From: jewell@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Larry Jewell)
Subject: 'NamVet Newsletter, Vol.4, no.3 (6/8)
Organization: Purdue University
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 17:53:20 GMT



















     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 77
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

                            I
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                        T I   I T                           88888888
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                  II  I    IIII   I  II         o88  88888888 8888)
                 XII  I  II   II  I  IIX       (88      8 88 888888)
                XIII  III       III  IIIX      (8 8 8 88 88 88 8 888)
               XIIII  I           I  IIIIX      (88 8  8  8 88888888)
              II  II  I  xIIIIIx  I  II  II     ( 8 88     888 88888)
                  II  I  T  T  T  I  II        (8888 88 8 8 8888888)
                  II  I  I  I  I  I  II         (8 88888 888 88 88)
                  II  I  I  I  I  I  II          (8888)888 88888)
                  II  I  I II II  I  II            (8) (I8I8I) 8
       oo8888888o II  I  I  I  I  I  II                 IIIII        X
      8888888 888BII  I  I  I  I  I  IIXX                III      X XX
       88 88 88  BII  I  TIIIIIT  I  IIXXX               III     XXXXX
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     888 888888888XXXXXII    ...   IIXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX        XXXXXXjXX
                         II    ..    IIXXXXXXXXXXXXXX         XXXXXXpX
      The Vietnam Veteran XII          IIXXXXXXXXXXXXX         XXXXXXX
       has relatives in the  III        IIIXXXXXXXXXXXX         XXXXXX
       Old and New Testaments   III        IIIXXXXXXXXXX         XXXXX
       who also experienced loss   II         IIXXXXXXXXX          XXX
       and grief, guilt and shame,   II         IIXXXXXXXXX         XX
       rejection and betrayal,         I          IXXXXXXXXX
       alienation and estrangement,    I          IXXXX  XX
       isolation and withdrawal.        II          IIXXXX
                                          II          IIX
      Adam and Eve tried to hide from God; II          II
      Moses, born Hebrew and raised Egyptian IIII        IIII
       searched long and hard for his real self; II          II
      Job, losing his children and all he owned,   II          II
       became sorely diseased;                       IIII        III
      Biblical Joseph was rejected by his brothers,      II         II
       lied about and imprisoned;                          I
      Peter denied Jesus.                                    II
                                                                I
      "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age"
                           Matthew 28:20
     
     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 78
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990



     =================================================================
            I V V E C   A l i c e   i n   B o o n i e l a n d !
     =================================================================

       Imposter Vets are exploiting our brother and sister veterans!
     
                           Input by: Rick Stolz
                            Okauchee, Wisconsin
                      at: VETLink #1 - Pittsfield, MA
                              (413) 443-6313
     
     Imposter  vets are more than just a nuisance  Con artist faking it 
     as  vets  try to cash in on the public's interest and concern  for 
     the American war veteran.
     
                     For U.S. Veteran News and Report
                              By F.A. Wright
     
     When  John  Maughn showed up at the Veterans Counseling Center  in 
     Atlanta on a sultry August afternoon in 1983, he had a POW license 
     plate  on  the front bumper of his battered station wagon and  his 
     wife and children and all their belongings stuffed inside.
     
     Maughn  told  counselors  at the center of 5-1/2 years  of  brutal 
     captivity  he  had  endured  in a prisoner of war  camp  in  North 
     Vietnam  and  displayed  his DD-214 as proof.  He also  related  a 
     heart-rending  tale  of  joblessness and  homelessness  that  left 
     Maughn and the counselors in tears.
     
     Within  days the vet center helped Maughn and his wife find  work, 
     located  an affordable apartment for them and greased the skids so 
     Maughn   could   obtain   a  $10,000  loan   from   the   Veterans 
     Administration.
     
     "He  was  so  convincing because you didn't see  a  song-and-dance 
     act,"  said Tony Hamilton,  employment director at the vet center. 
     "He didn't ask for anything in the beginning. He just told a story 
     and  let  us  suggest  what  we could do  for  him.  We  were  not 
     suspecting  anything  because when a guy says he's a  former  POW, 
     your heart goes out to him."
     
     Over the next four years,  Maughn ran up debts in the Atlanta area 
     of  more  $30,000,  often using his POW story to obtain loans  and 
     housing. He skipped from job to job, never lasting more than eight 
     months  at  any  one.  Finally,  in 1987,  Maughn and  his  family 
     hurriedly  moved  out of a $120,000 home they had been renting  in 
     suburban Atlanta and went to Florida, just ahead of investigations 
     by  the  Georgia Bureau of Investigation and a local reporter  who 
     had been contacted by vet groups suspicious of Maughn.
     
     What  these  two investigations eventually revealed were that  not 
     only  was Maughn not a former POW,  he was not a Vietnam  veteran. 
     During  3-1/2  of  the 5-1/2 years Maughn claimed to be a  POW  in 
     Vietnam,  he  was  actually  serving time in the  Atlanta  federal 
     penitentiary for car theft.  Although he had been in the Air Force 
     in  the early 1950s,  Maughn had an arrest record dating to  1957, 
     including time in two federal prisons.
     
     "He's a con artist and he's good at it.  He's a real manipulator," 
     
     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 79
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

     said  GBI  investigator  Dave Bartlett,  who  eventually  arrested 
     Maughn when he returned to Atlanta.
     
