Playing Fair and Being Kind

We’ve had plenty of days. We don’t need another. War is a racket, you know? Smedley Butler told us so.

WE DIDN’T LEARN A THING
Vietnam. Of course, any war will do for this discussion. They’re all the same. Scared people armed to the teeth. Jumpy as shit and not fully aware of their purpose or duties. Unschooled in ethical behavior nor should they be for the job they’ve been handed. I recall when my youngest son was old enough, he decided to enlist in the Army. I tried for a while to convince him not to do it. After a while I didn’t want to plant any more doubts in his head. If he was going to go fight wars, he needed to be a savage without thoughts that would make him hesitate to pull a trigger to defend himself and his comrades. He needed to not think, just act to protect himself and his buddies.

I just finished watching episode eight of the Vietnam series coming out of the Public Broadcasting Network. The Ken Burns series. There was a scene in the film that shook my tree. On the screen was Bob Frishman a Navy officer I knew pretty well when I was in California during the seventies. It was precisely 1975 and I was preparing to divorce my wife of 15 years so I was living on Naval Air Station Mirimar, California. Bob was administrating the Bachelor Officer Quarters (BOQ) where I was quartered. We got along pretty well and even double dated a few times.

Bob had returned from a prison camp in Vietnam where he’d been held captive for two years. His F-4 Phantom fighter jet had been shot down. Here is a link to the story of his last action before being shot down and captured. http://valor.militarytimes.com/recipient.php?recipientid=27812

The clip that was shown of Bob was an interview by the press of two recently returned POW’s.

Typically, when men were returned from prison camps, they were given non-stress duties like Bob’s at Miramar so they could be utilized in a light-duty situation and be medically evaluated for a period of time. During this phase is when we met. I got the sense that Bob was lucky to have made it back alive. His physical difficulties included a shattered arm that had been butchered by the North Vietnamese doctors in Hanoi. He also was hyper and demonstrated bizarre behavior which I found hilarious at times and at other times totally inappropriate depending on the situation and setting. Still I found Bob to be a good guy and an interesting personality. Here is another link to describe a little of the conditions encountered by POW’s in Hanoi. http://taskforceomegainc.org/f066.html

Over time we got involved with other things and then we drifted apart and I got transferred to North Island in Coronado. After that we never were in touch. Over the years I’ve often wondered what had happened to him. This evening I saw his interview with Douglas Hegdahl, another POW who was a key witness and could provide the names of who was being held captive in Hanoi. He memorized about two hundred and fifty names and particulars of others held prisoner in Hanoi. The information they supplied during the interview gave relief to many of the families and also gave a more accurate description of the terrible conditions under which the captives were held.

I found Bob’s phone number and address and gave him a call. He didn’t answer so I left a message on his machine. I somehow don’t think I’ll be hearing back. I’ll call on more time in a few days but I’m sure he’s had enough of people. We’ll see.

Be well. Continue the good fight. Stay involved. Be kind to others.
Peace out,

G. M. Goodwin 26 September 2017

 

Oh, here’s another one I haven’t finished yet. I will, I’m sure of it. It needs to make a point; perhaps it as already. I don’t know. I’ll put it here to read for you all. Maybe someone else can figure out how it ends before I get to it. Have at it.

SATURATION

Dispatches, Quiet American, The Green Berets

 I’ve been reading non-stop about Vietnam. Robert has introduced me to Michael Herr. In turn Michael Herr has introduced me to a different style of writing and the writing has sent to me to on-line resources to clarify, correct, and connect me to my younger self. My younger self is greatly over-matched with who I am today but you never can tell. There appears to be stuff to sift through and I may recover a few things I lost along the way.

Reading Herr’s book “Dispatches” has sent me partly around the big curve. I have friends who have been to ‘Nam and came back to kind of talk about it. Knowing what I know of my own military service and the ease with which I survived, at least to my knowledge, I wonder if my friends have the same experience with survival and how it is remembered. Reading the stories of camaraderie and terror and tensions I am deeply moved to tears and I struggle to hold the sobs. Is it my PTSD or are the stories actually, truly filled with pathos, heroics, action above human norms? I need to find out more. Maybe I need to take a break from the stories. I haven’t seen the other end of the big curve and I don’t want to get there at this point in time.

