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August, 2000

Listen Up Troops!!! The Old Drill Sgt. here and it's time for another trip down memory lane, this time though, it has a new twist. It has been brought to my attention that there is a new movement afoot to rewrite the story of that very bad time in American history, the VietNam War. Now this has been going on for some time, but as of late there seems to be a concerted effort to totally change the view of that time, in books and the printed press. Why? Because there has been enough time passed that people have put "The Nam" in a place in history; it is not in our lives as a constant reminder of stupidity and folly. The generation of today look on Vietnam as I did on WWI, something completely removed from their understanding by 30 years, with only the written accounts to explain it. This is a very dangerous thing to do with one's history. In fact it is, as far I as I can see, the first time the loser of a war gets to give the impression that they won. But humans are stupid, so what's new.

In my last column, about VVAW history and the present, a picture was presented on how an organization can change from what it started out to be to what it has become. Some folks told me that this was an in- house thing, and I was airing dirty laundry in public. Well guess what? I was! It was also a warning to old members and potential new members that things were not what they perceived them to be. Many old members said that what I reported was right on the money, and that it must have been very painful to air those views. Well it was, but that's the way the history game goes; whether I like it or not, you have to look at the bad with the good to learn from the process. Now the game is afoot to give the American people a completely new and more palatable understanding of Vietnam. In other words, if you can't deal with the truth, then create a meal of BULLSHIT and GARBAGE, and see how many sit down to the table and eat the crap you have just served up. I for one, refuse to dine on lies and misinformation. It's just the way Drill Sgt.'s are; we can't help it.

So here goes, "Vietnam", the way some would like you to see it.

This started a few years ago with Robert McNamara's , (please don't hate me anymore, I'm a nice guy, I'm old and I want to die with clean hands and a good place in history), book on his participation in the VietNam War. The title, "In Retrospect", The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. (Random House Inc., copyright 1995, By Robert S. McNamara.) Do you know what the "S" stands for in his name? His middle name is "Strange". Now does that tell you something, or am I just reading something into this? Anyway, old Bob is going to clear up everyone's misunderstandings of Vietnam, so we all feel good about ourselves again. He even said that anyone who bought his book could send the receipt back and he would be happy to send a refund to them, (see I'm human, I just want the record straight). Right Bob, like you really need the money. I plunked down the $30+ dollars for this waste of good trees, still have the receipt in my wallet, maybe I will send it to his estate when he kicks and see if I get a refund. Still, remember, Bob here was the president of the World Bank, after he did his Nam thing for the US Gov. The WTO, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been in the news lately. I'm sure you all enjoyed the stories in the papers about these organizations. ............................ GO SEATTLE!!!! GO TEAM!!!! RAH RAH RAH!!!!

One of the interesting statements to come out of Bob's mouth early on in the book, was that, "We just didn't know what we were doing or what to do, so we just kept the course and escalated." Thanks Bob! Remember folks, these guys were the best and the brightest of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. We were even told that on T.V. at the time. I can remember as a young teenager watching T.V., and the commentator saying, "Here folks, are the best and the brightest of the President's cabinet, men from the hallowed halls of the best Ivy League schools, trust them, they know way more then you do." These guys had as much in common with the average American citizen, as using leaches to drain evil spirits from your body does to modern surgery. And guess what, the American public believed they were the best and the brightest, and knew more than we could comprehend about the world in the throes of the Cold War. I believed so much, that I ended up an infantry paratrooper in The Nam in 1967. Dumb me... And yet, Bob said in his book that he and his buddies didn't know what they were doing or what to do, so they just stayed the course and escalated. Sounds more like the Dumb and the Dumber to me. On top of everything else, these guys got paid to do this. .............Can we get and audit and maybe a refund?

For years now I have been around machinery and building motorcycles. The one thing I know is that if you don't know what you are doing you go find out before you push that button, or try to fit one part on a bike to another. Like maybe read the manual or ask someone how the damn thing works. That's not what The Best & The Brightest/ Dumb & Dumber did, that would be way to easy. In fact they had all the info they needed, they just ignored it; what would a senior MACV military advisor on the scene in Vietnam in 1961 know about what's going on? We're here in Washington, looking through rose colored glasses, and to us everything is just rosy. Basically, the B.&B./D.&D. just disregarded the information they were receiving from their people in The Nam. This unacceptable info came from one Lt. Col. John Paul Vann. He told the B.& B./D.&D in 1961 and `62 that if the US kept going the way they were, the US would not prevail over the opposition to the then South Vietnamese Gov. In fact, the US policy was driving more people to the other side than to our side. What did B.& B./D.& D. do? They fired him in 1962! How could a senior MACV military advisor, on the ground with the troops, possibly know what's going on. He just doesn't understand the BIG PICTURE.

John Paul Vann's story is in a book by Neil Sheehan "A Bright Shining Lie" John Paul Vann and America in VietNam. (Random House Inc., 1988, the same folks that put out the McNamara dribble.) Might as well cash in on both sides I guess. Ain't Capitalism just grand!

