A Letter—Never

Answered—to
Mr. Owen A. Lock
of
Random House
1 July 1999

Mr. Owen A. Lock

The Ballantine Publishing Group
A Division of Random House, Inc.
201 East 50th Street
NEW YORK NY 10022
United States

I hope you are well, Owen? Are you?

I got your 4 May 1999 jotting down—and the book that went along
with it—on 15 May 1999.

I wish to repeat that little flash for the benefit of those who will read
this my snappy comeback to you: “As I do not see any market for
poetry about the Vietnam War, I do not see how I could publish such a
book. Thank you for thinking of me. Good luck elsewhere.”

I was not thinking of you, Owen! I was thinking of my book!

Be that as it may, I find it irksome to believe that there is no appeal

(for the Truth?) for a poetry book (see my A Book of Vietnam “War”
Poetry manuscript) about the Vietnam “War” when, in fact, a total of
8,744,000 individuals did duty in Vietnam from 4 August 1964 to 27
January 1973! I suppose not all of them are constantly glued to their
TV screens, are time and time again bug-eyed before their computer
videos, or are always oiling their pistols, shotguns, automatic
weapons, rifles, machine guns, bayonets, hunting knives, stilettos,
brass knuckles…. Have I forgot anything that can kill?

What I am convinced about is this: My poetry does not copycat the

official, evangelistic bent of Six Silent Men which you passed my way
with your rejection slip, presumably to put across that “underlying
meaning” you did not have the pluck or warm-heartedness to
elucidate upon in your fleeting billet-doux. That really is a shame,
Owen. But is it not “shame” the best word to describe all that has
come to be thought of together with the Vietnam “War?” I think so.

I did not read all of Six Silent Men because what little I did was so
disgustingly pompous and doctrinaire, I knew at once there was no
sense losing more time reading it. Let me quote from the back cover
for my many devotees: “Author Reynel Martinez, himself a 101st
(Airborne Division) LRRP Detachment veteran, takes us into the lives
and battles of the extraordinary men for whom the brotherhood of
war was and is an ever-present reality: the courage, the sacrifice, the
sense of loss when one of your own dies. In the hills, valleys, and
triple-canopy jungles, the ambushes, firefights, and copter crashes,
LRRPs were among the best and bravest to fight in Vietnam.”

Then: “’Lurps’ served God and country in Vietnam.” Very touching.

And what would The Supreme Being have to say about the millions of
Vietnamese civilians carpet-bombed to death Henry Kissingerly by
high-flying B-52s?

You do not have to be a psychoanalyst or even a clinical psychologist

to opine that many of these “brave warriors” were drunken
psychopaths, seriously disturbed individuals, and that some of them
had suicidal tendencies. (Lucky us?) There was even a sprinkling of
the criminal element there. (“Private, how did you find your way to
Vietnam? Well, lieutenant, the judge asked me: ‘Do you want to go
to jail or to Vietnam?’”)

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I did read one entire part from the book: “Sgt. Victor Cisneros
Asskicks in a Kontum Bar,” pps. 91-97. (From whom did you get that
title? John Wayne? Please change “Asskicks” to “Murders,” Owen. In
that way we will be—at least—verbally principled.) I waded through
that portion because I also had been in Kontum in the autumn of
1967, and I had a yen for what author Martinez had to say about it.
Sergeant Cisneros’s butchery of three Army of the Republic of
Southvietnam soldiers and one Vietnamese “prostitute” (woman?) in
a bar, epitomizes that which was, often, Standard Operating
Procedure in Vietnam. No unit was without its fiendishness. The time
and time again arrogant and violent gait of the United States’ military
“occupational forces” in Vietnam, frequently dealt with Vietnamese
nationals wielding a high-handed, barbarous methodology. The spirit
of these olive-drabs-with-a-license-to-kill was not one that
distinguished them in any salubrious fashion. Rather, their animating
principle was dangerous, mettlesome, intimidating. They recurrently
abused and cross-questioned that unprecedented mandate which had
plopped them into a foreign land to defend innocent souls against the
all-intrusive threat of the “evil,” unknown-to-them Marxism. They
disgraced themselves and their nation.

