Tom Glenn's Blog, page 7

More Trump Damage

Every time I turn around, I discover some damage that Trump inflicted that I had not been aware of. One of the results is that President Biden doesn’t get the credit he deserves because so many of his achievements have been to undo some harm that Trump did.

According to websites that regularly ask me for a contribution, Trump’s worst sins have been encouraging Russian interference in our elections, threatening Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political opponents, cozying up to Kim Jung Un and other foreign adversaries, abandoning our closest allies, defunding the Post Office, proposing $30 billion in cuts to Social Security, caging migrant children at the border, attacking freedom of the press, building a racist border wall, inciting the January 6 capitol insurrection, threatening state officials to rig the 2020 election, imposing a transgender military ban, and denying the severity of COVID-19.

One of the worst offences Trump has been guilty of is his claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent. At the end of February, during the annual Conservative Political Action (CPAC) Conference, Trump repeated his claim and made at least 23 other immediately provable false claims. That continues his record. While president, he told 30,573 lies, all proven to be false statements, according to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker.

I am still astonished that Americans ever elected Trump to the presidency and am even more amazed that so many still support him. Their numbers are a testimony to the unreliability of the American population.

The Boot Picture

Hanging on the south wall in the piano room of my house is a photograph taken some years ago by the photographer Ann Gonzales in the Palette and the Page, a book-and-art store in Elkton, Maryland, which features my books. For reasons I don’t remember, I had with me, while visiting the store, a pair of jungle combat boots I had worn in Vietnam. Ann took the boots to the basement and put them on the dirt floor next to a brick wall, then took a picture of them. On a later visit to the shop, I spotted a picture on the wall of my boots with the following caption:

‘Do what you have to do, whatever it takes.’

 Last of the Annamese

A novel about the fall of Saigon — 1975

By Tom Glenn

The quote at the beginning of the caption, “Do what you have to do, whatever it takes,” is the motto of one of the characters in my novel, The Last of the Annamese. It means that if defending your country requires to give up your life, then you must do it. So the picture and its caption have always made me think that the empty boots pictured once belonged to a man killed in combat.

I bought the picture and hung it on my wall in the most honored place. It is still there today. So often when I am playing my Steinway grand piano, I stop long enough to look at that picture. It reminds me of my justified pride in having put my life on the line for my country.

Deaf

After escaping under fire during the fall of Saigon in April 1975, I didn’t realize I had suffered ear damage during the North Vietnamese shelling of the city. I’d been holed up with two of my communicators in our office at the northern edge of Saigon, and we were severely shelled, first with rockets, then with artillery. I discovered the failing when I attended a performance by the Shakespeare Theatre in the Kennedy Center Opera House. I was annoyed that I couldn’t understand what the actors were saying. I had my binoculars with me, and I discovered that when I see the mouths of the actors, I could understand them—I was reading lips.

I subsequently had my hearing tested and found out that I was partially deaf. As a result, I got hearing aids, which I’ve worn ever since. But I find that even when I’m wearing them, I can’t understand other speakers if I cannot see their mouths while they’re talking.

That was not much of a problem until the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Then everyone took to wearing masks to protect themselves and others from infection. I discovered, not too surprisingly, that when people had their mouths covered, I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I was forever asking them to repeat, slowly and loudly, until I could make out their words.

As I have aged, my hearing loss has become more pronounced. But it’s somewhat less bothersome now because people expect elders to be hard of hearing. They often speak slowly, distinctly, and loudly without ever being asked.

My deafness is both a curse and a blessing. I often fail to hear what others hear and end up looking foolish. On the other hand, I’m spared annoying noises that used to irritate me.

Sometimes, even failings have a benefit.

My Steinway (2)

Fast-forward a number of years. One morning, Susan called and told me to be ready to go out for a drive. She and her husband would be arriving momentarily, so I had no time to shave and bathe. I threw on jeans and a tee shirt and jumped into their car. We drove into the District of Columbia, and I remarked that we were getting close to the Kennedy Center. It turned out that’s where we were headed. We went through the stage door of the Eisenhower Theatre to the stage which was filled with Steinway grands. The Kennedy Center was buying all new pianos and therefore getting rid of all its old ones. Susan told me to try the pianos and pick out the one I liked best. I was delighted. I played all the pianos, more than a dozen of them, but kept coming back to one that was a glory to hear. It finally dawned on me that this piano was the one I had played that season in the lounge. Susan, to my amazement, proceeded to buy that piano and arrange to have it delivered to my house.

A new Steinway grand at the time cost $85,000. I knew that the piano Susan bought me cost less than that—it was, after all, used. And I always assumed that Susan used the money she got from the recent sale of our family house to pay for the piano. But I recently learned that she borrowed the money and is still paying off the loan all these years later. Talk about feeling humbled . . .

