Alternate Generals III

I didn't understand, not for some months. By the time I did, it was too late.

I hated Washington. Going to Georgetown, which supposedly educates you in the realities of power, I should have known better. But I didn't. The only people who went there wanted something. Preferably for nothing.

I can't remember anyone who fulfilled Ke

And the Ke

I saw, very quickly, that mad gleam of power in JFK's eyes, and realized he would do anything to keep or increase his authority.

I also despised his personal morality. Ke

He lied to the people of America, justifying it with "When the time is right, they'll be told. But not yet." Which meant, as far as he was concerned, never.

His brother the attorney general was even worse, keeping his own overweening ambition concealed in the pretense that all he wanted to do was help his brother.

I never forgot what my father told me, that one of Robert Ke

I was, indeed, too close to the elephant.

I applied for a transfer back to the real Army several times, but was always refused. Ke

I should have known I was his token war hero, especially after he called me into his office, and told me I was headed for Fort Bragg.

"For what, sir?"

"Since the Green Berets are mine, I think it would be a good idea to have one around me."

"But-"

"On your way, soldier."

And so I went. And found something wonderful.

I'd deliberately chosen paratroops, and then Rangers, not because I wanted the little tabs and devices on my uniform, but because I wanted to be a warrior among warriors.

In Special Forces, I found warriors far more dangerous, more qualified, than I could have dreamed of.

They treated me, naturally, as just another White House dickhead.

I kept my mouth shut, and soldiered hard.

I wanted approval from these men, and I didn't get it.

But I returned to Washington with my beret, and a determination to get myself back to Vietnam, in any capacity so long as it was with SF.

The progress of the war helped.

It was not going well at all.

We held Hanoi, just like we held all of the other major cities in North and South Vietnam. But what of it?

Ho Chi Minh, his Communist party, and his army sank into the marsh of the countryside. Ho went back up the Red River, back into the mountains on the Chinese border, just as he'd done when the French tried to hold his country after WWII.

From there, he fought his war.

We garrisoned the cities, and tried to hold the roads.

And the Communists fought back. Not "fairly," as if there's such a thing in war.

But from the ditch, from the jungle, always at our back.

When we got arrogant, or careless, his Regulars, or the main force Viet Cong in the south, or even the local guerrillas, would appear, strike hard, and vanish.

Enraged, we struck back, bombing villages we thought were "hostile," or even declaring entire districts free-fire zones. If those areas weren't hostile before the helicopter gunships or the B52s or the fighter-bombers came over, they certainly were afterward. To ensure the people we were supposedly helping fight Communism hated our guts, we sent through battalions of legs, who thought any gook was a Commie, and probably deserved to be dead.

The puppet government we supported in Saigon was only interested in looting and control. Their best troops, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam paratroops and Rangers were used as palace guards.

Ke

And the war raged on.

University students protested the war, and these protests were slapped down by Attorney General Ke

The pretense Ke

Ke

As the 1968 elections neared, the always-sophisticated Communists mounted a scattered offensive in cities across Vietnam. The offensive failed, but Ke

That was enough for the voters. The extreme conservative Republicans were ignored by their party for a change, and the Republicans ran moderate Nelson Rockefeller, who destroyed the Democrats.

Naturally, one of the first things Rockefeller did after taking office was to put the draft into high gear, and send another million men into the war.

But that was in his first one hundred days, when it's very hard for a president to do anything wrong in the public and media's eyes.

One of Ke

That would further destroy my chances of just fitting back into the Army.

But I stayed in, and pulled a few strings.

I figured if I could get back to Vietnam, not only would I maybe be helping my country, but I could save my career by staying well out of sight.

The C Team of 5th Special Forces, named F Company, I ended up in charge of was at Lai Khe, a few hundred heroes who did everything from advising the ARVNs, to pulling intelligence missions up to the border, ru

If I thought being in the elite would keep me from this time of troubles my country and Army were going through, I was quite wrong.

The tour of duty had been increased to two years, over the previous eighteen months, so soldiers weren't constantly rediscovering fire. These draftee and non-special operations soldiers spent their time either huddling in the oversized, overcivilized base camps, or else timorously sweeping the jungle. Every now and again, a column of US soldiers would encounter, generally on their terms, the Viets. There'd be a brisk firefight, or sometimes a knock-down brawl, and then the Viets would vanish back into the bush, into the mountains, leaving us to lick our wounds.

We certainly weren't losing the war… but more important, we weren't wi

For many people, their tour in Vietnam was nothing more than sweaty boredom, never seeing the enemy, and only encountering him… or her… when a convoy they happened to be riding on was ambushed, or a friend on perimeter guard was sniped, or what they read in Stars amp; Stripes, the service newspaper.

I met Arthur «Bull» Simons in a rather strange way. He was ru