     Maughn  is  now  serving  time in a  Georgia  prison  for  illegal 
     possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
     
     Maughn  is  just  one of a growing number  of  fraudulent  Vietnam 
     veterans who have preyed on the conscience of the American public. 
     Over the past five years, according to experts, the number of fake 
     vets has increased as the public has come to view Vietnam veterans 
     and their emotional and physical problems more sympathetically.
     
     "For years, Vietnam veterans were portrayed as crazes.  Now,  they 
     are being seen as heroes," said Dr. Betsy Tolstedt of the Veterans 
     Administration's  outreach  clinic in Chicago.  "Some claim to  be 
     vets just out of a need to be macho."
     
     Others,  according  to experts,  are motivated by a sense of guilt 
     because  they hid in college or Canada while others fought.  Still 
     other  impostors,  like  Maughn,  try to cash in on  the  public's 
     acceptance of Vietnam vets. Whatever their motives, the numbers of 
     fake  vets  seems to be increasing.  Among the cases  of  recently 
     exposed fraudulent are these: In San Antonio,  Texas,  two men who 
     claimed  to be Vietnam veterans resigned as directors of a Vietnam 
     War  museum  after  it was disclosed that neither  had  served  in 
     Vietnam.
     
     In Salt Lake City,  Utah,  Robert Fife for years had convinced his 
     wife  and friends that his emotional problems stemmed from service 
     as a jet pilot in Vietnam his captivity as a prisoner of war. When 
     Fife  killed himself,  it was discovered that he had never been to 
     Vietnam  and was using the war as an excuse for his own  failures. 
     "I feel like I've been raped," said Fife's wife, Nancy.
     
     In  Kansas  City,  a 35-year-old water purification unit  salesman 
     named  Robert  Lyons  pleaded guilty in federal court  to  falsely 
     impersonating  a  federal officer when it was discovered that  his 
     claims  of  being a four-star general,  Vietnam War hero  and  CIA 
     agent  were  little more than ruses to bilk gullible women out  of 
     money.
     
     In  Phoenix,  Darrow  "Duke"  Tully resigned as publisher  of  the 
     Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette newspapers when his claims of 
     being  a  combat  pilot  in  Vietnam and  Korea  were  exposed  as 
     fraudulent.
     
     In  Massachusetts,  state representative Royall Switzler abandoned 
     his  gubernatorial  campaign when he admitted that his  claims  to 
     having  served  as a member of the Special Forces in Vietnam  were 
     false.
     
     In Connecticut, state representative Robert Sorensen was forced to 
     give  up  his reelection campaign when it was learned that he  had 
     lied  during a debate in the state legislature by saying he was  a 
     Vietnam vet.
     
     In  1983,  one  of the leading spokesmen for Vietnam  Veterans  of 
     America  was  forced to resign when it was disclosed that  he  had 
     never served in Vietnam.
     
     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 80
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

     
     In Hawaii, Leslie A. Tatay of St.  Cloud,  Florida,  crawled bare-
     chested  and barefooted from the Pacific ocean onto the island  of 
     Maui  and  into  the  midst of a church beach  party  telling  the 
     shocked church members that he was an escaped prisoner of war from 
     Vietnam.  The local press in Hawaii picked up on Tatay's claim and 
     printed it before he was discovered to be a fake.
     
     In Illinois,  Rick Beale,  who won the confidence of vet groups by 
     falsely  claiming to be a returned prisoner of war,  is wanted  by 
     the   State   of   Illinois  for  felony  theft   resulting   from 
     misappropriating  funds from Vietnam Veterans of America,  Chapter 
     299,  and  the Disabled American Veterans of Rock  Island.  Beale, 
     according  to  Chuck  Schantag  of  the  Vietnam  Veteran  Locator 
     Service, "is not a veteran of any war."
     
     Perhaps the most notorious case of someone cashing in on the blood 
     and  suffering  of veterans was that of Joe McCarthy,  the  former 
     flag-waving,  commie-busting senator from Wisconsin who terrorized 
     the  country in the 1950s.  McCarthy for years had claimed he  had 
     been a combat tail-gunner during World War II.
     
     According  to  David  M.  Oshinsky,  author of  "A  Conspiracy  So 
     Immense,"  McCarthy  who  served three years in the Pacific as  an 
     intelligence  officer  debriefing combat pilots who returned  from 
     bombing runs over Japanese-held islands,  knew that those who came 
     home with military honors would be rewarded at the ballot box.
     
     "Apparently  Joe wanted to break the record for the most ammo used 
     in  a single mission.  So,  he was strapped into a tail-  gunner's 
     seat, sent aloft,  and allowed to blast away at the coconut trees. 
     As a matter of routine,  the public relations officer gave him the 
     record  and wrote up a press release for Wisconsin papers.  A  few 
     weeks later, McCarthy came into the fellow's hut waving a stack of 
     clippings.  'This  is  worth 50,000 votes to me,'  he said with  a 
     smile.  The  two men then had a drink to celebrate the creation of 
     'Tail Gunner Joe.'"
     
     When  it  was  discovered  that  McCarthy's  tail-gunner  exploits 
     extended  no  further than 12 joy ride missions and that his  much 
     publicized  war-wound  was the result of falling down a  stairwell 
     while aboard the seaplane tender Chandeleur,  his credibility took 
     an  immediate dive.  Some experts now call this rash of fraudulent 
     vets the "Tail-Gunner Joe Syndrome."
     
