Tom Glenn's Blog, page 67

End Words

It’s been fairly common over the years to quote the opening words of books as a way to offer readers a sense of whether they’d like to read the book. But it occurred to me that perhaps a better indication would be to quote the last words of the book. So I thought I’d give it a try. Let me know what you think.

Here are the final words of my novel, Last of the Annamese:

            His eyes came to rest on the row of benches facing them. Evacuees sat talking, watching the sun and sea, laughing occasionally. Out of place was an olive drab object huddled at the feet of one of the women. An Army field jacket. It was moving.

            “Colonel,” Chuck said. “Is that Thu?”

            Troiano nodded.

            The jacket weaved and shuddered.

            “He keeps asking for you,” Troiano said.

            “It hurts too much.”

            “Do what you have to do,” Troiano said. “Whatever it takes.”

            He couldn’t do it. It was too much. But he had to. Against his will, Chuck stood. He walked to the benches and knelt beside the field jacket. “Tuffy?”

            The hood of the jacket fell back. Thu’s face turned to him. The eyes were Tuyet’s, but the face was Thanh’s.

            “Chuck?” Thu said. “A ghen? Bo-di?”

            “Buddy.” Chuck swept Thu into his arms.

            Thu contoured himself against Chuck’s chest. Chuck pulled him close. He felt his heart breaking. His tears dripped from his chin and wet Thu’s hair.

Upcoming Dental Surgery

On August 25, I’ll undergo a four-hour dental procedure to remove the remnants of two adjacent broken teeth and to implant a bridge. My only real concern is how long I’ll be unable to give presentations or do readings. I’m scheduled to offer my class on fiction craftsmanship at the Palette and the Page, a shop in Elkton, Maryland, on September 1. I trust that I’ll be in good shape by then.

The whole experience reminds me again of how absurdly healthy I am—I’m in better shape than any man I know in my age group. Some of that is pure luck, but most is because I go to lengths to maintain my health. I work out regularly and watch my diet to avoid becoming overweight. The downside is that I have had so little experience with surgery and recovery that I don’t know what to expect.

My expectation is that I’ll find a way to meet all my commitments. That said, I have to admit that this is all new to me. I have always been able to rely on myself to muddle through anything that comes along. We’ll see how I fare this time. I’ll let you know.

Veterans and Afghanistan

Within the past few days, I have written here about my reaction to press reports on the chaos in Afghanistan and its similarities to the anarchy when Saigon fell forty-six years ago. I was there in Saigon and watched it happen until I escaped under fire after the North Vietnamese were already in the streets of the city. The scenes in Kabul brought back my memories as if the Vietnamese collapse was yesterday. My Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) came back in force.

I didn’t realize until I attended the monthly meeting of the American Legion last Thursday that I am not the only one. Veterans everywhere are reacting to the news just as I did. Each of us at the meeting received a copy of a handout from the Veterans Administration Maryland Health Care System intended to help us cope. I quote from it below:

“Veterans from all eras are reacting to the events in Afghanistan, such as the U.S. withdrawal and the takeover by the Taliban. You are not alone. Veterans may question the meaning of their service or whether it was worth the sacrifices they made. They may feel more moral distress about experiences they had during their service. It’s normal to feel this way. Talk with your friends and families, reach out to battle buddies, connect with a peer-to-peer network, or sign up for mental health services.”

The text goes on to list available resources to help veterans cope.

Much of the conversation at the meeting dealt with reactions to the news. I learned that all of us were shaken by the press reports that brought back our own memories of the battlefield. Those most affected were the ones who fought in Afghanistan.

One of the symptoms of PTSI is the belief that the sufferer is alone, that is, that he is the only one affected by the experience of having fought on the battlefield. One way to manage the disease is to understand that there are many of us marked by the disorder. Another is to find a way to talk with others about our memories.

I was comforted in my distress by seeing, once again, that I am not alone. My brothers, who suffer just as I do, are with me. We will comfort each other.

Book Fair at Millers Church

On Saturday, 14 August, I participated in the Day of Knowledge Book Fair at Millers United Methodist Church in Manchester, Maryland. I’ve sold and autographed my books for years at the annual book fair there, but it was cancelled the last year because of the pandemic. It was so good to be back.

The book fair is held in the church’s hall, a large single-room building with a kitchen. For the fair, the bulk of the room was taken up with tables covered with books free for the taking to one and all. I nabbed a copy of one volume of Ernest Newman’s multivolume Stories of the Great Operas, first published in 1928. On one side of the room, five local authors sat at tables offering to sell and autograph their books. I arranged copies of five of my books (the sixth is an ebook only available on the internet) and spent the day talking to readers and autographing—one of my favorite things to do.

