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A big unfunny joke

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Clear-eyed from the start, only two months into his tour (April, 1967) Juris wrote: “I was just reading about the peace protests in NY and on the coast. Quite a picture, that mob of people at the U.N. I don’t know what they proposed as a solution, but I dare venture to predict something will break before Nov. ’68 and the election. For all of Johnson’s platitudes and pronouncements on the subject, this thing is going nowhere. He’s either going to have to throw in the towel gracefully – step off and make some big concessions and make it look like something other than saving face — or else step aside for the next poor sap to try his hand at this mess over here. Lyndon can announce and denounce all he likes but that jungle doesn’t budge an inch for all the rhetoric, and these people know their terrain. We hold what we sit on and waltz around during the day but come sundown it’s all “his.” Sometimes they even pop up during the day. The locals recently held their umpteenth holiday rally (very pathetic affairs) and the VC joined it with their own banners and people just to let us know who is really running the show and just how close they can get. And about all we could do was to scare them all off with a few rounds through the Red banners. This whole war is one big unfunny joke.”

Lizards on the screen

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As a child, Juris loved Westerns. “All movies, truth be told. On Saturdays the local cinema showed three feature films and a continuing serial for the price of one ticket. We came out blind as bats after three feature films and the latest installment of a Flash Gordon serial.” Juris the movie lover was frustrated in Viet Nam, where most of the time movies were “an unsynchronized, stuttering mess. Can’t wait to go watch a flic in its entirety upon my return to the world, one with no breaks and shakes and lizards on the screen.” His movie wish list for his return to ‘the world’ included Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet,” “Blow Up,” a second viewing of “The Sleeping Car Murders,” and anything new from Bergman. (He was also looking forward to seeing “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” on stage.) In the meantime, he had to content himself with the odd assortment of films that made its way to his remote province: “They’re showing ‘Madame X’ again – that old Lana Turner tear jerker. It would be a fair bit of acting if only they would dispense with the dialogue. A great silent flic it would make. I caught most of it the other night in typical Phu Bon fashion: the first reel second, the second reel first. Didn’t affect the film in the least.”

Protein on the hoof

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Juris on the local fauna in Viet Nam, which he would refer to years later in “Red Flags” as “protein on the hoof”: “It’ll be a cold day in Long Bien before a bug ever scares me again with the specimens they have over here—mosquitoes, beetles, moths, carnivorous flies, bees, wasps, locusts. They’ve got bugs big enough to leash and keep as pets. Today a ‘grasshopper’ big enough to ride practically, at least eight inches long. One of the guys threw a hat on it hoping to trap it for a picture and the thing started walking away with the hat. If someone walked up and told me he had just seen a butterfly with teeth I would believe him. And I thought the beetles here were big. I could just about eat the damn things now, like the Montagnards. Small consolation: at least the VC have to contend with all the lovely monsters too.”

Levitating the Pentagon

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In November, 1967, Juris was reading about the October march on the Pentagon that would become famous in Mailer’s “Armies of the Night.” Among other things, how strange to think that only a few years later he would be crossing paths with Mailer and Ginsberg. “We’re just now getting magazines with accounts of that march on the Pentagon. Pretty impressive really but—hawks, doves—I’m afraid they are all for the birds as far as the kids over here are concerned.
“Good people these youngsters. Corny but true though I’d smash any patriotic stateside soul in the mouth who said it. Haven’t got much use for hawks, doves, or the Army.
“The only thing that really interested everyone was that group that wanted to levitate the Pentagon 300 feet off the ground. Everybody got a kick out of that one, especially the judge permitting them to raise it only ten feet and no more. Beautiful. I hope my boys don’t ever become similarly inclined. They’d do it. Three hundred feet and then some. The best demolition squad in the highlands. They call them the Humpty Dumptys—for obvious reasons.”

Resorting to the RM

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Juris was in the Signal Corps, his job to relay information about VC traffic on the part of the Ho Chi Minh trail that ran through Phu Bon province. By Viet Nam standards, Team 31 was a tiny operation, “but even our little ‘shot’ keeps us busy with regular radio-telephone-teletype communication. One van with the radio hookup and modulating equipment, another full of backup equipment, one secret secret little van shelter for the crypto teletype operation, and a cement floor, wooden “hootch” housing the switchboard, our living room, office, and bar. Small, but open for business round the clock as we are, keeps the seven of us hopping. Hate to think how many nights we’ve spent coddling this red-eyed monster. And if it’s not the radio, it’s the generator, and if … endless tale of woe.”
Managing the equipment, Juris quickly abandoned “by-the-book operation” for “bailing wire, Viet Nam methods”:
“The generators went off so I took a jeep to jump them. Turned out to be the major’s. I’m acquiring the reputation of an easygoing funny joker with a twinge of wild.
“Back to the wires and batteries and beeps. Beep crackle crackle to you too, you electronic slave driver. You have to talk rough to the damn thing or it won’t work right.
“Have enough static stored in my ears to last me a lifetime. I doubt if I’ll be able to tolerate anything more electrical than a light bulb for quite a while. We all started out patient and conscientious but now everybody resorts to the RM at the slightest indication of trouble. (That’s Rubber Mallet.) Very effective I might add. Really amazing what a few well placed whacks will do for this sophisticated half million dollars’ worth of gadgetry.”