     Fake vets generally can be divided into two categories,  according 
     to  Dr.  Greg Andersen,  assistant director of the VA hospital  in 
     Menlo  Park,  Calif.:  "Those  who  want to enhance the  image  of 
     themselves and those trying to prey off the public."
     
     The  two fake vets in San Antonio who opened a Vietnam War  museum 
     may have had different motives.
     
     Gaylord O. Stevens and Kenneth M.  Bonner,  director and assistant 
     director  of  the Vietnam War Museum in San Antonio,  resigned  in 
     October  when a Dallas newspaper confronted them with  information 
     that  disputed  their  contentions that they had served  in  elite 
     military  units  in Vietnam.  Both had apparently  doctored  their 
     discharge papers.
     
     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 81
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

     
     Stevens claimed he was a Navy SEAL team member in Vietnam in 1968-
     69  when  in  fact he served in the Coast Guard from  1969-72  and 
     never  left  the states.  Bonner claimed he served in the  Special 
     Forces  in Vietnam but his actual military records show he  didn't 
     join the Army until 1978.
     
     When  confronted with the evidence,  both admitted they lied.  "No 
     matter  what you say about us,  we did something that no one  else 
     has  done and no one had the guts to attempt,"  Bonner said.  Said 
     Stevens:  "I knew the museum had to be built.  I still believe the 
     only  way  it could have been built was the way it  was  built.  I 
     assumed  a role and I assumed I could take it off just as easily."  
     Robert  Fife's motives for falsely claiming Vietnam service appear 
     to  have been part of an effort to delude himself and others  that 
     he was not a failure. But Fife was a lifetime loser. He had failed 
     at business when he gambled away $172,000 of a partner's money. He 
     was a part-time truck driver who dreamed of being a writer. He was 
     also, according to his wife, a pornography addict,  spending hours 
     alone with his large cache of erotic material.
     
     Fife  blamed all his problems on Vietnam.  Although he had  served 
     briefly  in  the Navy,  receiving a medical discharge  after  only 
     eight  months,  Fife  concocted  an elaborate  story  of  military 
     service  that included being stationed on an aircraft carrier  off 
     the  coast of Vietnam,  flying combat missions over North  Vietnam 
     and  spending 15 days as a prisoner of war before killing a  guard 
     and escaping.
     
     Fife's  wife  never  questioned  his story  through  23  years  of 
     marriage.  Nor  did Fife's therapist,  who wrote that he was "very 
     much  a  casualty  of  the  Vietnam  War."   According  to  Fife's 
     thoroughly  duped  therapist,  "He was clearly  depressed,  guilt- 
     ridden,  angry,  alienated  from people and viewed the world in  a 
     very   negative  manner  as  a  result  of  his  military  service 
     experiences,  particularly  as a prisoner of war."  Fife died last 
     summer  of self-inflicted carbon monoxide poisoning.  Tatay claims 
     he was promised $760,000 to travel to Maui and fake the part of an 
     escaped POW. He has refused to identify the person who offered the 
     money,  although  he did say that he was told the U.S.  Government 
     offered "grant money" for escaped American POW's.  Tatay's case is 
     still under investigation.
     
     Maughn's  motives  for  falsely claiming to be a Vietnam  vet  and 
     former POW appear to have been purely mercenary.
     
     In addition to the $10,000 loan from the VA, Maughn obtained money 
     from Atlanta-area veterans groups, ostensibly to help pay his rent 
     and  buy groceries for his family.  According to former coworkers, 
     he  also frequently borrowed small amounts of money from them  and 
     never paid it back. When he finally left town,  he owned more than 
     $8,000 back rent, according to court documents.
     
     Maughn's  resumes include degrees from UCLA and the University  of 
     New Mexico, but both schools say Maughn was never enrolled. Maughn 
     had  at least five different jobs in engineering while he lived in 
     Atlanta,  none lasting more than eight months.  He apparently knew 
     just enough technical skills to be able to get a job, but he could 
     never adequately perform the jobs once hired.
     
     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 82
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

     
     Maughn's  POW  story  varied from person-to-person  and  group-to- 
     group.  He  contacted  one former POW in Atlanta who was still  on 
     active duty and told him how his F-105 jet had been shot down over 
     North  Vietnam  in 1967 and how he had been held in a  tiger  cage 
     before  being  released  in Hong Kong in 1973 and  then  taken  to 
     Hawaii.
     
     "I was already skeptical of his story and when we got to Hong Kong 
     and  Hawaii and the release in June 1973,  I knew if this wasn't a 
     ringer,  then something fishy was going on,"  said the former POW, 
     who asked that his name not be used.
     
     Another  version  of Maughn's POW story had him flying  F-4  jets, 
     being  shot down in North Vietnam,  escaping from his prison  camp 
     after  5-1/2 years and traveling on foot across China to make  his 
     escape. For that, he told people,  he was being considered for the 
     Medal of Honor. Maughn also claimed at times to be working for the 
     CIA  in  Central America and Africa and of living in Thailand  for 
     three years, where he became an expert in martial arts.
     
     Maughn  was so brazen that in 1983,  shortly after his arrival  in 
     Atlanta,  he  volunteered  to  be a marshal in the  city's  annual 
     Veterans  Day parade.  Near the end of the parade,  Maughn  jumped 
     onto  a  float carrying several disabled veterans of  the  Vietnam 
     War.
     