I was pleased, surprised, and enormously flattered when people told me they had bought copies of my books at the book fair over the years and came back to see what else I had to offer. This year I had two new books, Secretocracy and Coming to Terms, both published in 2020.

The kindness, generosity, and good will of the church and its members impressed me once again. The church’s representatives went out of their way to make the visiting authors comfortable. They provided us with food and drink, checked on us regularly to be sure we had whatever we needed, and directed newly arrived people to our tables.

It was, in short, a delightful and fulfilling day for me. I got to do what I most enjoy and came away knowing that I will have at least eight people reading my books for the first time. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Kabul: Memories of Saigon (2)

My access to classified intelligence ended almost thirty years ago when I retired from the government, so I have no way of knowing whether our intelligence officers accurately predicted how quickly Afghanistan would fall when U.S. forces were withdrawn. But my knowledge of and respect for intelligence experts in the U.S. government strongly suggests that the available intelligence accurately foretold what would happen. My guess is that the intelligence predictions were ignored.

Given the dire consequence of our withdrawal (which were almost certainly known in advance), why did Biden do it? We have maintained troop strength in a variety of countries around the world—Germany, Japan, and Korea come immediately to mind—so why desert Afghanistan and leave its population, and especially its women, to the tender mercies of the Taliban?

And why did Biden do it so precipitously? Why not withdraw slowly, leaving behind enough force to discourage a Taliban takeover? Biden was not bound by Trump’s foolish plans, nor was he forced to adhere to an agreement that the Taliban had already flagrantly violated. He could have made decisions that avoided calamity but forewent that choice.

The 1975 fall of Saigon and our failure to rescue thousands who worked with us will always be an episode of shame in U.S. history. In the same way, the collapse of Afghanistan and the cruelty to which its population will be subjected overshadow all the achievements of the Biden administration. History will record the Afghan disaster as the primary black mark of Biden’s rule.

Kabul: Memories of Saigon

The press, as expected, is comparing the capture of Kabul to the fall of Saigon forty-six years ago. Friends and colleagues have been contacting me with comforting words. And they’re right: the scenes of the Taliban victory in Afghanistan are terrifyingly similar to my memories of the North Vietnamese conquest of South Vietnam.

Most horrifying are the images of people killed at the airport as they try to attach themselves to aircraft taking off. People clung to airplanes only to fall to their death after the planes were in the air. Human remains have been found in compartments into which the landing gear retracted. How desperate must they have been to have taken such risks? How very like the way the South Vietnamese acted at Tan Son Nhat, the Saigon airport, as the North Vietnamese advanced.

It appears that President Biden was surprised by the speed of the Taliban seizure of Kabul. That makes me wonder if intelligence was ignored in Afghanistan as it was in Vietnam in 1975. I and other intelligence officers repeatedly warned that Saigon’s days were numbered as the North Vietnamese surrounded the city, but the U.S. ambassador, Graham Martin, ignored us and assured Washington that the enemy had no intention of attacking Saigon. Washington accepted Martin’s version and made no effort to evacuate those of us still in Saigon as the North Vietnamese pressed forward until the pre-dawn hours of the day the city fell. That made the rout at the end all the more frantic.

The victorious North Vietnamese often killed members of the defeated armed forces and civilians rather than imprison them. More than two thousand men in an organization I had worked with were executed on the spot or sent to “re-education camps”—really concentration camps—where many more of them died. Are the Taliban equally vicious? Their history suggests that they are.

I spent thirty-five years in intelligence, and I developed great respect for the experts I knew in the field. They were rarely wrong but were often ignored by both military and civilian officials. It happened to me so often in Vietnam that I coined the term “Cassandra Effect”—being able to foretell the enemy’s next move but not being believed—to describe my dilemma.

More next time.

. . . Such Good Luck (3)

The worst physical effects of the Vietnam war came at the end for me. When Saigon fell, I and two communicators (who volunteered to say with me to the end) were holed up in our office while the North Vietnamese besieged and shelled the city. We were there for the better part of a week with nothing to eat but bar snacks we’d been able to scrounge while we could still get out into the city. And the nearly constant shelling—first rockets, later artillery—deprived us of sleep. The U.S. Marines, commanded by Colonel Al Gray, finally got us out safely after the North Vietnamese were already in the streets. My two communicators went out around two in the afternoon on 29 April 1975. I went out that night under fire.

As a result of the deprivation of those last days in Saigon, I was suffering from severe ear damage, exhaustion, dysentery, and pneumonia. From my time in combat during earlier years, I was subject to Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). But once again, my overall health triumphed. I recovered completely from the physical illnesses within a short time. The only lasting physical effect is that I have had to wear hearing aids ever since. The PTSI I will have always with me, but I have learned to cope.

