DEFEAT RACISM: READ REBUKE RESIST

 A hitchhiking dog? You may not believe it. My wife doesn’t believe it. No friend in years has believed it, but it is true. My shipmates and I once had a dog that would hitchhike whenever he chose.

It was like this. I was part of a security detail of a Navy communications compound on Monkey Mountain on the south side of Da Nang harbor. There were five compounds on the mountain and we were third from the top. The Air Force occupied the highest elevation, then the Marines, and then us, We had a lovable shaggy dog named Charie, first name Victor.

Well Charlie liked to go, on occasion, to the base of the mountain and visit friends. When the urge occurred, he would stand outside our perimeter on the only road serving the mountain and, before long, someone would pick him up.

Later, a vehicle would stop outside our gate, the driver would wave, and out would hop our canine shipmate. Most everyone on the mountain knew him by name, Charlie, first name Victor.

Once, when he had been below for an afternoon, a Marine deuce-and-a-half came roaring by like it was trying to outrun an AK 47 round. A few minutes later we heard it grind to a stop and shift into reserve. Soon, it backed up to our gate.

Yep. A door opened and out jumped Charlie. He wagged thanks and trotted in with his “ready for supper” look.  The driver, a newbie, explained that he thought he was rescuing a stray and was going to make him a Marine until he passed our compound whereupon Charlie began to express his displeasure in the best of nautical terms. The driver even asked us what an “effing fenderhead” was.

Home is the sailor, home from the sea. I think we operate under conflicting urges, one to seek adventure and one to come home when the adventure is done. I learned that from Charlie, first name Victor. America is on an adventure now and we can only hope she chooses to come home soon. If a dog can, America can.

Why will people believe Donald Trump and Elon Musk are decent human beings but won’t accept this lovable bit of history? I guess if a Fox entertainment pundit told it, they would.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

TET

A Public Institution Graduate (PIG) Looks at History: The Tet Offensive began January 30, 1968 when some units in the South got confused by time-observance differential between North and South Vietnam and kicked it off. The full-scale offensive began 24-hours later. Now here’s the thing: everyone knew all hell might break loose then. I was there, the lowest of the low, barely a month in-country, still in the demeaning “stateside chow” category (Ask a vet), toting an M-14 because M-16s were in short supply and Colt Industries insisted on being the sole supplier. We had already doubled our watches to six hours on and six hours off. We weren’t prepared but we were ready. Despite this, General William Westmoreland, HMFIC, was so sure that the offensive was simply a part of feint to distract him from the battle at Khe Sahn that he took in a round of tennis that first day. It gets worse. Just ask the Marines (150 killed) and ARVN (400 killed) units that were left stranded at Hue because General (Body Count) Westmoreland felt they were overreacting.

Lesson:

Be careful to whom you trust your children.

Additional lesson. Those who are denouncing modern Americans as "Communists" should stop to read an account of the Battle of Hue. They might be astounded to learn how real Communists behave when fate removes the restraints.

Sources:

Bowden, Mark, Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam. , 2017

Sorley, L. (2011). Westmoreland: the general who lost Vietnam. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Russians

Love Sunday morns. First, I do my one-hour (plus) study of the Sermon on the Mount. Then I watch Noir Alley on TCM. If time permits, I catch the message from Pulaski Heights Methodist Church in Little Rock to make sure that a least one Protestant Church in America still preaches love and peace. I call it my “Grace Sandwich,” i.e. grace followed by darkness followed by grace. It’s a spicy-smooth delicacy that makes me think.

The films on NA were made in the 1940s and 50s. Invariably, the discussion gets around to the blacklisting of actors, writers, producers, and directors, particularly those carried out by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), what, until recently, I regarded as the most evil group ever to achieve power in Washington. They were, of course spurred on by Senator Joe McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) and his chief vermin Roy Cohn, whom, until recently, I regarded as the two most evil men ever to gain power in Washington.  I don’t think it is documented how many lives these folks ruined. It was in the hundreds, I think, maybe more.

For what sin did they ruin innocent lives? It was for the sin of exploring Communism, an act legal at the time of commission and shared by many affected, and influenced, by the bitter poverty and despair in America during the Great Depression. Of course, at the time of the witch hunts, flirting with Communism meant communication with Russia. One minor dalliance could destroy you, your family, your associates, and your career.