     "Nobody  objected to it at the time,"  said Hamilton,  "because he 
     had on his VFW hat and was just another veteran."
     
     In 1984 Maughn played Santa Claus at an Atlanta-area mall and gave 
     an  interview  to  a suburban newspaper in which he  said  he  was 
     taking  time off from his job to play Santa Claus because he never 
     knew when it was Christmas during his time as a POW.
     
     "You know Christmas is there sometime," the paper quoted Maughn as
     saying, "but there's nothing you can do about it."
     
     Maughn's  stories invariably fell apart when he ran into  veterans 
     who had served in Southeast Asia.
     
     But for every John Maughn who is discovered, experts believe there 
     are  many  more fake vets whose lies about their service to  their 
     country go unchallenged.
     
     "What these people are doing," said one veteran, " is an insult to
     veterans and the uniform."
     
     >>  F. A. Wright is a former Marine and freelance journalist.  <<
     









     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 83
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

                    WIFE FINDS 'HERE' HUSBAND WAS PHONY
     
                         Springfield, MA Union-News
                         Tuesday, October 10, 1989
     
                         Input by: G. Joseph Peck
                         NAM VETs Managing Editor
                        VETLink #1 - Pittsfield, MA
                              (413) 443-6313
     
                  Image hid lifetime of failure from wife
     A  WIFE DECEIVED -  Nancy Fife of Salt Lake City,  Utah,  believed 
     that  her  late husband was a Vietnam War  hero.   His  headstone, 
     supplied  by the Navy,  refers to his service in Vietnam,  but  he 
     never went there.
     
     SALT  LAKE CITY (AP)  -  Nancy Fife never doubted that her husband 
     had  been scarred in mind and body by his Viet Cong  captors,  and 
     that he was a tarnished and troubled war hero.
     
     The  night almost 20 years ago,  when her sneakers seemed to drive 
     Robert  Fife berserk,  was all the proof she needed.   He told her 
     later that his captors used to wear sneakers then they came to his 
     bamboo  cage  to beat him and urinate on him,  and that the  enemy 
     soldier he strangled when he escaped was wearing canvas shoes.
     
     Then  there was the manuscript her husband left when he died  last 
     summer  at  the  age  of  46  of  self-inflicted  carbon  monoxide 
     poisoning - 449 pages of vivid Vietnam experiences.
     
     But Fife had never been to Vietnam, let alone been a hero.
     
     Misled by Fife, his therapist, Dr. Corydon Hammond,  had concluded 
     that he suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome and was "very 
     much a casualty of the Vietnam War."  A letter Hammond wrote after 
     Fife's  death  included a general account of what he believed  was 
     his  patient's  Navy  war experience -  15 days of  torment  as  a 
     prisoner  of  war after the USS Ranger-based F-4 fighter on  which 
     Fife was navigator was shot down in early 1966.
     
     But  Fife's  heroic  identity was adopted to cover a  lifetime  of 
     failure.
     
     His image, maintained through 23 years of marriage,  was shattered 
     only when his widow tried to have his name included on the state's 
     Vietnam War memorial, using the letter from Hammond as part of her 
     evidence.
     
     The  Utah  Vietnam  Era Veterans memorial Committee  decided  last 
     month  after  some debate to place Fife's name on the granite  and 
     marble structure, to be dedicated Saturday.
     
     His  would have been the last of 390 names on the  memorial.   But 
     while  an  artisan  was  preparing  to  engrave  Fife's  name,  an 
     Associated  Press  reporter  who had searched  unsuccessfully  for 
     veterans  who  served with the dead hero told Mrs.  Fife that  her 
     husband had lied.
     
     "I feel like I've been raped," Mrs.  Fife said after being told of 
     
     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 84
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

     the  deception  revealed by Navy records.   After a great deal  of 
     anguish,  she decided to tell the truth to her 21-year-old son and 
     her 19-year-old daughter.
     
     "Intellectually,  I know I have the right to be angry,"  she said, 
     "but even with all of this I first need to understand it all."
     
     Fife  did  not usually talk much about Vietnam,  but his wife  had 
     accompanied him to his first session with Hammond in 1986, when he 
     used the old fiction to try to justify his life.
     
     Fife  had acquired a certificate,  purportedly from the USS Ranger 
     Committee, listing the medals he said he had burned at the time to 
     protest the bad treatment of Vietnam veterans.   They included the 
     Navy Cross, the service's highest award for valor.
     
     At the reporter's request, Jeannie Kirk, head of the Navy's Awards 
     and  Special  Projects  Branch,  tracked  down  Fife's  real  Navy 
     records.
     
     They  showed that he enlisted in September 1965 and was discharged 
     eight  months later as medically unfit because of bones broken  in 
     his right foot during childhood that had not mended properly.
     
     Fife wanted to be remembered as the hero in his manuscript, not as 
     a man obsessed by the circumstances of his birth.  Fife never knew 
     his father, and blamed his mother for making him "a bastard," said 
     a sister, Lynda Turcsanski.
     






























