Tom Glenn's Blog, page 211

Not All Memories Hurt

A group I belong to asked me to do a presentation on my experiences in Vietnam. Some time back, I had given them the fall of Saigon story, but they asked if there weren’t some happy memories from my years in Vietnam.

My blog of several days ago came to mind. I quoted Chuck from Last of the Annamese asking himself if all memories have to hurt. As I said then, they only hurt on bad days.

There were funny things that happened. I’ll try to relate a few of them here.

The troops in just about every unit I supported found my presence among them hilarious. Somehow the idea that a civilian spy was masquerading as one of them cracked them up. But that was only after they accepted me as one of them. As long as they treated me with the distant respect due a superior and called me “Mr. Glenn” rather than “Tom” or just “Glenn” (use of the last name alone was common), we couldn’t work together as a team. So I spent all my time with the troops—ate C-rations sitting on the ground with them, slept beside them in the open or in a tent, used their latrines, dressed in their uniforms (my cover was that I was one of them), and went into combat with them. Sometimes it took a day or two or sometimes weeks, but the troops in all units I served with eventually welcomed me to their ranks.

My favorite story comes from a time when I was working with an army combat unit. One morning (during a lull in the fighting) when I woke up, my fatigues (the work and combat uniform of a soldier) had all disappeared. Dressed in my shorts, I wandered through the cantonment area asking if anyone knew where they were. An hour or so later they reappeared. The troops had snitched them while I slept. They’d taken them to tailor in a nearby village and paid him to sew labels above the breast pockets of my fatigue shirt. One said “GLENN” the other “CIVILIAN.” My two fatigue caps were now adorned with the unit insignia. Giggling and chortling, they couldn’t wait to snap my picture in my newly decorated fatigues.

Now I was truly one of them.

Feedback from a Reader

A man in prison for several decades wrote to me. He’d read The Trion Syndrome, about a Vietnam vet with Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). He was moved by it. He told me he suffers from PTSI from combat in Vietnam.

He didn’t tell me why he’s in prison or what happened to him in Vietnam. He suspects his PTSI contributed to his confinement. He’s still having nightmares.

This man is my brother, just as much as other vets with whom I’ve shared some quite hours. I managed to get through bad times by writing. He didn’t have writing to turn to. I, by sheer happenstance, muddled through. He didn’t. My heart is with him.

Brutality in Last of the Annamese

Some readers have expressed shock at the gruesome events depicted in Last of the Annamese. They should be shocked. I am. Even after forty-two years, the events I witnessed still make me shudder.

One of the several reasons I wrote Annamese was to tell readers of the horrors of war in general and of the Vietnam war in particular. A fraction of 1 percent of Americans have ever experienced combat. Most have no inkling of the savagery and the terrible damage to the human body that combat inflicts, as described, for example, during Thanh’s visit to the highlands infirmary tent. Nor have they observed civilian casualties of war, like the boy with white phosphorous in his skin in the prologue. They can’t comprehend the anguish that loss of a loved one to enemy fire visits on the human soul—like the despair of the Chinese maid Huong at the news of her husband’s failure to return from battle.

I want people to know.

I’m pessimistic enough to believe that we’ll never stop going to war. But maybe if Americans understand better the ghastliness of combat, they’ll think more carefully before committing our troops to combat.

Some Days I don’t Blog

Saturday and Sunday were the forty-second anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Sad days for me, filled with bitter memories. Ironically, those days I was at the CityLit gathering and at the Lit and Art event, respectively, both in Baltimore. I offered my books for sale and read from Last of the Annamese.

I was mostly successful in maintaining my composure at both events. But Sunday night, at Lit and Art, I read aloud for the audience the first scene (the prologue) and the last scene from Last of the Annamese. My emotions almost caught up with me. Annamese is about the fall of Saigon. I read with tears in my eyes.

So yesterday and the day before, the first and second of May, were my days to recover, just as they were forty-two years ago. I spent the days doing hard physical work. But my mind turned to the story I lived, then told in Annamese. At the beginning and again at the end of the novel, the protagonist, Chuck Griffin, asks himself, “Do all memories have to hurt?”

Some days they do. Those days, I don’t blog.

Hallucinations

I spent 30 April forty-two years ago aboard the Oklahoma City sailing in the South China Sea. I was asleep most of that day, but when I was awake I was badgered by recollections. I began to suspect that some of them were of things that didn’t happen.

