Tom Glenn's Blog, page 93

Navy Corpsmen

During my years in Vietnam working on the battlefield with U.S. Marines, I encountered men who were not Marines but sailors, from the U.S. Navy. These men’s job was to take care of the wounded during battle. As I eventually learned, the Marine Corps, unlike the army, didn’t have medics, that is, enlisted men trained to care for the wounded. They depended on the navy to provide that service. The sailors who cared for the wounded were called Navy Corpsmen.

The corpsmen assigned to combat units wore uniforms indistinguishable (to me, anyway) from those of the Marines, olive green camouflage fatigues. I identified them only when a troop was wounded and they rushed forward to care for him. They carried with them all manner of bandages and medicines and were lightly armed. The troops invariably called them “Doc.”

I still know today and stay in occasional touch with two former corpsmen. One still goes by the name of “Doc.” They were both in Vietnam on the battlefield in 1967, but I didn’t meet them there, and they don’t know each other. They are, justifiably, proud of their military history and the lives they saved.

I am honored to know them.

Under Cover as Military

For a good many years during my career as an employee of the National Security Agency (NSA), I provided signals intelligence support on the battlefield during combat to U.S. and friendly forces. That meant that I used the intercepted radio communications of enemy forces to tip off friendly forces as to what enemy units were nearby, where they were, what they were doing, and what they planned to do.

That meant that I had to be on the battlefield with the troops. Because my presence there was secret—to prevent the enemy from knowing a signals intelligence operative was snooping on them—I operated under cover: I wore the uniform of an enlisted man assigned to the unit I was supporting. I was indistinguishable from the grunts that surrounded me.

As I have reported here before, the troops on the ground found my presence hilarious. The fact that a civilian who outranked their commanding officer was roughing it right along side them struck them funny. When they learned that my payroll signature was Thomas L. Glenn III, they couldn’t stop laughing. They assigned me the radio callsign TG3. An American unit I was supporting in central Vietnam, near Marble Mountain, commissioned a local sculptor to create an ornate triangular desk nameplate for me in black-and-white marble. The name on it? TG3.

While I can’t make public claim to be a veteran of combat that took place after 1975—because where I was and what I was doing are still classified—I do stoutly maintain that I am a Vietnam vet. I spent the better part of thirteen years in Vietnam under cover as military supporting forces in combat. It’s true that I was a civilian pretending to be a soldier or Marine. But I faced the peril of the battlefield side by side with my military buddies. I earned my spurs.

My principal memories from those years of service are the young men who fought by my side. They were eighteen and nineteen years old. By their standard, I was an old man—in my late twenties and early thirties during Vietnam, even older in later years. To me, they seemed like boys in men’s bodies, big enough to fight and be killed in battle but young enough to think more like children than adults. The brutal deaths of so many of them by my side still haunts me and always will.

Reviewing Books

Just about ten years ago, a friend and fellow author David Stewart invited me to write book reviews for an enterprise he was founding called Washington Independent Review of Books. A year or two later, Bob Sanchez of the Internet Review of Books asked me to join his stable of reviewers. I’ve been reading and reviewing books ever since.

One result of getting into the reviewing business was that I tangled with books that I would otherwise never have read. Because of my background in Vietnam and combat, I was most often assigned books on Vietnam or war, but just about everything else came my way, too. About the only category I was spared was women’s literature.

Early on, I came to understand that my job was not to judge another author’s book but to help readers decide what to read. I resolved never to pan a book. If I found a book assigned me was poorly written or didn’t do justice to the subject, I refused to review it at all. But in reviews I did write, I tipped off readers to a book’s virtues and flaws so that they could decide for themselves whether to read it.

Along the way, I learned more about the art of writing. I saw that economy of means and precision were the primary virtues of a fine writer, along with an understanding of the rhythm created by sinuous use of words. I learned for the first time how powerful a single, short, blunt sentence could be, particularly if preceded by long, flowing ones. I came to appreciate the techniques of poetry applied to prose.

I don’t have an accurate count of how many reviews I’ve written, but I know it’s well over a hundred. Along the way I was taught the humility of gratefulness to other writers from whom I’ve learned while studying why their writing works so well. I am in their debt.

The book I’m currently reading for review is Barack Obama’s A Promised Land (Crown, 2020). It’s long (750 pages) and beautifully written. It’s the first of Obama’s books that I’ve read. I had no idea he is such an expert writer. And the content is so intriguing to me that I stop, ponder, reread, make notes, then go on. This won’t be a quick review.

So all these years later, I’m grateful to David Stewart for having invited me to become part of his reviewing endeavor. I’ve learned and improved as a writer.

But most of all, I’ve had fun.