     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 85
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990



     =================================================================
                       H e a r t s   n '   M i n d s
     =================================================================

                    A VETERAN SPEAKS -- AGAINST THE WAR
              by Bob Muller, Vietnam Veterans Against the War
     
             Presented at a meeting of the Student Assembly of
            Columbia University Student Assembly, July 23, 1971
     
                      Input by: Kathleen Kelly, Ph.D.
                       NAM VETs PTSD Section Editor
                 The New York Transfer - Staten Island, NY
                              (718) 448-2358
     
     Vietnam  is something you have to experience firsthand to believe. 
     I  know I didn't believe what anybody told me about Vietnam before 
     I went; it was something I had to go through myself.
     
     Let  me  go back and tell you who I am and what I'm about.  I'm  a 
     retired first lieutenant in the Marines -- retired, because today, 
     when you're separated from service for a disability, you're put on 
     a retired basis; you're not simply discharged as you were in World 
     War  II.  [Mr.  Muller  spoke from a wheelchair,  the result of  a 
     crippling injury sustained in Vietnam.]
     
     In 1967, I was in my senior year in college at Hofstra University. 
     And  one day that spring,  I went into the Student Union Building, 
     and  there  was a Marine officer standing there.  He  looked  very 
     sharp:  he  had  his dress blues on,  and he had the  old  crimson 
     stripe  down the side of his trousers.  I said,  "That looks good! 
     I'm going to be a marine."
     
     Right there,  in that sentence,  is really the tragedy of my life, 
     as  I  view  it.  The  tragedy of my life was not  being  shot  in 
     Vietnam; the tragedy in my life is one that has been shared by all 
     too  many  Americans,  and is still being shared  today.  For  me, 
     knowledge  of the fact that my government had seen fit to  involve 
     us militarily in Vietnam was sufficient for me.  I NEVER ASKED THE 
     REASON WHY.  I just took it on blind faith that my government knew 
     a  hell  of a lot more than I ever could,  and that they  must  be 
     right. My opinion has changed since then....
     
     Still  the  fact  is,  I  went.  I  went  all  the  way,  with  no 
     reservation. I said, "If you're going to fight,  you might as well 
     go  all  the way."  So I joined the Marines,  and then  became  an 
     officer. I didn't request the infantry, and I didn't request to go 
     to Vietnam; I literally demanded it.  I was "the Marine's Marine:" 
     I  could  run faster,  do more push-ups and more pull-ups.  I  had 
     leadership  capability  and so on and so forth.  I got what I  was 
     after.
     
     When I was in the Marine Corps,  as I said before,  I never really 
     asked  "WHY  are  we in Vietnam?   What's the history  behind  our 
     involvement  in  that  country?"  I  went  in  --  boom!   There's 
     something you have to understand about a system like the military: 
     once you become a part of the machinery, it works on you.   By the 
     time  it came time for me to go overseas,  I was a fanatic;  I was 
     the  epitome of John Wayne;  I wanted but one thing:  I wanted  to 
     
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     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

     kill.
     
     You  go through this environment of the military,  and  everything 
     sort of works on itself.  Your instructors,  the guys you're going 
     through with,  your peers,  what have you --  all the time it's an 
     indoctrination. "We're out there, and we're fighting the `gooks.'" 
     You  get a couple of hundred guys out in the field,  and they  put 
     the old bayonet on the rifle. "Kill, kill." Who do you kill? "Luke 
     the Gook" and "Link the Chink." You get psyched up on this stuff.
     
     I was "Gung-Ho"  as they say.   And I went to Vietnam with this in 
     mind: here is a country,  South Vietnam,  that is a freedom-loving 
     people,  that  want  their  independence,  their  right  to  self-
     determination, and they are being subjected to a massive Communist 
     invasion from the North.  I had some close family friends who were 
     fairly high in the military;  they had gone to Vietnam,  and their 
     experiences sort of backed up what I was being told:  that we were 
     fighting  to repel an invasion of these freedom-loving people from 
     the North. I said, "Wow! That don't go!  I'm for the liberation of 
     anybody who wants to be free."
     
     We get small-arms fire from a village, we get a sniper, and do you 
     know  how  we  return  that small-arms fire?  We  return  it  with 
     ANYTHING  --  and  that goes from whatever's organic to  the  unit 
     you're  working  with --  your mortars,  for example --  to  heavy 
     artillery,  to  gunships to jets,  to napalm,  to big bombs,  even 
     Naval  gunfire;  we had the battleship New Jersey on station  with 
     the  sixteen-inch guns.  We'd come across villages where we'd take 
     fire,  and  for the one or two people in there that might be V.C., 
     we'd  level that village.  Now militarily,  that might make sense; 
     but  you just stop and think for a minutes what it means when,  to 
     get two people, you kill 150.
     
