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Home Page Archive:
Home
Page as originally published in January 2018
— This Month —
Wrapping Things Up
– It's Time To Put This
Year To Bed, And Get Ready For The Next
–
and
In War the Veneer Of Civilization
Is Very Thin
– The
Physiological, Sociological And Psychological Impact Of War
On Civilians
–
And What The U.S. Military Must Do About It
MISSION STATEMENT
Our Association is a not-for-profit fraternal
organization. Its purpose is a) to foster camaraderie among the
graduates of Signal Corps Officer Candidate School classes of the
World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War eras, b) to organize and
offer scholarships and other assistance for the families of Officer
and Enlisted OCS cadre who are in need, and c) to archive for
posterity the stories and history of all of the Signal Corps OCS
Officers who served this great country. We are open to ALL
former Army Signal Corps OCS graduates,
their families and
friends, as well as other officers, enlisted men, those interested
in military history, and the general public.
Please, come join us. For more information about our Association, to
see a list of our Officers and Directors, or for contact details,
click on the OCS Association link at left.
Please note: The views and opinions
expressed on this website are offered in order to stimulate
interest in those who visit it. They are solely the views and
expressions of the authors and/or contributors to this website
and do not necessarily represent the views of the Army Signal
Corps Officer Candidate School Association, its Officers,
Directors, members, volunteers, staff, or any other party
associated with the Association. If you have any suggestions for improvements
to this site,
please send them to
WebMaster@ArmySignalOCS.com.
We are here to serve you.
Wrapping Things Up
It's time to put this year to bed, and get ready
for the next one.
Spend time in Vietnam? Spend some of that time
in one of those lovely swamp areas they called
rivers, over there? Remember getting tired of
C-Rations, and deciding to pick up a bit of fish
from the locals, and cook it up over a Sterno
tab, or a bit of C-4 plastic explosive set on
fire... just for a change of pace? Then listen
up soldier: you may be dying from a parasite
that you picked up way back then... one which is
just now—over a
half a century later—maturing
to the point of being able to kill you.
Yup. We're not fooling.
A new Veterans Affairs study points to a
parasite from Vietnam that's just making itself
known today. What the VA says is that recent
test results show that more and more Vietnam
vets are showing up with something called liver
flukes, and these liver flukes are killing them.
Apparently, the thinking is that the liver
flukes being found inside of Vietnam Vets today
were ingested back during the war, likely by the
soldier having eaten raw or undercooked fish
from the rivers, swamps and wetlands of ‘Nam.
Once in your body, they grow slowly—and we mean
slowly… needing in the order of some 40–50 years
to grow to maturity—at which point they are then
developed enough to cause things like bile duct cancer in
you.
Since it takes decades for the parasites to
mature, symptoms don't appear until there are
enough flukes inside of you to do damage. For
most of us that means that it’s right about now
that we should start feeling the symptoms of
river fluke induced bile duct cancer.
What are the symptoms, you ask? Answer:
tremendous pain, followed in just a few months
by death.
Read more about this last minute surprise that
the war you fought in half a century ago is
bringing to you today.
See now, aren’t you glad you served?
With all of the press about sexual assault in
the news these days… being committed by everyone
from Hollywood luminaries to TV personalities,
Congressmen, and just about everyone else
sporting a big head, bigger ego and self
inflated opinion of them self, it seems only
fair to ask how our own military is doing on
this front. Has
the introduction of co-ed foxholes resulted in
more sexual assaults in the Army than before the
idea of sharing combat with women came up? Or
are the men behaving themselves?
You be the judge:
For the record, sexual assault in the military
is defined as anything from groping to rape.
According to newly released data,
– Research that looked at all of the U.S. bases
in South Korea reported a combined 211 reports
of sexual assault, where the incident reported
resulted in an investigation being opened. Such
investigations we refer to here as “case
filings.”
– The Norfolk naval station reported 270 sexual
assault case filings in the 2016 fiscal year
(which began in October 2015 and ended in
September 2016). While higher than that found in
Korea, the number reported is down from the 291
cases reported in 2015.
