Dirty Old War - Pictures from Vietnam

Dirty Old War released earlier this year.  In it, I tell the stories of various people who lived through the Vietnam conflict.  A few of these people shared their photographs with me, allowing me to use them in the book.  These are some examples.

Lance Block:

   

Glen Bailey:

   

Dirty Old War - Tales of Vietnam

Dirty Old War tells various stories of people's lives during the conflict in Vietnam. Rather than talking about the politics or the big picture, it tells of individuals whose lives were affected irrevocably.

I chose to write this book when I got to know people who had been there and began to hear their tales. I learned quickly that the war was far more complex than is usually discussed.

Dirty Old War is now available on Amazon, and you can find it at: https://amzn.to/3qf4jHU

#vietnamwar #vietnam #war #history #amazon #militaryhistory #eastasia #military #truestories

Tales & Lives of the Vietnam War - Part 4

Chapter Four

Robert Reault

The Green Beret

"It's impossible to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means...  You have no right to judge me."

            - Apocalypse Now

When Francis Ford Coppola set out to make his epic movie Apocalypse Now, he drew inspiration for his hunted character from Colonel Robert Rheault.  The role would be performed by Marlon Brando and praised for its dark portrayal of a rogue officer gone mad in Vietnam.

Like the character, Reault had been a member of the American Special Forces.  In fact, he had been at the head of 5th Special Forces Group and the iconic Green Berets.  He was dedicated to the work they were doing protecting the south from a communist invasion and a pragmatist to the point of cynicism about what needed to be done to make that happen.  Also like the character, Colonel Rheault was fond of the indigenous people of Vietnam, known as the Montagnard, or "Yard" as the Americans often nicknamed them.

The Montagnards were made up of about 30 different tribes scattered throughout the mountains of South Vietnam along the borders of Laos and Cambodia.  Different in culture and ethnicity from their lowland cousins, they were used to living in the wilderness, surviving through subsistence agriculture.  They numbered approximately a million, and were often overlooked by foreigners and their own government.  Some journalists compared them to the Indian people of the Americas as Montagnards had been the indigenous people of Vietnam before the Sino-Mongaloid invasion had pressed them into the mountains.

Treated as inferiors by most people in South Vietnam, they were called "moi" or savages by those in cities.  The government settled refugees from North Vietnam onto their lands, and stripped away many of their rights.  It was for obvious reasons that the Montagnards sided with the French during their occupation as that foreign government promised them protected lands on which to live.  These promises vanished with France's withdrawal, and the tensions between the people of the hills and those in the valleys intensified.

This made them a prime target for North Vietnamese indoctrination; but the Montagnards were suspicious of communist goals.  They rightfully saw through the propaganda machine, realizing their religion and culture would be under more severe subjugation under their rule.  How long that would remain the case was unclear, and the American Special Forces decided to move in before the Yards switched their loyalty to the Viet Cong.

In 1961, they began an initiative within the Vietnamese mountains called the Village Defense Program, which later became the Strategic Hamlet Program.  Recognizing the importance of those mountains as pathways of the Ho Chi Min Trail, the Green Berets trained the natives to defend their villagers and supplied them with the weapons to do so in "civilian irregular defense groups," or CIDGs.  A detachment of the Green Berets would remain as advisors to help secure perimeters around the villages.  They were supported by South Vietnamese Special Forces, and Navy Seabees, who helped build dams, roads, schools, bridges, wells, and other necessities for the mountain people.  Special Forces also provided medical care to the villages.  By 1963, 43,000 Montagnard soldiers defended the area around Buon Enao, and 18,000 were in mobile strike forces which maneuvered by helicopter.

The Green Berets respected the Yards more than their ARVN counterparts.  What members of the Special Forces had to train for, the native people of Vietnam grew up with naturally.  When reporters came to the camp, they found the elite American soldiers quiet on all issues except that of their admiration for the Yards.  They shared many values, and became close friends.

The one area that found Montagnards lacking was in throwing.  Their culture had no games with balls that were tossed, and their weaponry never involved hurling projectiles.  So when the Green Berets went to teach them how to toss grenades, the tribesmen had to learn the movements from scratch.

The first Medal of Honor in Vietnam was given to an American soldier fighting alongside the Montagnards.  Captain Roger H.C. Donlon, with his group of 12 Green Berets, 311 civilian defenders, and only 60 Nung, (the fiercest of the Montagnard tribes,) held off an attack of nearly a thousand North Vietnamese soldiers for five hours and won.  Donlon gave particular credit to the Nung for their ferocity.

Despite their skills, or perhaps partly because of it, the South Vietnamese government continued to impose further and further restrictions on the Montagnard tribes, and many of the people refused to acknowledge them as equals.  Tensions rose, culminating in an incident in which one of the tribes killed as many as 80 South Vietnamese troops, and taking 20 Americans hostage.  The Green Berets managed to convince their allies to release their captives, but the damage was done.

Officials in Saigon provided some concessions to the people of the hills, but refused tribal autonomy.  They complained to the American government that their Special Forces had armed the hill people, which enabled them to make the attack.  The finger pointing came back to Special Forces, and specifically the Green Berets, who still stood up for their new brothers in arms.  Tensions now rose between the regular army and Special Forces; a strain that would remain for the rest of the war.

As a result, Special Forces were pulled from many of their posts in the hills protecting the villages; consolidating them into larger camps.  The civilian irregular defense groups were dismantled, and support from other branches was pulled.  As a direct result, Saigon saw that the Montagnard could no longer defend themselves, and officials returned to policies pressuring the native people from their lands.

By 1965, the US was pulling most of its support from the Montagnard; but Robert Rheault, who was executive officer for operations among the Special Forces, kept a connection between them and the Green Berets.  He visited the tribes personally, putting his impressive linguistic skills to good use to iron out relations with the mountain people.  He promised his support, and the tribes responded by supplying his operations with intelligence reports.  One of the tribes went so far as to induct him as one of their own.

Colonel Rheault was as no-nonsense and paradigmatic a soldier as one could get.  His close-cut, salt and pepper hair, deep tan, combat infantry badge with a master jump insignia, his Motagnard bracelet and thin Philippine cigar tightly bit in his lips all expressed his history and his influences.  He had degrees from Georgetown and the University of Paris, and his combat experience ran parallel with his tour as an assistant professor of foreign languages at West Point.

When he first arrived at his quarters in Nha Trang, he had the queen bed of his predecessor replaced with a common soldier's cot.  His dress and demeanor were crisp and austere.  His gaze was unrelenting.  He had been awarded a Silver Star in the Korean War where he attained the rank of captain.  In peacetime he rose through the ranks and had passed the Q-Course to join Special forces where he took command of the 1st Special Forces Group in Okinawa.  By the middle of the 1960s he was aiding operations in Vietnam, and in 1969, he took command of 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam, which placed him at the head of the Green Berets.

He believed firmly in the mission, certain that the only chance South Vietnam had against the North was for its people to be properly trained and equipped until they were ready to defend themselves.  His dedication earned him the loyalty of his men, who roundly believed he should be promoted to a general.

As talk stirred of a withdrawal, he went to General Creighton Abrams and asked him to allow 5th Special Forces to be the last to leave the country.  They had been scheduled to be first, and he argued that they were spread so widely throughout the country that their departure would damage the infrastructure of the defense.  During his lengthy speech, he said that the reduction should come from the fat, rather than the muscle.

This statement didn't go over very well with Arbams as his own army command tended to be what was referred to as the "fat."  Tensions between the Army and Special Forces had continued to rise in country as the branches clashed over rank, authority, and whose plans would be enacted.  In the tank and infantry campaigns of World War II and Korea, which Abrams was used to, the Army was the clear leader.  But in a covert war where the enemy could hardly be seen and intelligence gathering was key, Special Forces believed they would be more effective.

Abrams listened, glaring at the speaker, until at last he fell silent.  Then he asked bluntly, "Are you finished now, Colonel?"  Without a clear answer, Rheault saluted and left.

As the colonel took a tour of Special Forces' 80 plus facilities, he furthered tensions between his outfit and the Army by suggesting that the Search and Destroy methods were self-destructive.  Destroying a village may kill five Viet Cong, or destroy a cache of weapons, but it created five hundred fresh recruits for the enemy.  He stated that it was more important to gain the loyalty of the people who would soon have to fight for their own country, and to gather intelligence of enemy movements.  Both of these were achieved through diplomacy, not destruction.

It was not that Rheault had a problem with fighting and killing the enemy.  But his pragmatic nature knew that this strategy would be endless.  "You could kill guerrillas all day long and they would spring up like dragon's teeth," he said.

Throughout the first half of the year, members of the CIDG who worked with Special Forces began disappearing, specifically, those in an organization called B-57, otherwise known as Project GAMMA.

B-57 had been set up to establish agent networks inside Special Forces camps that operated across the Vietnamese border into Cambodia and sometimes into Laos.  Made up of civilians and natives, they operated under the cover of selling food to the VC and NVA units inside Cambodia and along the Ho Chi Min trail. 

This organization was kept secret partly because of its association with units across the Cambodian border, whose existence was being denied to the public, and to officials of Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam.

Its existence was also a secret because their mission was to gather intelligence not only of enemy troop and supply movements, but of spies working within the government of South Vietnam.

When agents from this organization went missing, it meant that someone deep within the inner circle was involved.  Special Forces would have to find out who it was without the aid or even knowledge of any other branch or their allies.

The investigators got their break when a photograph was discovered in an abandoned American camp northeast of Ban Me Thuot in the Central Highlands.  After it had been abandoned by the Americans, the North Vietnamese had used it as a staging area until a Third Mobile Strike Force attacked the camp and took it back.  There, among many of the documents they captured, they also found undeveloped rolls of film of the NVA unit participating in indoctrination activities.