Owen, I am certain you would not want your daughter to marry a

“Lurp”. You would be as crazy as they—if you did. “Lurps” spewed
from the “lower classes.” Uneducated. Gruff. Filled with hate for
authority. They were not the sons of CEOs, CFOs, politicians, editors
of National Review, munitions manufacturers, State Department
simpletons, Hollywood producers, book publishing magnates, et
cetera. Not corporate mettle—such as yourself. (Sometimes,
Afroamericans constituted 50% of the units I served with on the
“battlefield.” A The New York Times statistic: 14.5% of Vietnam
veterans did duty on the “battlefield;” 85.5% of them were useful in
base camps—where most of them did not even carry a weapon—
thank goodness!)

Six Silent Men glorifies rare birds who, having been brainwashed into
believing they could cross, at will, that fine line dividing sane actions
and mindless bloodlust, went about their way promiscuously. The
book’s bent is outrageously misleading, and it does no justice to those
of us who, with heads bent down, came back from Vietnam with clear
consciences and the knack to sleep soundly at night in peace and
quiet. The tome distorts both reality and yesteryear, and it kowtows
to a larger duping of the United States’ citizenry which, sanctioned by
the United States’ Department of State, used pretentiously selected
or falsified information—both at home and abroad—to lie its way
through to its truth. (See Diplomatic History, Vol. 21, No. 4 [Fall,
1997], “Clearer than Truth: Public Affairs Television and the State
Department’s Domestic Information Campaigns, 1947-1952,” pps.

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545-567. Blackwell Publishers, Boston, Massachusetts & Oxford,
United Kingdom.) How could you have been so obtuse, Owen?

I prefer, now, to help you instead of letting you pickle in the juices of
your doltishness. How? Sit back and listen to me, please. I want to
give you three random inklings which I doubt not will help you to
loosen up on your hard line hug around the Vietnam “War,” thus
enabling you to think free-wheelingly and, maybe, come to a better
understanding of what went on there while we were there. These are
not often-heard-of tidbits, but I am sure they will lend a hand in
melting you down—so energizing you to be high-minded about
Vietnam:
1. In the Fourth Division, Pleiku, all of us were obliged to read
—and sign that we did—the Geneva Convention. Further,
we all were made to pore over—and sign again—
mimeographed sheets expounding extensively on the
frame of mind we, occupational forces, were to assume
when confronting indigenous personnel (sic) and, in
particular, Montagnard villagers who were, more
frequently than not, referred to disparagingly as “Yards”
for all the time I served in Vietnam. (Not “Nam,” Owen!)
The explicitness of these directions was so intense, I
remain impressed with them even to this day. Let me give
you one, as an example: On the paths leading into a
Montagnard village one might chance upon different
systems of rock formations or pilings of them. These
denoted a death in the family, or a sickness in it, or a
marriage, et alia. We were uncannily ordained to respect
and abide by the wishes of these humble natives. (Cover
Your Ass?) “Asskicking,” Owen, was stringently
precluded!
2. Both Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre expended
countless hours protesting against the Vietnam “War.” In
fact, they listed, documented war crimes committed by
United States’ forces in Vietnam, and their records are
substantiating factualities that negate the rose-colored
interpretations regurgitated by your “Lurps”. Remember
that Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre have earned
such a lofty philosophic reputation, they belong to that
sphere of thinkers which is distinguished in the annals of
worldly, philosophical history. And, it is not once that I
have heard that they are probably the two greatest
thinkers of this century which now, disgracefully, comes to
its close, Owen. Read what they have written about
Vietnam. Wind and weather permitting, you will find your
“Lurps” in their indictments.

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 3. I want to tell you why Vietnam veterans are so pissed off.
As reported on CNN (check it out!), two-thirds of United
States’ casualties in Vietnam received their wounds or
deaths in mine-related accidents. Well, 90% of the
ordnances—goes the report—were captured United States’
rounds! As a “redleg” in the Fourth Division and the
Americal Division, I remember when coming to a new unit
always asking: “What’s the dud rate here?” That is, what
percentage of our own shells—produced in the United
States by flag-waving American “patriots”—would not
blow. Often, the disgruntled rejoinder was a as-high-as
40%. Of course, defective artillery high explosives were
not the only things wanting in Vietnam. Red, white and
bluish in the face United States’ businessmen, opting to
overturn the nineteen-sixty-twoish world recession, sent
us other military junk that did not function. Now can you
understand, Owen, why you did not see the sons of the
editors of National Review in Vietnam?