One contact with Russia, the most casual incident of intercourse, and your life would drain away like the muddy remnants of a spring rain flowing to the sea.

Sometimes, while I’m listening to how some successful American saw her or his life ruined by simply having some turncoat colleague like Ronald Reagan accuse them of sympathizing with the Russians, I think of my life.

See, the same America that produced HUAC, McCarthy, Cohn, and Reagan, once ordered me to a war zone to spend a year of my life in harm’s way.

Why?

Let’s see, oh yes. It was to wage war against a country that had never done America a smidgen of harm, but which had to be destroyed because they were aligned with and armed by, … by … are you ready?

Yep, our old arch-enemy, Russia, that demon of demons. Over 50,000 of my comrades died trying to teach those Communist bastards in Moscow a lesson.

I made it home reviled, hated, and rebuked because we didn’t seem to punish the Russian proxy-nation enough. I withstood the experience, but I never was quite the same person who left for the war. I don’t think any of my surviving brothers and sisters were. Those who dodged the honor were the lucky ones, I suppose.

So you, dear reader, may understand that I can’t explain why the only love expressed by our current president is for the former communists in Russia. Maybe it’s because they never damaged him.

Well, at least we’re not trying to ruin people’s lives today because they don’t love Russians enough, the way we ruined them back in the day for not hating Russians enough.

Uh.

Wait.

Let me get back to you on that one.

Grand Visions

Some sights stay with you forever, just as real as the moment they happened. For me, one was the first time I saw Brenda. I know. I know. I’ve described many times how she sashayed by and grabbed my heart as she passed, never letting it go.

Another was the time I was enjoying a brief dalliance with the “sport” of scuba diving. My friend Doug Sisco and I booked a trip to the Cayman Islands where, on one dive, we traversed a short, winding cave to exit directly over the “Great Cayman Wall,” staring down into tree miles of darkening blue water, suspended above it like cosmic interlopers. Oh my.

Oh, and speaking of blue ocean water, I can’t forget the sight of the South China Sea from the airplane window as I left another place. I only mention it because I dreamed last night that they sent me back, the first reoccurrence of that dream in a long time. I think that’s a compensating dream after an aggravating day, my mind saying, “It could be worse.”

There was, going back a bit further, my first glimpse of Old Main, soaring above the “Mother of Mothers” as viewed from my family’s car on old Highway 71 coming into Fayetteville.

I can’t forbear mentioning one other sight that never fails to stir my blood. It was back in the 1980s I think. My old friend, running buddy, and legal mentor Argumento deMinimus, the Harvard-Bred lawyer was spending two weeks of Army Reserve training at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Brenda and I flew up to visit ere he left. At some point, someone said, “Hey kids, let’s go to the Gettysburg Battlefield.”

Off we went. Arriving there, we found ourselves a little disoriented by the traffic and disorder. It’s a big place, the battlefield park. It is immaculately preserved, due largely to the initial efforts of one of the battles’ self-aggrandizing jerks, Union General Daniel Edgar Sickles. Sickles nearly blew the victory and then spent the rest of his life trying to destroy the career of General George Meade who whipped Robert E. Lee to a standstill at the three-day battle and was never forgiven for the insult, either by Abraham Lincoln or the writers of history.

Anyway, we decided to advantage ourselves of the first available parking place and then become oriented. This we started to do, wandering through a small entryway and heading up a slight incline toward the visitor center. As we walked, a small white building appeared on our right. “Hey,” I said, “that looks familiar.” Nobody listened. They just walked on up the hill. “Hey,” I said, “isn’t that General Meade’s Head … ?”

I didn’t finish, for I reached the top of the ridge where the other two already stood, transfixed. I froze as well. There we stood, at what they call “The high-water mark of the Confederacy," where from a line of battle a mile away, three divisions of Confederate troops had marched inexorably to doom against a Union force of men and cannons arrayed along the ridge where we stood.

I tell you it was really something. It makes chills run up my spine just to recall it. I have no truck with either the Confederacy or the cause for which it stood. I must admit, however, to recalling, at that very moment, the immortal words of William Faulkner, penned in his last novel, Intruder in the Dust. Remember what he wrote?

“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.”