One of the people seen in many of these photographs was a B-57 operative named Thai Khak Chuyen.  Of course, no one in the army unit recognized him; but when Major Budge Williams, who was part of Rheult's staff and a member of Operation GAMMA, saw it, he took it to one of his partners, Major Leland Brumley, who confirmed it.  This was their contact who was photographed associating with top NVA officers.  Nothing in Chuyen's reports indicated that this was part of an operation, and it seemed certain that he was associated with the enemy.

Williams and Brumley shared the information and photograph with two more members of their organization, David Crew and Bob Marasco, who had just come back from R & R.  They all knew Chuyen, he had been a trusted ally.  But this was proof that he was their double agent causing the deaths of many of their other connections.  In further investigations, they discovered that trouble had always followed Chuyen when he left other commands, and there had been other suspicions about him in the past.

Brumley sent Marasco to tell Chuyen that he was being considered for an important mission, and that he needed to report to headquarters in Saigon.  There, he was met with other agents who confined and interrogated him with the help of polygraph.  After the interview, the polygraph operator reported back to Brumley that there was no doubt that Chuyen was a double agent.

Brumley then had Chuyen flown to Nha Trang where he was interrogated again on a polygraph and with sodium Pentothal, otherwise known as truth serum, where he was again determined to be the double agent they were seeking.

Chuyen could not be released again for the course of the war.  Whatever information he had not already sent would be invaluable to the north, and dangerous to American and South Vietnamese operations.  Placing him in prison was also dangerous as the information he had was also secret from the South Vietnamese, and Chuyen knew it.  He could cause irreparable damage without even making contact with his northern connections.  The only solutions were solitary confinement, or execution.  The four Green Beret operatives decided to hand the decision over to the CIA.

The relationship between the CIA and Special Forces was complicated in much the same way as that between Special Forces and the Army.  One reporter described it as “an incestuous marriage between the sneaky Petes and the spooks.”  Both handled covert operations which, until recently, were led by the CIA.  When the Bay of Pigs fiasco occurred, both branches realized that military matters of larger numbers was best left to Special Forces while the CIA was better at dealing with covert information gathering and command.  This made the two more autonomous, but it caused friction when they were both dealing with something in between.

While the jurisdiction of command was fuzzy, it seemed logical to turn the matter of the double agent over to the CIA since it was internal.  Therefore, Majors Crew and Williams decided to travel to CIA headquarters on the fourth floor of the embassy to meet with the assistant station chief.  (The station chief was not there at the time.)

The plush offices were decorated with thick carpet and fancy furniture that gave a feeling like one was back in the US.  They were joined by several men who worked throughout the floor and seemed to provide false identities.

Crew and Williams suggested that the CIA provide them with a location to incarcerate Chuyen where he could not pass on information.  They also did not want him somewhere that the South Vietnamese were in charge for fear that they would torture information out of him, and some of the information involved CIA and Special Forces secrets.

The men who had joined them were not satisfied with that solution.  They ordered Crew and Williams to get rid of Chuyen.

Later that month, a frightened Sergeand Alvin Smith hurried into the Nha Trang CIA offices and begged for sanctuary.  He believed that he was being targeted by his co-workers, which included Crew, Williams, Brumley, and other staff members who worked for Colonel Rheualt.  Smith explained that the team had carried out the execution of Thai Khak Chuyen, but in the days following, the others had acted cold and distant toward him.

Smith believed he might be targeted because he had been Chuyen's handler, and believed they might kill him to cover up their actions.  He had not considered that there might simply be a solemn feeling among them for having killed one who they had thought had been one of their own.

Smith also did not expect the CIA to use his statement as an admission, and then to arrest him for conspiracy to commit murder.  When he reminded them that their own officers had ordered the execution, they denied it.

Colonel Rheault returned to Nha Trang to find that seven members of his staff had been arrested.  His copper tan turning into a red rage, he flew Long Binh and stormed directly to General George L. Mabry, top commander of the US Army in Vietnam, subordinate only to General Abrams who was in charge of all branches.

Despite the difference in rank, Rheault coolly looked Mabry in the eye with his steel gaze and demanded that he release his men.  When Mabry refused, Rheault demanded again, and said that if he wasn't going to release his men, then he would have to arrest him and charge him with the same crime.  Mabry accepted, and he placed the highest ranking member of the Green Berets in prison.

They were held under high security at Long Binh Jail, also known as LBJ as a dig at the president who had started America's involvement in the war.  Each of the eight men were kept in an isolated, small iron cells; so cramped none of them could stretch out fully across the floors.  The roofs were not strong enough to hold out the daily rains, and the walls trapped the unscrupulous heat.

The charges against them included murder, and conspiracy to commit murder; charges that, if found guilty, came with a minimum of a life sentence, and possibly the death penalty.  Rheault, as the commander, despite having chosen to stand with his men, would likely get the most severe sentence.

Each of the prisoners was appointed a lawyer, all of whom were told not to speak to one another; all of whom ignored the order and met privately to coordinate their efforts.

At the first hearing, the eight defendants and their lawyers sat in parallel lines of tables facing one another, perpendicular to the tables where the prosecuting attorneys, the court reporter, and other witnesses sat.  The rest of the room was empty save for a single upright fan that circulated the hot air.  The men were wiping their sweaty hands on their fatigues; the lawyers took notes on their blotted yellow legal pads.

The defendants had not yet had an opportunity to speak with their lawyers when a captain who was the Assistant Chief of Staff G-2 (Intelligence) for Headquarters, USARV, approached them and told them to sign a statement that was "a mere formality for this court."  The documents explained that classified material in the trial should not be divulged outside of the court or hearing.

Steve Berry, counsel for Leland Brumley, stood and proclaimed that he did not want the army to get the idea that they were going to get away with secrecy in this case.  The other defense attorneys concurred, and Berry continued, saying that his client was being denied effective assistance of counsel, and that it was impossible to properly prepare for this hearing while being in confinement under the existing conditions.

This took the court by surprise.  They had not expected such a heavy push-back right out of the gate.  They did not release them from their confinement, but there was an understanding that this would not be as secretive a trial as they might have liked.

This would be the theme of the entire trial, considering the conflicting values of a courtroom and undercover organizations.  The CIA and special forces operate under conditions of secrecy, while justice relies on public candor.  This case would test those ideals, with the prosecution arguing the side of secrecy, and the defense arguing the side of an open and fair trial.

Colonel Sieman, the investigating officer, began with a pro forma statement that the defendants had the right to present anything they might desire on their own behalf.  Steve Berry was ready and on his feet, saying he wanted "the Bravy 57 case file containing, but not limited to, the intelligence reports of the alleged victim, any contracts of the alleged victim, a name trace report on the alleged victim, an operations interest report on the alleged victim... testimony of Brigadier General Potts who is the G-2 at MACV; Major General Thomsen, Chief of Staff... a complete list of all agents at Moc Hoa that are in any way affiliated with Bravo 57 or the CIA.  Also, sir, a complete list of all agents in Than Tri... In addition, sir, I would like a passenger list of all the people who came from North Vietnam on the Mirabelle in 1954, and a complete report as to the NVA or VC affiliation of any and all of these people."

He was already making it clear that there would be no secrets left unturned, and that if the CIA wished to prosecute these men, they would have to do so out in the daylight.  He continued, "I would like a complete list of any memos that have passed between the CIA and the CID regarding the case now under investigation.  I would also like available from the Vietnamese government any files by military security surveillance regarding the alleged victim."

Every time he referred to Chuyen, he called him the "alleged" victim.  Though behind closed doors, everyone had spoken openly about the execution, no one had yet made a claim in open court.  In order for the prosecution to prove that there even was a murder, they would have to call witnesses from the CIA; witnesses who were averse to making public statements.

Berry continued to request "a dossier on the alleged victim, any dossier on him and any member of his family, including his sister who works for MACCORD... any messages from Nha Trang to Saigon or from Siagon to Nha Trang regarding the case file... the CIA messages, sir, regarding the CIA or CID, regarding any operations regarding the alleged victim.  Sir, we request any statements made, any statements, record statements made to the CID by the same Colonel (redacted) or Captain (redacted) and Colonel (redacted), the same individuals who have already been requested.  We request the presence, sir, of Mr. (redacted), the (redacted) worker at (redacted)."

Much of what Berry was doing was also revealing how much they already knew as a sort of hint as to what could be revealed should they continue this trial.  He went on with this by saying, "Sir, we request the operational plan of Than Tri Cypress regarding Bravo 57.  We request the Operational Plan Blackbeard.  Sir, we request all terminations with extreme prejudice in unilateral operations since 1961.  Similarly we request a list of all terminations with extreme prejudice in bilateral operations since 1961, and similarly we would request a list of all terminations with extreme prejudice in multilateral operations since 1961, and including especially the Provisional Recon Unit."

Colonel Sieman asked what Captain Berry meant by "terminate with extreme prejudice."  Though a phrase that later became popularized through Apocalypse Now and other spy shows and movies, it had never been uttered in a public forum until that moment.  In fact, it had not even been used as code until the CIA and special forces began using it in the 1960s.

Berry explained, "Sir, termination with extreme prejudice has to do with various methods of getting rid of agents who have outlived their usefulness, and we request a list of all instances in which that has been done here in Vietnam since 1961 by the United States or allies.  This information should be available from the CIA."

Berry continued opening the playbook of the CIA and special forces for the public record, and the prosecution could do nothing but listen.  The defense was laying out the Pandora's box they had opened.

