In 1969 a young second Lieutenant who had volunteered to serve in the special forces in the tri-border region of Viet-
nam arrived in the Central Highlands village where he was to spend the next year embedded with a Jarais tribe of Montagnards.
In the orientation materials and reports allegedly written by his predesessors, provided to him by the US Army, he anticipated arriving at a village that had the following:
A well built school fully equipped with desks and chalkboards, made of concrete, fully staffed with an administration including a principal, teachers, and maintenance workers. These posts were all on payroll every month.
A complete clinic with medics (Bouxi,) an administration and maintenance workers also all on payroll every month,
Wells made of cement, without regard to the fact that Montagnards will only drink running water such as that in a stream. They are animist people. They will never drink standing water as would be found in the well. That “well” functionally did not exist anyway, as it was made with such inferior cement, overmixed with sand to steal every possible penny, that it was crumbling.
At ʻease the well existed. The “school” and “clinic” were vaporware. The paychecks though - that was real.
When he reported to his superiors in Da Nang in the cool comfort of their air conditioned offices what he had found on the ground, he expected that they too would be alarmed at the corruption. Guess what? They not want to hear about it. Worse, if he said anything else about it to anybody he would be punished- and I mean very severely. To show him that they meant business, they no longer allowed him any money at all. He could only survive on what he could catch and kill himself or trade for, 100% independently of any support from the US Army.
Can you just imagine that for a moment?
Just a few months ago you were the head of the marketing department at a bank in your hometown. You volunteered your ass in there, thinking you were doing the right thing. You leave your family and get there to you find out that you were in the middle of a giant corruption racket. And now the Army that you loved wasn’t even going to pay you your money for food, much less provide any meaningful material support to the villagers.
How’s that for some bullshit?
Had did it not been for a network of people he knew if from where he grew up, he doesn’t think he would’ve lived.
That the immense gift of his sacrifice and service was so grossly abused for nothing was only part of what broke his heart there.
You know it has not gotten any better.
It’s a disgrace on a scale I cannot even comprehend, and here we are all over again, blowing people up with our tax money. It makes me want to vomit all day.
I am still angry for what happened to my beautiful brilliant and heroic father. We only learned of all this after he passed from his written documentation to the VA. He had quit the army days before he would’ve been eligible for his pension. He had just absolutely had it.
Assholes in suits from the CIA kept showing up at our front door trying to recruit him over the years. He literally told them to fuck off. He was a very tall, very imposing and very intelligent man who had a huge heart and who loved his country.
I think it’s waypast time for us to change, people. For real for real. I don’t want this to happen to anybody Dad from anywhere in the US.
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