This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.

Farewell, Uncle Ho

by Dennis Milholland

questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu

Chapter 79 (Mon., July 10)

Major de Witt and the steward continued to discuss why McNamara was in Vietnam and the obscene pageantry of General Waste-More-Land, while Gerry and I finished our packaged sandwiches. And when, as was usual in the military, they got tired of pussy-footing around their dislike of how the war was being prosecuted for fear of the consequences, which they could suffer for truthfully expressing their opinions, they turned their attention to us.

"Yeah, these two, " He gestured to Gerry and me. "are the interpreters for the NATO observers, who are meeting with McNamara's staff in Saigon."

"Wow." He turned to look at Gerry and me, since we were sitting across the conference table from Major Herb. "What language do you do?" And that question scraped across the surface of my brain with a sandpaper-like effect. Since when does anybody do a language?

Given that he was looking at Gerry, he answered first. "German - English and English - German."

Then he glared at me. "And I translate Chinese, French, and English in their six combinations." Again I felt my old dislike of being in the spotlight rise, making me self-conscious.

An uncomfortable state, which Gerry managed to soften with: "Don't forget Albanian." Our old private joke made us both burst out laughing.

We were still laughing, when our master sergeant glanced toward the front of the plane. "Atten-shun!" Naturally, he didn't sound as butch as Gordon always did. But then again, the Air Force was much more refined. Naturally, the effect was the same, but I much preferred the Army's swashbuckling way of doing it.

"Uh, oh for Pete's sake, as you were." The entering Brigadier General genteelly informed the master sergeant that he'd take care of his own belongings and came over to the table, placing his briefcase and clothing bag on the floor and extended his hand to me. "I'm Xav Paulson, Herb's cousin."

Not knowing whether he was joking or not, I had to presume that he was just being funny, I shook his hand. "Good morning, Sir. I'm Benton Loughery."

"And I'm Gerry Helmstedter, Sir." Gerry got a hand squeeze, as well.

The general then went to the first row of very comfortable looking seats, consisting of two on each side of the center aisle, and placed his large briefcase on the floor in the front row on the right and his clothing bag over the back of the aisle seat in the next row. Then he returned to the table.

***

As it turned out, General Xav and Major Herb actually were cousins. According to the general's affable, but lengthy and convoluted, story-telling, Xavier was the oldest son of Herbert's mother's sister, and Herbert was the youngest son of Xavier's mother's sister. They had both graduated from West Point with honors, and were the pride of their irresponsibly large. Catholic, Bostonian families.

When they were kids, Major Herb told us that General Xav had been sort of like the Caped Crusader of the neighborhood. The major had always looked up to his general cousin, as the older boy would track down and turn over to justice the neighborhood thieves who had stolen from the local candy store. Of course, I found this all very presumptuous of the two to believe that any of us could have actually given a shit.

It dawned on me that this was a ploy, when he told Gerry, me, and the master sergeant steward to dispense with military protocol during the long flight, since he wasn't in command of the aircraft - the two pilots were. Again, the alarm in my head was deafening. Since when, did one field-grade and one general officer want to play first-name-footsie with enlisted men?

Of course, they wanted something else. And I was sure that it was not a mile-high orgy.

I would have much preferred for them to have kept to military protocol and have given us a briefing about what we could expect with the two NATO observers, and why they hadn't brought their own interpreters with them. After all, I knew for a fact that NATO headquarters, which had been located in Paris at the same time I was, was chock-a-block full of linguists. And I was also sure that the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, or SHAPE, still had any number of qualified personnel, even after its reopening in Belgium on April Fool's Day of this year. So, I deduced that this interpreter's gig in Saigon was a ruse, in order to get other information.

When I thought back to Fortville, Indiana and Earl Masterson, his words rang clearly in my ears: 'I should get in touch with some of my old buddies at the Pentagon.' as a response to my having explained to him why, in my opinion, the US wasn't going to win the war in Vietnam. So, I assumed that maybe Earl had mentioned it to him. I glanced at the general's corps brass. Sure enough, Signal Corps.