My Latest Book Review

My newest book review, of Chris DeRose’s The Fighting Bunch, is published. You can read it at http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/the-fighting-bunch-the-battle-of-athens-and-how-world-war-ii-veterans-won-the-only-successful-armed-rebellion-since-the-revolution
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Let me know what you think.​

Human Hands

I hear so often that human beings are at the apex of living creatures on the earth because of their amazing brains that allow them to solve problems and create. I believe that is an accurate judgment, but it leaves aside an important adjunct: our hands allow us make miracles.

None of us stop to think about all the jobs our hands do for us every waking minute of every hour of every day. It is my hands that type the text you now see before you. My hands got me out of bed this morning, washed my face, combed my hair, heated my coffee, got the newspaper is, and held it while my eyes read it. My hands later in the day will bathe my body, brush my teeth, shave my beard, dress my body with clothes, play the piano, cook my food, hold my book while I read, hold the steering wheel while I drive, do any and all necessary writing. Only when my hands are damaged or too dirty to use do I get even a hint of necessary they are.

It is true that we humans share manual dexterity with the most advanced mammals—apes and monkeys. It is equally true that what sets us above those creatures is our brains. So, in the end, it is our brains that allow us to rule the earth.

But we wouldn’t be able to rule very well without the use of our hands.

Obama: The Hole

In reading Barack Obama’s new book, A Promised Land (Crown, 2020), I came across his description of his office in his home while he was on the way to the White House. His wife, Michelle, named it “the hole” because it was so disorderly. Periodically, Obama writes, he would be inspired to clean his office, put away the stacks of papers and books and pencils and pens, and restore a clean, orderly look. Then, three or four days later, as he worked and got out the materials he needed, it was back to being “the hole.”

I have my own hole, my office where I write and spend most of my time. It takes up the central room of the lowest floor of my split-level house. The room, starting at the foot of the stairs at the front (south side) of the house, extends more than thirty feet to the sliding glass doors that open out onto my patio on the shore of a large pond. The room is only about twelve feet wide with smaller rooms, a bathroom, and the utility room to the sides. In the northwest corner of the room, sitting on a brick hearth, is a gas stove that keeps me warm through the winter months.

The room is filled with office furniture a cabinet maker made for me many years ago, all constructed of pale tan maple wood. Down the center of the room is my u-shaped desk, some eleven feet long and eight and a half feet wide. The walls are covered with book shelves of the same maple.

The office is perpetually a “hole,” by Obama’s definition. The desk surface is littered with papers, books, writing pads, pencils and pens of every description. The west side of the u is taken up with my desktop computer, a screen nearly two feet wide, two printers, and a document scanner. The bottom of the u at the northern end of the desk is covered by a large slanted writing platform, also of tan maple, with my desk calendar on it. In the center of the east side of the u is another maple slanted writing platform.

Like Obama, I am occasionally inspired to clean my office and put everything away. The orderliness never lasts more than a day or two.

Writing is more important that tidiness.

Not Being There as a Father

Too often when my children were growing up, I wasn’t there for them as a father. Instead, I was on battlefields providing signals intelligence support to U.S. and friendly forces. It started in 1962 in Vietnam. For thirteen years, I spent more time in Vietnam than I did in the states. I earned my spurs and a reputation for effective combat support. After 1975, when Vietnam fell to the communists, I went on to other parts of the world. All that is still classified, so I can’t talk about it. Suffice it to say that I carried out similar duties.

The net result, for my four children, is that they were for long periods essentially fatherless. When I was home, I overdid being a good father, dressing them, feeding them, bathing them, and putting them to bed at night. But the overindulgence didn’t make up for my long absences.

My children grew into responsible, admirable adults. They are all successful, with children of their own. They have never criticized me. My sense is that they don’t hold me accountable.

I’m sometimes thanked for my service to my country. I often feel that the ones who should be thanked for their sacrifice are my children. They went without needed fathering so that I could support U.S. forces in battle. They survived the deprivation splendidly, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t suffer.

So, speaking for my country, I thank my children for their sacrifice. The world is a better place because of what they had to do without. My heart is with them.

The Seal Stamp

Among my treasures from Asia is one I’ve ignored for many years—a carved stone seal stamp. I retrieved it from the spot in my living room where it served as a decorative piece, bought a stamp pad and ink, and tried it. It works.

The seal it creates is my stylized initials, TG3 (for Thomas L. Glenn III), as I used to write them back in my Vietnam days. The stamp represents a long-standing Oriental tradition of a nobleman or government official stamping documents with his seal rather than signing them. I guess I’ll use it in my letters and maybe Christmas cards.

The stamp is little over three inches high and an inch wide carved from tan stone (alabaster? marble?). Its upper half is in the shape of a coiled dragon rising out of symbolic ocean waves. Its bottom half is smooth. The underside is square, taken up with my initials.

