1952\July\15 Tuesday
First Combat Tour
The Introduction
War must be a lot like suicide. I had a method of death. I could feel the presence of death. It was my companion, my friend, and my solution. "A permanent solution to a temporary problem." I was comfortable with the idea of dying. I had accepted it. I expected it. I looked forward to it. It was terrifying and thrilling at the same time.
In war, if you survived, your mind developed automatic coping mechanisms. If you drank, you drank until you passed out. If you smoked, you chain-smoked. Drugs. Gambling. Sex. Everything was done to excess. Even the killing. If it moved and it was not one of your teammates you killed the Hell out of it.
The account goes very deeply into the daily Spartan lives of my teammates and me. The Agency had a code name for me. They called me "The Garbage Man". When they had human trash to dispose of, they unleashed me. While I worked on my book, I often wondered how we ever survived. Or if we did. Only Ghoddess knows.
The day I was born was the beginning of my first combat tour. From my birth I was groomed for a life in the military. Very early on my parents taught me right from wrong. They were always right and I was always wrong. During my first enlistment I was there for Apple Pie, Chevrolet, Country, Ghod, Hot Dogs, Mom, and The Girl Next Door. I was completely and totally indoctrinated. My second enlistment was a transition stage. It was sometime toward the end of my third enlistment where I realized; apple pie came from a vending machine, Chevrolets were made in Mexico, the country had been sold to the Arabs and the Japs, Ghod was dead, hot dogs - what can you say in their defense, mom was divorced, and the girl next door was knocked up while on drugs. Some people have called me a real son of a bitch. I have quickly corrected them. I am adopted. I, am a son of two bitches.
You would ask yourself if all the events in the book were true . If you did not, then you were either a pathological liar or you were so deep in denial that you needed serious psychotherapy or shock therapy.
I am a writer. I have the power to alter history. I can change the course of mighty rivers. I can level whole mountain ranges. I can restore life to my teammates and loved ones or prevent their deaths. I can insure that only the good prosper and evil withers. I can eradicate AIDS - cancer - discrimination - old age. The dead who are in constant touch with me have protested. Nay, they screamed their objections. They would not tolerate the glossing over of a single horrible detail of their deaths. The omission of the slightest aspect or the blunting of the least fact would be judged as a horrendous crime, most foul. They have placed in me a sacred trust to tell their stories. The whole story and the rest of the story as Paul Harvey says. I will not let them down, again.
Being crazy was the only thing that kept me from going completely insane.
Maybe the book is my final mission, as a soldier. If it was, perhaps, Ghoddess would have mercy on whatever was left of my soul and finally let me rest in peace. So, this was the story of my participation in the for profit venture called Viet Nam, Inc. The Ferengi's would have been proud. Resistance is futile.
When H. Norman Schwarzkopf was in Desert Storm, I was there. I served with Creighton Abrams, William Colby, Maxwell Taylor, and William Westmoreland through the dark years of Viet Nam. I participated with Douglas McArthur and Matthew B Ridgeway in the fiasco which was commonly called Korea. I shared the difficulties of command with Dwight David Eisenhower in World War II.
On 7 December 1941 I rode in the backseat of the Japanese dive bomber which dropped that fateful bomb on the number three main gun turret of the USS Arizona. In the eighteen sixties I agonized over the same decisions as did Ulysses S Grant and Robert E Lee. When our country was born I stood beside Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold, Nathan Hale, John Paul Jones, Marquis de Lafayette, Paul Revere and George Washington. When the bad blood between the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s escalated, I was there to advise both sides. When the first Popes of the Roman Catholic Church declared, "We are going out into the world and convert these heathens to Christianity if we have to kill every last one of them!" I was at the front of the line pounding my scarred fighting sword against my battle worn shield and screaming "Kill the heathens!" When the first caveman had a disagreement with his neighbor, I was the one who put the club in his hand and showed him how to use it.