Now let's move forward to the here and now and see what's being laid down in the Revisionist History of Vietnam. It's been a month since I started this column and every time I sat down to continue, something new would come up. It seems that 2000 is going to be our,"Let's remember when" year. And at the same time let's rewrite it so it looks good. With that in mind I would like to cover some events of the era that have just surfaced. I'm going to have to put some order to this so we don't all get lost.

1. The Mayaguez incident, America's last casualties in Southeast Asia

2. The Johnson tapes, you know the Prez.

3. Book review, "Stolen Valor", written by a meat head

The Mayaguez incident, May 12, 1975

It had been a little over a month since Saigon got a name change and a new property management team, and the US was seriously bummed by the whole thing. Into all this, steamed the S.S. Mayaguez, a US-registered merchant freighter plying the waters off the southern coast of VietNam and headed for Thailand. Its course would take it into Cambodian waters and the new rulers, the Khmer Rouge. You remember these guys and gals, Pol Pot and his version of Marxist/Leninist analysis. If you wear glasses and speak more than one language and can think, you die. Anyway here comes the Mayaguez, plodding along in the tropical heat. The Khmer Rouge look up and say, "Hey, look, a capitalistic pig running dog spy ship, here to spy and destroy our glorious people's revolution." And the Khmer Rouge go out and capture that dang spy ship. It was a commercial ship in the trade routes and doing what capitalists do best, selling stuff. The crew is taken from the ship and replaced with a small crew of Cambodians. They were taken to an island in the area and held there. I'm not sure what the Khmer Rouge thought they were doing, I don't even think they knew what they were doing, but they were doing something and what happened next was beyond belief. The US Gov. gets wind of all this and says "We have to act to curb this international piracy." The radio on the Mayaguez worked just fine and the whole world knew when the first Khmer Rouge troops set foot on deck.

The US Gov. tells the world, "Don't worry we can handle this, we have been dealing with folks in SE Asia for years now. We will send our best diplomats and negotiators to handle the problem." The rest of the world held their respective heads and sighed. The US Gov. does send their best diplomats and negotiators; they send the US Marines. The only thing I can think of, is that the US gov. wanted to leave the area showing the world we still had what it takes, and "See, we were really good guys, just misunderstood." It didn't work out quite that way. For some reason, which this old grey bearded, long hair Drill Sgt. doesn't understand, the Marines were sent to the completely wrong place. Not only were the Marines sent to the wrong place, the operation was under way at the same time that the crew of the Mayeguez was being returned to the ship, unharmed, and released from Khmer Rouge control and sent on their way. Wrong, capitalist pig running dog spy ship; have a nice day. Are we talking a total lack of intelligence reports on the part of the planners of this operation, as to the events of the situation? Oh you bet ya! But using intelligence and military planning in the same sentence is a major oxymoron.

A flight of 14 CH-53 and HH-53 helicopters loaded with Marines was going to make a rescue attempt on the island of Koh Tang, off the coast of mainland Cambodia. This, again, was happening while the crew was being returned to the ship. Like no one was watching the ship to see what was going on, I guess that's about right. The crew had never been on Koh Tang and there was no intel on the island. It turned out, to the chagrin of the planners and Marines, that Koh Tang was the most heavily fortified island in the area. And the feces material hit the air circulation device shortly after the troops hit the beach.

Three choppers in the first flight were shot down immediately. Two more were forced to fly to Thailand, where they crash-landed. There goes the element of surprise. Now the plot sickens. 100 Marines were now pinned down on two separate beaches, under heavy fire and taking casualties. To add insult to injury, the Marines are told that the crew of the Mayaguez was at that time being returned to the ship, and to hold on, help is on the way. Well gee, thanks a bunch! And where do you think I'm going, out for coffee and a croissant??!! This whole operation followed the Three Ps principle to the letter. And what is the Three Ps principle, you ask. That's a military term which stands for: PISS POOR PLANNING & PREPARATION. Which translates into, "We are taking casualties and someone's ass is going to be in a sling for this mess." The sad part of this whole thing is that the officers that took the Three Ps to an art form, didn't go on the operation. Oh no, they were safe on board a Navy ship with all their maps and multi- colored pins to stick in them. And the Marines were on the ground getting the shit shot out of them and taking casualties. I want everyone right now that reads this column to understand that I have no complaint with the Marines fighting on Koh Tang island. They were given an objective and were doing the best they could with what they had. It is the planners and orchestrators of this fiasco that should be made to stand to and take responsibility for all this. Not the grunts fighting for their lives.

