That Isn’t The Way It Was

I have been an admirer of Ken Follett’s novels for years. I believe that he is one of the very best novelists of the late Twentieth and early Twenty-First Centuries. Beginning with his first big hit, The Eye of the Needle, I have awaited each of his books with anticipation and enjoyed them all. His recent project has been a three-volume saga covering the Twentieth Century through the eyes of several families in a variety of countries. Follett has shown a firm grasp of history in all of his works. I began reading his third Twentieth Century volume, Edge of Eternity, expecting the reading pleasure I had experienced in all of his earlier works, and I was not disappointed until about two-thirds through the book when I came to the section on the Vietnam War.

I know something about the Vietnam War. I served “in country” as operations officer of a Seabee battalion for a total of seventeen months. I was there during the 1968 Tet Offensive and its aftermath. I worked closely with the paratroopers of the 101^st Airborne Division, the famous “Screaming Eagles” for a good part of my last tour. What I write about them is based on my personal experiences and observations. Most of the characters in my Vietnam Seabee book, Asphalt and Blood, are based on real people.

As I read the section on Vietnam in Edge of Eternity, I felt like salt was being rubbed into raw wounds on my body. Those of us who served in that war were not welcomed home as honorable men who had done their duty to their country. We were vilified as “baby killers” and war criminals at New Left rallies, in some of the press, and in a number of Hollywood Movies. It took us decades to convince most of our nation that any problems with Vietnam were, in the words of current Secretary of State John Kerry, “with the war, not the warriors.” Ken Follett’s Vietnam War sequence undermines all our hard work.

Follett’s story portrays the “experiences” of a British journalist who was drafted into the Army. The story has his platoon of the 101^st Airborne Division occupying a mostly deserted South Vietnamese village. Upon entering the town, one of the soldiers beats an unarmed Buddhist monk to death to stop him from playing a religious drum. When a Vietnamese man, his wife, and young daughter are found hiding, the soldiers first beat the man and woman to try to get them to tell where Vietcong are hiding. When they plead ignorance, he orders his soldiers to gang rape the daughter in front of her parents. They end up killing all three. The writing creates the distinct impression that such actions were common conduct by U.S. troops throughout the war and that “everybody did it.” Follett is a masterful writer, and at the end of this sequence, I would have been enraged if it were not for my personal experiences. The sequence is great fiction. It is horrible Vietnam War history.

I am not saying that incidences such as Follett portrayed did not happen during the war.  No one can deny the crimes of My Lai. I am challenging the assertion such actions were common among U.S. troops, especially the “Screaming Eagles.” The officers and men with whom I worked for months in the Hue/Phu Bai area were professional and principled warriors, not war criminals.  Even if Follett actually interviewed soldiers who had committed such actions before writing his book, it is wrong to attribute them to the whole U.S. Expeditionary Force.

An underlying assumption in Follett’s book appears to be that war inevitably turns men into unprincipled beasts. This is an especially damaging doctrine at a time when the U.S. is reintegrating thousands of veterans of the Middle East wars back into society. Fortunately, these men are currently being welcomed home as the heroes they are. Those of us who returned from Vietnam were shunned, insulted, and even spat upon. Seldom did we see any appreciation for the sacrifices we had made for our country. We were further vilified by a string of anti-war movies from Hollywood that perpetuated the impression that we all became unprincipled barbarians.  But the truth is, that just isn’t the way it was!

Thousands of Vietnam Veterans were mentally crippled by their horrid experiences in the war. Few received any sympathy from the public at large. They came to believe that the general public thought they were just getting their just rewards. To deal with their mental horrors, many turned to drugs, became homeless, and died alone in their misery. As I said earlier, it has taken us years to get recognition that Vietnam Veterans were generally patriots who just did what our country asked of us. I’m disappointed that one of my favorite authors doesn’t seem to agree.

Are We Incrementally Giving Up Our Right to Free Speech?

 
Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

The Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; (my italics) or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Court decisions have extended this prohibition to all levels of government.

One might think that, with these two bulwarks of human rights so clear on the matter, freedom of speech is an unassailable concept. Instead, freedom of speech is under attack throughout the world, especially on U.S. college campuses.

Nowhere in either the Declaration of Human Rights or the Constitution is there any mention of a freedom from being offended. Freedom from offense is a “right” of recent manufacture. It derives from the recovery movement of the last century. This movement promoted the idea that we are all victims of abuse of some kind. People were encouraged to view the world through the eyes of a victim. They preached that all humans are fragile and easily damaged by any speech they deemed hurtful. Censorship was postulated as a moral necessity.

