Vietnam War

 

Yet again I notice a massive oversight:  I’ve done blogs on all those obscure wars no one really cares about, but haven’t addressed this one directly, though I have done so in other blogs.  This war actually occurred in my own lifetime and veterans exist in my presence, though I’m not aware of any relatives who fought.  My uncles were WWII veterans and too old by this time, most of my male cousins were too young, the only one possibly old enough was in college and probably exempt from the draft for that reason.

 Golf.  My brother likes to play golf, a hobby I don’t share – my preference is shooting guns at the range.  So sometimes they pair him up with a partner.  One time his partner wound up being an elderly veteran.  My brother asked him, “WWII?” which prompted Mr. War Guy to respond, “how old do you think I am?  No, Vietnam.”  Well, with the war 40 years ago and no children serving, that means US Vietnam war veterans (enlisted men, NCOs and junior officers) would be at least 60-70 years old by now; senior officers and generals would be long dead.  By now the WWII veterans are dead, and absent magic, so would be our AEF and Civil War veterans as well.  As noted earlier, the last veterans of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) died in the early 1950s.

 Draft.  This was the last war for which we actually drafted soldiers – we switched to a volunteer military in 1973.  The Selective Service is still in existence and I happily registered when I turned 18 in January 1987, but my subpar hearing kept me out of West Point, ROTC, JAG, and the National Guard.   

 Movies.  There are plenty of movies about the war. I don’t think I’ll try to mention all of them, but those of them that I will mention, I will cite chronologically in the narrative.  I’m also seeing some Vietnam War segments in “The Umbrella Academy”, to the point where the character (Klaus, #4) is still wearing his combat uniform back home far away from combat.   See below….

 Background.  Among other items which French Emperor Louis Napoleon, aka Napoleon III, accomplished between 1848 and 1870 – the biggest being expanding Paris to its current 20 Arrondissement size and giving us those wide avenues – the other foreign policy “thing” he did outside Mexico was taking “Indochina” from China and making Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia a French colony.  Hanoi and Saigon received a French treatment, the latter becoming the de facto “Paris of Southeast Asia” – just as Beirut was the “Paris of the Middle East” and Bucharest fancies itself the “Paris of Eastern Europe”. 

 During WWII the Japanese took Indochina away from France, while the Germans took France away from France.  We sent advisors to Vietnam to help a communist guy, Ho Chi Minh, train his own rebels, the Viet Minh, to fight against the Japanese.  They did so with the understanding and expectation that after the war, Vietnam would become independent, but the US saw fit to give it back to France.  A new guerilla war broke out, and by 1954 the Viet Minh had defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu.   Promised elections never materialized, so by 1956 Vietnam was separated into North (communist) and South (pro-US, another mish-mash corrupt democracy). 

 By the late 1950s the North Vietnamese began a campaign to take over South Vietnam.  [Movie:  “The Quiet American” with Brendan Fraser and Michael Caine.]  The US sent advisors, but not ground troops.  [Movie: “Go Tell The Spartans” with Burt Lancaster].  By late 1963 the guerilla war was going poorly for the North Vietnamese until Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated.  This threw the South Vietnamese regime into turmoil and allowed the North Vietnamese to get back on track.

 Gulf of Tonkin & Ia Drang.  By 1964 the communists were on the verge of winning the war.   President Johnson got US forces sent to Vietnam by 1965, with the first encounter between US ground troops and the NVA at Ia Drang.  This deployment was the only strategic surprise we enjoyed against the North Vietnamese.  [Movie:  “We Were Soldiers” with Mel Gibson].

 Tet 1968.  [Movie:  “Full Metal Jacket” with Matthew Modine and Adam Baldwin.  This is actually my favorite Vietnam War movie.]  The story had been that the war was going great (from 1965-68) and we were winning.  We really had not much idea how many forces the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) had, just a vague estimate, so comparing what we understood to be enemy casualties – the body count – with what we believed was the enemy’s troop strength, came up with a fairly arbitrary assessment of our progress.  In January 1968, during the Vietnamese New Year holiday time (analogous to Chinese New Year) the North Vietnamese launched simultaneous attacks across South Vietnam.  Half of Hue was taken, and VC guerillas even infiltrated the US Embassy compound in Saigon.   Eventually all those gains were wiped out with heavy casualties, putting the NVA/VC so far behind that it would take until 1972 to rebuild to the point of making another general offensive.   But the huge surprise of a general offensive when Westmoreland, McNamara, and the President had been telling the American people that the enemy was on its last legs killed the administration’s credibility – the sad irony being that in the aftermath of the offensive the NVA/VC were in fact in a very weak position.  [Movie: “Platoon”].