I play the piano less often these days than I did in the past—I’m busy with writing, presentations, and readings from my six published books. But several times a week I allow myself the luxury of playing some Mozart and Bach (my two favorite composers) and some of my own compositions.

It is still, after all these years, the most beautiful piano I have ever played.

My Steinway

I’ve written here before about the joy I derive from the Steinway grand piano that dominates the high-ceilinged room in my house that I have dubbed the piano room. The room is two stories high with the eastern wall divided into four floor-to-ceiling windows which flood the room with sunlight each morning. Because of all the glass and the resulting crisp sound, the room is ideal for a piano.

The background on the pleasure I take from the piano is that I have always loved music. As a child, I all but wore out the 78 rpm records I had of symphonies, concertos, and operas. After my father went to prison for embezzlement, we were too poor to own a piano, so I taught myself to play on the pianos at school and went on to major in music at the University of California, Berkeley. I scrounged enough money from part-time jobs to buy an old upright to play my harmony and counterpoint assignments on before I handed them in. I went on to earn a BA in music.

Many years later, my oldest daughter, Susan, and I subscribed to the ballet season performances every year at the Kennedy Center. We’d always arrive early and go to the lounge for a cocktail before the performance. There was always a Steinway grand piano in the lounge, but we were early enough that the player had not yet arrived. I’ve never been able to resist a piano, so I asked permission to play the Steinway.

One season there, the piano in the lounge was the most beautiful instrument I had ever played. I couldn’t wait to get there and had to be dragged away. But the next year, a new Steinway was in place. I tried it and immediately decided that it was inferior to its processor. The same was true every season after that.

More next time.

We Need to Improve

I continue to believe that the United States of America is the greatest country that has ever existed. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have problems. Today I want to talk about three of them. Yeah, I know. I’ve used this blog to complain about these problems before. And probably will again. But harping on our failings might help resolve them.

My first two peeves are with out political system, both of which threaten democracy. The first is the requirement we elect two senators from each state, no matter the population. That means that the vote of each resident of the state with the smallest population, Wyoming (576,851 in the 2020 census), is almost seventy times more powerful than the vote of each citizen of California (with a population of almost forty million). We can change that by a constitutional amendment that links the number of senators to the population.

The second peeve is the Electoral College. It is not the popular vote but the Electoral College vote that decides who will be president. Because most states give all their Electoral College votes to the candidate with the majority of popular votes—no matter how close the contest—it is possible for a candidate to win the presidency without winning the popular vote. Twice in the last few years, the presidential election was determined by the Electoral College, not the popular vote: in 2000 when George W. Bush won and in 2016 when Donald Trump won. The latter was the most spectacular: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million but lost the electoral college count to Trump.

And finally, our national inequity. The richest 0.01 percent of American households, a group that represents about 31,500 people, has an average household income of $43 million—1,807 times more income than the bottom 20 percent. And 68 percent of the total wealth in the U. S. is owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 3.3 percent of the total wealth. That top 10 percent make more income than the next 90 percent combined.

In short, we Americans have some real problems to solve. We won’t be able to make progress in resolving them as along as the Republicans retain enough power to maintain the status quo which very much benefits them. My sense is that Trump has so damaged the GOP that it will fade over time. Watch what happens in the 2024 election. If the Democrats score a great victory, as I expect, we can move forward on solving our problems.

My Penance

I was raised Roman Catholic and was taught as a child that to gain forgiveness for our sins, we must do penance. Then, as an adult, I spent years assisting friendly troops on the battlefield with signals intelligence (the intercept and exploitation of the enemy’s radio communications) in Vietnam and escaped under fire when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese invaders in April 1975. I went on doing the same kind of work elsewhere, though where and what I did are still classified.

One consequence of my time in combat is Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI), a mental disorder that results from participation in fatal violence. After suffering from the disorder for years, I finally found a partial therapy: helping others. In the early 1980s, I volunteered to take care of gay men dying of AIDS. Over a period of five years, I cared for seven dying men. Then science discovered a way of keeping AIDS patients alive. So I shifted to caring for hospice patients. I went on with that volunteer work until I was too old to be able to lift my patients, a necessity in caring for the dying.

One of the symptoms of PTSI is feelings of guilt. I was complicit in the deaths of an unknown number of enemy on the battlefield. One cannot be involved in the death of another human being without a sense of guilt. So in a very real sense, my work with the dying was a penance for my involvement in the deaths of men on the battlefield. My guilt was assuaged by helping men die.

I was reminded of my years of penance recently when I came across a news item reporting that the Whitman-Walker Clinic, the organization I volunteered with to care for dying AIDS patients, will be opening to a new facility on the St. Elizabeths East campus in the District of Columbia in late summer.  The press report described Whitman-Walker as a nonprofit serving patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), another name for AIDS. It says the clinic started 50 years ago in a church basement.