These words are the transcripts from the University of South East Asia, the campuses of Cambodia, Laos, North Viet Nam and Thailand. My major was Death, with a minor in Destruction. It was there that the fires of my Hells forged me. I am a veteran of the great civil war between the North and the South. The North Viet Namese attacked the South Viet Namese to free those enslaved. I fought on the side of the South and the North won, again.
I was in a splinter group of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Security Agency. It was a shadow world beyond overt and covert, the name of which was classified. If I were to tell you, I would have to kill everyone in the room. The use of the word intelligence in that application was a misnomer and a contradiction in terms.
The only thing I was ever good at was killing other human beings and destroying whole grid squares of their country. It was not long before I discovered that I liked what I did. I cannot describe the ecstasy I felt when I realized I was accomplishing what I was born to do. I volunteered to go to South East Asia and practice genocide on a race of people because our benevolent government said they were the enemy and we had Ghod, not a typographical error - my own spelling, on our side. Ghoddess, please protect me from Ghod. The people of S E A's only crime was their culture was not compatible with ours. How could I kill people who worshipped the rainbow as a sign which Ghod still existed and cared about the people here on earth?
I can dismantle and reassemble twelve different automatic weapons from as many countries, in the dark, and they will function flawlessly. The Agency taught me a half a dozen ways to disable, maim, and kill human beings. Where does it go on my resume? So, what am I supposed to do now?
The spoken and written word, as a form of communication, was inaccurate and inadequate. Until we could directly transmit feelings, clearly, it was all we had. My solutions to deal with the resulting bad - dreams, feelings, memories, was to build an emotional fortress, deep in my mind, put all that stuff inside, lock the door, and pocket the key. That was an acceptable solution for me. Those solutions made it impossible for other people to relate to me, as I seemed to be only a cardboard mockup. It was similar to our callous government agencies that sit there, nod, smile, agree with you, and then do absolutely nothing. The first day I saw the war in Iraq on the TeleVision, the overload to my senses blew the door completely off my fortress. It was no longer secure and it was time for the real solution. I must tell the story so those events could be resolved and not be repeated.
Some of my teammates still sleep under bridges and others in the dumpsters just for cardboard, some wait for me in the afterlife. For us, the wars still go on. My teammates still live in me and I in them. It was my wish to allow you to know of my teammates, past and present, before the cycle of my current existence was completed. It may be why the Ghoddesses preserved me. It will be your task to shape the world and my future teammates. Shape it and them well, with care and love, not hate and violence.
We were cautioned - instructed - not to allow close relationships to form. The man beside you could be killed at any moment. In Special Forces we lived and worked together. We were closer than lovers. We had to know each other's thoughts - what each would do - and tailor our actions to dovetail with theirs.
We were not supposed to become emotionally involved upon another's death. I could not help but become emotionally involved when these young men died at my command or in my arms. Especially when they apologized to me for dying on me and letting me down.
In murder - and so in war - insanity - was not a defense - it was a requirement. It was a world which Ghoddess forgot or chose to ignore. Or it was hours, days, weeks, months, of oceanic tedium. There was no middle ground, it plunged me, screaming, from chaos to tedium and back to chaos. Our benevolent government told us to go over there and kill all these people that our government did not particularly like. Here, if you kill someone that you do not particularly like, they either put you to death or in prison for the rest of your life. Am I the only one who can see a contradiction here?
"War is cruelty, but you cannot refine it. Its glory is all moonshine. It is those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell."
General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)
"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it."
General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)
Memoirs, ii, 126.
"There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror."
General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)
Address, before a G.A.R. convention at Columbus, Ohio, 11 Aug. 1880. It was no doubt from this extempore speech that somebody coined the epigram, "War is hell," which Sherman could never remember having uttered. (See Lewis, Sherman, Fighting Prophet.) Various persons have asserted that they heard the phrase spoken by Sherman at other places, but no real evidence that it was has ever been discovered.
The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on.
General U.S.Grant
It is well that war is so terrible; else we would grow too fond of it.
General Robert E Lee
Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy, forget in time that men have died to win them.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
War is Hell.
General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)
George William (Bill) Newport
Copyrighted
15 July 1952
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