     Is  My  Lai  an isolated incident?   Hell,  no!  It may  not  have 
     happened  so  often that one platoon commander,  in  an  immediate 
     situation,  rounds  up  people as Calley did,  and just  summarily 
     executes them. Granted,  I had the same experiences Calley had.  I 
     had had guys in my platoon that were blown away by kids.  We had a 
     company setup outside a village, and during the day, kids came by. 
     And  the  guys were giving them C-rations and chocolate  and  they 
     took   them  into  the  perimeter.   And  they  were  giving  them 
     cigarettes, what have you, and being real nice.  And the kids were 
     ten  years old,  eleven years old.   They were manning the  water-
     buffalo.  I  said,  "Don't let the kids in the  perimeter."   That 
     night  the  company got hit by a VC mortar and rocket  squad,  and 
     they had our positions mapped out.  They knew where the C.P.  was, 
     they knew where all our defensive positions were, and how they got 
     the information was from the kids. And yes, you do have, among the 
     kids,  among  the women,  VC sympathizers.  That's the majority of 
     what I came into contact with, anyway,  in Northern I-Corps.   But 
     because  you have people who are VC sympathizers mixed in with the 
     population  what's  the solution?   What have we done in  Vietnam? 
     Actually follow a policy of genocide?  And it is genocide, because 
     of  the nature of the war.  It's not a conventional war;  it's not 
     the  same as World War II,  it's not the same as Korea.  We  don't 
     have fronts, we don't acquire land, hold it,  and then move on and 
     acquire  more  land.  What we do is,  try to win the minds of  the 
     people;  and  since we're doomed to fail,  there's only one  other 
     answer: liquidate them. And that is what we've done.
     
     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 87
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

     
     I  have a friend who spent four years in Laos.  Don't try to  tell 
     him  what  we're  doing in Laos is winding down  the  war;  that's 
     hogwash.  He can tell you about day after day after day in Laos -- 
     a  country that we're not even at war with --  where our guys  are 
     going  over and not limiting themselves to the Ho Chi Minh  trail, 
     but are going throughout the entire region of populated areas, and 
     knocking  out the villages.  These stories about people living  in 
     caves and tunnels; that's no joke; it's reality. It's what's going 
     on.
     
     Perhaps  you think I'm just a bitter person --  and only because I 
     got  hit  in Nam.  I am bitter.  You're damn straight I'm  bitter! 
     There  is no way I could give you the essence of what I'm  talking 
     about.  I  could sit here all night,  and tell you a series of war 
     stories. A lot of them would really make your hair stand on end -- 
     but I'm not going to do that.  You had that with the film ("Winter 
     Soldiers").
     
     They say that because we Vietnam veterans are called upon to kill, 
     we're  dehumanized,  we  are  callous.  I  will  agree  with  that 
     statement and disagree with it, too. While I was in Vietnam, and a 
     combatant, I was very callous. One time I had the guy on the right 
     and the guy on the left of me both get hit,  and I didn't blink an 
     eye; it wasn't ME;  I didn't get hit,  they did.   They might have 
     been  my friends,  but it wasn't my ass that got blown away.  As I 
     said  before,  kill  another person?   You do it.  You're in  that 
     situation and you're going to kill.
     
     But  there's  something even more to the fanaticism that  led  me. 
     After  I made up my mind that the war was wrong,  I still  fought. 
     The last day I was in Vietnam, the day I got shot,  I knew the war 
     was  wrong;  but  I  still went up  that  hill,  assaulting  North 
     Vietnamese positions, with only one idea in my head,  and that was 
     to  kill  --  not for any ideological reason,  but simply  out  of 
     hatred.  I'd lost friends in Nam,  I'd gone through hell for eight 
     months,  these  guys were the enemy to me,  and I went out to kill 
     them.
     
     You  might  say I got caught up in an insanity.  It's very  simple 
     back  here  in the States to pass judgment on what goes on in  the 
     heads of the guys in Vietnam.  It's very easy for somebody to say, 
     "How  the hell can these things happen,  that the guys are talking 
     about?   These guys should all be thrown in jail!"  It's very easy 
     to  just be here and say,  "What a barbaric act!"  But that's  the 
     kind of war this is.
     
     Vietnam is ten thousand miles away to you people.  I don't want to 
     sound  condescending,  but  it's a reality!  It's going on  today! 
     Right  now,  there  are guys out on ambushes,  there are  guys  on 
     "long-range reconnaissance inserts,"  in Laos,  in Cambodia.   The 
     killing  is going on right now!  The psychological pressures  that 
     are  in these guys'  heads is going on right now.  Don't let  this 
     statistic  of  "eleven deaths last week"  throw you.   There is  a 
     full-fledged war going on, with all the horrors that go along with 
     it.  If you don't physically see the horrors of war,  it's easy to 
     forget.  It's  easy to forget it.  Maybe it's something you try to 
     forget.
     
     
     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 88
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

     But, dammit, I can't.   It's with me every day,  whether I like it 
     or not, I cannot forget what is going on in Vietnam.  Everybody in 
     this country seems to be thinking, "The War's over.  They're going 
     to  work out some great plan.   They're going to have a withdrawal 
     of troops.  Fine and dandy!"  But that war is still going on.  And 
     until it's politically expedient for Nixon to get a withdrawal out 
     of  Vietnam,  and a negotiated settlement,  how many more guys are 
     going  to  have to die?   And again,  I'm not only  talking  about 
     Americans.
     
     There are a lot of things about Vietnamization, but the tragedy of 
     it is this:  that it continues the war.  Now you can sugarcoat the 
     rest  of  it any way you want to:  "We're not doing  the  fighting 
     anymore.  We're  only giving them air support."  But the  fighting 
     continues!   And  if it's not obvious now --  after how long we've 
     been there,  after having over half a million American men totally 
     committed  to trying to seek a military victory --  that this  war 
     cannot  be  won militarily,  short of the deployment  of  tactical 
     nuclear weapons --  then I don't know when it will be.  But if you 
     consider wiping out North Vietnam a victory, and rubbing out major 
     sections  of South Vietnam a victory,  then I say,  "Well,  that's 
     your definition; to me, that's no victory."
     