 Westmoreland out, Abrams In.   “Seek & Destroy” vs “Clear And Hold”.  [Movie:  “Hamburger Hill”].   Part of the problem was that US General Westmoreland was using a strategy called “seek and destroy”.  US/ARVN units would seek out enemy forces, engage them, push them away, then leave the area, which would be reoccupied by the enemy in our absence.  Unless we knew for certain that we had literally killed all the enemy soldiers, this strategy was doomed to failure.

 In 1969 General Westmoreland was replaced by General Abrams.  Abrams had a better idea:  after clearing a village or area of enemy troops, hold it with a garrison force and move to the next province over.  Now you’ve secured the area.  Overall this works better, but with one major catch:  it takes a lot of troops, both US and ARVN, to make it work.  From 1972-73 we were drawing down troops, leaving the ARVN to fight by themselves.  The South Vietnamese didn’t have enough troops on their own to make “clear and hold” work. 

 Over the Border.  Another problem was that, politically, neither Johnson nor Nixon could justify a comprehensive campaign of invading North Vietnam, destroying the NVA up there, and conquering Hanoi.  Even if we succeeded in clearing all of South Vietnam of the NVA and VC, what then?  We’d have to keep US troops in South Vietnam indefinitely.   If you want the war to end, and for us to be able to bring our troops home, you are going to have to invade North Vietnam and decisively defeat the North Vietnamese Army.   And if you can’t do that, you’ve entered a war you will never win.  So what’s the point?

 Easter Offensive 1972.  As noted, the Tet Offensive depleted the NVA/VC to the point where it took until 1972, four years later, for them to launch another one.  At this point we still had troops in VN but were drawing them down.  Even so, the ARVN managed to hold off the NVA and this offensive was another failure.

 April 1975.   By now, the US troops had gone and US support for South Vietnam was at its lowest.  The North’s patience was rewarded when the ARVN collapsed and NVA forces were able to overrun South Vietnam and crash the gates into Saigon, which fell by April 30.  By now it was GAME OVER for South Vietnam.

 Office.  I work with Vietnamese clients.  Half of them are named Nguyen, the rest Tran, Huynh, Pham, Phan, Luu, etc.  They come mostly from South Vietnam, Saigon in particular (no one is going to call it Ho Chi Minh City).   It’s rare that I get any clients from North Vietnam, though my office manager is originally from north of Hanoi – she was a little girl when the Japanese occupied her part of the country. 

 M16s & Helicopters.   The two biggest flavors which distinguish this war for us Americans are the M16 rifle – taking over from the M14 – and helicopters bringing troops in and out of battle. 

 At the risk of doing NORML more favors, I’ll bring up this issue.  I’ve been watching “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific”, both of which take place during WWII and focus on US soldiers in Europe and the Pacific.  Almost all of them smoke.   As noted in a prior blog, I do not and never have.  Barring personal experience and not having any friends who do smoke, I gather that nicotine calms and relaxes you without impairing your judgment.  Sure enough, these soldiers seem very relaxed after a cigarette but can function and talk normally.  Any long-term health issues are eclipsed by a concern of surviving the next battle and the war as a whole.  They have more immediate concerns than lung cancer.

 Vietnam is the first war where you see US soldiers smoking marijuana.  When Napoleon sent his troops to Egypt, alcohol was absent due to Egypt being a Muslim country.  However, hashish, which is highly concentrated cannabis, was available and rapidly proved very popular with the French soldiers, who persisted in enjoying it despite Napoleon’s express prohibition.  They even brought it back to France with them.  In “Platoon”, Sgt Elias (Willem Dafoe) and his supporters enjoyed marijuana.   There was even a real-life soldier, Peter Lemon, who had blazed up in a firebase, just when the enemy decided to attack.  He fought just as well as anyone else and even won a medal – the Congressional Medal of Honor.  https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/medal-of-honor-peter-lemon-was-high-on-marijuana-he-single-handedly-fought-off-two-waves-of-vietcong.html

 

Well, that ends my long-overdue analysis of this controversial and fairly recent US conflict….

Shadow Warrior

I can’t believe I haven’t done a blog on this, but apparently I haven’t.  So here you go.

Shadow Warrior is the now out-of-print memoirs of Felix Rodriguez, the Cuban-born CIA operative responsible for hunting down and capturing Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967.   It was fascinating, and not just for the Che Guevara angle.

He was born in Cuba, of all places – whereas Guevara is Argentinian.  The CIA sent him back for the Bay of Pigs operation.   Rodriguez was in Havana at the time, and if the invasion managed to get off the beach and reach that far, he would have coordinated with the invasion forces in the city itself.  Obviously things didn’t reach that level.

Rodriguez later went to Bolivia to help the Bolivian Army track down Che Guevara.   Oddly, Castro had given the Bolivian Communist Party explicit instructions NOT to give Guevara any help whatsoever.  Almost none of Che’s team in the forests of Bolivia were native Bolivians.  He had an East German woman with cancer, and a Bolivian named Paco, who would rather have studied Marxism in Moscow than have a gun shoved in his hands and told to traipse through the forest with no clue what he was doing.