Neither a charge, nor Pickett's...
His widow promulgated that myth.
It was an assault, an insane one,
by nearly 15,000 brave, but
misguided, men and stopped
by other brave men in epic battle.

In Memorium

All alone this morn thinking about Memorial Day Weekend. I don’t have a picnic or anything planned, just a quiet time to give a little thanks for the fact that I’m not one of the ones being remembered.

I’ve only known one person who was killed in our country’s wars. He was a high-school classmate. He and I were not close friends, but he served honorably and had a great future ahead. His name is now among the 57,939 carved into the black granite monument known as the Vietnam Memorial.

Another classmate died recently from duty in that war, this one from the delayed effects of Agent Orange. They say that everyone in the country, during the time the chemical was used, was exposed. I don’t imagine that the names of its victims will be carved on The Wall, not even the American ones.

Those who forgive, or even support, the warmongers may not understand the long-term effects of battle. I’ve learned recently that experts still consider the earth at such places as Belleau Wood (1918) and Normandy (1944) toxic. Well known, but unverified, anecdotes claim that as late as the 1960s trees in some areas of France retained enough mustard gas residue to injure farmers or construction workers who were clearing them. I’ve read about secluded and undisturbed valleys that still retain pockets of deadly gas.

In America, 50 years later, Vietnam veterans still bear the stereotype of sociopathic ne’er-do-wells, the one tragedy avoided by those with their names on The Wall.

They don’t mention these things when they whoop it up about invading some country or other.

Those I know who have worn the uniform don’t seem to get as agitated over such things as wearing a flag-decal on their lapel. Just in the last couple of days, I’ve also seen some posts by some who are exercised over regulations limiting the size of flags and the height of flagpoles. How silly. It reminds me of a comment of a close friend, fellow vet, and Iraqi invasion participant. He’s quite high up in the military now, and he once made a very pertinent observation.

“The American Flag is not an advertising gimmick.”

Love of country and all its people is a wonderful emotion. Patriotism represents a more slippery term. It has been called, with some justification, “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” (Samuel Johnson) and “often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles” (George Jean Nathan). Used in earnest and with propriety, it brings out the best in us. Used for immoral purposes, it creates monuments bearing the names of war’s victims.

In my day, some of those victims didn’t ask for the chance to add their names to such monuments. During the Vietnam War era, they tell us that one-third of veterans entered the military through the draft. By contrast, WWII saw a draft rate of 66 percent. These figures can be a bit misleading. They don’t take into account the number of those who enlisted simply to avoid being drafted into the infantry. Trust me on that one.

No matter. The fact remains that many of the names on The Wall are those of individuals drafted into the service. They include some who fought alongside Hal Moore in the Ia Drang Valley, a few who had only a few weeks left “in-country,” the term that held so many different meanings for those of us who served in that sad war.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll go to the annual Flag Day celebration in Little Rock on the grounds of the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History. There will be music, free ice cream, and a flag for each person there. At some point, the band will play The Armed Forces Medley. When it reaches Anchors Aweigh, I’ll stand and wave my flag. Last year, there weren’t any young shipmates standing. Of those of us who did, more than a few required a little extra effort in making it erect. We did it though. If for no other reason, we had to in honor of those shipmates with their names on the wall.

Change ...

One of the things I’ve noticed about urban problems is the immediate tendency to blame someone or some individual group for them. While study sometimes proves this to be justified, it’s not always true. Sometimes things just happen and we have to act wisely. I think that some of us who matured in the turbulent 1960s when we suffered the indignity of being uprooted from whatever life we were leading and then thrust into a war halfway around the globe, a war that no one understands, or can justify, even today. Worse still, we are blamed for it.

We understand that sometimes stuff just happen. Survivors accept and adjust. Losers bitch and moan. But there are those who must suffer.

Some cities, including Little Rock, are now facing revenue shortfalls. Someone has to accept the blame. Who? Is it the previous Mayor who might have pursued policies that we didn’t like?

Is it a board member who once torpedoed a wise policy or program?

Is it the present mayor who should have soared into office on a wave of exuberant economic enthusiasm?

Is it the policy-makers of past years who worked hard to make the regressive and unreliable sales tax the basic revenue source for Arkansas municipalities?

Is it the local citizen who, having been denied learning how government works, during high school, no longer comprehends the need for municipal services and the cost thereof?