I think of those early years around 63 and 64 when I read all the traffic coming in about “Indochina” and all the garbled, unfamiliar names, military gobble-dee-goop, lists of central characters no one had ever heard of. I’d sit in the yeoman’s shack at his tiny two station desk at the selectric typewriter reading the teletype pages given me by the radioman. I’d scan the stories and my hair would be on end reading accounts by whomever about raids in the jungles and sinister leadership and “advisers” assisting troops. It was all very confusing but at the same time there was little confusion that killing was on-going and the players in this conflict were at risk regardless.

I’d sit there at the yeoman’s desk four feet from the ocean on a nuclear submarine sneaking around the north Atlantic Ocean at four knots so we wouldn’t be heard by the Russian trawlers topside who were looking for us so they could do dastardly deeds to us. I never felt threatened but like we all know, “you never know”. I only felt fear after the loss of Thresher and Scorpion. From 63 onward. My pulse never dropped below one hundred twenty while we were submerged. The smallest change in pitch angle would excite my nerves. I was not alone.

A few years later, during the very early 70’s when the B-52’s were flying from Guam in groups of three to go bomb the shit out of the North I met an Air Force captain navigator who refused to fly. He had convictions about the high-altitude bombing runs that poured tons of bombs on targets.

Certainly making mincemeat of everything alive on the ground. There was no humanity left, no concept of murdering innocents. He revolted. He said, ‘Fuck you”, to his seniors and he was instead taking judo lessons with some of us and we quietly looked at him and wondered what it must be like to refuse orders. I knew what it was like but not everyone.

I lived in Navy housing with my family while on Guam. The area was a Japanese landing strip during World War II after the Japanese had invaded in the early stages. The area is known as Orote Point and the airstrip lay in a line on the narrow ridge of the six hundred-foot-high cliffs. Some of us would walk the old airstrip, now covered by tangan-tangan, in the late afternoons for a great view of sunsets and wide-open seascapes. During the period of 18 to 28 December 1972 many, many flights left Anderson Air Force Base. The aircraft flew in groups of three. In the early evening the groups would be returning to Guam and visible from Orote Point. The planes would trail in together in loose formation lining up with the runway at Anderson. I could see their landing lights for miles while they were still far off, over the ocean. As they approached from the northwest the first thing was the lights. Bright little spots of gleam coming back from pulverizing the Vietnamese “back to the stone age”. They always came back in threes just as they had left until one day, I saw just two come in together. One was missing. I wondered for a while where it could be. Then after a few more groups came back with less than three I connected the dots. We were losing B-52’s at war and I had trouble fitting that into my brain. Then I saw just one B-52 flying back alone. I don’t know if I ever saw no B-52’s flying back because that would be one of those inexplicable conundrums.

Much of what I was witnessing in this situation I was witnessing as a Navy officer who was approaching his mid-thirties. I was nearly thirty-four years old in December of 1972. The men involved in the conflict in Vietnam were all very young. At this point in my life I had been hearing about this war for ten years but I knew nothing about it and I had mindfully avoided any chance of being part of it.

The closest I got to the war was when the Hunley provided repair services to the submarines transiting to the seas bordering Vietnam. Other than that, our usual customers were Polaris missile submarines patrolling near the Soviet Union. One other time I saw a notice sent out inter-service from the U.S Army calling for senior petty officers to join the Army to train as helicopter pilots. The promise was made to jump four pay grades after graduation from helicopter flight school. I saw through that offer right away. I kept my hand down and in my pocket.

I’d read a book about the Green Berets fighting in Vietnam during my time as an enlisted man while I was still making patrols. I found a copy in early 65. The author wrote in such a genuine style I was mesmerized. The battles were obviously politically motivated, the adviser status had been surely abandoned to the point where the combatants were primarily U.S. Troops that had morphed from adviser status. The role of the Vietnam troops had been relegated to support status if at all. I remembered the feeling of fear and frustration for the situation and I recall that the feeling was identical to the fear and frustration I felt as a young boy when the U.S. was involved in Korea in 1951.

The End for now.

G. M. Goodwin
11 November 2019
Veterans Day