Guevara separated his group into a vanguard, a rearguard, and a main group in the middle, which contained Guevara himself.   Rodriguez’ counter-insurgency team of Bolivian Army soldiers captured the vanguard team, who happily spilled the beans about the whole thing.  That included Paco.  Now Rodriguez knew Guevara would be arriving – but Guevara had no clue he’d be walking into an ambush.  Sure enough, he was captured.

The two of them talked at length, very friendly.  Che gave him his Rolex, which is now on display at CIA headquarters.  If it were up to Rodriguez, he’d have had Che sent to Panama to be interrogated by the CIA and who knows what else.  But it was the Bolivians who decided what to do, and they decided to shoot him.   Too bad.

Vietnam.  After Cuba, Rodriguez went to Vietnam.  There he turned a female NVA officer.  She was in love with the son of her NVA commander (Colonel Tu Ton), but he thought his son was too good for her, and forbid the relationship.  The colonel reassigned his son to a combat unit, and the boy was killed in a B52 raid.  She blamed Tu Ton for not only breaking up the relationship but also getting the boy killed.   So she helped the CIA arrange highly effective operations against him.  And there was much rejoicing.

Nicaragua.  By the 1980s, Rodriguez went to Nicaragua to help out with the Contras, who were trying to overthrow the communist Sandinista regime then in power.  Despite the notoriety back in Washington of some guy named Oliver North, Rodriguez said the Contras had no idea who North was.   Rodriguez considered North to be an arrogant idiot who had no idea what he was doing, nor that Secord and the rest of the Iran-Contra operation were making money behind his back, overall a pompous, incompetent assclown with a grossly inflated image of his importance.

If you’re interested in CIA covert ops, or in Che Guevara, by all means check this out.  His background is extensive and his stories are compelling.  

SS vs. VC

I finished a fascinating book, The Devil’s Guard.  It had been out of print for ages, so I had to buy it used from someone selling it for less than $200.

 SS.  This was the elite organization of Nazi Germany.  No Holocaust film is complete without SS guards, guarding the concentration camps and rounding up hapless Jews; brutal guards and cynical officers – even the charismatic and articulate Hans Landa from Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds”.  With their black uniforms and dramatic symbols, the SS runes and Totenkopf (Death’s Head), the SS is certainly a fascinating incarnation of evil.  Although the SS was a vast organization with its tentacles in all walks of German life, most of what the SS is infamous for nowadays is its role in the Holocaust.  The Totenkopfverbande (Death’s Head Detachment) manned the concentration and extermination camps.  The Einsatzgruppen were special squads operating in the forests of Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltics mowing down Jews in vast open pits dug by the victims themselves.  After the war, the SS was seen as Nazi Germany’s primary organization responsible for the atrocities associated with the regime. Its leader, Heinrich Himmler, escaped justice by swallowing a cyanide capsule upon capture by the British; Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped from Argentina by Mossad agents and brought to justice in Jerusalem.  

Part of the SS, but not part of the Holocaust operations, was an elite army known as the Waffen SS (Armed SS).  This was originally designed partly as Hitler’s personal bodyguard (Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler), which became the First SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (LAH), and a modest group of special disposal troops, the Vefugungstruppe (SS-VT), which later developed into the Second SS Panzer Division Das Reich. They were intended both as an elite fighting force loyal directly to Adolf Hitler, but also as a militarized police force after the war which would have gained credibility and respect on the battlefield.  Complicating the “we had nothing to do with the camps” argument, however, is the Third SS Division, Totenkopf, which was raised from concentration camp guards and led by Theodore Eicke, who was responsible for developing the camp system and establishing its rules.  The two major stains on the Waffen SS were the massacre of French civilians in Oradour, perpetrated by a unit from the Das Reich division, and the massacre of US prisoners at Malmedy, in Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge, by the Leibstandarte Division.

 The majority of Waffen SS units, however, were concerned with fighting the Red Army on the Eastern Front.  They formed ad hoc kampfgruppes (battle groups) which combined for specific operations as necessary, a flexibility unique to that army.  SS units were the scourge of the Reds and later the Allies, always feared and underestimated at their enemies’ peril.  Fortunately for their enemies, the SS was limited in number, never more than 10% of the size of the Wehrmacht, a few core German divisions and many more foreign units (see below).

 The Waffen SS attracted some German Army mavericks who had unconventional ideas for training which were frowned upon by the traditional German Army.  The Waffen SS trained with live ammunition and upgraded the exercise, fitness and calisthenics of the soldiers, plus a healthy dose of Nazi propaganda training.  Its soldiers received the first camouflage uniforms, a distinctive dot cammo (green or brown, depending on spring or fall) and also received the best weapons and equipment, and its panzer divisions received the newest tanks.  Waffen SS soldiers are the ones seen in the last third of “Saving Private Ryan” almost overrunning Tom Hanks’ small group of soldiers and paratroopers. 