***

The steward had politely interrupted General Xav's story-telling, to prepare us for takeoff. After Gerry and I had swiveled off our anchored chairs at the conference table and were about to take our places in the assigned row ten, I whispered to Gerry to assume that our seats were bugged. He nodded, then asked loudly, if I had anything against his sitting next to the window. And since I'd seen enough of the Midwest, I had absolutely no objections.

Once the C-137's turbines were screaming with power for takeoff, he asked in a whisper, why I thought the seats were bugged. My logic told me that it was obvious, but I explained it anyway, since it could have been my paranoia speaking. "Why else would we have to sit next to each other, when there are about fifty empty seats, and who knows how many more are behind that partition?"

"You're right." Gerry grinned mischievously. "Batman and Robin aren't sitting close enough to hold hands, either."

***

After we leveled off at our cruising altitude, the captain came over the intercom, telling us that our cruising speed was five hundred miles per hour at about twenty five thousand feet, And that our flying time to Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska was to be about 7 hours and 15 minutes, where we would have a one-hour stopover.

Just about when I was drifting off, dreaming about licking Gerry's lovely ass, which was well within reach, but so off limits, that I would have turned to a court-martialable pillar of salt, had I acted on my urges, Major Herb jostled my shoulder. "You might want to get changed." He pointed to the seats behind us, just in front of the partition. "Those duffel bags have your jungle suits and boots. Just place your winter Class As and normal fatigues into the unmarked bags, and we'll check off the property returned."

"Okay," I stood, getting my stenciled duffel bag from across the aisle, since there were no overhead bins, and placed it onto the seat. "but I would like to keep my field jacket, though."

"Why would you want that heavy thing in the tropics?" Major Herb seemed to be totally baffled.

"We're going to the SJA in Saigon," He nodded that he understood that. "but we'll be on frequent temporary duty in the Central Highlands, where it gets downright cold." I told him convincingly but lying through my teeth, and basing my story on what Sean had told me. But, in reality, I did not want anybody taking crumb samples out of our pockets. I really didn't relish CID finding particles of Haruki's Black Afghan or of Sean's no-name dope.

"Okay, and when you get changed into your jungle suits," He turned, smiling somewhat forced. "the general wants to talk to you."

"Does he want to talk to both of us?" I wondered, since Gerry was now awake.

"No," He avoided looking directly‎ at Gerry. "just you."

***

Once Gerry and I got changed into our very light-weight and quick-drying tropical uniforms and our initial issue from Fort Dix returned to its rightful owners, I made my way up the aisle to talk to General Xav. "You wanted to see me, General?"

"Yeah, Ben," He patted the seat next to his and motioned with is head for me to sit. "I'd like to ask your opinion on a few things."

"Like why bombing the Vietnamese 'back into the stone age', as per your Air Force colleague, 'Bombs-Away' LeMay, or even the fictitious Buck Turgidson, for that matter, isn't going to let you win the war?" I hazarded a guess.

"That would be a good place to start." General Xav offered me a cigarette, I accepted and lit his in return.

I took a drag, which made me light headed, since the last one had been before boarding at LaGuardia. "It's very simple." I laughed. "Most of Vietnam is still in the stone age, their world seldom extends beyond their village and immediate surroundings and they're content with it." He looked puzzled, since this didn't fit into the propaganda stencil of their wanting freedom.

"They've been working the land they're now working for generations, possibly for thousands of years. Their infrastructure is intact; they're happy and don't want anything from the 'White Guys'. They turned down us French, and they're going to turn you down, too.

"You tell them that you're fighting communism, to keep them free. The masses up in the mountains or down in the delta don't know what communism is, nor do they care. But they do want their freedom, alright. They want their freedom from you." I took a drag and blew a couple of smoke rings, before I went on.