As for the execution itself, the prosecution was going to have to prove that one had even occurred.  When leniency was offered to any of the Green Berets who could lead them to the body, no one came forward.  (It would have, in fact, been impossible, as they had thrown the body into the South China sea for it to be devoured by sharks.)

Captain Berry put it plainly by saying, "What body?"

The first witness called by the prosecution was Colonel Rheault's deputy commander, Colonel Facey.  He looked uncomfortable as he was sworn in.  He answered through a pale face and with clenched fists, clearly torn between his duty to his uniform and his duty to his comrades in arms.

They asked him questioned "concerning a compromise of a certain agent from the depth of B-57 operations."  He answered that he had attended meetings regarding a "possible security problem with reference to a possible penetration of a clandestine operation from which the 5th Group of USARV responsibility."

He testified that he had "reason to believe that one of the agents that was hired or employed by Detachment B-57 for clandestine intelligence operations was, in fact, a VC who had penetrated the operation."  In discussing how to deal with the agent, they had determined on one of three courses of action: "One was that the agent should be continued to be employed on isolated, closely guarded missions, his future conduct to be observed.  Number two, the agent could be dismissed from the program.  Number three, the agent should be eliminated."

Further questioning by the prosecution brought out that Facey believed that "the agent" had either been sent on a mission, or his sentence had been carried out.

The witness had provided so little for the prosecution's case that the defense was nearly prepared to waive cross-examination.  But Captain Berry decided to establish a few things with him.

"You say Bravo 57 has to do with our unilateral operations in Cambodia, is that correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"And in an earlier statement did you not say that due to the unilateral nature of the operation, that the open disclosure of such would undoubtedly cause international problems?"

"I made that statement."

"Can you tell us why the open disclosure of Bravo 57 would cause international problems?"

"Primarily because we were operating unilaterally, U.S. intelligence operations, from this sovereign nation of Vietnam without consulting - into the country of Cambodia without their knowledge."

"Would it be correct to say then, that it was considered to be in the interest of the United States that the government of Vietnam not know that we were conducting unilateral operations into Cambodia?"

"I would make an assumption that is why it became a unilateral operation to begin with.  They didn't want them to know."

"Do you know whether or not it is unusual to discuss the possibility of eliminating an agent?"

In the business or the field of intelligence it is not unusual to discuss this."

"Sir, when an agent is eliminated, is it usually considered to be a military necessity to eliminate him?"

"In my opinion, yes."

"Sir, would it be correct to say that if the CIA knew that man was going to be eliminated and they did not in fact preempt, this would be a form of a go-ahead by the CIA as a practical matter?"

"To the best of my belief I would say yes, it would be a full go-ahead."

Facey went on to establish that Black Beard had been the code name for B-57 operations into Cambodia, and that if Chuyen had been allowed to compromise Black Beard's mission, it would render the net ineffective "in addition to placing the United States in an unfavorable light."

Berry asked if General Abrams himself had not approved of the nets and their results, and Facey answered, "I sat next to COMUSMACV when he made that statement."  The long acronym stood for Commander of the United States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam, a phrase that amused Berry.

Bill Hart, one of the other attorneys, questioned the witness further, establishing that "the longer you held the agent, the more precarious the situation became."  Facey then admitted that "something had to be done."

Hart was followed by Middleton's lawyer, Captain Booth, who established that "the 5th Special Forces Group were in fact working for CIA.  He went on to ask what sort of damage would come from the governments of Cambodia and South Vietnam learning about the operation.

Facey answered that "if the government of Vietnam were aware of the fact that we were conducting clandestine intelligence operations from within their territory into Cambodia, they may damn well be very upset about it."

The prosecution held a redirect examination, but for every question they asked, eight defense attorneys were able to respond with questions of their own which established more favorable information for their clients.

Curiously, the prosecution never established that Chuyen had been an innocent victim, nor did they refute the claims that he was a double agent, and that his work could unravel an undercover operation and put thousands of lives at risk; not to mention enrage the leaders of three governments.  They stuck to the allegation that the execution had not been sanctioned by the CIA.

This narrative continued through the remainder of their witnesses, all of whom appeared torn between their loyalties.  The prosecution established the details of the execution.  The collaborators had received clearance for a boat, and had requisitioned a silencer.  Their alibis and whereabouts were established, painting a timeline that revealed a coordinated effort and a murder.

The defense admitted no such action took place, while at the same time revealing from all witnesses that such action would be acceptable based on the circumstances and that it happened fairly regularly.  Some witnesses even seemed confused by the allegations, considering that this was the sort of work that the CIA and special forces were there to do.

After adjournment, the defense counsel went out for a drink and some planning.  They believed they had the matter wrapped up.  There was no way the government would want a case with so many secrets wrapped up in its evidence to go to trial.  Bill Hart slapped John Berry on the back and said, "We got 'em running, buddy.  No way the government's going to want this one to come to trial."

Marty Linsky, one of the other attorneys, added, "I don't know if you guys recognized them, but there were a bunch of reporters - AP and UPI - hanging around outside the gate.  If any of this gets out, the government will have their backs to the wall, and they won't be able to dismiss if they want to."

Their celebrations were short lived.  When they reconvened on August 2, Colonel Sieman refused most of their requests for additional witnesses, including the polygraph operator who had tested Chuyen, for reasons of national secrecy.

John Berry leaped to his feet, and with his booming voice, shouted his protestations to the court.  "If ever it is established that anybody was killed," he began, covering the base of deniability, "the guilt or innocence of these men may well hinge on... the total environment, the total flow of circumstances... instructions, customs of warfare, military necessity... I would personally like to have the privilege of forcing each and every one of these... witnesses to state what he refuses to testify to on the grounds of executive immunity."  He later asked if "army loyalty should run downhill as well as uphill," and asked if "loyalty and justice were at least as important as another star."

Berry then reiterated that he wanted the papers that showed Chuyen was a VC/NVA agent.  Then he warmed up to his main point: "If the government wishes to keep all of this secret, it may not try my client.  The government has a choice.  It may bring forth everything... and try my client, in which case we will gladly go to court, or it can drop the charges against my client.  The government may not do both, sir."

Despite his vigorous plea, the court still rejected their requests.  The defense moved for a continuous, then left.

They were going to need more help.  Berry knew a lawyer named Henry Rothblatt who would have the knowledge and wherewithal to build their case.  Rothblatt was now in a comfortable, highly paid position at a New York law firm, and Berry was asking him to come to Vietnam at his own expense with no possibility of ever getting paid.  But, Berry added in the letter he wrote to him, "this case will be unique in legal history, Mr. Rothblatt, and I promise you that if you do come, your skills and talents will be taxed to their utmost."

Rothblatt arrived on August 18.  Two days later, the pretrial hearings continued.  The military attorneys began questioning witnesses while Rothblatt caught up on records from earlier days that were only permitted to him once he reached the courtroom.

The first witness from the CIA, whose name was redacted, read a prepared statement.  In it, he claimed that there was no evidence of Chuyen's being a double agent, and that the CIA had not ordered him to be terminated with extreme prejudice.  He added that one of the defendants had asked if there was an island they could send Chuyen to for the duration of the war.  This was an unusual admission since it in essence contradicted their point that the Green Berets had decided to kill him.  It brought up the very question the defense was proposing that why would these men turn around and kill him unless someone ordered them to.

The agent then took his statement one step too far when he added, "the CIA does not involve itself with assassinations."  This opened up Pandora's box once again.  Before the unidentified witness said that, the defense was not allowed to bring up any subject outside of the narrow scope of the trial.  However, since the witness had broached the subject, that made any and all questions about the CIA committing assassinations open to questions, as well as requests for evidence on the subject.

As the witnesses who were allowed to testify came through, the defense counsel made sure to ask about the new revelation.  Witnesses denied so much about CIA involvement in anything that one would question what their purpose even was beyond taking up a floor in the embassy.

In their closing arguments, Steve Berry spoke first.  "It is a simple case," he said.  "These men are being left, as Mr. Rothblatt said in his questioning, "holding the bag."  The government can do one of two things.  It can maintain its operations in Vietnam, it can maintain its CIA, it can maintain its operations in Cambodia, or it can try our clients.  That is the choice."

Berry's statements went on for a while, but most prophetically, he said, "One of the practical reasons why this case cannot go to trial is the fact that the American people aren't going to put up with it.  Colonel Rheault is a hero to the American people."

Most of the rest of the attorneys echoed Berry's statements.  Then Rothblatt concluded their statements.  He first gave a lecture to the investigating officer presiding over the trial on constitutional process.  He then characterized the CIA as taking the position that "we don't want to give you the facts and we don't want to be subjected to the elementary processes of truth finding."

He concluded by saying, "Let's say to every soldier fighting this war, 'We will respect your rights; we will respect those basic principles.'  Tell the American people that we love our men; we will give them due process rights and not kangaroo court rights, and let the men honestly devote themselves to duty and do what their consciences and their obligations to their country compel them to do.  Say to them, 'We will not stand behind the deception, the cover-up by an agency that invokes the privilege,' and promptly dismiss the charges and return these men to honorable duty."

The pre-trial concluded, Henry Rothblatt returned to New York.  The other attorneys remained, handing in their motion to dismiss the charges based on the fact that doing so would require revealing undercover operations in order to have a fair trial.  They also alleged that General Creighton Abrams had unduly influenced the proceedings and was anxious to get a conviction of men he saw as rivals.

Once the motion was turned in, there was nothing more they could do for this case but wait.  The lawyers attended to their other cases, and Rheault and his men settled into their new accommodations.