As the day dragged on,the fighting intensified on Koh Tang island, with nightfall on the way. The order to withdraw is given, but there is one hitch. The Marines can't get off the island and any chopper that tries to land is filled with holes. This whole time there is constant air cover, everything from close support helicopter gun ships, F-4D Phantoms from Thailand, (these are very nasty pieces of flying hardware). navy fighter-bombers and gunfire from navy ships in the area. With, last but not least, U.S. Air Force AC-130 gun ships. Now here is an interesting piece of military ingenuity. You take an Air Force C-130, four engine, turbo prop, cargo plane, and you transform it into a flying gun platform. I jumped out of the C-130 at Ft. Benning, Ga. during my jump school training. Here's what a, "Flying Gun Platform" consists of. What you do is place, through the side of the aircraft, a variety of high volume, automatic weapons of varied caliber. Everything from 7.62 mm mini guns to 20 mm Valcon cannon. These are multi- barreled, electrically operated weapons. Essentially they are electric Gattling guns. They can fire thousands of rounds a minute. To round out your platform, you include a 105 mm Howitzer, mounted on a hydraulically controlled platform bolted to the floor of the aircraft. Why? Because if you don't, when you fire this gun, the recoil will launch it through the opposite side of the aircraft. This was an upgrade from the two engine C-47 ( DC-3) cargo plane that was converted to a gun ship during VietNam. Lovingly known as "Puff the Magic Dragoon"( I bet Peter, Paul & Mary really hated that). This one only had three mini guns and still it could bring, what we grunts called "Pee and Scunyon" on any grid square it fired on. When "Puff" fired, it sounded like tearing a sheet of metal apart, with what looked like a solid stream of red fluorescent paint being poured >from the sky. Peace through superior fire power. The AC-130 has a more devastating effect on landscape when it cuts loose. What the pilot does is tip the left wing tip towards the ground, then starts a 360 degree turn on that wing tip and opens fire with all guns. Dolbe surround sound from on high. Lest I forget the upgrade to the AC-130, the AC-135 was used to support the Contras, during the Reagan days of the 1980's, during the Contra war against Nicaragua. The Gov. said that it was on aerial recon mission only. Well we did the same thing in the Nam. It's called "Recon by Fire", open up and see if anyone shoots back.

Hey let's get back to the Marines, and see how they're doin'. Well guess what? They're not doing well at all. With nightfall approaching the situation was going down hill rapidly. The Marines were between a rock and a hard place and the practicers of the "Three Ps", decided there was nothing else to do but. "Send in more Marines". This, unfortunately, was all they could do. See, we got one right, HOORAY FOR OUR SIDE!

The relief force was sent in to get the rescuers out. The extraction was done under heavy Khmer Rough fire . If you look at it, what were the Cambodian troops on the ground to think? To them this looked like an invasion. The crew of the Mayaguez was not on the island, so why are we hip deep in U.S. Marines? And they kept up the engagement. When you apply the "Three Ps", to any equation, this is what you get.

The relief force lands, secures the area, and the stranded Marines are evacuated. Back to the safety of the Navy ships, and debriefing on the operation. Like it wasn't clear! Now we're going to sit around and try to come up with an excuse on why we stepped on our respective DICKS! Oops, sorry, I get carried away when I think of all this. It won't happen again......................................................... NOT!!!

During the debriefing, a startling fact comes to light. A three man machine gun team was left on Koh Tang island, and there is no way to get them back. You go ask any Marine or Infantry soldier about leaving live or dead personnel on the battle field, and you will get a resounding NO!. it don't happen. It's a grunt thing, and very hard to explain. But 25 years later and former Marines of the Mayaguez engagement returned to Cambodia to retrieve the remains of those lost soldiers. They had died in captivity and that's how war works, plain and simple. Former Khmer Rouge soldiers did everything they could to help, and did it willingly, understanding what a soldier goes through. The evidence has been gathered, and these three young men have been accounted for.

And so ends the Mayaguez incident. 15 dead Marines, 50 wounded, and three MIA, finally accounted for. And people wonder why I get "A case of the Jaws!" over things like this. "A case of the Jaws". Well, that's another military term. You got it, go ask a vet, a grunt, what it means.

Moving right along.

The Johnson tapes. Well, I really don't have much to say about this new revelation. The tapes have just come out. Needless to say, they have many startling passages in them . I heard a little on the TV, and it seems that Johnson knew he was headed for real big time trouble in VietNam. Oh wonderful, just validate what people have been saying for years. Keep watching the news on this and see how far it goes. President comes clean....Update at 11.

Book review: "Stolen Valor"- How the VietNam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History

By B.G. Burkett & Glenna Whitley

Verity Press, Inc. 1998

I guess Random House didn't want to have anything to do with this exercise of the absurd. But hey, it still got printed. So much for the continuing waste of paper.

What B.G. Burkett was going to do with his book, was expose the phony VietNam vets for who they are. Cool, phonies are what they are, phony. In my years in the Vietnam vets community I have, on occasion, run into many phony vets. I have dealt with them and passed it off to people wanting to be what they are not. I ride motorcycle, an old Harley Davidson, painted olive drab and black. I cannot tell you how many times I have run into phony, wannabe bikers. So what; I know, and they know I know, they're bullshit. Do I write a book exposing all these phonies? No, it's just another meat head wanting to impress someone. For some reason I cannot explain, Americans want to be something they are not. I guess they just don't have a life.