Is it the citizen who supports politicians from a party that starts wars on credit and requires its members to sign pledges never to increase public revenues, no matter what the need?

Is it the citizen who orders goods on-line for the convenience, then chortles about not paying sales tax on the goods as a delivery truck, protected by municipal fire and police, ambles along streets maintained by the city, to deliver those goods to homes whose mortgages are protected by public largess?

Is it the cult member who activates against birth control while unwanted children wander our streets with career options seemingly limited to pro sports or criminal enterprise?

Today’s social media drippings are rich with answers. Everyone has one and they are all true. So far though, no one has mentioned simply raising taxes to meet the demands of our brave new world.

Heck, I know only one thing: two plus two equals four. Always has. Always will. As my old college pal, John Keats would put it, “That is all you know on earth, and all you need to know"

My Redacted Life: Chapter Four (Cont._5)

I guessed right. My promotion at the new job failed to scour in the back room. My two co-workers returned from their briefing and said nothing. There was a silence so stony it could have been used to fashion arrowheads. I ignored them, choosing instead to spend the rest of the day amending my list of projects into a more detailed plan of attack.

That night, I listened to Chet Atkins playing Spanish guitar, finished off the bottle of Ripple I had started the night before, and contemplated strategy and tactics. From my naval experience I knew that critical elements for a successful mission included buoyancy, propulsion, and maneuverability, along with firepower, of course. From a book called Vom Kriege (On War) by Carl von Clausewitz, one that I had found in our ship’s library, I remembered other principles. It was critical, in a campaign, not to let friction slow progress. That implied a need for tactical analysis. I thought and planned.

I slept the sleep of the chosen and arose early. After a calorie-laden “Bear Claw” and coffee at the Lion’s World snack bar, I headed for the office and was deeply involved in scribbling when the rest of the staff arrived.

The drafting crew went to work without looking my way. After an hour or so, I stopped what I was doing and asked where they kept some supply or other. “Don’t you know?” came the reply from the once head of the drafting room. I sensed, rather than heard, a suppressed giggle from the woman across the room.

I ignored it and searched for myself. One must avoid war at all costs, and they should be initiated only for irrefutable justification. Just ask the families of those tens of thousands who were still coming home then in coffins or wheelchairs. One shot, supposedly fired at a small naval vessel, isn’t worth 58,220 American and over three and a half million Vietnamese lives.

No, I waited for a more positive opportunity, one that could be a learning experience for us all. It wasn’t long in coming.

Jim Vines stuck his head in the drafting room and asked me to bring a print of the notes we had taken at the city of Dierks a couple of weeks before. I rose and walked to the map file. Stopping, I chose the calmest voice I could muster and asked the head drafter where the maps of that city were kept.

He completed the line he was drawing, set his pen aside carefully, turned to me, and said, “You’re the head man who’s in charge now. Ain’t you supposed to know things like that?” He turned and reached for his pen.

Here was the test. As a petty officer in the proudest branch of military service, I had profited from months on end of high-level management training, some of the best, I imagine, in the world. I mentally ran through scenario after scenario of dealing with insubordination, applied practical knowledge to empirical analysis, formed a mental “decision-tree,” and walked closer to him, calling him by name.

“What say we review that last exchange?” I said.

He laid his pen aside and looked at me as if I had just interrupted a complicated surgery. “What?”

“Let’s ask ourselves,” I said, “whether I politely asked you a question, the answer to which was simple and would help us move progress along?” I stopped, guessing correctly that information needed to be provided in small bites. When he turned to look at me, I said, “Or did I by some chance ask you for a cheap ration of shit?”

That confused him. I heard the woman swivel in her seat. I knew she was licking her lips in anticipation.

“Now,” I said, “if that sort of wise-assed response is going to be typical, I can just leave. I'll tell Tom and Jim I quit, and let you and your pal over there start back running things. That was working real well, wasn’t it?”

The air fairly roared with furious silence. He looked at me and I could feel the wheels spinning.

“Make up your mind,” I said. “I don’t have all day to put up with someone’s bullshit attitude and eighth-grade humor.”

Daggers flew from his eyes. I had seen the look hundreds of times from big, strong, men contemplating orders they didn’t particularly like, knowing how easily they could smash the giver of the orders.