When Rothblatt had arrived, changes were immediately made to the men's confinement.  They were moved into unused barracks with barbed wire fencing around them.  They were all together, with beds on which they could stretch out to full length.

Rheault settled right back into the role of commander.  He set up a program for physical training, waking up the soldiers at 5 a.m. to do officer's call, and then daily exercises.  Their regular run, which was supposed to go five miles, posed a problem.  The MPs first set up a system wherein they would jog with the soldiers, but they soon found that no one could keep up with Rheault and Brumley.  By this time, however, they had come to realize how much integrity they had; so they gave them permission to jog freely about the grounds if they swore on their honor that they would return to their confinement.  They swore, and never took advantage of their freedom to escape.

Others wanted to help them get out.  Word of the case had spread throughout the men, who were baffled at the story.  Some began to ask publically, "Which of our enemies are we no longer allowed to kill?"  In a war where body count was the measure by which success was determined, the need for such a question seemed absurd.  Morale, already a rising problem among the men, began to drop even further with the threat of soldiers facing execution for doing the job they had all been sent there to do.

News of the situation reached the press, and questions began to arise in press briefings.  On August 28, Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor held a press conference at Tan Son Nhut Airport in Saigon where reporters' questioned bordered on the sarcastic as they asked about what was starting to be called the Green Beret Affair.  One of them asked, "Has there been any change in the orders to army commanders that their mission is the pursuit and destruction of enemy forces?"

None had, of course, but the question made more of a point than it demanded an answer.

Letters of support poured into the prison barracks.  One package included a false passport, a 9mm pistol, and some hand grenades.  Another set up a plan to drop in with a German light aircraft designed for short landings and takeoffs to rescue the men if the decision had gone the wrong way.

Still others stated plans to spring them out of prison.  They didn't realize that the eight men held in the LBJ prison were capable of escaping themselves, even without their open jogging allowance.  One of the soldiers, in fact, Budge Williams, was slipping out of the barracks some nights and going to parties.

Larkin W. (Rocky) Nesom was threatening in another way, claiming that he would gather up Special Forces alumni and educate the public as to the manner in which the war was actually being fought.  This was not only the most damaging threat to the Army who was prosecuting the case, and the CIA who was supporting it, but it also reminded them what would happen simply within the trial.  The unnamed witness had opened the door to the subject of the CIA does not assassinate.  There were more than enough Special Forces operatives willing to testify, either in or out of court, that they did; and they could provide specific examples.

The attorneys visited regularly, and a genuine friendship grew between all of them.  Despite orders of no alcohol, they brought bottles of Scotch, bourbon and gin.  Rheault began to open up and joke around, introducing Captain Berry to a friend as "the sloppiest soldier and the best lawyer in Vietnam."

David Crew was a deeply religious soldier, spending at least an hour a day reading the Bible.  He saw their confinement as a test of his faith.  Crew was also more concerned with the morale of the other men than he was for his own safety.

Budge Williams, Lee Brumley, Eddie Boyle, and Bob Marasco saw the murder charge as just another wartime dilemma.  Boyle was a tough Irish kid from the Bronx who never doubted the outcome of the trial.  Williams and Marasco told bone chilling tales of their undercover adventures.  Bob Marasco was dealing with his own unraveling marriage back home.  Lee Burmley was quiet, reflective.  He spoke most about his wife and young daughter.

One of their earliest visitors was Colonel Charles M. "Bill" Simpson III, commander of the 1st Special Forces Group in Okinawa, Rheault's old command.  The two had been close friends for a long time.

After Simpson visited Rheault for the first time, he went to visit Abrams.  The general wouldn't see him, but sent a deputy in his stead.  When Simpson got on the plane to return to Japan, he was arrested and detained for the night on Abrams' orders.  Even though he returned without incident the next day, he knew it was an intimidation tactic meant to keep him away from Rheault.

It had the opposite effect.  Simpson returned to the US and headed straight for Washington.  For the entire length of the lawsuit, he was haunting the halls of the Pentagon, bringing attention to the Green Beret case.  He reported back to the defense team that Nixon had already wanted to dismiss the case, but Abrams had told the president to stay out of his business if he wanted a smooth withdrawal from Vietnam.

Rheault's replacement at the head of Special Forces was not gaining the confidence of his men.  Traditionally an Airborne role, Colonel Lemberes was ground forces, like Abrams.  When someone said he had not earned the Green Beret, he decided to do three short jumps from a helicopter and then give himself his wings.  On his third jump he broke his leg.

Though soldiers are supposed to enjoy the same right of a "speedy trial" that civilians do, the Green Beret case continued to be pushed back, mostly by the efforts of General Abrams, who seemed to want the heat to die down among other soldiers.

The defense counsel drew restless, and began making demands that were largely ignored.  At last it became evident what they needed to do.  The defense attorneys had not wanted any details of the case to go public because they wanted something to hold over the prosecution should it go to trial.  However, if the soldiers were to be held indefinitely, there was no point to hold back any cards.  And so they turned to the media.

Berry came out with guns blazing.  He said, "There are fair trials, and there are closed trials, but a trial cannot be both closed and fair... I predict that our government will have to choose between trying this lawsuit and waging this war."

With no trial date pending, the attorneys had time to go on media tours, speaking to any networks and radio broadcasts that would listen.  Interest in stories of military blunders had increased, and they found a willing audience.  Lemberes' efforts in Washington paid off in the form of Congressmen bringing up the subject on the floor of the House.

Congressmen began writing to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, claiming that the Green Beret case was a disgrace, embarrassing American armed forces, and threatening to reveal military secrets

Rothblatt spread the word through his east coast connections such that the story reached the cover of Time Magazine.  Once the public learned that some of the most elite soldiers were on trial for murdering an enemy spy, many became outraged.

One mother with a son in Vietnam wrote to President Nixon saying, "The court-martial of the Special Forces men is a disgrace; they are doing nothing but making scapegoats of them... the people are going to revolt."

Another wrote of her son, "Am I to understand that he is in jeopardy of being accused of murder?  He might today be in a situation of those six men who the army and the CIA are attempting to set up as scapegoats."

Many of the letters made it clear that they were Republican voters, implying that Nixon would have to begin to choose between siding with his chief general, and his public.

Others reminded the president of what was already happening; that morale would drop precipitously should they convict men for doing the job for which they were drafting soldiers and sending them across seas to do.

One letter recounted a heartbreaking incident where a man's son was part of a helicopter squad that was ambushed.  His son was killed along with most of the rest of the squad because the VC had known in advance exactly where they were going to land.  He pointed out that it was because of someone like Chuyen that his son was dead, and he believed the Green Berets deserved a medal for their action.

Another mother told about her son who had died in action "fighting and doing his duty for what?"  They all asked what their sons were supposed to do if they were trained to kill the enemy, but were then at threat of being charged with murder.

Letters from American Legion chapters and auxiliary chapters with hundreds of signatures echoed the sentiment.  One woman's letter read, "As a veteran and widow having two boys in Arlington National Cemetery as a result of the Vietnam War, I am deeply offended that the government they died for is prosecuting the Greeen Beret officers.  The military is fighting for the USA.  Which side are you on?"

Finally, the pressure became too great.  Congressman George Bush and many other members of both Houses demanded answers.  Soon after, the CIA released a statement claiming it would not release any of its agents to serve as witnesses.  Then on September 29, 1969 a statement was issued ordering the case be dismissed.

It was over.

On the flight home, the Green Berets were announced to the passengers of the plane who gave them a rousing applause.  They had all taken an early retirement from the military when they learned there would be no advancement for them.  Even though they were not found guilty of any wrongdoing, there was new leadership in Special Forces, and overall command had revealed just how it felt about them.  And so in the interest of their outfit and of themselves, they left it all behind and returned to civilian life.

Under that new leadership, B-57 was dismantled, and the North Vietnamese built upon their supply bases along the western border.  Many of their attacks in 1975 would come from these locations.

The attorneys all stayed in touch.  Steve Berry worked for Henry Rothblatt for a year before returning to the Midwest to begin his own practice.  He stayed in touch with each of the Green Berets.  David Crew was an usher in Steve's wedding.  Budge Williams took him on a tour of monuments in Georgia when he went to visit.  Leland Brumley worked in military intelligence, having a tour with MI6, and retiring in Texas, where Steve saw him during a layover not long before Leland's death.

Colonel Rheaut went to visit Captain Berry at his home in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Berry introduced him to Governor Bob Kerry, another veteran of the war.  Rheult stayed at the governor's mansion that night and went on a jog with Kerry the following morning.  He was 86, and suffering from Parkinson's.  After he left, Robert sent a letter and a picture as a thank you to his former attorney.  On the back of the picture was written, "To Steve Berry, eloquent and dedicated defender of the Green Berets."

The letter was the last communication Berry had with him, and it ended with, "It's been a great ride."

 Tales & Lives of the Vietnam War will be released later this year or early next year.

Tales & Lives of the Vietnam War Sample

Earlier this year, a friend of mine died who had been the first subject of one of my upcoming books about people who lived through the Vietnam War.  His name was Lance Block, and he'll be missed terribly.

I'm sharing his chapter of the book here in remembrance of him, and to show what's coming in the next year or two.

***

Chapter One

Lance Block

American Infantryman

Aware that he would probably be put in the military regardless of his own wishes, Lance Block considered joining the Air Force.  Whether flying a plane, or working at a control center on the ground, he knew it would be stimulating.  However, his interest really lay in architecture.  An expert with a pencil, Lance enjoyed designing and drawing three dimensional images.  His uncle was one of the premier architects in the world, designing buildings all across the United States.  He drafted the third tallest building in Chicago, and had laid out plans for the tallest one before the project fell apart.  Growing up, Lance occasionally assisted him, and learned a lot as he did.