     Vietnam  did  something to me,  it shook me out of the rut  in  my 
     life.  There's  this whole thing about the Pentagon Papers and the 
     need to make yourself knowledgeable. This is the essence of what I 
     try and say -- specifically when I talk with high school students. 
     But I don't limit it to that.
     
     I  was going on with blinders through my whole life.  I  graduated 
     from  college  with  a  very  high  average.  You'd  think  I  was 
     intelligent; I was a dummy.  I was all set to go into the Marines, 
     spend three yeas as an officer, get the leadership credentials and 
     all  that garbage;  come back and go into a major corporation,  in 
     its management training program, right up the scale, and so on and 
     so  forth.  Vietnam  pointed  something  out to  me,  that  I  was 
     derelict,  I  was negligent in my responsibility as a  citizen.  I 
     don't  mean  delegating  all my responsibilities as a  citizen  to 
     whoever I voted for, or whoever was my congressman or senator. All 
     right, they're the ones who are making the policy;  who am I?  I'm 
     Norman Nobody.   "Even if I know something,  what good is it going 
     to do?" I think it CAN do some good.  I say that there is going to 
     be  a  revolution in this country.   And it won't be born  out  of 
     violence or bloodshed.
     
     The revolution I'm talking about may be one reason why you're here 
     tonight:  an  increased  sensitivity  on  your  part,   a  greater 
     awareness  of  your  function  as  a  human  being,  and  of  your 
     responsibility,  as  a  citizen  of  this  country,   to  be  held 
     accountable for,  and to try to direct,  what the United States of 
     American is doing in your name.  THAT'S the revolution I'm talking 
     about -- a social revolution, a change in thinking, one that says, 
     "Throw out `kill ratios' as the logic for continuing the war." Our 
     commanders are happy; they say,  "We will continue.  We're winning 
     in  Vietnam,  because  we are getting fifteen  `gooks'  for  every 
     American killed."  It is THAT that I want to see a total rejection 
     of. I want to see people recognize that a Laotian, a Cambodian,  a 
     North  Vietnamese,  a Viet Cong,  has got as much right to live -- 
     and live any way he chooses to --  as any American.   The day that 
     
     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 89
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

     we really incorporate that into our thinking is the day that we're 
     going to change.
     
     You ask me, "What can I do for peace?" I don't know.   I've seen a 
     lot of suffering, and I'm aware because I saw it.   I hope you can 
     become aware, because then you will take on your responsibility as 
     a  citizen to know what we've done in Vietnam,  and to broaden our 
     horizons.  Look  at  what's  going  on  in  Pakistan,   with  this 
     Administration  still  wanting to send military aid  to  Pakistan, 
     where  hundreds  of thousands of Bengalis have  been  slaughtered. 
     This  is  what I'm talking about,  this sensitivity.   Look at  us 
     supporting a military junta in Greece, in Athens,  or having Spiro
     T. [Agnew, the Vice President under Richard Nixon] going around to 
     all these fascist countries, saying "Right on!  Right on!"  That's 
     what I oppose.   And that's why I say,  "Open up your heads and be 
     aware."
     
     Be aware of the racist policy that we have followed. I hardly even 
     touched the racist nature of [the war in] Vietnam, but it's there. 
     I can go on and on and on. But the whole thing winds down to this: 
     I've seen a lot of hate in this world; and all I have left --  all 
     I  try to keep in my head and convey to others --  is love.  And I 
     mean that, because that IS all I've got left.  Thank you.
     
                                ----------
           Source:  "THE FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO KNOW THE TRUTH: 
        A Study of the War in S.E. Asia through the Pentagon Papers 
                 and Other Sources" (monograph). New York: 
            The Student Assembly of Columbia University, 1971.
     





























     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 90
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

                A Vietnam Veteran's wife shares her pain
                             By: Laura Palmer
                       In the 2/18/90 El Paso Times
                           Input by: Joyce Flory
               NAM VETs Incarcerated Veterans Section Editor
                    Desert Dolphin BBS - Las Cruces, NM
                              (505) 523-2811
     