 Another fascinating aspect of the Waffen SS was its multinational composition.  It initially accepted “Aryan”/Nordic volunteers from Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Flemish Belgium, plus “Reichdeutsche” (foreign nationals of German ethnicity).  Later, the SS lowered its racial standards and allowed French, Walloons (French speaking Belgians), Hungarians, Estonians, Latvians, and even Russians, Ukrainians, and other Slavs.  Leon Degrelle, commander of the SS Walloon Division, was the highest decorated non-German in the Waffen SS.  There was a Yugoslav unit, the Handschar Division, of Muslim Croatians.  However, the infamous “Britisches Freikorps” was little more than a 30 man unarmed unit which never saw combat.

 After the war, some of the Waffen SS veterans, fleeing what they perceived to be indiscriminate justice at the hands of the victorious Allies who labeled all SS personnel “war criminals”, wound up in France and received sanctuary in the ranks of the French Foreign Legion, which has a reputation for accepting disreputable characters from all over the world.  By this point the French were involved in a costly guerilla war in the mountains and forests of North Vietnam, against Ho Chi Minh’s US-trained and Chinese-supplied guerilla force, the Viet Minh.  The Foreign Legion allowed the Germans to form their own self-contained, independently operating unit.

 Viet Minh.  The precursor to the infamous Viet Cong (VC) was the Viet Minh, essentially the same organization under a slightly different name.  Without a sovereign state, North Vietnam, yet in existence, the army was purely guerilla but had substantial support from China and the USSR.

 The German unit operated behind Viet Minh lines and caused considerable problems for them.  Many of them were sharpshooters, carrying silenced rifles.  They learned fluent French and some Vietnamese, and were assisted by a Viet Minh turncoat, whose whole family had been wiped out by the Viet Minh.  Realizing that the Chinese were supporting the Viet Minh, the German unit went into China proper, dressed in black pajamas, tire sandals, the conical hats, and blew up several staging camps.  They also rescued several units of captured Legionnaires, and avenged others who were not so fortunate. 

 The Germans ruthlessly repaid Viet Minh atrocities in kind; on the rare occasion in which VM officers were lenient with French prisoners, the Germans acted likewise.  On one convoy, the Germans rounded up the wives and children of the local guerillas and used them as human shields to guarantee the safety of the convoy.  At another camp, besieged by a ruthless VM officer murdering captive Legionnaires outside the stockade of the camp, the Germans captured the VM unit’s local family and brought them to the camp, threatening to kill them if the VM officer didn’t back off.  This resulted in a mutiny in the VM ranks, who turned on their own officers.

On one remarkable occasion, one of the Germans challenged a VM officer to an open debate in front of the local villagers.  This German was well versed in Marxist ideology and ripped apart the VM’s arguments one by one; he was clearly excited and amused to engage in this battle of wits, words and ideas instead of bullets. 

  The Germans had also studied Mao’s guerilla warfare tactics and the writings of Spencer Chapman, a British officer who had been part of the UK advisors who remained in Malaysia after the Japanese took over, advising and organizing local guerillas to fight the Japanese; his book The Jungle is Neutral served as much as a primer in jungle warfare and counterinsurgency as Mao’s own teachings.  It turns out the French had done no prep work training the Legion for fighting in jungles (their training bases were in North Africa) nor had they bothered to study the tactics of the Viet Minh or of Mao himself, who literally wrote the book which Communist guerilla movements followed. 

 Unable to defeat the Germans in the forest, the Viet Minh used its political connections among the world’s Communist movement, particularly in France, to embarrass the French into disbanding the German unit.  Its men, unwilling to be parceled out piecemeal to the other Foreign Legion units, and having satisfied their enlistments, resigned from the Legion and found homes around the world.  In 1971, the leader of the unit, Hans Wagemueller (not his real name), met with the author of The Devil’s Guard and dictated his fascinating story. 

Cam Ranh Bay: Base Exchange 1966

Obviously, this is one that I haven't been to, but I thought it was interesting anyway. Unfortunately the narration drops for long periods of time, as if they had more footage than useful things to say (military way of doing things: utilitarian and practical, if not particularly adept at presentation). Check out the co dep nguoi Viets (pretty Viet girls) working as cashiers.