Embarrassing enthusiasm

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Juris was completely devoid of machismo. Here he is at 24, writing about Viet Nam: “Nearly twelve months I’ve been here and the biggest, most protruding, obvious truth I yet discovered is that men are never such little boys as when they are playing war. Incredible all this bravado and banality. And I thought Hollywood war was bad. The worst John Wayne flic is a sober documentary compared to the show these people put on with such embarrassing enthusiasm.”

The ugly American

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Corruption in wartime is a theme that runs through both “Red Flags” and “Play the Red Queen.” Juris saw it all around him in Viet Nam, most pointedly in the way aid intended for the indigenous Montagnards was siphoned off along the way. “The Viets really take the poor, exploited Montagnards for everything, not that they have it to be taken. All the carelessly strewn US aid that they should be getting manages to pass no further than the higher up Viets. Much graft. I remember reading ‘Ugly American’ and believing it to be true but a little condensed and overdramatized. It isn’t. If anything it’s understated. The jokers over here literally hold the power of life or death. I think any GI in the backwoods could do a more hair-raising job of writing the ‘Ugly American’ than the touring professionals. Graft, corruption, murder, and pestilence. Elections that elect no one, rice that goes nowhere—what’s the use? And all with the full knowledge of the U.S. authorities. I’m only glad I’ve got my GI greens and my little pistol to keep me warm. And, believe me, we don’t pack weapons because of the VC. That’s the least of our headaches.”

Starch and polish

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Toward what he assumed would be the end of his Viet Nam tour, Juris was plagued by the decision of whether or not to extend: stay longer in Viet Nam but serve a shorter total hitch in the army, or return to a stateside post but owe the army more of his life. Ultimately, the decision would be made for him by the Tet Offensive, which extended his tour involuntarily. But in the meantime, he wondered whether he could stand ‘real’ military life back home. As he wrote, “The Army really wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so military and so much like an army.” For the anti-authoritarian Juri, stateside duty sounded like hell.
“Hopped back to Phu Bon and resumed polishing for the general. A cute guy as generals go. Friendly too, even shook hands with me, but then I guess he couldn’t do much else—our salutes are much too embarrassingly unmilitary. Hardly remember how. Thank god I got stuck in the boondocks. Not too much protocol around here. It’d be really rough to take all this junk otherwise. Bad enough being here without having to put up with the finer aspects of military life. I don’t know if I can get used to the States again. Rolling socks and boots and formations and starch and polish. Will not be easy. The big outposts and the Army are getting worse and worse. It’s getting to be like stateside, really. In Pleiku and Da Nang you’d think you were back in a major post in Washington, DC or something. You can hardly tell it’s a war zone: inspections, formal guard mounts. We don’t have any here. People just sling a rifle over their shoulder and walk around with soft caps on, a magazine in their weapon. Oh, the States. How are you going to take this stuff seriously after standing next to some light bird colonel in the morning and watching him shave his feeble face in his drawers?”

Border war

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Because he spent his days (and nights) monitoring radio traffic, Juris was well aware of the illegal war spilling out of Viet Nam into Laos and Cambodia: “The Charlies are going mad lately. Not much rhyme or reason to it. They’ll come off the border and work it like the Rio Grande in the old days: hit, and then run across the river, and we can’t go after them. Not that anyone knows where the border really is. And they do go after them, but very much on the sly. Not for publication: I’ve been on their radio a couple of nights, and you have ‘unidentified aircraft’ crossing the border, maybe eight ships at a time. They pick them up on radar. They’ll challenge them over the radio freqs, and you don’t hear anything coming back. So they’ll put up a FAC or something to intercept them, threaten to fire on them. Then you’ll hear the Americans saying ‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!’ Oh, crazy war.”

Fair elections?

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“All quiet in the province,” Juris wrote in late summer 1967. “Too quiet.” Viet Nam was tense because of the elections scheduled for the end of August, when VC harassment was expected everywhere. As a warning, the country was covered with “gory posters of all sorts of atrocities.” The runup to the election had been “quite a surprise. No one apparently expected the civilian candidates to advocate peace negotiations as strongly as they have. It looks like Johnson isn’t the only one losing supporters. The hawks seem to be flying the coop all over. Pretty soon the only fowl left on Capitol Hill will be Lady Bird.”
Given our own fears about election tampering, it’s fascinating to read about the way elections ran in Viet Nam that year. “Thieu and Ky took about 48% of the vote, and did as well in the rest of the country too, I imagine. Little wonder—they were the only ones who could mount any sort of campaign, controlling the government agencies and communications as they do. Somewhat lopsided but at least here a ‘fair,’ untampered election. You never know, though. The Army holds the ballots for safekeeping and could have done anything it liked with them before sending them on to be tallied. And of course government representation did the actual counting so you can’t really be too sure. Still a long cry from the days when they would use candidate symbols on a ballot, except for the government’s choice, and then tell the Montagnards and Viets to choose from them. If you were an illiterate, unsuspecting Montagnard, who would you vote for to run the government—a donkey, an elephant, a flower, or some smiling guy in a uniform?”