                "A Vietnam veteran's wife shares her pain"
                "Her book traces path of horror to healing"
       "Patience Mason has  written  the book she couldn't  find  in  a
     library or bookstore.
       "Recovering from the War:A Woman's Guide to Helping Your Vietnam
     Vet,  Your Family and Yourself"  is written with the blunt honesty 
     of one who has been there - and back.
       Mason's husband, Robert, was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.  His
     book about his experiences,  "Chickenhawk",  became a best seller. 
     But  for many of their 23 years of marriage,  his wife  says,  "We 
     were a flamingly dysfunctional family.
       "For some of those years," Mason writes,  "Bob drank a quart  of
     whiskey  a day,  smoked pot,  and took a lot of Valium and he  was 
     still wired.
       "He couldn't sleep, he  had  nightmares, rages, constant anxiety
     attacks, intrusive thoughts,  deep depressions.  Often he was cold 
     and critical.  He was unfaithful to me.   He left various jobs for 
     both reasonable and unreasonable reasons.
       "Neither of us  knew what was wrong.  I screamed and  raged  and
     enabled and took care of the family stuff while he suffered."
      Mason, 46, now knows her husband was suffering from PostTraumatic
     Stress Disorder.  The problem is he came back from the war in 1966 
     and the disorder did not exist as a diagnosis until 1980.
       As her husband relied on pills and alcohol to throttle down  his
     pain,  Mason  became  a state-of-the-art co-dependent who  assumed 
     that his problems were her fault.
       "I felt that if only I were better, thinner,  more  housewifely,
     neater,  kinder,  Bob wouldn't be so depressed all the time,"  she 
     writes. "If I were a perfect wife, he wouldn't have any problems."
      Ultimately, her book is about healing and hope for people who are
     willing to look honestly at themselves and then buckle down and do 
     the hard work that is required to change.
       Mason gave up trying to "fix" Bob and control the world.  Change
     led her to revelation.
       "I  was  real  surprised to find out I wasn't perfect and didn't
     know everything," she writes.
     The fact it has not been easy has made her life hard and this book
     good.  This is a woman with a college degree who cleaned houses so 
     her  husband  could write and then went on the book tour  for  him 
     because  he  was in jail after his only attempt at drug  smuggling 
     backfired.
       "Recovering from  the  War" is more than just  Patience  Mason's
     gritty  story.  The first one-third of the book could be described 
     as  "everything  you  need  to  know  about  the  Vietnam  War  to 
     understand someone who served there."
       The second section  explains  what the  physical  and  emotional
     aftereffects  of  the war were on the men who fought it,  and  the 
     third segment explains how to cope.
       This book is crammed with first-rate advice about  the  Veterans
     Administration, the Vet Center Program and veterans groups.
     
     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 91
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990



     =================================================================
                  C o n c e n t r a t e d   S e r v i c e
     =================================================================

                 NamVet/IVVEC Concentrated Service Report
          
                            by: G. Joseph Peck
                         NAM VETs Managing Editor
                        VETLink #1 - Pittsfield, MA
                              (413) 443-6313
     
     To keep you abreast of HOW NamVet/IVVEC Concentrated Service is 
     doing, we'll try to run a report every month of the status of 
     efforts currently underway and, if appropriate, apprise you of 
     positive or negative results.
          
     -- Letter dated 1/1/90 to Massachusetts' DAV Commander, with text-
         file copy in IVVEC: 
        To date:  NO response - VERBAL or WRITTEN
     
     -- Copy of above letter dated 1/1/90 to DAV National Commander, 
         with text-file copy in IVVEC:
        To date:  NO response - VERBAL or WRITTEN
     
     -- Letter dated 1/13/90 to U.S. Congressman Silvio O. Conte, with 
         text-file copy in IVVEC was received and responded to 3/2/90. 
         It is included in this issue of NamVet. (Progress!!!!)
          
     -- Letter(s) dated 1/21/90 to Commissioners and Directors of 
         Veterans Affairs in 50 states and 2 Territories, with text-
         file copy in IVVEC:
        To date: 24 positive and helpful responses w/literature;
        7 letters returned ADDRESSEE NOT HERE UNABLE TO FORWARD
     
     -- Letter dated 1/31/90 to U.S. President Bush was received and 
        responded to. It is included in this issue of NamVet.  Agent 
        Orange Editor Kroll is to provide the White House with a copy 
        of his letter and a copy of its 1/31/90 response to me.
     
     I will keep you posted here and in the VIETNAM_VETS echo as to 
     continuing developments on any of the above issues.
     
            Yours, in Service to America ... and my fellow man
                   In kindness, honesty, and good faith
     
                              G. Joseph Peck
              Moderator, VIETNAM_VETERANS INTERNATIONAL ECHO
                          Managing Editor, NAMVET
                            SysOp - VETLINK #1
                President, BERKSHIRE VETERANS' CENTER, INC.
     








     NAM VET Newsletter                                        Page 92
     Volume  4, Number  3                               March  7, 1990

                        Letter from The White House
     
                            by: G. Joseph Peck
                         NAM VETs Managing Editor
                        VETLink #1 - Pittsfield, MA
                              (413) 443-6313
     
     In last month's NamVet and in IVVEC we published a letter which we 
     wrote to The Honorable U.S. President George Bush concerning the 
     lack of response to Agent Orange Editor Martin Kroll's letter 
     concerning Agent Orange Compensation to the Vietnam Veterans of 
     our nation.  
     
     On or about 26 February 90, we received the reply noted below.  We 
     have since NETMAILed a text-file copy to Martin and, as soon as we 
     can gain access to a working copier, we will copy and mail the 
     White House letter to him also.
     
     - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * -
     
                              THE WHITE HOUSE
                                WASHINGTON
     
                             February 20, 1990
     
     Dear Mr. Peck:
     
     Thank you for your most recent message to the White House.
     
     I regret that you have not received a response to your original 
     correspondence, but we have no record of it in the file system at 
     the White House.  If you would care to write again, we will be 
     certain to see that your message receives the proper attention.  I 
     would appreciate it if you could also enclose a copy of this 
-- 
#L.W. Jewell Moderator at the Veterans Information Site (veteran@cc.purdue.edu)#
#& WWII-L Listowner: "Sunday's horoscope is note worthy because of its strange,#
#sudden and wholly unpredictable and inexplicable occurrences, affecting all   #
#phases of life." "Your Horoscope" L.A. Evening Herald Express, Sat, 12/06/41  #
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam