Title: The Monk, and Other Stories
Description: Review written by Bernie Weisz, Historian, Vietnam War. Pembroke Pines, Florida, USA Contact: BernWei1@aol.com Nov. 11th, 2012 Title of Review: A Reflection of My Spy Time in Cambodia & A Psychological Memory of Visceral Fear.
Larry Serra's last book, "Nilo Ha Tien" took forty years to write. "The Monk, and other Stories" took three years following his initial offering. The author has come full circle, filling in all the gaps of his first historical novel and giving the reader further priceless gems in historical anecdotes about the Vietnam War. Are both books fiction? Not likely! In 1970 Serra was a Naval Intelligence Liaison Officer, known simply with the acronym NILO. He did in fact broker a secret weapons agreement with Cambodia's Navy, thereby foiling the Port of Sihanoukville's destruction. Although acquitted, he was hypocritically tried at a Naval Board of Inquiry, a sad fact no Special Operations Group member who did "Over the Fence" missions in Laos or Cambodia ever faced. So why is this "historical fiction?" As he explained in "Nilo Ha Tien," Serra elucidates the following as to his fictional format; "To inject a textural and sensory feel for the places, people and events; to protect the innocent and the guilty; to allow the author a flight of fancy in undertaking the prosecution of a naval officer for his intelligence activities. Virtually all of the events herein actually happened, and the author leaves the reader to guess which did not. He will probably guess wrong, truth being stranger than fiction." Knowing this, after digesting "Nilo Ha Tien,"the reader hungers for more of Serra's stories. With "The Monk," you now have them!

In the tradition of John Del Vecchio's "The Thirteenth Valley," John Podlaski's "Cherries" and Karl Marlantes "Matterhorn," facts about the Vietnam War and Larry Serra's life and legal career are strewn anecdotally throughout the novel. If you have read different memoirs written by Vietnam Veterans, it is not difficult to find one where a wild monkey was not kept on an American base as a pet. They were fed everything from liquor to marijuana, and sometimes they even made it as simian passengers on Huey gunships. Wild in nature, some of these primates spit, bit and even threw things at soldiers, even turning on its owner. This exasperation is expressed in one particular tale which Serra humorously entitled "The Monk." Similarly, rats were a problem countrywide in South Vietnam from remote mountaintop Fire Support Bases to the streets of cosmopolitan Saigon. Any recounting by a veteran who was unfortunate enough to be stationed at Khe Sanh Combat Base during the 1968 Tet Offensive is rife with rodent recollections. In a passage entitled "Rats," Serra humorously addresses this pesky issue, in addition to recalling the oddities he witnessed in Southeast Asia. From the absurd to the outrageous, the author recalls the South Vietnamese "Ruff Puffs," i.e. Regional Forces starting a firefight with themselves, U.S. naval officers being regularly "gracious" to the widows of deceased Vietnamese naval officers as part of their duty and even more outrageous, a tropical ice cream parlor at Ha Tien, a remote city which Serra lampoons as the "Barstow of Vietnam."

In another anecdote Serra entitled "A Little Help For My Friends," Serra takes shots at both former President Richard M. Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger for their deceptive duplicity on the Cambodian issue. While insisting to America that he respected Cambodian neutrality, Nixon secretly bombed this country and even ordered an American incursion resulting in a domestic antiwar uproar that culminated in the infamous incident at Kent State University. Serra refers to Nixon's sidekick, who stoically went along with the President's program as "Kissinger playing Bismark." Details about the war, the political instability in Cambodia and their longstanding antipathy for their Vietnamese brethren are recounted, as Serra unequivocally wrote of their philosophy; "The only good Vietnamese is a dead Vietnamese." The author doesn't stop there, lampooning "Air America" and its operatives. This was an American passenger and cargo airline that was covertly owned and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency supplying and supporting U.S. covert operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Once again, using Lt. Thomas Medici as both his fictional surrogate and protagonist, Serra comments on a CIA helicopter landing in Chau Doc, Vietnam as a "simonized" aircraft. Landing in a remote and heavily jungled part of sweltering Vietnam, the author describes Air America crew members jumping out of their shiny helicopter in crisp white shirts, Saigon mirror sunglasses and heavy gold bracelets, all tanned and smiling like a toothpaste commercial.

The author spares no one. Recounting an ARVN interpreter named "Mung," who was escorting NVA prisoners, Serra disparagingly asserted; "He had black market written all over him from the cologne, to the cigarettes, to the ostentatious gold ring, bracelet and chain that he wore. Mung saluted, then reached to shake his hand when Medici noticed his nails were manicured. Manicured! In the middle of the Vietnam War!" While there are many other interesting narratives in this novel, there is a sobering account of a Naval Captain patrolling the South China Sea who despite the protests of Medici as well as other crew members on the U.S.S. Tulsa, fired the ship's powerful guns of at an unarmed civilian sampan. The small boat was laden only with fishing nets and attacked because it crossed into a designated "free fire zone." After the ship was sunk with lethal results, Serra wrote a most telling passage; "The Executive Officer had not permitted the survivors to be brought into the ship's sick bay from the main deck, as if they were lepers. In a way they were, Medici thought, infected victims of the Commanding Officer's moral contagion." One must wonder if perhaps this tract is a euphemism for America's conduct of the entire Vietnam War. Larry Serra also confronts his past before Vietnam as well as his legal career afterwards, all through his protagonist. A graduate of Princeton University, Serra was a Congressional Intern in 1966, a historical period that witnessed the escalation of the Vietnam War, racism in America and Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" initiative.

Larry Serra reminiscences this period as well as what he calls his "shanghaied entry" into the Navy. Noting he was young enough to be drafted yet indignant that he was not old enough to buy a beer was a situation many faced as they were deployed to Vietnam. Throughout the course of the war, the average age of Asian bound military personnel was nineteen. Serra volunteered as a NILO once in the Navy and attended Vietnamese language school at Coronado, California. In another amusing account, the author wondered if he was learning enough of this strange language to call in fire support or get a Vietnamese medic to stop his bleeding if wounded. Serra also met Robert Kennedy while working on Capitol Hill and eerily mentioned; "There was something religiously charismatic about Bobby. But there was something else. Something marked and tragic about the man. It was the air of guys in the combat zone you knew were going to get killed." Serra has been a lawyer now for four decades and concludes his novel with his endeavors to rebuild Cambodia's legal system after the carnage Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge imposed on this forlorn nation. The reader realizes that all these short stories are real and historically significant, and a fitting continuation to the author's first installment. One can only hope that Larry Serra has in store a third masterpiece and can futuristically recount additional adventures of his amazing career. After taking in "The Monk," readers can only wait with eager anticipation for more!