He relaxed, forced a half-grin, and said, “Dierks is in the third file from the bottom.”

“Thanks,” I said. I turned to the woman, “Are we okay?”

She nodded and they both returned to their work. We never had any more problems after that. In fact, I found them to be nice people as time passed. It’s funny how well things work out within the structure of sophisticated management techniques.

Contemplating applied
management training

My Redacted Life: Chapter Two: (Cont. _ 3)

I had one hand on the door that would open my way back to San Francisco, California when the name of another city was mentioned: Little Rock, Arkansas. I'd never thought of it. I'd only come to talk to the Director of my home town urban renewal agency as a last step in proving there were no jobs around for a recently separated veteran of the United States Navy. I knew there was little opportunity for employment in Little Rock either. Besides, I carried the additional burden of having served time in Vietnam.

I was "outa there" as they say these days.

"I know these two guys in Little Rock," the director said, seconds before I escaped. "They have started an urban planning firm. We just hired them for some work. Would you be interested in visiting with them? They might know of something there."

"Well, hell yeah. Why not?"

A phone call and I was set up for a meeting next morning. Little Rock was just a little shy of 40 miles away, no big deal. I'd go ahead and pack so I could leave for California the day after. I was sure the trip would be fruitless and my journey would continue. There was also the fact that, supposedly, they would have to hire me back at my old job out West, and there wouldn't be any more prospects in Little Rock than they were in Pine Bluff. Things were looking rosy.

There were some things I didn't think of at the time as I headed up the twisting highway toward our Capital City next morning.

I was Caucasian, not only Caucasian, but Northern European Caucasian. My last name said so.

I was a man. My DD 214 said so.

I was a graduate of the University of Arkansas. My diploma said so.

I had been reared in a stable home. My mother said so, had beaten it into me at times.

These impeccable, but largely unearned, credentials automatically placed me way more than halfway up the Ladder of Success in the state of Arkansas—called "The Land of Opportunity" in fact—in the year of 1970.

The rumble of the tires on  my Chevrolet Impala, "Steinbeck" gave me a peaceful, easy, feeling as the song says. I was content. But like another popular song was to mention years later ... had I been more astute at time, I might have felt the Earth move under my feet.

What I knew about
Little Rock in 1970

My Redacted Life: Chapter Two (Cont. _2)

Out of the military a couple of weeks, I was getting restless. Here I was, one foot out the door heading back to California, and the other responding to a mother’s request to find work in my hometown. Mothers win. Always.

It was early December of 1970, and she had convinced me to make one more try at dropping anchor in what she saw as life's safest harbor—home.

I wasn’t optimistic. So far, the folks in Arkansas hadn’t been real impressed with either my qualifications or my veteran status. I had been four years away and my puny Bachelor of Arts Degree seemed a distant and impotent achievement. Peers who had evaded the Draft had been learning and earning for four years while I languished, or so it seemed to me then.

The Honorable Discharge, such a proud achievement and sine qua non of my youth was now being pretty much translated as “chump.”

But my cousin Troy, with whom I was very close, worked for the city and knew the Director of the Urban Renewal Agency in Pine Bluff, a nice fellow named Charles Rush. Troy had arranged for me to meet the director and discuss the potential for meaningful work in the state. It was rumored that he knew a lot of people.

So, I bundled up and headed to the city’s new civic center. It, at the time, was a proud new addition to the city, designed by the architectural firm of Edward D. Stone, until then perhaps the most famous architect produced by our state. It was an extremely unfunctional facility that hasn’t stood up well, but that’s another story.

Mr. Rush welcomed me into his office graciously. I didn’t own a suit, and a needy shipmate had stolen most of my civilian clothes just before I left the service. I did borrow a tie from my father. I think he had purchased it for funerals back in the 1950s. I’m sure I made a splendid appearance.

No, Mr. Rush explained, there wasn’t much work for a college graduate with no special qualifications in the area. I had pretty much decided that on my own, but thanked him for his insight. His office, he said was fully staffed and he knew of no positions available anywhere.

We talked, I could almost hear the sounds of foghorns from ships heading west through the Golden Gate and taste the salty fog of my beloved San Francisco. I had tried, Mother, so take that and grant me my freedom.