* * *

I have my own LRRP (Long Range Reconaissance Patrol) story for you.
But before I narrate it for you, you must promise me you will read it in
the presence of a psychiatrist and two psychiatric orderlies holding
ready a straitjacket for you in case you come upon the idea to jump
out of your corner office on East 50th Street. I do not want your heirs
blaming me for your Final Action. (Americans are always suing the
shit out of themselves!) This story—sad as it is—will be very rough-
going for you, Owen, if you believe all that bullshit shoveled in Six
Silent Men. FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT: When I was studying (1973-
1975) at the University of Florida in Gainesville, the only job I could
find—at that time and place—was selling whisky and wine (FULTON
DISTRIBUTING COMPANY, Jacksonville) in the northcentral confines of
Florida—one of the most beautiful places on Earth but very hot and
muggy in summer. (No wonder GATORADE was thought up there!)
On my “runs” through my territory, I came upon in the pines a small,
run-down bar with a drive-in window not very far from the city limits
of the horse-breeding Ocala. In it, I found my friend John who—you
guessed it, Owen!—served as a L.R.R.P. in Vietnam. I was a bit older
than he was, he having served later on in the “war” when I had been
already home shaking off the vigors of that experience. There is a
certain “shining” when you meet someone who has shared a poignant
ordeal resembling yours, and when we both slipped into the jargon we
two together knew from use in the fields and rice paddies of Vietnam,
there gushed out stories and memories that were, in a sense, uplifting

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and therapeutic for both of us. Whatever we had gone through in
Southeast Asia, John and I were still alive, and the two of us did not
possess any physical damage that many of our confreres were wont
to have. On this, we had reason to celebrate. John was very much
“screwed up” mentally, however. Towards the Afroamerican people
who stopped by to buy half-pints of SMIRNOFF VODKA and little cans
of BLUEBIRD grapefruit juice, he held a great resentment and—like
many others in the northcentral part of Florida—he was hostilely
prejudiced and his rancor against Afroamerican people often went
back to Vietnam where, John said, they there were often cowards and
not valiant soldiers. One day, he turned his back to me and showed
me the .45 pistol tucked into his belt. Then he pulled out, from under
the counter, a sawed-off shotgun. He swore he would use these
articles if any of those “nigger bastards” tried to rob him. As many
paranoid personalities are expected to act, John divined that the
Afroamerican people were out to get him for one reason or another. I
sold John cases of liebfraumilch which he told me he was drinking at
the rate of three bottles a day. Slowly but surely, John’s ugly story
was onion-peeling bit by bit in front of me. Weeks passed by. John, as
it turned out, was a mental out-patient. He let it be known to me that
he had “to go in”—every once in a while. His urge to kill was so
compelling, he went out of state and sat up high on the pylons
supporting high intensity wires looking for animals to shoot with his
rifle collection. John lived in a house trailer, and his neighbors were
always calling the sheriff to complain of his raucous, drunken binges
during which he would “shoot it up” in the trailers’ park. He had a
problem with authority. When he was a LRRP, he was sent on long
recon missions deep into enemy territory, and it was his habit—
refusing to do what he had been ordered by upper division brass—to
bring back a newspaper or a highway distance indicator to show that
he had gone on and beyond where he had been directed to go. As
many of his fellow LRRPs were quick to tell you, John, too, was
invested with an excessively high opinion of himself, and he thought
he was better than the ordinary troops, including Marines. In many
ways he was. John liked to rebel. Once, after a general had chewed
him out, he went back to the recreational room of his unit, and when
he saw a high-ranking officer on the Armed Forces Television station,
he took out his pistol and shot the television to death. John’s friends
would take him to other rec rooms and bars throughout the division
base camp to see him “replay” his “slayings of colonels and
generals.” John had become famous standing up to those who had
rank on him. (I saw many other violent individuals like John in base
camp when I served in the Central Highlands. So many so, the
commanding general of the Fourth Division in Pleiku had to order all
arms locked up to stem the many shooting incidents among all the
drunken defenders of democracy. Imagine, Owen, if the Mayor of
Littleton, Colorado had ordered the lock-up of the entire city’s

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weapons’ collection!) In his rantings and ravings one late afternoon,
John confessed to me that he hated all officers. He knew I had been a
first lieutenant. After a great deal of mind-wrangling, I concluded that
seeing the off-again, on-again charming, romantic John—who had the
most affable of smiles—was not the best of ideas. I felt he might
become violent with me in one of his drunken stupors. I had put
Vietnam behind me and, sadly, I had now to put John, too, behind. I
remember feeling very downcast then. And from that time on,
whenever I saw on a television news program a violent massacre
perpetrated by a Vietnam veteran gone beserk, I wondered
immediately if that was John gone—finally—over his limits. John,
Owen, was full of rage and hate but—most of all—GUILT.

