In Vietnam Juris had a pet civet called Lovey that climbed like a monkey and traveled on his shoulder. Unfortunately, civets were considered food by the Montagnard guards and one day Lovey disappeared. Juri was philosophical about it: “We had a captain we didn’t like. They ate his parrot too, so I forgave them.”
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.”
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.”
“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?”