In the February 22, 2015 issue of the Washington Post, writer Wendy Kaminer criticizes university administrations for adopting the recovery philosophy in their cultures. They sought to protect minority groups on campus from being exposed to speech they considered racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise discriminatory. Kaminer wrote that, “Popular therapeutic culture defined verbal ‘assaults’ and other forms of discrimination by subjective, emotional responses of self-proclaimed victims.” She further points out that, “The tendency to take subjective allegations of victimization at face value—instrumental in contemporary censorship campaigns—also leads to a presumption of guilt and disregard to due process.” She concludes, “This is a dangerously misguided approach to justice…Instead of advancing equality, it’s teaching future generations of leaders the ‘virtues’ of autocracy.”

Unfortunately, the media world seems to be collaborating in this assault on free speech. When gunmen attacked a recent cartoon contest in Texas because the subject was images of the Prophet Mohammed, one of the frequently asked questions by reporters was, “Should such a contest have been allowed to take place?” Where was the outrage at the attempted massacre?

I wrote in a previous blog post about my belief that “political correctness” is a totalitarian concept beloved by absolute dictators like Stalin, Hitler, and the Kim Dynasty of North Korea. Criminalizing an individual’s thoughts, no matter how much we may disagree with them, is anathema to a free society. What happened to the “marketplace of ideas” that educators and politicians of both parties used to praise? Who gave progressives or conservatives the authority to decide what the rest of us may think and say? It is time they realized that millions of Americans believe that “political correctness” is being taken to the absurd.

In the April 29, 2014 issue of The Washington Post, columnist Kathleen Parker decried the death of straightforward speech in an article entitled, “When sensitivity triumphs over truth.”  Her unifying theme is that, “We are slowly becoming a nation that pays greater heed to sensitivity than truth, and that prefers the comfort of committee-crafted thoughts that neither offend nor enlighten.”

I, for one, refuse to see the world through the eyes of a victim. I admire straightforward communication. I hate racism, despise any form of government that oppresses individual initiative, and have been called a feminist because of my views on full equality for women. Based on my study of science, I believe that sexual orientation and gender identification are hard-wired into the brain, and governments should let the subject alone. But I’ll be damned if I’ll cede to any other human the right to tell me what to think or say. I’ll leave that to God.

The accompanying cartoon from the Miami Herald, which was reprinted in The Washington Post, inspired this blog post.

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Warren Bell is an author of historical fiction.  He spent 29 years as a US Naval Officer, and has traveled to most of the places in the world that he writes about.  A long-time World War II-buff, his first two novels, Fall Eagle One and Hold Back the Sun are set during World War II.  His third novel, Asphalt and Blood, follows the US Navy Seabees in Vietnam.  His most recent novel, Snowflakes in July, is a Pentagon thriller about domestic terrorism.  He is currently working on a new novel, Endure The Cruel Sun, the sequel to his best-selling novel, Hold Back the Sun. For more about Warren Bell, visit his website at: wbellauthor.com or see him on twitter @wbellauthor.

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Illegitimis non Carborundum

Loosely translated, the title Latin phrase means, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” It is one of the many mottos of the U.S. Navy’s legendary Seabees. “Can do!” is the most common Seabee motto because of their ability to always get the job done quickly. Another is, “We have done so much for so long with so little that now we can do anything with nothing.”

In the long history of the Navy, Seabees are of fairly new origin. In late December 1941, Rear Admiral Ben Moreell, Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, was gravely concerned about the loss of life among civilian construction workers on the Pacific islands that the Japanese had conquered. Realizing that a uniformed Naval Construction Force would be required for the island-hopping campaigns that lay ahead, Moreell proposed the formation of Naval Construction Battalions made up of skilled construction workers. The concept was approved early in 1942. Part of the approval was the authority to grant naval rank based on years of experience in the construction industry.  The initials C.B. spawned the nickname, “Seabees.”

Admiral Moreell approached the Construction Trades Council of the labor unions for help in recruiting construction experts. As a quid pro quo, the admiral promised that Seabees would never be used in the continental U.S. in competition with the civilian construction industry. Thousands of skilled construction men were soon flooding recruiting offices. Many were the men who had built the prodigious public works of the New Deal era.

After a short boot camp in Virginia, the new Seabees were sent to Davisville, Rhode Island, or Port Hueneme, California, and formed into battalions officered by members of the Navy Civil Engineer Corps. One of the Davisville Seabees designed the iconic fighting bee emblem for which the units became famous. Construction battalions were soon deploying to the far-flung battlefronts.