"They got rid of the Chinese about a thousand years ago, then in the 1860s, the French showed up, then during World War II Japanese occupied them and extracted enough food that there was a famine between 1944 and 1946, causing somewhere around two million people to starve to death. Then when they thought things were over, the French were back and brought their American friends with them. Now, all they want is for all the foreigners to go home. They are tired of all these oh so civilized people like the Chinese, the French, the Japanese, and now the Americans telling them how to think and what to do. So, their political objectives for the last hundred years has been to undermine central government, because it has always been a puppet regime of a foreign power." The general looked a little embarrassed. "You won't win their hearts and minds, just like we French couldn't."

"You said, 'we French'." He tried to blow smoke rings.

"Watch." I blew a couple of rings slowly, showing him how. He was pleased when it worked. "I referred to us French, since I'm no longer deemed fit to be an American, even though I was born there." I laughed. "I voted in a French election, because I am also French by birth, due to my father. But since I was supposed to choose when I turned twenty one, Mr. Rusk decided that I'd made my choice, when I cast that ballot."

"Are there many French of Chinese ancestry?" The next smoke ring seemed self-satisfying.

I chuckled at his assumption. "My father's not Chinese, he's Celtic and very white."

General Xav did look somewhat perplexed but let it slide. "And what did Rusk base the decision on?" He blew two smoke rings in rapid succession.

"The Supreme Court decision, Perez versus Brownell." I had to let out an enormous sigh, rather than a smoke ring.

"Um, do you feel that racial prejudice had anything to do with it?" The general was trying to get me to reveal any lack of loyalty to the United States.

It still surprised me that Americans have always been so naive to believe that everybody in the world was naturally going to be loyal to their way of life. It had to have had something to do with Christianity. Not many Christians could imagine that the majority of people on the planet believed in something else.

"Wouldn't you see it as racism?" I put the cigarette out in the ashtray in the armrest. "Or do you think that Grace Kelley's US citizenship was taken away when she became Princess Grace of Monaco? And that was one Hell of a lot bigger move than putting a piece of paper in the ballot box in a foreign country." I had to quash my anger, like I had the cigarette. "And you can bet your bottom dollar, General, that her royal kids are Americans, as well, even though they are more than just loyal to a foreign state. They run it. But, of course, they're also all lily white. No offense intended, Sir."

"None taken." When he reached for his cigarettes, the pack was empty. I gave him one of mine. He nodded. "Could there have been any, uh, contributory factors, other than race?" He gave me a supportive smile.

Had to give the general credit, though. He was good at baiting me. And I had to assume that he wanted me to talk about things like Dad's having told the House Committee on Un-American Activities that he couldn't have given a shit about McCarthy's whole problem with un-American activities, since Dad wasn't American, himself.

Since I couldn't tell, whether the Army was keeping a McCarthy-inspired loyalty file on me, or whether I was just being paranoid, I decided for a safer answer. "Maybe France's withdrawal from NATO last year, just pissed off your illustrious Secretary of State enough for him to take it out on people like me." I couldn't stifle my snicker of sarcasm, much to the general's apparent bewilderment.

"That's a real enigma to me." He took a long drag off the cigarette. "Can you explain to me why de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO?"

"There's no mystery to it." I took my last drag and put the cigarette out. "The United States had his best buddy killed." General Xav gave me a worried look. "Uh, Kennedy." He nodded. "And instead of your listening to the one country with the most experience in Indochina as Kennedy had," I almost had to snort because of his now surprised look, but could just catch myself. "uh, that would be France, and instead of drawing up a strategic plan, the United States has chosen just to bomb Vietnam 'back into the stone age', or as President de Gaulle has frequently referred to it, employing the American version of a blitzkrieg.

"But having said that," I paused for effect. "the Germans, at least, had very intricate plans with their blitzkrieg. All you're doing, as far as anyone can tell, is throwing an enormous amount of wealth and weaponry at Indochina, hoping for the best. It's as if no one at the Pentagon has ever heard of the word, plan, not to mention ideas, called contingency plan or exit strategy. But since someone high up in your government okayed the assassination of President Diem back in '63, increasing your total committment, it doesn't look as if there's any way out for you, now, does it?"