I thanked Mr. Rush for his time and began, mentally, to assess the route I would take to the West. Arkansas had a new governor who seemed willing to continue the progressive programs started by his predecessor. I wished the best for my home state, but California was a big place and opportunities seemed to grow on trees there. I had even been able to find a job in “The City” while I was burdened with a 1A status (Same-same Goodbye my Darling, Hello Vietnam) from my local Draft Board.

Just imagine what a free man could do there, in San Francisco I mean.

I had a hand on the office door when Mr. Rush said, “Wait a minute. Would you be interested in working in Little Rock?”

I thought I was marketable,
 but to whom?

My Redacted Life: Chapter One (Cont. 5)

It was only the second day of my civilian life but it felt like a year had passed. In a few moments, I would be home. Home. Robert Frost once said, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." I knew my return wouldn’t be that cynical. It was the only place on earth where they wanted to take me in, at least from love.

 

Fight our country's
 enemies, and this
is your thanks.

I've mentioned that the Navy had offered to take me back in and give me home if I only promised to serve on river boats in Vietnam. See, to the right,  how the country allowed people to treat men who did that. I’m glad I passed on a grand patriotic adventure such as that.

Back to Day Two, I drove by fields, recently harvested, where men still made good livings tilling the soil. Large, but not grand homes, appeared where plantation mansions had stood years before. The farms gave way to scattered housing, then subdivisions, and then commercial enterprises. I seem to remember that a massive outdoor movie screen still stood on the outskirts of town. Roberts Brothers Tire Store came into view, then an all-night service station where we had delivered milk when I was an eleven-year-old.

Herbie’s Barbecue, where they used to bring beer to your car, was still there. I learned later that the bathroom was still as filthy it as it had been when I left. They say Herbie left it that way to discourage people from spending too much time within. A story, not verified, by me at least, held that a young man had left his empty beer can on the long, once white, urinal, his last beer before leaving for Vietnam, only to find it still in the same spot on his return. I don’t know. You hear a lot of things in your home town.

My crowd’s main teenage hangout, “The Wagon Wheel” had closed years ago. I drove on.

I reached Main Street and saw our town’s landmark: a billboard with a little girl on a swing that actually moved, “Little Miss Sunbeam.” I don’t remember how long it had been there, at the end of Main. I just couldn’t remember when it wasn’t. She was still swinging that day, and smiling right at me. Appropriate.

All the sights were familiar now. My heart was warm. I was no longer a stranger in a strange land. In a few moments I would be home. I drove down a divided and landscaped street with grand homes on either side. Then I made the final turn toward where my future waited.

I had no way of knowing at the time, but at a college 60 miles away, a beautiful young girl of 20 was finishing classes for the day and was sashaying across campus on the way to meet her boyfriend at the Student Union. Her flowing red hair and grandly formed legs no doubt drew a great deal of attention that day. Jimmie Buffett would later describe her type as “A smart woman in a real short skirt.”

Paths cross in this world. They choose strange routes and take their time. Sometimes, they carry anchors with them. I sometimes wonder if the gods don’t stand at the intersections and laugh.

Tomorrow: meeting Mother.

In my hometown, you know you have
arrived when she smiles your way.

Morning Thoughts: October 19, 2017

Do you remember what I had for lunch this past Monday? Neither do I. I was thinking about that yesterday morning while driving to a paying job. I still do a few in order to make a little extra money for silly things, like guitars lessons, Four Roses sipping whiskey, and good cigars.

I was wondering if they would pay me money if they knew that I couldn’t recall recent meals.

Ah, but I can remember other things. As I drove, my mind drifted off to December 29, 1966 when I awoke to my first day of Navy Boot Camp. It was one of the most awful days of my life. Of course, I knew what I signed up for.

Actually, I didn’t. I thought I had signed up for four years of sailing into exotic ports aboard one of my country’s most prestigious warships. I signed up for feeling the sea rolling beneath my feet and of my channeling a Joseph Conrad character. I signed up for shore leave among the glorious capitals of the free world, the museums, the art galleries the … uh … entertainment venues, and the classic building and ruins I had studied in college. I had even eschewed seeking officer training or service schools in order to “sail the seven seas,” so to speak.