Seabees went ashore at Guadalcanal a couple of weeks after the Marines first landed. They finished the new airfield (Henderson Field) begun by Marine engineers and started building the piers, housing, roads and other facilities necessary to a modern fighting force. With the Japanese Navy bombing and shelling the airfield on a regular basis, Seabees camped in bunkers alongside the runway. As soon as the “all clear” was sounded, they rushed out with their equipment and pre-positioned materials and filled in the holes and installed new steel plank pavement. The Marines were full of praise for how the Seabees kept Henderson Field operating in those crucial months of 1942.

The teenaged Marines were also astounded by how old some Seabees looked. The official average age of the World War II Seabee was 37.  The actual average was much higher. Men in their sixties lied about their age in order to serve. The young Marines developed the saying, “Never hit a Seabee. He may be some Marine’s father!” The Seabees adopted the Marine slogan, “Once a Marine, always a Marine,” into “Once a Seabee, always a Seabee.”  There are no such things as “former Marines” or “former Seabees.”

Over 325,000 Seabees served in World War II.  Besides constructing sprawling based and airfields throughout the Pacific, the Seabees also built and fought on six continents. The amphibious landings at Sicily and Normandy would have been impossible without the Seabees and their pontoon causeways and Rhino ferries. A Marine on Iwo Jima paid the Seabees perhaps the ultimate compliment when he posted the following poem on a roadside sign:

            And when we reach the isles of Japan

            With our hats at a jaunty tilt,

            We’ll enter the city of Tokyo

            On roads that the Seabees built!

Seabees have played pivotal roles in all of America’s conflicts since WWII.  Seabee- placed pontoon causeways allowed the Marines to cross the seawall at Inchon in Korea, reversing the course of the war. Twenty-two active duty and reserve Seabee battalions built the critical ports, bases, roads, and airfields the U.S. forces used in Vietnam. Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the military operations in Afghanistan would not have been possible without widespread Seabee support.

Last month, I spent a weekend at a reunion of Seabees from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Forty. I was Operations Officer of this battalion in 1968 and 1969. My experiences there formed the basis of my Vietnam War novel, Asphalt and Blood. We old Seabees swapped sea stories and generally enjoyed each other’s company.  We also dedicated an NMCB 40 plaque at the Navy Memorial and visited the Vietnam Wall and Korean War Memorial. Although few of us retained the slender bodies of our youth, we still have Seabee fire in our bellies. All retain a fierce espirit de corps and pride in being a Seabee. I felt honored to be in the presence of these valiant Americans and their families.

Thanksgiving in the 1940s

In my childhood, Thanksgiving was truly a family affair. I grew up in a large extended family whose spiritual anchor was my Grandmother Tatum.  A physically small woman, to us Edna Tatum was an awesome presence. She raised five daughters (Brenda, Olive, Evelyn, Lorene, and Sadie) essentially alone on an isolated farm outside El Dorado in South Central Arkansas. Her husband, Miller, worked for the railroad and was away from home five days a week.  This left Grandma to run everything, including supervising and feeding the hired hands who worked the farm. Miller didn’t move his family into town because El Dorado was a rough oil boom-town in those days. He felt his daughters were far safer out in the country.

After Miller’s death, Grandma sold the farm to Aunt Evelyn and her husband, Earl Molsbee, with the condition that she would always have a home there. So on Thanksgiving, the whole family less Lorene, who lived in far-away Batesville, gathered at “Aunt Evelyn’s.”

Ours was a strictly a blue-collar family. My Dad, Jewell Bell, worked as a planing mill foreman in a lumber plant. Besides running the farm, Uncle Earl worked in the oil fields. Leonard Goodnight (Brenda’s husband) worked at the local oil refinery. Ross Martin (Sadie’s spouse) served as a policeman. These men, all survivors of the Great Depression, were grateful to have jobs that let them put roofs over their families’ heads and food on the table. To them, Thanksgiving was not just a holiday. It was a celebration of the blessings they had enjoyed during the year.

In those days before television, the men usually sat around the wood stove in the living room and enjoyed each others conversation. The hardest thing for the children was waiting for the meal. I was one of four sons who were always called, “the boys.” Gerald Goodnight was a few months older than my brother, Tom. Johnny Molsbee was a year younger. I was “tail-end-Charlie.” The one granddaughter, Darlene Molsbee, was about a year younger than me. She usually hung out with the women and helped with the meal. If weather allowed, the boys were banished to the outdoors. There was always lots to do and look at around the farm. I usually just trailed behind the big boys and tried to do whatever they did.

My mother and her sisters prepared dinner as a communal activity. Aunt Evelyn usually furnished the main dish, and the others brought their contributions, some already prepared, some to be finished just before eating. The menu was about the same each year. Turkeys were a luxury in those years just after World War II.  Instead, the sisters baked or boiled chickens ahead of time. Making large pans of cornbread dressing with the broth, they would tear up the chickens into bite-sized pieces and embed them atop the breading, then bake the whole thing in the oven.  Sometimes, we would have fresh pork roast and dressing as well. Cream gravy with the cooked chicken “giblets” chopped up in it went along with these dishes.

The rest of the menu was pretty traditional: mashed potatoes, home-canned Kentucky Wonder beans, candied sweet potatoes, fruit salad made by augmenting canned fruit cocktail with apples, oranges, and bananas, and jellied cranberry sauce. Desserts were all sorts of pies and cakes. My mother usually took a cake, since my dad preferred them to pies (except chocolate).  My favorite was always the mincemeat pie. All this bounty would be spread on the big table in Evelyn’s dining room.

We always had a big turnout. Besides the sisters’ husbands, several other relatives usually came. One constant was Grandma’s younger brother, Johnny Ford. His son, Wilmot, frequently came also. Uncle Johnny, a widower who raised his son alone from infancy, was considered saintly in our family.  He always offered the blessing before the meal. A Methodist, he never failed to enumerate the good things that had occurred in the previous year. Sometimes, this made the children impatient.

The dining room and table were too small to accommodate everything at once. As was customary in those days, the men ate first. According to how many were present, we children sometimes got to eat with the men. If there were too many, we were relegated to the “children’s table” in the kitchen. Either way, the women didn’t eat until everyone else was through. If they resented it, they never let on. I suppose they just took it as a matter of course. Things would change in later years.

The way we lived in the 1940s would probably be considered “poverty” by most of today’s young people, my grandchildren included. We had no computers, no television, not even electricity.  Batteries powered our radios and listening time had to be rationed. Our homes were heated by wood stoves and lighted by kerosene lamps. Only those who lived in cities had running water and indoor plumbing. But that was how almost all people who lived in the country existed in those days. We did not consider ourselves poor.  We were thankful for dry beds and full stomachs and loving families to care for us. Physical things didn’t seem to matter so much. The world has changed a great deal since the 1940s. Some of it is actually progress.

Are We Really Listening?

My wife, Annette, and I have an excellent financial consultant named Ric Edelman who manages some of our assets for us.  Every month, Ric puts out a little paper called Inside Personal Finance (IPF). The newsletter is chock full of tidbits on financial management and investments. To lighten the overall tenor of the document, Ric’s wife, Jean, also puts in her own column called, The Other Side of Money. After pouring over the November copy of IPF, Annette pointed out Jean’s column and said, “You’ve got to read this!”

Jean’s column was entitled, “You Are Not Listening to Me.” Jean enumerated a number of reasons many people are not good listeners. Here are a few of the mistakes she lists:

• Instead of listening, we are thinking about what we want to say next.
• We listen just long enough to decide whether what is being said conforms to their own view.
• We don’t let the other person finish. Instead, we begin to spout out solutions before the problem has been fully identified.
• We filter and judge based on pre-existing assumptions, expectations, and intentions. 

After reading Jean’s column, I had to admit guilt on all four counts. I’m especially prone to commit number 3, but I commit the others as well. Fortunately, Jean offers suggestions on how to improve conversations.

• Limit our talking in the conversation.
• Stop assuming we know what the other person will say.
• Turn off all electronics so we‘re not distracted.
• Take notes to help us stay focused on the conversation.
• Paraphrase what we think was said and ask whether we are hearing correctly.
• Ask clarifying questions.
• Notice facial expressions and body language—those are part of the conversations too. 

This is really good advice. I might paraphrase Jean’s recommendations by saying, “Forget about yourself and PAY ATTENTION to the other members of the conversation.  To be a good listener requires concentration on other people. You cannot stop your brain from continuously analyzing what others are saying, but you must resist the urge to blurt out your incomplete results.

Many people are fond of complaining about the status of the world today.  I believe that a big part of the problem is that we are not really listening to one another.

Forgiving the Unforgivable

Last week, my wife and I watched the movie, Philomena, for the first time. Based on a true story, the film tells about an Irish woman’s  years-long search for the illegitimate son who was taken from her as a baby and sold for adoption by a Catholic nunnery. Near the end of the movie, Philomena and the journalist who had been helping her confront the old nun primarily responsible for keeping the mother and son apart. Astonishingly, Philomena turns to the nun and says, “I want you to know, Sister, that I forgive you.” The journalist, who is focused on retribution, is stunned. How can such forgiveness be possible?