What B.G Burkett is doing with his book, by exposing these phony Nam vets, is to attack every issue in the Vietnam vets community, under the guise that all our complaints are not real. Now you have to understand that this is a guy who grew up in officer country in the Air Force. Became an Army officer, with no understanding what the average soldier goes through daily, I'm in charge, you're not mentality. B.G. did not want to go to the bush, and did everything he could, not to. He even states this in his book. B.G. was a REMF, go ask a Nam vet what that is. B. G. was a procurement officer for the 199 Lt. Infantry Bde. Basically, he scrounged supplies for his unit, a useful skill in the Army, but hardly a grunt by any stretch of the word. He even talks about going up to an old French villa that had been taken over for the officers, and hanging around the pool with all these airline stewardesses and having fun and partying. This guy had no idea what the grunt in the bush was going through, nor did he care. There's even a picture of good old B.G. in steel helmet, flack vest, M-16 rifle, 45 pistol, gas mask and last but not least, CLEAN FATIGUES and SHINED BOOTS. What the caption reads is: Lt. Burkett posing for the folks back home during my stint as a ready reaction rifle platoon leader. To the unsuspecting reader, i.e. civilians, this guy was a leader of men in combat, fighting the good fight, against all odds. Nothing could be farther from the truth, in the case of B.G. Burkett. Just what is a Ready Reaction Rifle Platoon Leader? OK, here's how it works. In Nam, each base camp was surrounded by a series of bunkers. These bunkers were manned by personnel of the base camp, on guard duty. This was done so the bad guys, V.C. & N.V.A., could not waltz in and blow up the mess hall or steal the beer from the EM (enlisted men) and Officers Clubs.

The rotation of the guard was done daily, from the personnel that were permanently stationed on that base camp. This is guard duty like anywhere else in the military, anywhere in the world. As a Drill Sgt. at Ft. Campbell, Ky., I had my turn of "Sergeant of the Guard" as my name came up. The problem with Nam though, was that the bunker line could, and did at times, receive a dose of live ammo from the opposition. Not a good thing for the soldier in the bunker with B-40 rockets and R.P.G.s (rocket propelled grenades) headed your way. The ready reaction platoon was there to reinforce the bunker line, if needed. It was made up of personnel from the guard mount and an officer was put in charge. These personnel would stay in one place back from the bunker line and move out to help when called on. This job would rotate through the enlisted men and officer ranks. So a stint, as B.G. puts it, could be for a few hours, a few days, or a week maybe. Personnel in the base camp had other jobs to do daily so that's why the guard was rotated among all troops in the base camp, officer and enlisted. So here's B.G. in his book trying to give the impression to the unsuspecting reader that he was some kind of combat officer, which he wasn't. So who's the phony, B.G ?! And now he is going to show how all these vets are phony and at the same time discredit all the issues in the Vietnam vets community. That's why he wrote this book; it had nothing to do with phony anything. Again there are phony VietNam vets, but the issues in the Nam Vets community are not phony at all.

In every chapter, he starts off with a story about a phony Nam vet. Then when that is done, he launches into this reasoning on why the issue at hand is not real, using stats and stories to get his point across. He even attacks the VVA (VietNam Veterans of America), which I am not a member of, a viable Vietnam Vets organization. He attacks PTSD, which he states that the V.A. (Veterans Administration) in collusion with, now get this , VVAW (VietNam Veterans Against The War) created when there was no real problem. B.G. is so taken with PTSD that he devotes three (3) chapters to the subject. He doesn't have, quote, a problem with PTSD, so why should anyone else have a problem with it. He even goes so far in his conspiracy crap to tell the reader that Nam Vets would tell new guys to let their beards grow out, look scruffy, bad attitude, don't wash for a few days, and wear old fatigues with combat patches on them, to get over on the VA, and get lots of money. Give me a break, I've known Nam Vets, Korean, and WWII vets that have struggled with the VA for years to get what was due them. The VA don't hand out bennies just for the hell of it. That all the issues were brought up by Commie leftists, and it was done to mess over God fearing, loyal, taxpaying American citizens, is just more then I can stomach. If you read through B.G.'s exercises in Republican, right-wing, psycho babble, you will see that every time he wants to show who started all this., it was some leftist Commie. For example, Maude De Victor, the whistle blower in the VA about the Agent Orange issue, was, according to B.G., part of the Black Power Movement. That's a nice buzz word to get the right wing racist blood going.