* * *

I wish to wind down this my little White Paper on Vietnam written by

me and for me at the end of this century with the hope that the next
ten decades will bring more that creates and, at least, much less than
that that was destroyed during the last one hundred years.

Vietnam has bequeathed something very important and that which is

now frequently taken for granted. For some twenty-odd years after
the end of World War II, the United States of America had been often
referred to as “the liberator of Europe,” or “the leader of the world,”
or “the leader of the free world.” Today it “enjoys” more dubious
epithets at best among them these: “The Policeman of the World;
The Greatest Economic Power on Earth; The Best of the Worst.” (We
all know what everyone thinks about policemen!) Someone may not
like Northamericans; nonetheless, everyone likes dollars! What is
clear these days is that the United States is tough with its virtual sort
of military supremacy, and it is in possession of the wealth needed to
sustain its point of view. (For how long?) But, there is also something
lacking in this identikit of United States powerfulness. Respect is
what is missing. That void dilutes Northamerica’s potency rather
drastically.

Living in Europe for more than sixteen years, I have been singularly
bedazzled by this want of admiration. The United States is not looked
up to anymore, and it has not been so for a very long time. This
coupled to the fact that the United States’ post-World War II military
presence has exaggerated its stay (and still does), one begins to
wonder whether or not Northamericans are, in fact, welcomed in
Europe. Surely one sees businessmen and diplomats and media
execs and other members of that golden n’ holdin’ class cavorting as
if they were bosom buddies, but deep down in the doldrums of

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European society, as a whole, there is not very much enthusiasm
regards the United States of America—and rightly so. Why?

Earlier this year, flying from one European capital to another on her
broom, that little fat witch, Madeleine Albright, almost single-
handedly, split Europe right down the middle, set brother against
brother, and lit a slow fuse on behalf of World War III. Before this
vulgar and insensate hostile exploit, there existed the fine glimmer of
optimism that, perhaps—with the fall of the Berlin Wall—European
nations were on their way to progressing towards a new fulfilment,
were shedding their grief and shock over the deaths of millions of
people during World War II, were beginning to pull together to achieve
something lasting, something they could say they had accomplished
for their betterment and the improvement of others in this world.
Nowhere does that aspiration now draw breath.

In the present, prevalent aura of deceit and sanctimoniousness, no

one has the stout-heartedness to reflect on the sad fact that dog-eat-
dog depredators began to ransack Russia in the early 1990s cajoling
Russians to switch immediately from one modus operandi lived under
for seventy years to that of another almost entirely incompatible with
theirs. Business administration professors and State Department
imbeciles led the charge; but, Northamerican businessmen, as it turns
out, invested the least! The other G’s followed the mother hen, and
the bacchanalia of democratic capitalism went wild with glee and
toasts to laissez-faireism. Today, with dizzy hangovers, investors are
smarting from the resilience of the Russian people. All of Eastern
Europe is furious with the unattained, pie-in-the-sky testimonials and
promises made on their behalves. Owen, the United States did not go
to Kosovo to save downtrodden people. It went to shore up its
defences against a seething Eastern Europe. (I know the case of one
big fish who lives near me. Roberto drove to Moscow with a truckload
of $50,000 worth of condoms. He told the Russians he was a member
of the Italian mafia—to scare them! Then, he went about trying to
convince potential buyers that now, since they had entered into a
new, capitalistic way of life, they would have to protect themselves
against the diseases that are “bound to come with free enterprise.”
Roberto, sullen and comfortless, came home empty-handed, but
today he is very happy to be alive!) Europe, for sure, has had enough
of war. But, it also has had now an abundance of the slick way of
doing things. It wants to change, but it refuses to become a colony of
maverick capitalism.

The United States of America has been breathing down Europe’s neck
for far too long. Its full nelson on Europe has done more harm than
good, and this stranglehold should let loose as soon as possible.
When is the Department of State going to realize this tragic faux pas?