In retribution for making plans without official authorization (MPWOA), the United States Navy sent my sorry ass straight to Vietnam to perform a task it didn’t even have a rating (same-same MOS) for, thus assuring no promotions for a year.  We were trained for a month as “rent-a-grunts,” by real grunts, flown over, handed a rifle, and sent out on towers, bunkers, or patrols to act as targets. So much for knowing what you signed up for.

Anyway, back to boot camp. After they woke us up that first day in a most undignified manner, they pointed to a blackboard. They told us that every day there would be a nautical term on that board and the first thing following “reveille,” we should memorize that term and that a fate worse than any that Dante himself could have imagined awaited the seaman recruit who failed, that entire day, to repeat that definition if requested by one of his keepers.

Memories were important to the Navy.

So, here I stand. I can’t remember Monday’s meal, or the last movie I saw, or even the name, on occasion, of a favorite author. I forget my wife’s birthday. I forget to take out the trash. I play hell remembering a password to any account I own. Heaven help me if the police ever ask me what I was doing on any particular night of the last month. I’d be toast, although I vaguely remember what toast is.

Oh, but want to know what that first nautical term was that I had to memorize nearly fifty years ago? It was “athwartship,” or at right angles to the fore and aft centerline of the ship. I can still see myself in newly-issued skivvies staring at that blackboard with the others and thinking “athwartship?”

I can even remember a recruit from Cumming Georgia named Durant turning to me and saying, “What’s a right angle?”

That’s what I had signed up for.

Where did I get lost?

Sailing To Oblivium: August 10, 2017

Delicacy forbids details, but I just spent a day and a half in prepping for, and undergoing, a medical procedure. Mostly I read, … mostly.

I spent a good deal of time with Huế 1968: A Turning Point in the American War in Vietnam” by Mark Bowden. While it may be disturbing, the book is certainly timely, as we increasingly place our country’s future in the hands of its generals, in increasingly dangerous conditions. We can only hope they, the generals, are good ones like my friend, Brig. Gen. Troy Galloway. He is one of the best that America can produce and American needs more like him.

They weren’t so good in 1968. I’m talking about my war. During the fall and early winter, North Vietnam had positioned some 10,000 troops, along with ample arms, for an assault on Huế. Made an imperial city in the early 1800s, it lay equidistant between the Northern and Southern borders of what was Vietnam at the time. With a population in 1968 of 140,000 or so, all of Vietnam knew the city and viewed it with reverence.

The city was lightly defended for what would become known as “The Tet Offensive.” An ARVN group held a position in the Northern part of the city and a small American force occupied a MACV compound to the South.

I was only 70 miles away, at Da Nang, when 10 battalions of NVA and VC attacked Huế, immediately occupying the city and surrounding the small groups of allied forces.

Away in Phu Bai and Saigon, generals Foster LaHue and William Westmoreland refused to believe that the North could bring that many troops to the city undetected. They believed strongly that  General Võ Nguyên Giáp was using Huế as a diversion for a major attack on an American emplacement at Khe Sahn, farther North.

Giáp fooled them so completely that, after his troops had occupied the city with a force of perhaps 10,000 men and women, our generals refused to recognize or admit the truth. Their report to the public was that a few bands of Viet Cong had entered the city and were being rounded up as they spoke. Privately, they accused the ARVN troops of incompetence and the Americans of a lack of battle experience and the "jitters" for any delay.

Then they began ordering company-level groups of Marines, less than 100-strong, to cross the Perfume River and retake Huế. The disastrous and inhumane results should have triggered a formal review and appropriate punishment. That, of course, never happened.

Meanwhile, there are reports that the Northern troops were massacring up to 3,000 civilians in the city, including some Americans.

Oh well, enough is enough. Here is a film of how the Marines began re-taking the city, building by building, with a level of heroism worthy of their ancestral comrades at Iwo Jima and Tarawa. Oh, and those were the same Marines of whom General Westmoreland once commented: “the military professionalism of the Marines falls far short of the standards that should be demanded by our armed forces.”

I laid the book aside for a while yesterday, and began thinking about generals who give suicidal commands to troops from safe positions faraway. Then I thought of how General Grant spent the night, after the first day’s battle at Shiloh, leaning against a tree less than a mile from the Confederate front lines. We need to know about our generals ere we trust our youth to them.

As I say, I hope we have good ones in place during these fearful times.

Highly recommended.