It couldn't be that concerned citizens were exercising their right as American citizens under the Constitution and expressing the right of redress of grievance to the Gov. for issues that affected a whole bunch of people. No, we're just Commies. Well, B.G, I am not a Commie, or a leftist. I was an infantry paratrooper, Drill Sgt. and I turned against the Vietnam War and war in general, because of my personal experiences in that war, as did a multitude of American citizens. I was a member of VVAW, and fought that leftist crap tooth and nail all through my time in that organization. To imply anything else is a slap in the face to Nam Vets and the American people. And you can stick that where the sun don't shine

Homeless vets? Not so, they're all phony Vets, and on and on. Agent Orange is not real, there were no minority problems in the ranks. Here's a guy that never served in combat saying there was not a disproportional number of people of color in combat. Here, B.G. has his head straight up his ass. Does anyone remember, "MacNamara's 100,000"? What this was, was a way not to draft the major colleges in the US in 1967,`68,`69. MacNamara and the B&B/D&D knew that they were going to run out of bodies for the draft and would have to start snatching folks from places like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the rest of the upper class Ivy League schools. Oh woe, can't have that, what will we do. Easy, we will just lower the draft standards and reclassify people we rejected a year ago and draft them. Problem solved, more bodies to send into harm's way, and the hallowed halls of our best schools are safe again. As a Drill Sgt. at Ft. Campbell, Ky. in `68 &`69, I had to train many of these people and I could not figure out how many of them got past the draft physical in the first place; they just should not have been in the Army at all. I did not know of "MacNamara's 100,000", at the time. The kicker to this was the fact that at the same time, I was getting young men who were graduate students and had lost their deferments and now were headed into the fray. Their questions, and the fact that I was training young men that should not be there at all, started me to look at, and reevaluate just what I was doing. They were not Commies, they were just young Americans on their way to something they did not understand and I was obliged as a combat soldier to answer their pointed questions. As any soldier who took the Code of Honor seriously, would do.

Now anyone with a minimal education knows that you can prove and disprove anything with the same numbers. And that's just what B.G. Burkett tries to do. Nam vets are better educated, we're all fine, no problem at all. All these guys with long hair and beards are phony. Gee B.G., where does that put me and many Nam vets I know? It's all VVAW's fault; he brings up VVAW over and over to show that the Commies were behind all this. This, I'm afraid, is giving VVAW a whole lot more credit then it deserves. Yes, there were members of VVAW that went on to work on many of these issues, but VVAW was not the driving force behind all this, as B.G. would lead the unsuspecting reader to believe. B.G. Burkett did not get involved in anything to do with Nam vets until 1986, when he became involved with the Texas VietNam Veterans Memorial project. He is a stock broker in Dallas, Texas. B.G. also has absolutely nothing in common with the rank and file Nam Vet. He still is coming from officer country. B.G. was not around in the late 60's, the 70's and early 80's, when thousands of Nam vets, myself included, their families and Vets from organizations from all parts of this country and all aspects of the vets community, came together in hundreds of conferences, meetings and symposiums to address all the issues concerning that community of people. I must say, I found it quite amusing to see the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars), DAV (Disabled American Veterans), American Legion, and other Nam vet organizations, (some still around and some gone to time), and VVAW(you know them, The Commies!), all sitting around and having to agree that the issues before us were relevant and needed to be addressed. B.G. Burkett was not there through any of this, he was selling stocks and acting like Nam had been a cake walk. I cannot express the level of umbrage I take towards B.G. Burkett and his exercise in trite bullshit. And I had to lay out 30+ bucks to experience his crap. This guy just gives me a major headache.

There is a whole section on Medal of Honor winners, some real, some phony. Here B.G. is going to show our real heroes, and expose the phony bad guys. One of the real heroes he writes about is Charlie Litkey. Litkey was a chaplain with the 25th Infantry in 1967. He was a chaplain who went out with the troops, was in the bush and saw what they went through. He received, and rightly deserves, the Medal of Honor, for disregarding his own safety, going into the killing zone and pulling several wounded soldiers back to the medics where their wounds could be treated. He is credited with saving many lives. What B.G Burkett fails to mention is that Charlie Litkey, since his release from active duty, has been a very active antiwar pacifist, that he returned his Medal of Hornor on principal, and has been involved in hunger strikes, fasts, and generally getting in the face of the US Gov. for its military policies in places like El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua, and the Gulf War, to mention a few. He is now going to spend a year in federal prison for his part in protests at the "Schools of America" at Ft Benning Ga. This is the school where the US Army trains military personnel from Central and South America, on how best to deal with their own people who question that country's policies. I.E., kill them. We're talking death squad and paramilitary organizations. B.G. omits all this. Gee, I wonder why.

Onward and downward, B.G. even has a chapter on "The Wall" in D.C. This he calls, "The American Wailing Wall", thanks much meat head. Anyway, he starts out with a quick rundown on how the wall is set up and during this part he brings up, of all things, the Mayaguez incident, as an example of the last to die in Southeast Asia Here he has it ALL WRONG. I mean just plain wrong. First off, he states it was the retaking of the USS Mayaguez,................. WRONG!

You have already read about the Mayaguez incident in this column. We did not retake anything, except rescue the Marines who were sent to the wrong island to rescue the Mayaguez crew. Also he designates the Mayaguez as a USS ship.... Wrong. It had an SS designation, meaning merchant ship under US registration. USS stands for military ship, or Navy war ship. B.G. Brickhead would again try to give the unsuspecting reader the impression that it was a Navy war ship that the Khmer Rouge had captured. If it had been a Navy war ship that was seized, then things would have been a whole lot different. The Navy doesn't cotton to people taking over their boats, no matter who they think they are. But it wasn't;

it was an unarmed merchant ship. Now this may seem like a small thing, and to the unknowing reader it is. But to anyone with any knowledge of the events of those times it is not a small thing.