PPSH-41

I’ve never had the pleasure of firing this gun, or even holding one in real life, but it sure is impressive. This is the PPSh-41, the top submachine gun of the Red Army during WWII. It fired a 7.62x25mm pistol round at 900 rounds per minute. Although a 35 round box magazine was available, and was more reliable, the ubiquitous 71 round drum magazine, copied from the Finnish Suomi submachine gun, was considerably more common and popular. Approximately 6 million of them were produced during WWII, and entire units of the Red Army were equipped with it. It was the ideal weapon for close-quarters street fighting in Stalingrad, though once the distances opened up, the more advanced German Stg-44 assault rifle became more advantageous – provided there were enough Germans left alive to fire them. With a capacity advantage of more than 2 to 1 against the the Germans’ MP40 (with its 32 round box magazine), the PPSh-41 gave the already more numerous Red Army soldiers a definite edge. For their part, the Germans adapted the PPSh-41 to 9mm, and even attempted a double-stack magazine setup for the MP40, which worked as poorly as you can imagine.

After WWII, the PPSh-41 was supplied to North Koreans, Chinese, and other communist countries. Pictures circulate of rebels in Hungary in 1956 using them, and early in the Vietnam War, before the AK-47 became the standard weapon of the VC and NVA, it was used by those forces.

Remarkably, long after the AK-47 has captured our attention – thanks to the PLO and countless other terrorist groups adopting it as their signature weapon – the PPSh-41 made a comeback, in the most unlikely context. US forces in Iraq, involved in street fighting, have adopted the PPSh-41 and have been using it there - even fitting high-tech laser aiming systems obviously not available to the Red Army in WWII. Only the Danish Madsen machine gun has more staying power over the years – from 1903 to at last being retired by the military police of the state of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, as late as 2008.

Saigon West

Before May 2002 my interaction with Viets was limited. Then I got a job representing Vietnamese, and my exposure increased dramatically. Before then I knew all about the Vietnam War, as my buddy from high school was a huge fanatic about that: Tet this, Khe Sanh that, “Apocalypse Now”, etc. Now it was my turn to get inundated with Viets at a personal and professional level.

Apparently Northern Virginia has the second largest concentration of Vietnamese living in America (California is #1). Seven Corners is the center, with a mall, the Eden Center, which flies the south Vietnamese flag (yellow with three horizontal red stripes down the middle) and is full of Vietnamese restaurants, karaoke bars, jewelry stores, and travel agencies. My office was 5 minutes away, and frequently clients were given directions from the Eden Center as a landmark. I’ve eaten there a few times, and even sampled its club, the Diamond Club, a few nights, though not recently.

I tried several times, but could not manage to learn Vietnamese, beyond a few phrases. All those accents throw me off, and I think I’m past the peak of years where absorption of a new language is something my brain can handle. Portuguese is still locked in at #2.

For that matter, I’m not a big fan of the food either. Much of it, like most Asian food to my palate, reminds me of the Star Trek episode where Riker tries to sample Klingon cuisine. Uggh. Using chopsticks is a no-win situation: obviously they’ll laugh at you if you can’t seem to manage it, but even if you do get it right (as I do) they’ll laugh at you with wonder – “wow, the monkey did it!”.

I also got to know something of the Vietnamese personality. Unfortunately, the more I learned, the less I liked it. Like most Asians, Viets don’t seem to understand the Western notion of “objective reality”. The “truth” and “honesty” are alien ideas, the province of stupid, naïve, childlike Americans too foolish to lie effectively. An honest Viet is hard to find – either they’re Catholic or heavily Americanized. They’ll tell you what you want to hear and get pissed if you don’t behave the same way. [However, the guy who painted my car is 100% redneck, yet shares the same “tell him what he wants to hear so he doesn’t get completely pissed off” way of doing business. He does great work, he just takes forever to get it done. Despite that, he’s a nice guy. People are pretty complex.]
One of my secretaries dated a Vietnamese man who constantly checked up on her at the office – insanely jealous. She thought it was endearing and cute. And this same girl warned me: there’s a good reason why Vietnamese men are so jealous of their Vietnamese wives and girlfriends (“where there’s smoke, there’s fire”, was how she put it). One of my cutest clients was the victim of a husband who ruined a great thing by being too jealous; damn idiot couldn’t deal with it, but given how attractive she was, I could understand how he felt. He just took it too far.
I’m not a big fan of Asian women, who all too often look as though they never even went through puberty. I’m into women, not girls; occasionally some of them seem to actually have a figure, breasts, etc. Many of them seem to have a mean streak and ability to spend money like it’s going out of style. A former secretary’s sister had a shirt that read “You Better Make More Than I Can Spend”. Another secretary, only one-quarter Vietnamese, pointed out that the girl should have a shirt that says “Size Doesn’t Matter As Long As You Buy Me Stuff”. Add that to the lying, unfaithfulness, low attractiveness, Klingon cuisine, a majority preference for Vietnamese men, and the odds of finding a decent Vietnamese woman are pretty low, which is why I’m not even looking. Most of the offers seem to be regarding someone’s sister or cousin back in Vietnam who needs a green card. All too often, American men are only good as husbands to get a green card or provide unlimited amounts of cash to spend on their wives’ Vietnamese lovers behind their backs. Hell, Viet women cheat on their Vietnamese husbands – what chance does an American husband have expecting the woman to be faithful? [To be fair, though, a certain Eastern European country on the Black Sea does a remarkable job of producing beautiful women who are just as greedy, deceitful and unfaithful as Vietnamese women tend to be. But that’s another story.]