I have another seal stamp whose bottom is uncarved. It’s larger, five inches high, and the figure carved at the top of it is an exaggerated temple dog that resembles an angry lion. Like my ceramic temple dog I described a few days ago in this blog, this dog is also holding a ball under its right foot, but it looks less like it wants to play, more like it’s preparing to attack.

I have no memory of where I obtained these stamps. They look Chinese, so I might have gotten them in China or maybe Hong Kong. The meticulous carving in both is artistry in miniature. The curled fur and tiny teeth are precisely shaped and look authentic even under a magnifying glass. The artists who created them were masters.

As I look around my living room, sun room, and piano room, I am awed by the collection of art from all over the world that my travelling days allowed me to collect. And I know that over time, the value will increase. My children and their children will have real treasures.

PTSD Versus PTSI

I am subject to a malady caused by observing or participating in events so horrific that the soul is permanently damaged. The experience that produces the malady can be anything from an auto accident or housefire, for example, to a natural disaster, such as an earthquake or hurricane. As far as I can tell, the event that produces the malady usually or maybe always involves damage to or death of human beings.

The commonly accepted name for the soul sickness is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but I call it Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) because it is invariably inflicted by an external event; it’s not the mind suffering an internal dysfunction.

The occurrences of the malady I’m familiar with are those associated with combat. Men who have killed and seen their fellow combatants killed before their eyes on the battlefield almost invariably suffer from PTSI to some degree. Not being horrified by ghastly deaths is in and of itself unhealthy. In other words, those subject to the disease are normal people.

All too often, I have heard people condemn soldiers suffering from PTSI as weak or cowardly. A brave soldier, according to these people, should emerge from combat healthy, no matter what he may have seen or done. My sense is that the opposite is true: only men who are mentally competent and courageous enough to fight on the battlefield are subject to PTSI.

The compulsory draft into military service in the U.S. ended in 1973. As a result, the number of men and women enlisting in the service as I did with a specific assignment guaranteed, thus avoiding being drafted into the infantry, dropped to almost nothing. That meant that we have fewer and fewer veterans. The number of veterans who have seen combat gets lower every year, as does the number of those suffering from PTSI.

By some uncanny circumstance I can’t understand, we veterans with PTSI recognize one another. Nothing needs to be said. There is a look in the eyes, a knowing smile, a light slug to the upper arm.

My occasional contact with other PTSI sufferers, becoming rarer all the time, helps me maintain my sanity. I hope that is a gift I give to others.

Rerun: The Cassandra Effect

Readers keep going back to my posts on the Cassandra Effect, so I decided to rerun (post again) my thoughts on the subject.

I’ve written here several times about U.S. government officials ignoring warnings I gave them about the North Vietnamese, during the Vietnam war, based on signals intelligence (the intercept and exploitation of the radio communications). It happened so frequently during my thirteen years in and out of Vietnam that I gave it a name: the Cassandra Effect.

Cassandra, according to Greek myth, was a Trojan woman blessed by the gods with the ability to foretell the future and cursed that no one would believe her. I found myself in Cassandra’s shoes often during the Vietnam war. American military commanders were not trained to understand the utility of signals intelligence—many had never heard of it—and dismissed my warnings.

Three spectacular examples illustrate the dilemma.

In the fall of 1967 in Vietnam’s western highlands, I alerted the U.S. 4th Infantry Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade that the North Vietnamese B3 Front and its subordinate main force units were in the hills to the west of us preparing for combat. The commander of the 4th Infantry Division didn’t believe my reports but sent a battalion to reconnoiter just to be sure. It was all but destroyed. At the end of the resulting battle, one of the bloodiest in the Vietnam war, no territory had changed hands.

In January 1968, at my behest, my agency, the National Security Agency (NSA), issued a series of reports warning that the North Vietnamese were preparing to launch a country-wide offensive. I briefed General Westmoreland and his staff at the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). The general and his staff thanked me but dismissed the warning. The Tet Offensive which began days later took them by surprise.

In April 1975, I alerted the U.S. ambassador in Saigon, Graham Martin, multiple times that the North Vietnamese were preparing to attack Saigon. I repeatedly informed him in writing and briefed him personally three different times. He didn’t believe my warning, never called for an evacuation, and barely escaped by helicopter when the North Vietnamese were already in the streets of the city. I fled the city under fire.

I write again here about the Cassandra Effect because, as I noted recently, our country is in severe danger due to an administration that not only ignores intelligence but is actually hostile to it. As I wrote in my post about my book Secretocracy, dismissing intelligence warnings and sabotaging the intelligence agencies invites disaster. We only have a few more weeks until Trump leaves the White House. I fervently hope he doesn’t act against the interests of the U.S. in the interim.