Further on in this chapter he brings up Country Joe McDonald, to prove his point. This, B.G. calls "The Contrition Rag" He cites Joe from "People" magazine saying he was sorry for the "Fixing to Die Rag". You all remember that song... and it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for, don't asked me I don't give a damn, next stop is Vietnam, and it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates, ain't got time to wonder why, whoopee we are all going to die. Then he cites Joe as saying that he(Joe) was mad at the left for its treatment of VietNam vets when they got home. Well so what? Myself and many Nam vets have been mad at the treatment we received on our return, from the left, right and the middle of the road. We were treated like shit by everyone, (except our moms) when we got back. To use Joe to single out the left is just plain bullshit, (I seem to use that word a lot in this book review, don't I?). To quote Randy Newman form his song , "Political Science", "No one likes us, I don't know why, we may not be perfect, but Lord we try". And that's how it was, whether anyone wants to admit it or not. This whole country, its people and all its institutions turned their backs on the returning vet from Nam. Why single out the left, when the whole country is to blame. Why? Because it fits B.G. Brickhead's way of right wing thinking. Can't admit that everyone shit on the Nam vet, let's blame the left and antiwar people. What crap! (I seem to use that word also in this review, wonder why.) B.G. even tries to use the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Joe put together in Berkeley, Ca. to imply that Joe did it for some kind of redemption for his activism during the VietNam war. That is crap(there's that word again). Joe and the other vets from Berkeley did it because it needed to be done. Just like the thousands of communities across this country that have at last done something to honor the Nam vets for their service to their country, and try to heal those wounds that war created. Hey B.G., it had nothing to do with redemption, it had to do with respect, something you have no understanding of, you meat head!

I have known Country Joe for over 20 years now and have worked with him on many events around Vietnam vets, reading my poetry, (I know, a Drill Sgt. that writes poetry? What will they think of next.), and him doing his music. And I must say that when he starts the "Fixin to Die Rag", the whole audience starts to cheer and sing along as loud as they can. Joe even performed at my wife Helen's memorial, after we lost her to breast cancer in `94. Helen was a Ghandian pacifist, and organizer with the War Resisters League; how she got hooked up with this grunt Drill Sgt. is beyond me, but we were a real mix, to say the least. My mom even sang along when Joe did the "Fixin to Die Rag", in Helen's honor, complete with the Fish cheer. Mom didn't quite understand the Fish Cheer, you know, Give me an F, give me a U, give me a C, etc., you know the rest. This is a family column now, isn't it? This was at the San Francisco Veterans War Memorial Building on Van Ness Ave., and you could hear the Fish cheer all the way out to the street. My sister told my mom, "Don't ask questions, just sing." And that she did. When I introduced my mom, Rita, to Joe, all he could say was, "You're Steve Hassna's mom? You deserve a medal for putting up with him". I just said,"Thanks Joe, I love you too", and we both laughed, while my mom looked somewhat perplexed. 

In all the years I have known Country Joe and seen the work he has done around the Vietnam vets community, he being a vet himself, (Navy, early Vietnam era), he has always been up front and straight forward about what he felt about the war. Redemption, what redemption? Joe has always stood on his principles, and I have always been proud to call him a good friend because of that. What B.G. El Meathead tries to do is take everything Joe says out of context, (just like everything else in his book), to prove his twisted point of view. Well it won't work, B.G, there are too many Nam vets out there that see right through you, and hopefully the civilian population will also.

Finally, at the end of this book, way back in the back of this book, right down there by the end of this book, out there around page 500 something, (now I'm sounding like Arlo Guthry and Alice's Restaurant), is a section on the questions B.G. has been asked while doing this book. You know, why and what do you want to get from it. Here he states that he wants an apology from the American people for the treatment of the Vietnam veteran. Well gee, B.G., where have you been? Any Nam vet that hasn't been living in a cave has been asking that for over 25 years. What makes you think it is going to happen now? We (Nam vets) gave ourselves a few parades, and have been walking around saying, "Welcome Home" to each other for years now. That one really ticks me off no end, "Welcome Home". I tell people who say that to me that I got back in `68 and no one said squat; why start now. That usually gets me a strange look. But then I'm just an ornery, grumpy, old Drill Sgt. and I can't help it. On top of everything else, why, B.G., if you want an apology >from the American people, do you attack everything in the Vietnam vets community and all our issues? If you want to get in someone's face, go out and stick it to the American people and leave us, Nam vets, alone. We have done nothing to you and don't need your bullshit either. We have seen enough and just want to get along with our lives, what's left of them.