In the blog I posted yesterday, the forty-second anniversary of the fall of Saigon, I mentioned that by 29 April 1975, I was in such bad shape from lack of food and sleep that I was starting to hallucinate. Bob Hartley, Gary Hickman (the two communicators who volunteered to stay with me through the fall of Saigon), and I had been isolated in our office suite at Tan Son Nhat on the northern edge of the city for the better part of a week. We had run out of food and were on an alternating schedule of one guy resting for two hours while the other two worked. We couldn’t sleep because of the small arms fire and the shelling. Our compound was hit with rockets and artillery—the building next to us blew up and two Marine guards at our gate were killed.

After I got back to the states in mid-May, I was diagnosed with amoebic dysentery, ear damage, and pneumonia due to muscle fatigue, inadequate diet, and sleep deprivation. But at the time, all I knew was that I had to keep going.

I have memories I can’t verify. Were they waking nightmares or did they really happen?

I don’t write about what might have happened, only what I know happened. Yet these pseudo-memories still haunt me. They’ll remain leftovers from a brain sick from hunger and exhaustion.

I’ve never read of anyone else suffering from memories of things that might not have happened. If any of my readers can enlighten me, please do.

Anniversary

Today is the forty-second anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Tomorrow is the official celebration or commemoration—depending on one’s view—but by midnight on 29 April 1975, Saigon was in the hands of the North Vietnamese. It’s a troubling day for me, filled with nightmarish memories and things I’m not sure I remember. I was in such bad shape due to lack of food and sleep that I was starting to hallucinate (more about that in another blog).

I remember the sense of relief I felt when Bob Hartley and Gary Hickman, the two communicators who volunteered to stay with me to the end, went out that day on a helicopter destined for the 7th Fleet cruising in the South China Sea. With them gone and my other forty-one subordinates and all the families safely out of the country, I knew my work in Vietnam was finished. I flew out that night in the rain. As soon as we were airborne, I saw the tracers coming towards us. We took so much lead in the fuselage, I through we were going to crash. But we made it. When we reached the Oklahoma City, the flagship of the 7th Fleet, the pilot circled and circled in the dark and the rain. Then he finally, very slowly, descended and landed on the floodlit helipad of the ship. He told me later that he, a civilian pilot working for Air America, had never before landed on a ship.

I remember the sense of loss—we left behind many thousands of South Vietnamese who had worked and fought by our side. We abandoned them to the mercies of the conquering North Vietnamese.

Later, I took pride in what I and my men had accomplished. But not that night. That was my night to mourn.

I still grieve over what we lost. An Nam, the old name for Vietnam, was forever destroyed. And its people were all killed or captured. It was the last of the Annamese.

Me and Indiana Jones

For the cover story on me and Last of the Annamese published in February in the Columbia Flier and the Howard County Times, reporter Janene Holzberg interviewed several fellow authors. One was Larry Matthews who wrote about me along with six other men in his 2016 book, Age in Good Time. Larry characterized me as having lived a life “that Indiana Jones would envy.”

That remark made me laugh, but it also got me to thinking. Indiana Jones went out his way to seek adventure, but I didn’t. My wild escapades resulted from a vortex of circumstances, my odd affinity for languages (especially Vietnamese, French, and Chinese, the three languages spoken in Vietnam), and my willingness to go into combat with the U.S. Army and Marine troops I was supporting.

During my thirteen years of trundling between the U.S. and Vietnam during the war, culminating with escaping under fire during the fall of Saigon, I never considered anything I did as heroic. I was just doing my job. Granted, the scrapes I got myself into were bizarre. But operating under cover is weird by nature, especially since I masqueraded variously as a soldier, a Marine, a CIA employee, and a foreign service officer. Several times over my years in Vietnam, an American who knew me under one cover would stumble across me acting under another, forcing me to explain—without much credibility—that I had changed jobs. As far as I know, my true affiliation, to the National Security Agency (NSA), was never discovered. It was finally completely declassified at the beginning of 2016.

At least, during my Vietnam years, I never was required to use an assumed name. That did happen later in my career, but everything after 1975 is still classified.

So, Indiana Jones? Nah, more like Beetle Bailey on a toot.