The Viets vary considerably on their level of assimilation. Some speak almost no English at all despite having been here since 1975. They only eat Vietnamese food, won’t watch a movie if there are no Asians in it, and have to drive a Honda, Nissan or Toyota. At the other extreme are Viets who have been here for a long time, hardly speak a word of Vietnamese, and act exactly like Americans. My office manager’s oldest son is completely Vietnamese yet doesn’t speak a word of Vietnamese. To hear him talk, and the way he acts, he is completely American. All his wives have been white Americans and all his children are Amerasians. The rest seem to fall somewhere in between: using cell phones and shopping like Americans, but rarely watching US TV or movies or listening to any music sung in English. This is one department where I can’t, and won’t, paint them all with the same brush.

I’ll finish off with a few concessions. (1) I have never been to Vietnam, or anywhere else in Asia. My impressions on Viets are due to my dealings with the ones here. (2) I have met a fair amount of Viets who are outstanding and treat me fine. They’re not all slime. It was simply discouraging to see the same behavior resurface again and again, and find myself liking them less and less the more I got to know them. Maybe I should simply go to Saigon – accompanied by someone, as I don’t speak Vietnamese and have no hope of fitting in – and wrap up this chapter in my life.

Nelson DeMille

I recently finished Wild Fire, the latest novel by Nelson DeMille. He is a spectacular author; almost every book of his turns out to be a page-turner. Cops, international terrorism, and Vietnam tend to be his frequent subjects. He himself was a Vietnam veteran, so he has some background experience to draw upon.

Two of them feature a character, Paul Brenner, who seems to be an alter-ego to DeMille himself.

Up Country. Features Paul Brenner. This is my favorite. Brenner goes back to Vietnam to investigate a murder which allegedly occurred in Hue in 1968, amidst the Tet Offensive. This involved a US captain – now a prominent US politician pursuing a higher office – who shot a US LT in Hue, an act witnessed by an NVA soldier. Brenner is sent to Vietnam to find out what this NVA soldier – if he’s still alive (?) - knows. He starts off in Saigon, then travels up to Nha Trang, Hue, Hanoi, then the interior of North Vietnam, accompanied by a beautiful American CIA officer, Susan Weber (go figure, with all the women in Vietnam, the love interest is nguoi my!). MUCH better than The General’s Daughter. I learned a few nuggets of Vietnamese to help me at my former law practice: “co dep” (beautiful girl) and “SAT CONG!” (Kill communists!). I already knew “khong biet” (“I don’t know”), “dung lai” (later), “ong luat su” (Mr Lawyer), “troi oi” (OMG!!), “toi yeu em” (I love you), “hon mong toi” (kiss my ass), “an cut” (eat shit) and other useful fragments.

The General’s Daughter. Paul Brenner is back. This was made into a movie with John Travolta as Brenner. Brenner investigates a murder at a US military base involving a US officer, a beautiful West Point graduate, the daughter of a prominent general. It turns out the daughter had some bad things happen to her at West Point, and was into some kinky stuff at the base. As with so many of DeMille’s books, all is not what it seems.
Another popular character is former NYPD cop John Corey, who does NOT appear to be a Vietnam veteran, just a major smartass whose stories are written in the first person.

Wild Fire. Corey, assisted by his beautiful wife, FBI Agent Kate Mayfield, investigates a wealthy right-wing radical, Bain Madox, who built an ELF transmitter in upstate New York and is plotting to wipe out the Middle East, by detonating 4 suitcase nukes in L.A. and San Francisco, which will precipitate “Wild Fire”, an obscure US mutually-assured-destruction plan which dictates that the Islamic world (except Mecca and the oil fields) will be nuked by US strategic nuclear forces if any nuclear device detonates in a US city.

Plum Island. John Corey is involved in something dealing with a top secret US installation on way eastern Long Island. Clearly one of the more forgettable ones.

The Lion’s Game. John Corey is on the tail of a terrorist whose aim is to track down every USAF pilot involved in Reagan’s 1986 bombing of Libya.

Night Fall. John Corey and Kate Mayfield are convinced that Flight 800 (the TWA flight which mysteriously blew up off the coast of Long Island in 1996) was NOT an accident – that a missile was involved, somehow. But the powers that be don’t want them to look into this issue, and have a vested interest – why??? – in shooting down the missile theory, despite many eyewitnesses who saw what appeared to be a missile. Somewhat of a paranoia trip, with the pair having to figure out who they can trust, and what is really going on.