When he came of age, Lance went to study mechanical drafting at the University of Santa Cruz.  He was instantly successful.  Between his experience with his uncle and his natural talent, Lance was able to translate 3D images to drawings quickly and precisely.  When his class was required to do isometric drawings of objects, he accurately represented them on the page to the smallest detail, getting A's in every test, and surpassing all his classmates.

This expertise would have kept him out of the Vietnam War as college students whose grade point average remained above a C were exempt from service.  He was tripped up, however, by his German language class.  Lance had not needed to take German.  In fact, his mother, who came from Polish ancestry, discouraged it.  But Lance had an enormous interest in model tanks, and the best book on the market about German armor was written in their native language, so he was bound and determined to read it.  Had he taken a less challenging class, Lance could have avoided military service altogether, but his inability to learn the language dipped his GPA just below a C-, and he received his draft card in 1968.

His mother, incidentally, never let him live down the fact that it was learning German that caused him to get drafted.  She and her three sisters resented the language since World War II, in which Poland had been conquered by Germany, was just over 20 years earlier.  The occasional guilt Lance felt interfered with his studies, which may have been why he didn't do well in the class.  In any event, on his way to Vietnam, Lance threw the German book away out of disgust.

The result of being drafted rather than joining was that he would have less power determining which branch to join.  However, after going through a physical examination to determine his fitness eligibility, Lance was given the opportunity to take tests at the recruiting offices to see which branch was most appropriate for him.  He chose to try for the Air Force and the Army.  The latter choice was because many of his family members had been in the Army, including his father, who had stormed beaches in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

One of the few stories Lance knew about his father was when his Wildcat Division was attacking the island of Palau.  The landing craft they were in got stuck on a reef, and the captain, thinking they had hit shore, had the ramp opened and ordered the men out.  Lance's father, who had a full, nearly 100 pound field radio on his back, dashed out first and dropped into the ocean.  Realizing they hadn't reached shore yet, the captain ordered the boat to back up, leaving Private Block behind to sink.  Block's best friend managed to reach into the water and pull him back onto the craft before they left, however, saving his life.

Aside from this one account, and a few other short stories, Lance knew little of his father's experience.  So when he passed both the Air Force and Army tests, he chose to go into the Army.  The Army then placed him in the infantry because Lance had written in his test that he liked to go camping.  "That was a big mistake now that I think back on it," Lance now says.

He spent the first three days at the Los Angeles Induction Center, a medical building near downtown.  There he got to know eight guys who were close in line because their names all started with similar letters.  Dressed in only their underwear and carrying their clothes and paperwork in their arms, the nine young men shuffled through the multitude of rooms, following arrows on the ground that led them from doctor to doctor who checked them out to make sure they had no diseases or other disabilities.

They all had bunk beds near one another, and they became close friends over the three days in LA.  They then traveled together to Fort Ord where they got their buzz cuts, and they went to basic training together at Fort Washington.

One of the men that Lance became particularly good friends with was a young man named Peter Borse.  He had been the first person Lance met while standing in line at the medical center, and the two of them had remained close throughout training.  Peter was the son of a minister, and hoped to carry on in the same profession when he returned from the war.  He exemplified what he preached, showing a genuine interest in other people's thoughts and feelings.  "You couldn't help but like him," Lance says today about Peter.

The nine friends did everything together, mostly going to see movies during their time off.  It didn't matter what was playing, they didn't have a lot of choices.  They just went to whatever was there.  Before and after the movies, they talked about everything from politics to regrets of the past and plans for the future.  They were all very different from one another, coming from widely differing social and economic backgrounds.  Politically, they were all over the spectrum.  They probably would never have met outside of the military.

Training included target practice and sparring in hand to hand combat with other recruits.  Lance was good with a gun.  He figured that would be what's necessary in modern combat.  "In my mind, if you have to use a knife or your fist, you've fucked up," Lance says.  And he hoped it wouldn't come to that, because he was terrible at melee, getting beaten down by nearly every trainee.

One of them, who had been a fighter before the army, saw that Lance was struggling; so he went over to him and gave him some pointers.  They were sporadic suggestions, as he could not linger long without being yelled at by the sergeant.

During the three months, trainees received paperwork that gave some idea of where they would be going and what they would be doing.  Those who received orders to go to advanced training were on their way to Vietnam.  Others would be mustered into American forts either in the US or somewhere else in the world.

Lance and his eight friends all got transfers to Fort Benning, Washington.  They would be going to advanced infantry training.  "We all saw the writing on the wall," Lance says today.

Advanced training was the same as basic training, just more intense.  Lance's small band of friends were in different platoons, so they were separated during their drills and instructions, but they continued to get together and do things during their time off.  Lance was increasingly impressed by Peter, who, as far as he was concerned, was already taking on the role of minister.  He was the one who de-escalated arguments, and who everyone turned to with their problems.  He was the ever-present voice of reason, and the group psychologist.

Lance continued to be bad at hand to hand combat.  One soldier got especially aggressive while fighting him, and wouldn't let up after the sparring was complete.  Lance didn't understand what the man had against him, but a day after their training sessions, the same trainee wanted to be good friends with him.  Lance let him hang out with himself and his friends, but found the whole experience unusual.

After advanced training, soldiers were given time off to visit their families one last time before being shipped off to war.  Many were then sent individually, but Lance and his friends were able to go over together, stopping first at Fort Lewis for some final rifle training; then on to Hawaii, Japan, and finally landing in Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.  From there they were transported to Bien Hoa as replacement recruits.  This was another point at which soldiers were generally separated as they were placed into units that needed new soldiers.  But luckily for the nine friends, the First Cavalry was in need of a lot more soldiers, so they all went to An Khe together in the central part of South Vietnam.

There, Lance and the other soldiers went through additional training.  This time it was more specific to the environment and the tactics being employed in the area.  They trained with helicopters, practicing landings and descending from ropes into the jungle.  They also trained in survival methods, and learned how to use the equipment they would be utilizing out on patrol.

The First Cavalry Division, Airmobile, was one of the most decorated units in the military, and one that exemplified the strategies employed in Vietnam.  The First Cav. initially grew out of the days of horseback riders to evolved into a light mobile unit meant for fast strikes.  It matured to include combined arms, and served with distinction in World War II and the Korean War.  With the inclusion of helicopters into the military, the renamed "1st Air Cavalry" led the way into the new tactical doctrine; flying troops into an area that had just been bombarded with artillery, then controlling the territory with the support of combat helicopters.  The division was present at the Battle of Ia Drang the first major engagement of the Vietnam War, and was stationed in the most hotly contested area near the center of the DMZ, the border between North and South Vietnam.

Lance and all of his friends had expressed desires to serve in a combat zone for extended periods of time because doing so meant they could get out of the army five months early.  They had two year enlistments, and none of them wanted to make a career out of the military, so they all wanted early-outs.

Though they were all part of Charlie Company, Lance was part of first platoon while the rest of his friends were in third platoon, so they were separated in the enormous base.  An Khe, (also known as Camp Radcliff, named after the division's first casualty,) was a combination airfield and base camp large enough to hold three divisions.  It had a 26 kilometer perimeter, nicknamed the Green Line with three-man watchtowers every 50 meters.  The escalation in the area made it the largest helicopter base in the world, with more than 400 helicopters on what was nicknamed the Golf Course because of how level the ground was made to accommodate the aircraft.  This field was bordered by a long runway capable of landing enormous C-130 Hercules aircraft which flew in new troops like Private Block and his friends.

Lance's quarters were inside a bunker whose walls were made of sandbags held up by corrugated pipes.  These were made to resist against the mortar attacks that would occasionally come in from somewhere outside the base.

The first thing Lance noticed was the same thing most soldiers noticed, how hot and muggy it was.  Average temperatures were in the 80s, while the humidity hung over 90%.  To make matters worse, he had flown in during the monsoon season.  This meant that the rain started falling about 3:00 in the afternoon, and continued late into the night.

Everyone in the base had bunkers to hide in due to the sporadic mortar attacks from either the North Vietnamese or the Viet Cong.  Typically, no one would ever learn which one it had been as either the attackers disappeared into the forest before anyone could reach them, or their bodies were charred by the counter-battery fire from the American base.

Soldiers in Lance's company decorated their quarters with pine boxes they got from the artillery.  These boxes had transported shells, and were being thrown out after delivering their ordinance; but infantrymen noticed how finely crafted they were, and how well they served as cabinets and chests, storing personal items such as radios, framed photographs, and other paraphernalia.  They also served well as tables, and, when filled with sandbags, made for good roof supports in their bunkers.  These disposable boxes were the backbone of many homes away from home for the soldiers.

The other thing that stood out to Lance at first, and that he noticed throughout the war, was the incompetence of the leadership.  Commanders had come from West Point, where they had clearly not learned the same skills that the soldiers who had been drafted or signed up at recruitment centers had.  It seemed that their training was all cerebral and abstract, not practical.  They seemed to have no idea how anything actually worked.  They would give orders with little to no understanding of how those commands could be implemented, and made demands that served their egos, but accomplished nothing.

The root of the problem seemed to stem from the classism which put the officers into their positions, and the inherent narcissism that followed.  Students at West Point were typically taken from a pool of upper class citizens who had the right connections.  They were accepted due to social status rather than merit.  Their training then consisted of lessons from traditional warfare fought on battlegrounds against large, identifiable, well equipped enemies.  They were taught discipline and a rigid social structure, one in which they were told on graduation day that they were at the top.