While doing research on my second novel, Hold Back the Sun, and the sequel I have just begun, I studied several books that detailed the suffering of Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and interned civilians during the Pacific war. These prisoners were beaten, worked like slaves, and systematically starved during their entire captivity. Some women were forced to become sex slaves for the Japanese Army. The POW Research Network Japan reported that some 27 percent of military prisoners died in captivity. Crew members of ships taking former Dutch internees from Indonesia to Holland reported that after meals, the women viewed food as so precious that they would sweep the crumbs off the dining tables and save them for eating later.

This week, Anna Fifield had an article in the Washington Post about a visit to Japan by several 90-something-year-old former POWs. After detailing the horrors the men experienced, Fifield states that, “What was striking about the three former POWs was not just how little resentment they harbored but how happy they seemed for Japan.” She quotes one as saying, “I get a kick out of seeing how well this nation is doing.”

One of my research sources is the book, Evidence Not Seen by Darlene Deibler Rose. The wartime memoir of an American missionary interned for years in a camp on Makassar, Rose relates the horrors endured by the women, but goes on to tell of how she was concerned with changing the hearts of her captors. Forgiveness was at the core of her beliefs.  In my research, I encountered other references to former prisoners forgiving their previous tormentors.

How can people find it within themselves to forgive the unforgivable? I believe that both Philomena and Darlene Deibler Rose found their forgiveness in their religion. Both were dedicated Christians. For the old soldiers, the reasons are less clear.  Forgiving one’s enemies, however, isn’t just a Christian concept. Confucius is quoted as advising, “He who refuses to forgive burns the bridges over which he, too, must cross.” The Buddha wrote that “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

Many in today’s world might consider the forgiving people above to be insane. For decades, the mantra of many has been, “Don’t get mad, get even.” Payback has become a prized concept. Hate, revenge and retribution seem to be the order of the day. I find that I can no longer subscribe to such notions. Novelist Jack Higgins frequently quoted the old proverb, “Before departing on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves.” The second grave, of course, was for the avenger. There is wisdom in those words. Hate corrodes the human spirit. I do not have enough time left in my life to waste any on hatred. To paraphrase Gandhi, “If everyone practiced ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ the world would be filled with toothless blind people.”

Use It or Lose It

When a younger performer suggested that country music legend George Jones and other older singers should step aside and leave the scene to the next generation, Jones responded with a new popular song called, I Don’t Need No Rocking Chair!” The song is a vigorous defense of the contributions that older people still have to make to society. I have subscribed whole heartedly to this position since I adopted Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses as my philosophy as a teenager. Tennyson has the ancient Greek hero speak these words to the surviving crew who shared his twenty-year voyage home from Troy:

My mariners,

Souls’ that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and oppos’d

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;

Death closes all; but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

… Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Mov’d earth and heaven, that which we are, we are: One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. I don’t believe that, when looking at me, most people see an Indie author of three novels that have won awards and appeared on bestseller lists.  Yet, although I am in my 79th year, except for some creakiness when I get up in the morning, I don’t feel like an old person.  This didn’t just happen by chance. Before I began publishing Indie novels at 75, I was beginning to slow down. Even as this was happening, I realized that much of it was my own fault. There is an old adage about aging that says, “use it or lose it.” I was not using either my body or my brain enough. Armed with exercise sheets provided by my doctor, I was able to minimize the aches and pains that were invading my body by regular exercise. Reactivating my brain required that my mental faculties be worked just as rigorously. Entering the Indie author arena came rather naturally to me. I had aspired to be a novelist all my life. Several manuscripts that I had started over the years were still in my computer. The eBook revolution taking place in book publishing provided opportunity. The Internet makes research infinitely easier that in my earlier years. But preparing and publishing eBooks is hard work that demands meticulous attention. Completely focusing the mind is required. But the more I wrote, the sharper my mind seemed to become. I enjoy life much more now than I did in my mid-70s.  My current role model is the South African novelist, Wilbur Smith. The author of scores of highly successful novels, Smith has done some of his best writing in his 70s and 80s, including #1 Bestsellers. At 81, he has just published the latest in his series dealing with ancient Egypt, Desert God. The book became an instant bestseller in Great Britain when published there. Look for it on the New York Times Bestseller List in the next few months. I have written before that if you want to understand Africa, read Wilbur Smith’s novels. I follow him on Facebook, and I am amazed to read his posts about salmon fishing in Norway and exhaustive book signing tours in Great Britain. He keeps both his body and his mind continuously active. I know that I will never be anywhere near as good a writer as Wilbur Smith. But I can aspire to emulate his active lifestyle. Like him, I hope to continue writing as long as I am physically able. I don’t enjoy feel like an old man.