The rest of the stories involve characters who just show up for that particular story.
By The Rivers of Babylon. Two El Al Concordes are brought down by a terrorist attack. The crew and passengers of one survive, only to be assaulted by successive waves of PLO terrorists very close to the ruins of Babylon in the Iraqi desert. We have corroboration in here, as noted in Red Horizons and Seven Pillars of Wisdom (both of those non-fiction) that Arab terrorists are notorious homosexuals and lousy soldiers. Remarkably, the Israelis hook up with a remote, isolated group of Jews who had been left behind in Babylon thousands of years ago (obviously these are their descendants…!)

Word of Honor. Ben Tyson, a US officer in Hue in 1968, is brought up on charges of murder in the battle in that city. He has to defend himself, yet ultimately the truth unfolds. This was made into a made-for-TV movie with Don Johnson as Tyson.

Gold Coast. Something on Long Island involving wealthy WASPs and Mafia types. Vaguely reminiscent of The Great Gatsby.

Charm School. This was the first one I read. It’s about a “charm school” – a finishing school in the USSR for the KGB. It’s complete with a 7-11, a McDonald’s, etc., and designed to give KGB agents the ability to speak and act like Americans, not merely fluent English with Russian accent. It even features a third generation (82-92) Trans Am.

Spencerville. Keith Landry returns to small town Ohio after years abroad in the CIA killing exotic people in exotic places. There he finds his high school sweetheart has married the local corrupt, brutal police chief. Although he hasn’t made any overtures at the woman, “this town is only big enough for one of us”, and the jealous chief starts making trouble for him immediately. You can pretty much figure out where this goes. His ex-CIA buddy reminds him: “BUCHAREST.” Like I need to be reminded.

Talbot Odyssey. Another Cold War relic; this one involves a Soviet plot to induce EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) by detonating a nuclear device at high altitude above the US. The Soviet consulate at Glen Cove, Long Island, is the focal point of this one. It also turns out that a high ranking CIA officer is a Soviet mole (no, it wasn’t Ames). One of the bad characters is… a Romanian woman. Clearly not completely fiction.

Mayday. This one was co-written with Thomas Block. A new-fangled high-altitude airliner fucks up somehow, leaving everyone except one Ted Striker guy either dead or permanently brain damaged. Ted has to land the plane himself (with no inflatable automatic pilot), but comes across resistance: the airline has cynically determined that its liability will be less if the plane crashes completely, killing everyone on board (including Ted) than it would be if Ted successfully landed a plane of brain-dead zombies the airline will be legally obligated to support for the rest of their lives. So quite apart from landing the damn thing (hard enough in and of itself) he has to deal with the bullshit from the airlines (sounds like something from “South Park”).

Cathedral. A bunch of IRA terrorists capture St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC on the eve of the St Patrick’s Day parade. They take the Bishop (not Terry Jones) hostage. An NYC cop of Irish descent, don’t you know, turns out to be better for the cops than the actual hostage negotiator.

As I noted above, they’re all worth reading, and though I preferred some over others, none were of substandard quality. Unlike Tom Clancy, though, DeMille doesn’t get bogged down in military technology, though there is more than enough of that in several of the books to keep the fans of that stuff satisfied. Of course, there’s also sex….which is always good.

Ho Chi Minh + LBJ = Sgt Pepper?

Here’s a radical idea: add Ho Chi Minh and Lyndon Johnson and you get: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

 Think about it: would the massive upheaval, the social revolution, the counterculture, have happened if (A) North Vietnam hadn’t invaded South Vietnam, and (B) LBJ hadn’t sent US troops into Vietnam in 1965? 

 Back in the early 60s, we were like the late 50s: crew cuts, rock’n’roll, Elvis, anti-communist, obey authority, no drugs, etc.  We trusted the government just as we trusted our parents, to tell us the truth and look out for our best interests.  LSD was in the hands of the CIA and a few knowledgeable souls such as Ken Kesey, but otherwise unknown.  There was a very small fringe - beatniks and communists – but they were a very small minority and off the radar of mainstream America.  The Beatles didn’t even put out an album until 1962, and even then it was Please Please Me. 

 By 1970 everything was different.  Woodstock, Altamont, LSD, Kent State, you name it.  Even if the counterculture represented a minority – as distinguished from Nixon’s “Silent Majority” – it was still thrust in America’s face, impossible to ignore.  The war itself was on the news, as were the protests.  A threshold was reached where ordinary people were capable of doing anything.  The Beatles had put away their matching outfits, grown their hair long – or even beards – and Lennon and Yoko posed naked on their album cover.  Even the Beach Boys (???) were singing about marijuana, meditation, all that New Age crap.