Thus, when a soldier trained in the proper, modern use of equipment, and who had witnessed this new sort of warfare firsthand, tried to inform the commanders of the reality of the Vietnam War, they were met with deaf ears, and a stern dressing down.  They also found themselves bypassed in the chain of command by those who told the officers what they wanted to hear; thus creating more leaders who were in denial of the realities of combat in Vietnam.

"Oh god, you couldn't tell this son of a bitch anything," Lance says today, thinking back on some of his commanding officers.  "Some of the guys who get into these places is because of who they know or their pedigree.  Doesn't mean they have what it takes or should be."

One instance that exemplifies Lance's point was when a captain ordered Lance's platoon to climb down a rope ladder from a chopper directly into the woods that had not been cleared of the enemy.  The captain wanted to impress his commanding officers with his plan to coordinate assaults from Chinooks.  The back of the helicopters would open, and the soldiers would throw cargo nets down, then descend quickly into combat areas.

The plan would save the helicopters from having to land, but when it was tried, the cargo nets flapped wildly under the wake of the blades, and the soldiers who tried to climb were tossed about.  They struggled to hold onto the ropes while also keeping hold of their weapons.  Their 70 pound packs drug them downward, and the rope ladders got tangled.  The soldiers were supposed to descend two by two, but many of them got twisted up, causing a traffic jam that slowed everyone, and nearly caused many of them to fall.

All this was not only a humiliation in front of higher ranking officers; the company had been so noisy coming in that if there was any enemy within the area they would have easy targets to shoot down.  And the helicopters would still be at risk; not being able to easily gain altitude with all that dragging weight, and with soldiers at risk of falling to their deaths if they did get very far into the air.

Luckily for everyone, there was no enemy nearby, and the entire platoon got down safely.  But the officer chewed them out for taking so long.

Lance was not long in-country before he was sent out on patrol.  The typical patrol lasted 28 days, and it involved a company marching out into the woods around the main base searching for enemy units or individuals.  It was also intended to stop enemy operations in the area.

Closer to the base, this involved locating mortar emplacements used for bombardments.  Further out, this involved finding Viet Cong rebels, or North Vietnamese soldiers in a tactic called "search and destroy."  This could be interpreted by individual commanders, but it typically meant killing enemy combatants because the measure of success was counted in numbers of casualties.

To the soldiers, it usually meant ferreting out enemy operatives and equipment so they could not be used against the American base, the South Vietnamese soldiers, or the local villages.  While some of these villagers were themselves undercover operatives working for the Viet Cong, Lance found that most of them he met were resentful of the North Vietnamese invasion, and were fearful of their attacks.

During one of his early patrols, Lance's company located radios the enemy had left behind when escaping.  The soldiers were surprised to hear American voices on these radios.  The enemy had their frequencies, and were listening in.  From that moment forward, Charlie Company tried to keep their radio calls to a minimum, at least insofar as it gave away their position.

The soldiers carried three days of dried rations at a time, which were called LRPPs, (Long Range Patrol Packets.)  Inside the packets was dehydrated food with some seasoning.  There was also a miniature pack of four cigarettes for those who smoked.  Those who didn't could trade them away with those who did for food or something else they had.

If a soldier wanted to cook their food or boil their water, there was a small powder blue bar that was the same shape and size of a bar of soap which came with the rations.  To use it, a soldier dug a small hole, placed the blue bar at the bottom and placed a few sticks on top of it.  When he lit it with a match that came with the blue bar, a nearly invisible flame lit up.  During the most pitch black night, one could notice a faint blue glow emanating from the source, but that was the only light coming from the flame.  There wasn't even a smell, smoke, or crackling unless it came from the twigs.

The intention of this was to remain hidden from the enemy, though this didn't seem to make much difference.  The American soldiers were so loud as they moved through the woods, and especially when they set up camp, that Lance figured the entire country must know exactly where they were at any time.

Supply drops came in by helicopter every few days, bringing food, ammunition, mail, and replacement parts for any equipment they might have.  They also brought in two bottles of beer and two sodas for each soldier.  Lance didn't drink, and he traded away his beer for more soda or food.  He likely got the best deal out of the trade since soldiers in the jungle would sweat so much they wouldn't have a chance to get drunk or even buzzed.

After a grueling 28 days in the jungle, the company returned to camp for a few days off.  They had been wearing the same clothes the entire time without changing.  When Lance took them off, he found that they had grown so stiff that they stood up on their own.

Lance was also the only member of his platoon who wore underwear.  Others felt that it chaffed them and they threw them away, but Lance kept his.  He ultimately ended up feeling more comfortable near the end when others soiled their pants and had to keep wearing them and Lance was able to discard his underwear when there was an accident.

Soldiers had only three days of respite between each patrol, so they tried to make the time count.  Though Lance's friends from training went out on the same patrols as him, he didn't see much of them while outside the base, so he got together with his friends during these respites.  The first thing Lance noticed every time he visited their part of the camp was Peter Borse counseling someone, or hosting a religious service.  He had quickly made friends with other members of the platoon, and become known throughout the company as someone people could turn to when they were having trouble coping with the frightening and difficult conditions.

Lance's company was soon sent out on an assault mission.  The soldiers were dropped off in a clearing just large enough for six helicopters at a time.  The third platoon was dropped off in the first wave, and they rushed into the tree line, securing the perimeter.  Lance's platoon came in on the second wave.  They, too, hurried into the tree line in a similar, but different direction than third platoon.

They were all under fire from the enemy further in the woods.  The Americans returned fire, but did not call to one another using the radio.  Ever since they had learned that the NVA and Viet Cong were listening in, they kept radio silence; and instead used colored smoke grenades to signal orders, send answers, and to mark areas where they requested fire or movement from other squads.  First platoon had taken some casualties, and they requested both reinforcements and fire support.  The request for fire support was red smoke, which they threw ahead of them toward the enemy so the Cobra helicopter would know where to lay down a devastating barrage.

Lance had the yellow smoke grenade which was the signal that his squad acknowledged the reinforcement request, and was on its way.  Unfortunately, the grenade was in his pack, and he had to pull it off and go through the pockets to locate it.  Not finding the grenade immediately, he realized it was at the bottom, so Lance held the pack upside down and emptied the whole thing to get to the grenade.  The sergeant was livid, standing over Lance shouting at him for taking so long.  He wanted to be across that field already helping third platoon.

At last Lance found the grenade and handed the canister to the sergeant.  As this was happening, someone threw another colored smoke grenade into the clearing just behind third platoon.  It was a marker to show the corporal where his helicopter would land.  The corporal had wanted a color different from everyone else's landing colors to denote his importance.  He had chosen red.

Lance quickly scooped everything into his pack, threw it onto his back and stood up.  The sergeant ordered them forward across the clearing to help third platoon.  They had made it one step when the entire area exploded.  The Cobra helicopters had seen the red smoke used to mark the corporal's landing spot and had mistaken it for their firing orders.  The resulting friendly fire devastated the third platoon.

Despite the disaster, the Americans held the ground, and that night they made camp.  One of Lance's friends from third platoon found him and told him the results.  Most of the people they had signed up with were dead or wounded.  Peter Borse had been killed instantly.  The soldier didn't say much else.  He just returned into the darkness, back to his platoon. 

Lance was devastated.  His thoughts swayed from the remorse he had for his friend he would never see again, to the luck he had for having been stalled by the buried smoke grenade, to the survivor's guilt, knowing he had lived while so many men right in front of him had not.

When he returned to base, Lance had little spirit left.  To add to his misery, he had contracted malaria.  He was sent to the hospital.  When he arrived, he saw other soldiers who had been wounded in battles; soldiers who were bleeding profusely, missing limbs, some on death's door.  Lance felt guilty for being there with a fever.  And it threw him into a tailspin of emotion; thinking of his friends, of the people who had died right in front of his eyes, and how he'd be with them if he hadn't screwed up the placement of his smoke grenade in his pack.  Then he felt bad about thinking of himself.

Without work keeping him constantly busy, and with his mind sick from malaria, Lance fell apart in the hospital.  He was now treated for mental, as well as physical illness.  A doctor trained in psychology saw him, and he kept him in the hospital even after the malaria was cured.  Lance rested, trying to come to terms with everything that had happened.  While the loss of every life there was devastating, it was the loss of Peter Borse that he could not reconcile.  He was the best of all of them, Lance believed; and if karma could not see fit to keep alive a man who was good to everyone he saw, then no one was safe.

After two weeks, the doctor could no longer keep him in the hospital.  Lance felt fine about returning, however.  The work would make him too busy to be haunted by the sadness and guilt he felt.  Soon, he was on patrol again.

Each time he went out on these nearly month-long excursions he saw something unusual.  One day the jungle seemed to open up into a completely different land.  The heavy foliage disappeared above them and bright light shone down, revealing long, thin emerald chutes which grew straight upward until they disappeared into the white sky.  The ever-present humidity now seemed to hold a green glow in the air.  This was the bamboo forest.

The patrol traversed this environment for half a day until they reached the old part of the woods.  Here, ancient, dying bamboo chutes bowed into one another until they formed giant trapezoids; like great works of architecture or vast cathedrals.  The sunlight, beaming at an angle through the verdant leaves of the young trees, splashed across the dead amber and hazel leaves of the ground and reflected the old, beige wood to create a golden haze which hovered just over the forest floor.  All around them in the stillness, an omnipresent clicking noise echoed as if the trees were talking to one another.

Here, under the protection of nature's tall structures, the unit settled in to camp for the night.  They started by creating a circular perimeter, laying out trip wires attached to land mines and claymores, which were mines set off with a triggering mechanism.  They also set up flares which could be lit up to illuminate oncoming enemies.  First, third, and fourth platoons created the circle, and third platoon set up in the center with the mortars.  Often the men had air mattresses they would blow up, and the sounds of an entire company of soldiers filling them with air at night and letting the air out in the morning were noises that stood out among the jungle noises.