Annamese

I’ve posted several blogs about the title, Last of the Annamese. One way to understand the title is that it refers to one person. Another is that it denotes a people, the residents of An Nam, the old name for Vietnam. As I mentioned earlier, I deliberately used to name “Annamese” in both senses.

What I left largely unsaid is that the novel is about the destruction of a people. With the defeat of South Vietnam, the culture that was An Nam, which means “peace in the south,” came to an end. The gentle, sweet way of living that characterized the non-communist Vietnamese died along with the people whom the North Vietnamese killed or captured.

Late in the story, Chuck finds the South Vietnamese Marine Colonel Thanh sitting in his garden in the rain. Thanh points to sky and says that heaven is weeping. As he says, An Nam is no more.

Sparky

I’ve mentioned the character of Sparky several times during this blog. It’s time to devote a post to him.

Sparky and Ike, a Marine captain working with the Marine guards at the embassy, are housemates of Chuck Griffin, the protagonist of Last of the Annamese. They are provided a rented villa to live in on Yen Do Street in Saigon because they are willing to face hazardous duty in Vietnam after the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Sparky’s nickname derives from his mental dullness, especially his slow uptake and forgetfulness. The moniker is also a reference to his blond-red hair which is never under control. Like Ike, he is married, but his wife awaits him in the world (i.e., the U.S.). Like Chuck, he is an analyst in the Intelligence Branch at the Defense Attaché Office located at Tan Son Nhat, on the northern edge of Saigon. He, Chuck, and their boss, Colonel Troiano, are the last three at the office after all others are sent out to safety as the North Vietnamese close in on Saigon. They are evacuated under fire as Saigon falls.

All the characters in the story find Sparky likeable. He’s down to earth but, unlike Ike, not earthy. More than once, he manages to keep Chuck out of trouble and even saves Chuck from harm by restraining him when he tries to take on South Vietnamese army guards at the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital. He’s steady, reliable, humble, and devoted to his work.

Sparky, like so many characters in the book, is based on men I worked with during the final days of Vietnam. Were it not for their quiet service and dependability, I wouldn’t be alive today.

People Who Buy My Books

Yesterday, I was at the Kensington Day of the Book Festival selling my books. I started paying attention to the kind of people interested in my work.

On the four-foot table, I laid out three of my books, two reviews of Last of the Annamese, and the two newspapers that have done cover stories on me. I was surprised by the number of people that stopped by the table and read an entire newspaper article or a review before speaking to me. Then they questioned me about the books and my time in Vietnam. A good many wanted to know what “Annamese” means. Most ended up thanking me and moving on, but some bought a book, almost always Last of the Annamese.

The folks not interested were the most obvious—they walked by apparently without noticing me. They were teenagers and millennials and young couples with children. I particularly enjoyed watching the latter because as I get older, I’m more and more charmed by children. The parents sometimes noticed my smiles and chuckles. Mostly they just passed on by.

The people who showed interest were almost invariably those in the last half of life. We seniors and near-seniors seem to have in-built affinity that draws us to each other.

A fair number of women, usually in pairs, stopped to ask about my writing and my past. They were intrigued by my story—granted, an unusual one: thirteen years on and off in Vietnam as a civilian spy working under cover—but then thanked me and headed out.

It is the men who showed the most interest. Somehow they sense a kinship with me. They are drawn to one of their kind with a story to tell.

But in venues like this one, the group most attracted are veterans, both men and women. They spot me as one of them and want to express the bond we veterans always feel for one another. Most of the time, the vets tell me their stories of where they served and what happened to them. If they were in Vietnam, we compare notes on locations and units, talk about the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the south Vietnamese fighting force, and often reminisce about the beauty of Vietnamese women. If they buy one of my books, I always give them my business card and ask them to give me feedback after they’ve finished the book.

I wish that young folks would read my work. My sense is that they could learn not to repeat the mistakes we made when we were younger. I’m particularly pleased that a young German woman has read my books and regularly corresponds with me. Her English is far better than my German, and the story of Vietnam, all new to her, is especially intriguing.

For reasons I only dimly understand, the experience of talking with others at book fairs is satisfying. Writing is a lonely occupation, always done, out of necessity, alone. My guess is that communicating with other human beings in a literary milieu slakes my thirst for companionship.