I have been involved in the VietNam vets community and Veterans community at large since 1972, and I know bullshit when I see it. And that's how this book reads. Every time I would open this headache of a book and check one chapter or another, it would be the same thing. Wrong, twisted, and misleading information to discredit VietNam Veteran issues. And the sad part is that there are people out there who believe this shit, civilians, and VietNam Vets alike. Why? Because they want to, they want to feel good about themselves and want the memories of "The Nam", to be good and wholesome. So they sit down to the table and eat up the bullshit and garbage B.G. Burkett and his ilk serve up, by the truck load. And that, troops, is by far the saddest part of this whole thing: people giving credit to B.G. Burkett, and him with his head so far up his ass, I'm surprised he can even breathe.

Well, that's it for B.G. Burkett and the book he did not write, (it was written by Glenna Whitley as far as I can tell.) Now remember, there are phony Nam vets out there and you may run into one and B.G. Burkett is, without a doubt, one of the biggest to come around lately. But the issues of the Vietnam vets community, and American Veterans of any war are not phony in any way, shape, or form.

Moving right along, I was about to end this column and say Ta Ta to you all, when all of a sudden something new, that is old, came up and so now I get to play with this new/old situation. And all I want to do is fire up my bike, go for a ride and get the wind in my face. Maybe stop by and see Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman, drink a couple of cold ones, spin the dial on the Wayback machine and see what happens. But no, I got more new/ old stuff to deal with.

So here goes: Jane Fonda and her 1 millionth apology

It seems that Jane Fonda (God, she was good in Barbarella) has come out again to apologize for her trip to North VietNam during the war and the picture of her sitting in an NVA anit-aircraft gun position. She has said that she will carry that image to her grave, and she regrets ever doing that. OK, cool, we all make mistakes in our lives. It's a human thing, act before thinking. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the rumors that she is now a born again Christian, or that she wants to get back into the movies again. Whatever the reason, she is apologizing again for something that happened almost 30 years ago. And as far as I'm concerned, once is enough. But that's not how a bunch of people, civilians and Nam vets, look at it. In fact I have been told, and you are going to love this weird logic, that it was because of Jane Fonda that we lost the war in VietNam........... I don't think so...

OK, here's how this little scenario works. Jane Fonda as a young anti-VietNam War activist, with a public name from a famous acting family, goes to N. Vietnam and sits in an anti-aircraft position, looking through the sights, on a photo shot. Not good, Babycakes, but then you are young and don't have the political savvy to understand the far reaching implication of your actions. Now the right wing does, and just runs amuck with this very stupid stunt. This country was being torn apart over the war and things were not looking good for the home team. She is branded a traitor, and even worse, by many people. And a lot of Nam vets use her as a scapegoat for all the ills of that war. Why, because people, civilian and many Nam vets, don't want to admit to themselves just who was responsible for all that death and misery. The following is a list of reasons why the US endeavor in Vietnam went down the tubes and Jane Fonda's photo op is way down on the list.

The reasons why the US took a dump in "The Nam", by Drill Sgt. Hassna.

1. How about,"The Cold War". Remember that, troops? It started in 1946, the year I was born. With the start of the cold war and the geopolitical maneuverings of the two major players, the US and the USSR, it was inevitable that tragedies like the Nam would come along. The two super powers used the third world countries to flex their geopolitical influence, without the threat of nuclear destruction to their respective peoples. Let the poorer people of the world suffer, while we have business as usual. We will fight the fight between the Commies and the Capitalists... Oops, sorry, I mean the Free World, (don't want to confuse anyone). At someone else's expense. And we will charge them for all the ordinance to boot. This happened in Vietnam, Angola, El Salvador, Afghanistan, S. America, and other areas too numerous to mention, for 40+ years. Till the US could outspend and bankrupt the USSR. And now we're buddies, somewhat.

2. How about a really stupid foreign policy after WWII, with Pres. Truman rejecting the Vietnamese request for independence. Even after we signed a part of the UN Charter that said we recognized the right of indigenous people to self determination. Ho Chi Minh was an ally against the Japanese during WWII. Then Truman let the French go back to Vietnam to reclaim what they had lost.........DUMB!!! And Uncle Ho became the bad guy...

3. How about our stepping in when the French got their asses kicked in 1954, and started a campaign to disrupt the elections in 1956. Why? Because the then CIA, the same people that were with the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) in WWII, and worked with Ho Chi Minh, told the President, Eisenhower was his name, that Ho would win with 80% of the popular vote, regardless of his politics. The elections were a mess, the country divided and a repressive government friendly to the US set up in the south. Oh, by the way, I was 10 years old in 1956, what the hell did myself or the rest of the children of the time, that would grow up to toddle off to Nam, know about GEOPOLITICAL BULLSHIT. I'll tell you what I did know and what the rest of my generation had pounded into their very impressionable heads. That the Commies were coming and we would all be slaves. I can remember from my early days in school to "Duck and Cover", and protect myself from nuclear attack. The whole time not knowing that the assholes in power and privy to the truth knew that there is no defense from nuclear bombs. And that was taught to a whole generation of post WWII American children. Try walking around during your younger years being told you could vaporize at any second,and see what mind set you will have toward the other side by the time you are 19 years old. I'm sure the Russian people were being told something similar. The capitalist pig running dogs will enslave our peace loving peoples and destroy our glorious revolution. The Germans had been there a few years before and the Russians had lost 20 million+ people in that fire fight. Are you following me here? Perfect set up for a VietNam style screw up.