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On shithouse walls throughout Vietnam, I often spotted this pithy
statement: AMERICA LOST ITS VIRGINITY IN VIETNAM. In other words,
Northamerica lowered itself to the same barbarous levels its enemies
had done before it. On this very day, fascists, totalitarians,
revanchists, dictators, and chauvinists all cluster around one precise
conceit: “The United States is just as depraved as we are. In the end,
all that matters is that might is right.” I have heard this adage time
and time again for more than six years in Venezuela, and for more
than sixteen years in Italy.

It is here that I see a crucial turning point for our times. The United
States speaks for international law and order, but its mandate has
been seriously compromised. Anything and everything spoken by
Northamerican politicians to the world, ring like a lead coin striking a
marble floor. There are few takers left. There is no esteem for the
United States in the air. In Europe, right-wing fanaticism is taking
hold ever more increasingly. Youth are mobilizing over and over the
standards of racism and violence. Soccer stadiums are filled with
semi-unarmed storm troopers without a Hitler or Mussolini to tell
them what to do. Ironically, the rebel flag of the Confederate states is
frequently a symbol of their loathing, and metre-high banners
hanging from stadium guard rails trumpet this thought: WE HATE
EVERYBODY! (I remember in Vietnam, on the day of my arrival,
newly-assigned to an Armored Personnel Carrier unit. About four of
five of the antennas on the vehicles in the company held high the
“Bars and Stars.” I wrote immediately to Governor Nelson Rockefeller
in New York protesting the situation. He sent, lickety-split, by cover
letter from the Commanding General of the New York State National
Guard, a New York State flag! I raised mine ceremoniously—joking as
I did so. The next day a division S.O.P. ordered all flags down.) A
good part of Europe is still looking for a fight, and the likes of that
little fat witch, Madeleine Albright, are wont to bring the United
States, once more, to that distressed footing where cruelty and self-
flagellation are the order of the day, and nations go about trying to
outdo each other in the art of mass killing.

Owen, your Six Silent Men gives a boost to war because it condones
what is wrong, and it sets your enemy to thinking that you are the
same as he is. (You root but ask others to shoot, to boot!) You give
your enemy a justification for stimulating himself to the state of self-
immolation, and you accept his invitation to be sucked into his
delirium of destruction and rage to see which one of you two will
come out “the winner!” It would have been much better for you, for
the United States of America, had you sought to reveal the truth
about Vietnam without ennobling those who committed crimes
against humanity in their endeavors to demonstrate American

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military mightiness—in their frenzies to bully innocent Asian people
into submission, sending millions of them to their deaths.

* * *

Now for my grand finale! I wish to quote from my essay, The

Entrancing—But Perilous—William F. Buckley, Jr.: Intimate Glimpses of
a Dogmatic Timocrat and His Family, taken from my Politically
Philosophical and Philosophically Political Writings: A Book of Essays
(1979-1982):

“…Northamerican conservatives have had too much a share of

pessimism and negativism to offer. They have grouped
together to form palsywalsy social, cultural, economic and
political ties which serve the inclusive general concept that a
government should dole out political and civil honors according
to wealth. The conservative is not interested in offering a fair
shake to his fellow man, and he excludes him from his power
circles with the justification that life demands a political
philosophy which exalts the nation and a select group of
individuals above all others, and that severe economic and
social regimentation, and the forcible suppression of the
opposition, are necessary measures to exercise stringent control
over the masses who are considered inferior to the nobler and
more privileged conservative.

I deny this philosophy and its aspects of myopic gloom. I look

for programs which show liveliness and interest in good things.
Which look with hope to the future. Which signal danger, but
communicate love and understanding. ‘Human behavior leads
to make-believe, disequilibrium, frustration, lies, or, on the
contrary, it becomes the source of rewarding experiences, in
accordance with its manner of expression in actual life—
whether in bad faith, laziness, generosity, and freedom,’ said
Simone de Beauvoir.”

I wish that all people enjoy their lives in a spirit of generosity, lucidity
and freedom; and, I beg William F. Buckley, Jr., you, Owen, you little
rascal! and all others of this ilk to come to your political and human
senses and yield to the ideal that all men and women belong to the
same community where equality and justice for all is the common
goal.

You just don’t have the balls, do you, Owen? Toodleoo.

Anthony St. John Casella Postale 38 50041 Calenzano FI Italia

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