perfect peace will never be mine. The recollections are too hideous for that. But telling the world what really happened offers me another satisfaction. In writing, I find fulfillment.

Writing to Vent

I write for a variety of reasons.

First of all, not to write would be tantamount to accepting damnation. When I was six years old, I discovered that I was mandated to write. I tried a variety of other vocations—languages, acting, and, especially being a spy—partly to see what alternatives were open to me, partly to worm my way out of the burden, and partly to make a living. But I couldn’t escape. I was stuck with the mandate. I write because I have to.

Second, I want people to know what happened. That desire especially drives my writing about Vietnam, but it was also a strong factor in my stories and novel about AIDS. It’s factor in my latest (unpublished) novel, Secretocracy, about illegal operations ordered by a presidential administration.

But third and equally important, writing allows me to vent. When I came down with Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) as a result of my years in Vietnam, I couldn’t seek help in psychotherapy because I had top-secret-codeword-plus security clearances. In those days, therapy would have triggered the loss of my clearances; I would have been fired from my job. So, in an effort to come to terms with my grisly memories, I wrote down what happened. I learned later that one effective way of coping with PTSI is to record exactly what happened in writing. It forces the patient to face his memories head-on and he learns to live with them.

Venting worked for me. I have consciously faced the brutal recollections of what I observed and participated in and have learned to keep my emotions in check. I still can’t talk about some of my memories. But they creep into my writing.

Writing hasn’t worked for everybody. Some can’t bring themselves to write down their memories. Others can’t write well enough to get the stories on paper. I grieve for my brothers who can’t use the tools I’ve used. My heart is with them always.

AIDS and PTSI

A reader of yesterday’s blog asks why working with AIDS victims helped me cope with my Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI).

First of all, I call it “injury” and not “disorder” because the condition is the result of an external wound to the psyche—an experience so brutal that it does permanent damage to the soul—rather than an internal malfunction. Second, the affliction doesn’t heal; it’s a permanent infirmity. The afflicted’s only recourse is to learn to cope.

I learned to cope by helping others who were far worse off than I was. I spent five years working with AIDS patients, two years helping the homeless, and seven years taking care of dying people in the hospice system. I found that when I helped those less fortunate than me, my unbearable memories faded into the background. I learned that compassion comforts the giver as much as the receiver.

So I can’t claim that virtue or good will drove me to work with the needy. It was my own need. But I’m grateful that survival is a dominant trait in my personality. So many men who go through combat are maimed by the experience. Their memories of the battlefield are worse than mine. I was an intelligence operative; they were fighters who had to kill or be killed. The suicide rate among Vietnam veterans is higher than in any other socially-defined group, according to one report. And the rate of suicides goes up as people age.

In short, my drive to survive is far stronger than my despondence over my memories of war. In this season of thankfulness, I have much to be thankful for.

The AIDS Epidemic and No-Accounts

Early in the blog, I wrote several posts about how No-Accounts­—my only novel not directly related to Vietnam—came to be written. That was a year ago. At the risk of repeating myself, I want to talk today about that novel.

No-Accounts, recognized with an Eric Hoffer award, is the story of a straight man taking care of a gay man dying of AIDS. It is the direct result of the five years I spent caring for AIDS patients in the 1980s. I became a volunteer for two principal reasons: I needed to cope with my Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI), the result of my years in combat and surviving the fall of Saigon; and I couldn’t stand what was happening to AIDS victims—because of the public terror of the disease (we didn’t know how it was transmitted), men were literally dying on the street because no one would go near them or allow them a place to stay. I didn’t know how much danger of contracting the disease I faced, but I decided to risk it because these dying men desperately needed help.

To quote what I said a year ago in this log: “I saw that being with the ostracized dying was like combat: you stay with your brother no matter what the danger. And when he dies, part of you dies, too. In the five years I worked as a buddy, I had seven patients, all gay, all died. I grieved over every one of them as I did over the men who died in combat next to me.”

When the cause of the disease became clear and treatments were discovered, I stopped my work with AIDS patients. I went on volunteering to help others because I found that it helped me come to terms with my PTSI. I worked with the homeless and the dying in the hospice system. I came to see that I had a gift: I was willing and able to work with people that others shunned because of bias or horror. My experience in combat allowed me to reach out to the suffering when others backed away.

Annamese on Sale

The U.S. Naval Institute Press is having a holiday sale. Last of the Annamese is listed at $14.98 with free shipping: “Special Holiday Pricing: 50% Book Discount & FREE SHIPPING. Discount Automatically Applied. Offer expires at 12:00 PM (EST) on Friday, December 15, 2017.”

You can find the sale information at 

 

My Work after 1975

I’ve written three novels (Friendly Casualties, The Trion Syndrome, and Last of the Annamese) and a series of short stories drawn from my time in Vietnam between 1962 and 1975, and one novel about my experience with AIDS victims (No-Accounts). The latter resulted from my volunteer work in the 1980s, undertaken to help me cope with Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). Readers ask me what happened in my professional life after Vietnam fell to the communists in 1975.

I’m not free to say. My work after the fall of Saigon is still classified. The languages I worked in are not. I can publicly state that I used Vietnamese, Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Latin in my work. Readers are welcome to guess where I might have been assigned.

I can tell one story without specifying where it took place. Once when I was working under cover, I did some sightseeing in a city away from the post where I was assigned. I was at the time operating under deep cover with a false name and identity as a maintenance man. The fact that I spoke the language of the country I was in was classified.

While I was wandering around in the city I was visiting, I lost my way. I found myself in a seedy part of town with the onset of night. No one in that section of the city spoke English. It was obvious to all that I was a foreigner.

To find my way back to my hotel, I was forced to ask directions in the language of the country. In short, I violated security.

Local citizens were very helpful, obviously impressed that I, a very ordinary-looking American, spoke their language so well. I found my hotel and, the next day, returned to the city where I was working. I reported my security breach to my handlers who forgave me, given the circumstances, but warned me never to do it again.