I can be justifiably proud of my work with the dying. It was something no one else wanted to do to. I loved everyone of my patients and still grieve over their deaths. But my life is far richer for having helped them die in peace.

TG3

I’m stuck with a grandiloquent moniker, Thomas L. Glenn III. I started using that form of my name when I was a college undergraduate because my father, Thomas L. Glenn Jr., between terms in prison, forged checks against my bank account. By adding “III” to my signature without his knowledge, I stopped him.

During my years in combat in Vietnam as an undercover civilian pretending to be military, soldiers and Marines both found my payroll signature hilarious. They gave me the radio callsign of TG3.

Then, during the late 1960s when I was operating near Marble Mountain south of Đà Nẵng in central Vietnam, the troops paid a local sculptor to make me a desk plate of black and white marble. Instead of my name, centered in large black letters against a white background is “TG-3.” When they gave it to me, they couldn’t stop laughing.  That desk plate now rests in a place of honor on my desk in my office where I write.

Lest the reader fail to grasp the significance of that gift, let me explain that the desk plate was a symbol of respect from the soldiers who gave it to me. They had watched me, a civilian under cover as an enlisted man in their unit, a linguist and signals intelligence specialist who outranked their commanding officer, as I lived with them, ate C-rations sitting in the dirt next to them, slept on the ground next to them, and went into combat with them. They had witnessed how the information I provided them from intercepted North Vietnamese radio communications had led to victory after victory. So while their gift made fun of my name, it also demonstrated their admiration and gratitude.

I’ve long since abandoned the long form of my name, Thomas L. Glenn III, in favor of the form I use as my nom de plume, Tom Glenn. Simplicity is always best, especially in writing.

The desk plate is displayed at the end of my u-shaped desk where all visitors will see it. That desk plate, my Civilian Meritorious Medal (for saving lives during the fall of Saigon), and the plaque my guys gave me to thank me for saving their lives are my three most precious possessions.

Civilian

During my time in combat in Vietnam and in other places after 1975 that are still classified, I was a civilian. Granted, I was under cover as an enlisted man in whatever unit, army or Marine Corps, I was supporting. But my actual military service (army) was completed well before I ever saw combat.

My job on the battlefield was using signals intelligence (SIGINT—the intercept and exploitation of the radio communications of the enemy) to tip off friendly forces as to where the enemy was, what his plans were, and the size of his units. The U.S. Marines always exploited my info to the hilt and had some historic victories as a result. The U.S. army sometimes refused to believe the intelligence I supplied them with and didn’t act on it. Their officers were not trained to exploit SIGINT. Many of them didn’t even know what it was or that it even existed. Hence the loss of almost a whole battalion at the start of the 1967 battle of Dak To because the U.S. army 4th Infantry Division ignored my warnings about enemy forces hidden close by.

All that said, I was indistinguishable from the GIs and Marines I was serving with. I have always looked young for my age, and I saw to it that my hair was cut like the combatants I was on the battlefield with, and I dressed in their uniforms, even down to the boots they wore—I still have and occasionally wear one pair of my jungle combat boots from Vietnam.

I take well-deserved pride in my time in combat. Because of my unique ability and training (among other things, I was comfortable in seven languages other than English), I was one-of-a-kind.

I served my country well.

Shake ’n Bake Sergeant

I’m between books for review. I just submitted my review of Pete Earley’s No Human Contact (Citadel Press, 2023), and I haven’t yet received a new book for review. So I resumed reading Jerry S. Horton’s The Shake ’n Bake Sergeant: True Story of Infantry Sergeants in Vietnam (2006) labelled “Edition: September 2018.” The copy I have shows no publisher. My best guess is that Horton self-published the book. The copy is also autographed, but I have no memory of ever having met Horton. Nor do I remember how I came to have a copy of the book.

The text of The Shake ’n Bake Sergeant is filled with small editing errors, everything from words left out to peculiar spacing (e.g., two spaces after each period) and misspellings. It tells the story of Horton’s army tour of duty in Vietnam’s western highlands in 1969. Assigned to the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, he operated in an area very familiar to me from my time there during the battle of Dak To in 1967. His descriptions of the places he was assigned bring back sharp memories of the area, except that I was a civilian under cover as military assigned to assist the 4th Infantry Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade with signals intelligence of North Vietnamese forces. I repeatedly warned both units that several North Vietnamese divisions were concealed in the hills to our west preparing to attack us. I wasn’t believed. The end result was one of the bloodiest battles during the Vietnam war. At the end, despite huge casualties, no territory had changed hands.

I can’t say I’m enjoying Horton’s book, but I am learning from it. Horton details endless marches from place to place (he calls it “humping”). At about halfway through the book, I haven’t yet read of Horton’s combat experience, but I know from the preview in chapter one that he was severely wounded. I had thought that my time in the highlands was grueling, but his—and that of other infantry soldiers—was far worse.