So here I am thirty years after retirement with a comfortable income, living in a house ideal for my lifestyle (magnificent view, next to no upkeep), with multiple published books and stories, with the time and means to write, and still able to do presentations and readings.

It doesn’t get much luckier than that.

. . . Such Good Luck (2)

For the next thirteen years, I spent more time in Vietnam than I did in the U.S. My job until 1973 was supporting troops on the battlefield with information about the North Vietnamese gleaned from intercepting their radio communications. After U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam in 1973, I headed the clandestine NSA operation there and escaped from Saigon under fire after the North Vietnamese were already in the streets.

Because I was so good at what I did and I was willing to risk working next to soldiers in combat, I was promoted rapidly. The same was true after the fall of Saigon when I did similar work in places other than Vietnam. Before I knew it, I had advanced into the executive ranks. Because I insisted on leading rather than managing—that is, uplifting my subordinates and urging them to be the best they could be rather than controlling them—I was phenomenally successful and rose to the top of the executive ranks. I retired as early as I could to write full time. I now have six books and seventeen short stories published.

My third area of good luck is that I was never wounded in combat. More times than I can count, men fighting next to me were killed. More than once, I was among the handful of survivors in a battle gone wrong. And more often than not, I had close calls. But somehow, enemy bullets, hand grenades, and bayonets sometimes grazed me but never took me down.

More next time.

. . . Such Good Luck

Continuing the series I began with a discussion of being an artist and then keeping fit, I finish with the phenomenal good luck I’ve been blessed with that allowed me to create art and stay healthy.

And I’ll start with physical well-being. I am the healthiest man of my age that I know. As the regular reader here is aware, I watch my diet and work out. I am unusual for my age group in that I am not overweight but trim and muscular.

But my health has always been exceptional. I have always pushed myself to the limit, and three times during my life I suffered exhaustion severe enough to land me in the hospital. I survived lung cancer (undoubtedly due to my years of cigarette smoking) when the upper lobe of my right lung was removed surgically. The doctors at the time attributed my survival from a disease that should have killed me to my overall excellent health. I am determined to live to be a hundred because I have books to write. And, so far, my excellent health suggests that I’ll make it.

Second, I never set out to make money but ended up with a generous annuity that allows me to write full time. Throughout my career, I never tried to get promoted or advance in my fields as a linguist and manager. I did what I enjoyed or what I thought my country, the U.S., required of me.

For example, I revel in languages. As a child, I taught myself French and Italian. In high school I had four years of Latin. In college I took German. To avoid being drafted, I enlisted in the army with the proviso that I would go to the Army Language School. I wanted to learn Chinese, a language that had always fascinated me but was too difficult for me to teach to myself. Instead, the army assigned me to classes in Vietnamese, at a time (1959) when Vietnam was of little interest to the U.S. After a year of intensive study of Vietnamese, the army sent me to the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade, Maryland, close enough to Washington, D.C. that I could sign up at Georgetown for classes in Chinese. By the time my army enlistment was up, I was comfortable in Vietnamese, Chinese, and French, the three languages of Vietnam. NSA hired me and immediately sent to Vietnam in 1962.

More next time.

Refusing to Wear Masks

I am more and more irritated with those who refuse to wear masks to protect themselves and others during the pandemic. These people—and those who refuse to be vaccinated—are endangering the health of others. I know of no reasonable argument in favor of such abuse.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has made it unmistakably clear that failure to mask and get vaccinated not only endangers one’s own health but also—and far more damning—risks the health and even the lives of others. Masks greatly reduce the likelihood of transmission of the coronavirus from the wearer to those close by. Even the vaccinated can still carry and transmit the virus, so they, too, should mask up.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump politicized the wearing of masks. He claimed that the pandemic was a hoax. It became a statement of Republican loyalty to refuse to wear a mask. That led to greater infections and lethality among Republicans than Democrats and others. Trump, in short, is responsible for the deaths of his followers who refused, at his behest, to protect themselves and died as a result.

The argument I have heard most often for refusing to wear a mask is that everybody has personal liberty and freedom of choice and that mask mandates violate the U.S. Constitution by abridging those rights. Put differently, mandatory masks violate the First Amendment right to speech, assembly, and especially association, and mandatory masks violate a person’s constitutional right to liberty and to make decisions about their own health and bodily integrity.

That argument might be defensible if only one’s own health were put at risk by failure to wear a mask. But, far more important, the absence of a mask can allow an individual to become a source of infection for all with whom he comes in contact. To maintain that one has the right to infect others is the equivalent of demanding the right to shoot guns in crowds or refuse to obey traffic laws. The Constitution gives no one the right to endanger the welfare of others.

It’s time that we as a nation pulled together and recognized our civic duty to safeguard the health of others. We should welcome a mask mandate for the good of all of us.