That night, as they dug their foxholes, the soldiers began to find old artifacts left behind from World War 2.  Lance found a Japanese helmet.  During other patrols he had located artifacts from other wars.  It spoke volumes to just how long fighting had been taking place in that region.

Another time that they came upon strange foliage, Lance was walking point and got stopped by a strange and rare plant which was incredibly difficult to chop through.  He started to cut around it, but the sergeant insisted he go straight through.  Lance and a few others continued to chop away at the plant, causing a great deal of noise that would have alerted any enemies within earshot had they been there, and holding up the entire company.  Finally, what would have taken ten minutes had they gone around, was achieved after a half hour.

The men dreaded going across rivers as they always came out with leeches.  They didn't feel them as they attached silently, and sometimes under the clothes.  It wasn't until a while later when they would feel a soreness; and when they looked for the source, they found the slimy body attached to a lump about the size of a quarter.  The person could only remove it with bug repellant, because yanking them out would rip open the skin and cause an infection.  Once the creature was taken off, the bulge remained for as long as three months.  Lance still had some marks on his legs for years after the war.

One day, Lance's company was relieved to find they would be walking across a natural bridge of huge logs laying across a shallow pond.  The water beneath them was crystal clear; they could see all the way to the bottom.

They were about halfway across, all of them single file, when the point man noticed a group of soldiers, also single file, strolling across another bridge that was perpendicular to theirs, heading in their direction.  After a moment, he noticed that they were enemy soldiers, so he fired and hit one of them in the head.  The rest of the enemy soldiers went running, and Lance fell into the pond, getting a mouthful of the water.

The sergeant yelled at Private Block as he climbed back onto the log, throwing up as he did.  The sergeant told him to toughen up, it was just water, but Lance's true reason for throwing up was he had seen the young man's head explode when he was shot, and the pieces had fallen into that clear water that Lance had just swallowed.  Even though it had happened too far away to have gotten to him, the thought of it wouldn't leave.

At one river crossing, recon helicopters had reported that they had sighted bunkers on the opposite side.  It was a perfect location for an ambush as there was a steep embankment on the side with the bunkers.  Lance and about fifteen others were called up to the front with grenade launchers, and they fired a host of barrages for about five to ten minutes to clear the way.  By the time they were done, they had blasted away the tree line and filled the embankment with craters.

When they ceased fire, the company of nearly a hundred men rushed forward, across the river and up the other side.  There, they didn't find any bunkers.  They hadn't been destroyed, they simply weren't there.  As they continued forward, past the destruction and into the tree line, they finally came upon the bunkers.  They were all still intact.  None of the plethora of grenades they had fired had reached their intended targets.

Luckily for the company, however, the bunkers weren't manned.  Had they been populated with machine guns, they could have all been shot down.

Each platoon was assigned a blockhouse to investigate.  Lance's commander was angry at him, so he was sent inside first.  Just as Lance opened the door, he heard the snapping of a wire, the sure sign of a trap.  Lance jumped back, certain there would be an explosion.  After several seconds, when nothing happened, he and some others peeked inside.  They found a grenade inside of a sea ration can with a broken wire attached to it.  The wire had rusted, and the trap had been a dud.  Lance had been saved by a recent monsoon that had gone through.

His company had been on their way to a village, something they regularly did.  Much has been made of the poor treatment that some American military personnel gave to villagers, which did happen.  But the terrible treatment caused by the other side, which was far more numerous, has been largely ignored.  Private Block's company sometimes came upon villages that had been raided by the Viet Cong and NVA, and he heard stories of villagers who were threatened and beaten by them.

While on patrol his company found AK-47s, magazines, and ammunition found inside large straw rice bowls.  Often, the soldiers kept a couple items they found for souvenirs, but only the officers were able to keep most of them.  Lance managed to return to the US with a magazine of ammunition with the gunpowder removed.

Which villagers were complicit and which were threatened and coerced was unclear.  It seemed to Lance that most of them just wanted to be left alone by both sides.  But if they didn't help the Americans, their houses were burned, and if they didn't help the Viet Cong, they were killed.

Lance's company worked alongside the South Vietnamese soldiers, known as ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam,) during a six day sustained battle in which they were trying to remove NVA and VC troops from a supply depot.  The US and ARVN forces fought on two separate sides of a river.  Though the river kept them from easily reinforcing one another, it ensured there would be little to no friendly fire where American troops mistook ARVNs for the enemy.

Each day the US and ARVN troops moved up until the enemy began firing; at which point a colored smoke grenade was thrown forward and artillery and air power would come down on the enemy.  The Viet Cong and NVA troops would pull back, and the US and ARVN would follow until fired upon again.  Lance didn't see the enemy soldiers, but he heard the shots and the orders to fire.

This process repeated over and over throughout the week, typically 30 times a day.  At night the enemy countered with mortar fire that ran through the US/ARVN lines.

And thus the cycle continued until one day when NVA and VC forces got bold and counter-attacked, coming close to overrunning Lance's company.  The unit managed to hold them back and caused them to retreat.  Even after they were long gone, though, Lance's commanding officer ordered his men to keep firing.  They did, shooting the unmanned trees and bushes.

Lance saw the sergeant's canteen sitting on the ground in front of him, so he fired a couple shots into it during his barrage.  When at last the shooting was done, the sergeant found the holes in the canteen and declared that the enemy had come that close to hitting him.  He went on to tell that story to everyone who would listen around camp.

After the battle was finished, the two forces were transported by helicopter up to the top of an inactive volcano.  From this peak they could see for half a dozen miles in every direction.  The US soldiers set up camp on one side, and the ARVN set up next to them.

Many of the Americans felt bad for the ARVN men when they saw what they had.  Their supplies were all in poor shape.  Their food in particular was rank.  Often, all they had to eat were fish heads.  Once, when the US soldiers tried their water, they all contracted dysentery.  Whenever the American soldiers wanted to complain about their own rations, they only needed to look at their neighbors to realize how lucky they actually had it.

At night, Lance listened to his radio while laying in a foxhole, (the armed forces had their own station,) another luxury some of the Americans enjoyed as long as they wore ear plugs.  One day he found that the radio was missing, and he spotted an ARVN soldier who had it.  Private Block told one of the commanders about it, who informed the Vietnamese sergeant.  That officer retrieved the radio and returned it to Lance, then gave a severe beating to the offending soldier.  He delivered such a harsh punishment that Lance felt bad for having said anything.  The chastened soldier was later placed on a helicopter and taken off the mountain to face more severe punishment.  The ARVN were extremely strict and met dereliction with acerbity.

Going up and down the mountain was a treat for Private Block.  He had never flown before, so whenever he rode on a helicopter, he sat on the side so he could look down on the passing terrain.  Though this was dangerous, it wound up saving his life.  Once when a helicopter he was on came in for a landing with a tight formation of other choppers, the blades of his transport hit the trees.  This caused the body of the helicopter to begin spinning, and it came down hard on the ground.  Being at the doorway, Lance was thrown clear while the motor crashed into the passenger section of the Huey, crushing those still inside.

He had the misfortune of a second crash when he was being extracted for R&R.  They had put too many wounded on board, and the helicopter was unable to deal with the weight.  Luckily, the pilot was able to keep the Huey from coming down too hard and everyone survived, but it cured Lance's desire to go up as much as he could.

On the ground, they cut their way through the jungle, always blazing their own trails in single file to avoid being ambushed on one of the more widely known paths.  During one such excursion, Lance's unit chopped its way out of the brush into a trail that ran perpendicular to their route.  This sort of discovery was usually ignored, but there were no other American units in the area, and the path looked wider and more heavily used than what was typically found, so the sergeant ordered an inspection.

The platoon made its way along the path.  Soon the woods opened up into a couple small clearings where they found a few small tables surrounded with chairs.  Then they came upon a long banquet-sized table complete with fine linen tablecloth, ornate plates with polished silverware, resplendent decorations, and an entire feast all set up to be consumed.  Steam was even emerging from the cooked meat and soup.  It was as if dinner had just been served for a king and his court, and then they had disappeared.

The whole scene was surreal.  It looked as though the entire setup had been transported out of a palace.  The soldiers checked the woods for an ambush or a trap, but the coast was clear.  They had apparently interrupted a meeting for important dignitaries in the middle of the jungle who had heard them coming and escaped silently into the woods.

The men of Private Block's platoon wanted to eat the food, but were afraid.  Their own rations left a lot to be desired, but this food could easily be poisoned.  So the sergeant ordered it all to be destroyed.  They set C4 charges along the table that were typically used for destroying bunkers, and they blew the whole thing up.

No one ever knew what the banquet had been all about, or for whom it was intended, but they knew that they had scattered when they heard the Americans coming.

Though more prepared than their enemy, the Americans were never able to surprise them.  Commanders would occasionally try, such as when a new captain arrived to Charlie Company and ordered his men to set up along the sides of a trail he had discovered.  He intended to ambush the enemy when they traversed it.  His men tried to inform him that the Viet Cong or the NVA would have heard them and would not be coming, but he ignored them and ordered them to dig in.

As they did, they found older fox holes that had been dug by another American platoon that had tried the same thing.  They could always tell when it was one of their own previous locations because of the junk left behind.  Once they were in place, they waited all day, trying to remain quiet.