4. How about the early 1960's and the build up of American military advisors, a corrupt, repressive South Vietnamese gov, and a well organized and motivated opposition to that government from people of that region. And of course, President John Kennedy, Robert MacNamara and the B&B/D&D totally ignoring the information they were receiving from people out in the bush as to what was happening. Because it didn't fit into their fantasy world of rose colored glasses.

5. How about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and resolution and all it brought. Build up upon build up. And from all this we got a totally stupid military posture that had our troops running in circles all over South VietNam. Trying to chase and catch a people in their own back yard. I'll tell you what. You come out to the mountains of Northern California where I live and try to chase me and my neighbors around and see what happens. And that's one of the things the US just did not get. We were in someone else's back yard and they had had it with foreign interference, right to the tops of their heads. The Vietnamese had had the French for over a hundred years telling them what to do and enough was enough. And now they had the Americans. Funny thing is that Ho Chi Minh and most Vietnamese did not want to fight us. We were allies against the Japanese during WWII.... such is politics. Twenty years after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, people in the know were saying that maybe it didn't happen quite like it was reported. I have a friend who was on one of the U.S. ships involved and he says that he thinks that the U.S. somewhat over reacted to the whole thing...... Imagine that...

6. How about General William C. Westmoreland; now here is a real character, to say the least. This guy couldn't get it if it fell on him. Here's a General in command of all American and allied troops in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968. In 1966 he deletes 300,000 North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong opposition troops >from the order of battle. The Order of Battle is a break down of all the troops and equipment on both sides in any given conflict. This gives field commanders on both sides an idea of just what they are up against. Kind of like a program for a football game with all the stats on all the players. In late 1966, three months before I was in country and assigned to the 1st Bde, 101st Airborne Division, Waste-more-lands deleted 300,000 opposition troops from the order of battle. He did this because he knew if he sent a number including these figures to President Johnson it would be so high, as far as opposition strength, that Johnson would balk on continuing the war. So Westy just lost 300,000 NVA and VC troops so the numbers would look good. All this came out 20 years later 1986 in a CBS special, where it was shown that Westy had doctored the numbers. And this was his own people that snitched him off. CIA personnel, Army officers under his command at the time and others. Not the dreaded COMMIES, oh my. Westmoreland started a law suit for slander. He dropped the suit the day he was supposed to go into court. Why? Because he knew that so much would come out in the trial, that his ass would be in a major sling over it all. Just go ask a Marine >from Khe Sanh how he feels about Westy sticking him and the rest of the Walking Dead in that valley for months. To this day I hold General William C. Westmoreland personally responsible for the deaths of many American soldiers. He is responsible for many names on the Wall in DC., along with Robert MacNamara and the rest of the B&B/D&D club.

7. How about the TET Offensive 1968? Here the Vietnamese proved beyond a doubt that regardless of the losses they would fight on. Pretty much set the stage for the next 4 years.

8. How about 20,000,000 Vietnamese people who just did not want us in their country. You Beaucoup number 10 G.I. NOW GO HOME!!! Go ask a Nam vet what number 10 means...

9. The protest movement: They demoralized the troops and said bad things and smoked pot and it's all their fault and they had long hair and free love and they had weird music and they don't listen to the Four Freshmen and Connie Stevens and Perry Como and they're all commies and oh they make me so mad I could stamp my feet and cry and suck my thumb. Nope, sorry troops, not so.... That's the right wing attitude and I just threw that in for balance. These were American citizens exercising their right under the Constitution, of redress of grievance, at something they felt was seriously wrong.

10. And way down here we have Jane Fonda and her stupid stunt in North VietNam being blamed for the loss of the war. This all gets back to taking responsibility for one's actions. Americans, civilians and Nam vets don't want to admit that they were part of the process. That they elected, backed, paid for and followed the orchestrators of this disaster as it spiraled into hell. And remember, I was part of all this, I was an infantry paratrooper and a Drill Sgt. and have to accept my role as such. Blame Jane Fonda for the loss of the war and ignore all the other reasons?........................... GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!

This is from the old Drill Sgt. to you Nam vets and civilians alike, still trying to lay blame for the war. THE WAR IS OVER, now get on with your lives!

Well, troops, this ends another trip down memory lane. Did we all have fun and now feel warm and fuzzy all over? Remember now, to keep reading those newspapers and watching the T.V. for what we all love so much: The American Historical Process....

Today's tips are:

1. Keep an eye on Columbia (the country, not the College), this could be a real hot time for us all.

2. If you hear someone yell, "INCOMING", don't forget to duck!!!

Airborne, The Old Drill Sgt. Hassna.........................OUT!

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