 Clearly something happened.  But what?  What did the WAR have to do with it?  The war stretched the government’s credibility gap beyond the breaking point for all but the most diehard right wing reactionary.  During WWI and WWII it was expected that the government may have been fudging a little on its propaganda, what Churchill called “terminological inexactitude”, but so long as the war was being won and the results didn’t stray too far from what we were being told, it didn’t matter too much – we assumed we were being told this for our own good and that our own government was looking out for our own best interests, like parents telling their children about Santa Claus, a harmless story for the benefit of the child’s happiness and well being.

 But Vietnam was different.  Ordinary people could tell that what they were being told didn’t match what was really going on.  Body bags + violence + an unconventional war against an unconventional opponent; it didn’t help that the war was being fought with one hand behind our back.  Instead of invading North Vietnam on the ground, we bombed it from the air; and we know from experience that you although you can’t win a war without air superiority, air power alone won’t win the war without “boots on the ground” – it’s a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for victory.  We could see the napalm, the arc lights, the destruction, but not the victory.

 Tet January 1968 was probably the last straw.  Up until that point the White House, Pentagon and General Westmoreland had been telling America that the war was being won, that the enemy was on its last legs.  Then POW!  The VC and NVA attacked everywhere at once, overrunning much of Hue and breaking into the US Embassy compound in Saigon.  Although the NVA and VC eventually lost all the territory they had gained – suffering horrible casualties and wiping out the VC as a military force – the political damage was done.  The irony was that NOW the war was winnable, but no one – not even the military – believed it anymore.

 It was this destruction of government integrity, how they betrayed our trust (“Born on the Fourth of July”, Daniel Ellsberg, etc.) which ripped our social fabric apart at the seams.  We were a democracy, but we could no longer trust the government, as if our parents, who we loved and respected, turned out to be selfish, lying bastards.  The world was turned upside down.  Now anything was possible.  Black was white.  Night was day.  Drugs were OK.  Promiscuous sex was OK.  And Revolver and Sgt Pepper (as well as the Grateful Dead and Piper at the Gates of Dawn) stepped in to fill the void.  These albums, this music, fit our mood, our spirit.  They described exactly how fucked up, how confused, how crazy we felt.  If America hadn’t been corrupted and weakened from within, if the bond between government and people hadn’t been ruptured, all this counterculture would have remained a small, weak, insignificant margin outside the mainstream, out of sight, out of mind.  The music might still have been made, but it would not have had the impact and the success it did, instead remaining obscure like Bloodrock, Hawkwind, and Blue Cheer.

 In each place, the US and London, a social revolution was going on.  The youth of the counterculture had come to the conclusion that: (A) the establishment looked out for its own interests, not those of the public at large, and not for the younger generation – who it sent to Vietnam to fight its wars; (B) it established arbitrary rules which restricted the freedom of young people to express themselves; (C) it was possible, nevertheless, for youth to rebel against this corrupt authority and take control of their lives, and (D) there was no shortage of outlets for this rebellion.  The music – especially Pink Floyd & the Beatles, and the San Francisco bands, reflected this change, casting away the old restrictions and going off into new, uncharted territory where anything was possible.  Sgt Pepper is the finest example of this: 4 guys going into the studio without having to worry about satisfying mobs of screaming teenage girls or whether they could reproduce the music onstage. 

 LSD.  Undoubtedly, the catalyst for channeling the severe social distortion of the Vietnam War into the creative and productive outlet of music was the drugs, and none more important than lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, or acid.  The drug is too important to fully address here, and deserves a full blog entry in its own right.  But for here it’s enough to argue that the drug was responsible for no less than Sgt Pepper, Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Pink Floyd), Blue Cheer, the Grateful Dead, Hawkwind, and countless other bands.  Lennon has always denied that “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” was about LSD, but the song title and lyrics, plus Lennon’s own extremely irreverent and cynical personality, convince me that his denial was really an elaborate put down, an inside joke, a slap in the face, and an insult to the intelligence of anyone who ever listened to the song closely.  By expanding our consciousness, by smashing outside the box of conventional thinking, the drug opened new horizons.  Not all the music was good, but the best of it was some of the best ever made, and could never have been made without the LSD.  Sure, these same bands had made quality material in the early 60s, but alcohol, cigarettes, even marijuana, were no substitute for what Jimi Hendrix called “the experience”.  LSD was the only game in town.

 The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and others in London’s Underground movement were watching America, particularly San Francisco, and the shock waves rippling through America from the Vietnam War – including Woodstock, which was an anti-war protest festival – flew across the sea into the streets of London, and channeled through the artists and musicians by LSD, were engrooved into vinyl for the rest of us to experience and enjoy even to this day.  Thanks to Uncle Ho for invading South Vietnam, and President Lyndon Johnson for sending US troops to defend it.