That night, when they were settled in place, the enemy revealed that they knew the Americans were there by lobbing mortar fire onto them.  It was perfectly placed, and the explosions walked right over them, carpeting their area.  The trap had been set up for them, not vice versa.  Dozens were wounded, including Lance, earning him the Purple Heart; and they had to be evacuated by helicopter.

The captain didn't admit his mistake.  He was a West Point graduate and they were just grunts.  One of the soldiers dropped a grenade into the captain's tent when he wasn't there, blowing up all of his things as a warning of what could happen if he continued to abuse them and put them into needless danger.

At night, platoons on patrol tried to set camp as quietly as possible.  They set up claymore mines and trip wires along their perimeter, but mortars could land on them if the enemy knew their exact location.  One night, this cover was more than blown when several soldiers accidentally hit their clickers that set off their claymore mines.  Someone else accidentally set off their flares.  This worked like a domino effect with startled soldiers setting off their own mines or flares, revealing to anyone within a kilometer exactly where they were.  "It was a real fireworks display," Lance now recalls.

Though the mistake was made by multiple soldiers, Lance, who set off one of his own claymores, was the one the sergeant caught in the act, and upon whom he leveled his fury.  After a thorough dressing down of the private, he placed Lance on point for the next two weeks.  This meant he would be out front of the platoon in the most risky position.

During that time, the company set out to investigate a bunker complex.  With Lance was a young man who had only been in country for about three weeks and was eager to get into the fight.  Spotting something up ahead, Lance dropped to the ground.  He wasn't sure what he had spotted, so he crawled forward, followed closely by the kid.

When he got close, Lance realized what he had seen was a large hole in the ground.  He still wasn't close enough to look down inside, but he could tell that its frame was perfectly cut, like a sizeable doorway.  The young man made his way up next to Lance and pulled out a grenade, saying, "Let's frag it."

Lance said, "Now wait a minute!  There's something wrong here.  This hole is perfectly cut!"  Usually, the Viet Cong hid in holes that were rushed, temporary, and roughly hewn.  If a structure was well crafted, it usually meant it was civilian; so he said there might be families down in the hole.  Lance had the kid go back to the sergeant to retrieve a flashlight, and when he did, Lance shone the light into the hole.

What he saw gave him chills.  The spotlight revealed first a black tailfin.  Then, as he moved the light further into the hole, it revealed that the tailfin was attached to a large, 2,000 pound unexploded bomb.  If they had thrown a grenade onto it, that would have blown up the entire company.

Visibility was always a problem on patrol.  Not only did it hide the enemy from sight, but it caused problems for navigation, and in keeping the unit together.  While heading through the jungle one day, one of the men got distracted for a moment looking in a different direction.  He lost sight of the man in front of him, and he wandered off to the side; still heading in the same general direction, but a couple dozen feet from the main line.  The men behind him followed, so there were now two lines walking parallel to one another.

Someone from the first line heard movement coming from the trees, so he stopped the line.  Believing they were about to be ambushed, they fired blindly into the brush.  The other soldiers returned fire, believing they had been ambushed by the Viet Cong.  After a short while, they figured out the mistake and ceased fire.  By that time, six men had been killed.

To combat this visibility problem, the US set about trying methods of deforestation.  Charlie Company came across several areas where dead leaves carpeted the ground leaving the trees bare and visibility clear.  It looked like a fire had come through, except the tree trunks and branches were still in place.  The soldiers were grateful for this as there was nowhere for the enemy to hide to ambush them.  This was the work of an American chemical called Agent Orange, intended to clear sections of the jungle of cover so US and allied soldiers could pass without threat.

The unintended consequence was that it made these soldiers sick.  When Lance later had serious skin problems, such as rashes, severe water blisters, and peeling skin, he went to the VA doctor to find out what the problem was.  The doctor, without looking at him and from across the room, declared that he could not have contracted anything from Agent Orange.

Soldiers were granted two weeks of R&R.  They were provided with a list of places from which to choose where they would be flown and would be provided with room and board.  Lance chose to spend one week in Sydney and one week in Hong Kong.

In Sydney, Lance stood out with his military haircut, his fatigues, and of course his American accent.  This worked in his favor when he went to see True Grit at the theater and the woman at the ticket counter let him in for free.  She even escorted him inside because the movie had already started and it was dark inside.

He stayed in an area called King's Crossing, and he was struck by how kind the people were and how beautiful all the women were.  He found out why later in the day when a stranger approached him and said, "You don't want to be here."

Confused and a little shocked, Lance said, "I don't?"  The man then explained that he was in the red light district.  That explained a lot, but it didn't really talk Lance out of leaving the neighborhood.

However the stranger was interested in showing Lance around town, so he got him on a bus and took him to lunch, and then on to some of the city's most prominent features.  They ended with dinner at the man's home.

The Aussie asked Lance about the radio he carried around with him, and Lance explained that it was what he listened to out in the field.  It had gotten wet and Lance was hoping to fix it while in town.  The man told him to leave it with him and he'd get it fixed and send it on to him.  Lance later received it, fully repaired, when he was back in Vietnam.

In Hong Kong, Lance was constantly accosted by people on the street wanting to sell him something.  Women hurled themselves out of bars telling him to come inside "for a great time."  The one thing he bought was a Banging Olsen stereo system.  At the time it was considered top of the line and Lance could get it at a cheap price, so he had it shipped to his parents back in the US.

When Lance returned, he was sent to rear guard duty away from the front line.  Now finished with patrols, he had returned to life in a bunker decorated with pine wood artillery boxes, bags, and metal pipes.  This time, knowing that he would be there for an extended period, Lance collected colorful sheets for the walls and made shelves to hold books and cassette tapes.  At Christmas he got a small tree that went up next to his bed.

His jobs included guard duty, building emplacements for the artillery, KP, burning waste from the latrines, filling sandbags, cleaning weapons, and laying new barbed wire and land mines.  The mines at the base were more involved than those on the field.  They involved burying a barrel of napalm over a claymore mine.  Detonating the claymore exploded the napalm which took out anyone who was near it.

One of his jobs involved guarding a garbage truck as it dumped its trash into a long trench.  The children from a nearby village, who were desperate for food, always came running when the garbage truck came.  Lance and the men he was working with pulled out anything that was edible and handed them out to the kids.

One of the soldiers he worked closely with was an ARVN private who spoke no English.  Lance spoke no Vietnamese, but they would often sit together, share photos with one another, and point things out that they saw.  They each taught one another a few words in their own language and learned what they could.

Once while he was pulling guard duty in a watchtower, the base was attacked with mortars and rockets.  One of the rockets hit the ammo dump, causing a mighty explosion.  The storage facility where the American rockets were held was also hit, causing many of their rockets to launch, hitting other parts of the base.

When one of the rockets flew at Lance's tower, he jumped out, sliding down the railing, away from the explosion.  He and others dove for cover until the explosions died down and the attackers were chased off.

It was the last time Lance saw action in country.  Soon after, he was flown back to the United States.  The plane landed in the middle of the night at an airport near Sacramento.  After everything he had been through, his return was far from a hero's welcome.  It felt more like they were sneaking him home as he was driven into San Francisco during the wee hours of the morning and put on a plane at San Francisco International.

The reason for the subterfuge was because protesters had been crowding the airports yelling at soldiers, calling them "baby killers" and even hurling things at them.  In a shameful display of their beliefs, these protesters treated each soldier as if they were the worst of the war criminals, and blamed men who were often drafted, or did what they saw as their duty, instead of the politicians who caused it.  The irony was that not only were their actions hurtful to those who had just returned from a harrowing ordeal, they were also useless.  Their time belittling soldiers could have been spent doing something productive toward ending the war, but instead they wasted it attacking better people than themselves.

And so the flights to take soldiers home were switched to night time when the protesters were too tired to show up.  (Their values seemed to dissipate when doing something was inconvenient for them.)  Lance was quietly placed on a plane back to Burbank where his parents met him, and took him home.

He spent much of his life after that working and traveling on trains, and photographing the places he saw.  Lance went to the VA for treatment from a mortar wound he had sustained, and for skin and muscle problems that stacked up.  He later developed Parkinson's disease, a common side effect of Agent Orange, and other ailments.  Treatment for these illnesses have been irregular, as the government continued to deny health problems associated with the powerful defoliant.  Even after the Agent Orange Act passed in 1991, granting veterans treatment for diseases consistent with exposure to the herbicide, measures were later taken to deny benefits to soldiers who had served across seas, the very place where the exposure was the greatest.

In 2018, after four decades of denial, a bill was at last on its way to passage that would recognize the connection of Agent Orange to health problems.  The VA opposed the measure until its secretary, David J. Shulkin, shifted course and called for the measure's passage.  But before it could be voted on by the Senate, Shulkin was removed from his position via Twitter by President Donald Trump.  He then appointed a secretary who wanted to fulfill Trump's desire to move the VA into the private sector.  Since claims of health issues from Agent Orange would cost a lot more money than it would profit, admission would cause problems for this transition, and so the measure has been dropped, and denial of claims from Agent Orange continues.

Lance settled down in an apartment he purchased in Los Angeles.  Nearby, he met a Vietnamese man who owned his own water bottle shop just around the corner.  In speaking with him, Lance learned that he had been a soldier in the North Vietnamese Army.  Lance didn't tell him he had fought on the other side, but he met him on several occasions, and genuinely liked him.

Lance always meant to talk to the man about the war, but he was afraid it would boil up too many emotions in both of them.  He never forgot his friend Peter Borse who had died over there, and he was sure the other man had lost friends, too.

Eventually, he built up the courage to go speak with him.  But when he walked around the corner, the business was closed, and Lance never got the opportunity to speak with someone who had once been his enemy in a land so far away that it no longer seemed real.