Sexual assault case filing reports from other
big bases in 2016, included:
– Fort Hood, with 199 case filing reports;
– The Naval Base in San Diego, California, with
187 case filing reports;
– Camp Lejeune in North Carolina with 169 case
filing reports;
– Camp Pendleton in California with 157
case filing reports, and
– Fort Bragg in North Carolina with 146 case
filing reports.
For 2016, throughout all branches of service,
the Pentagon reported a total of 6,172 sexual
assault case filing reports, compared with 6,082
the previous year. While that’s up a bit, it’s
nothing compared to how low the number used to
be in the old days. Compare today’s reported
cases that were filed for investigation, if you
will, with 2012, when only 3,604 cases were
reported and investigations begun.
Yet interesting as these numbers are, the reader
should note that again they represent case
filings, rather than mere reportings. If one
looks instead at reports of sexual assault
incidents where no request for action was made
by the person being assaulted—thus resulting in
no file being created or investigative activity
beginning in favor of the assaultee—one would
find that throughout the military in 2016 there
were 14,900 reported incidents. And while this
is a much larger number than that of the cases
that were filed, it is significantly down from
the 20,300 non-filing reports that were made in
2014.
So which is it? Are sexual assaults going up, or
down? And if they are going up, are they going
up because more women are serving in more close
proximity to more men, or does the increase
represent little more than America’s female
soldiers feeling safer today about reporting
sexual assault activities, than in the past?
Either way, one thing you can say about our
military is that at least they measure and
publish the data on how out of line men are when
it comes to sexual assaults on women. The
statistics speak for them self, and the fact
that there are statistics to begin with says a
lot about the integrity of the military. Now, if
we could just get our government—federal
and state—to do the same, we might actually
accomplish something. As for me, if I were a sexually
sensitive woman who couldn't fend for herself and
stop an aggressive man dead in his tracks, I
would opt for joining the U.S. military, rather
than hang around Hollywood or the halls of
Congress.
Sad.
Next year... next month... we'll resume our
Signal Corps Success Stories series. Those of
you that are regular visitors to our site know
that in these articles we tell the story of Army
Signal Corps OCS graduates from either the WWII,
Korean War or Vietnam War periods. It's part of
an effort we are making to capture the stories
of those Signal Corps Officers that gained their
command through Signal OCS, and went on to serve our
country. Our objective is to archive for
posterity the stories and history of all of the Signal Corps OCS
Officers that served this great country.
In writing our stories, we focus on helping our
readers learn who these people were... in terms
of their strengths, weaknesses and beliefs..
especially those beliefs that go to the core of
their character, the ones that led them to step
forward and serve. If you are an ex-Signal Corps OCS
graduate,
drop us a note and tell us about your
life. We'll be glad to post it on a special bio
page for you... and who knows, someday you may
find your story highlighted here, on our Home Page,
as a Signal Corps Success Story.
One of the things that we know about war
is that its sociological impact on those who
live through it is enormous. It matters not if
you are a soldier within it, or a civilian...
the societal impact of war is horrendous.
What we also know is that at any one time in
today's world there are some 50 wars being
fought around the globe. That's the way it is...
and unfortunately its been that way for a long,
long time. Add to this the narcissistic egos of
the Rocket Man and the Trumpster, and it would
appear that America's
military may soon find itself in yet another war.
Are these wars necessary? in North Korea's case,
is it worth it to go to war to
make our point that a self important dictator
like Kim Jong-un can't be allowed to have
nuclear weapons that threaten America, never
mind ICBMs?
We'll let you decide.
Instead though, what we want you to focus on—as this
year comes to a close—is the impact wars have on
civilians.
In our next article we look at the effect living
in a war can have on the civilians that exist
within it. We'll use the case of a family that
lived through the Vietnam War... fighting on
our side, but leaving the country on the
last day of the war... the last day from our
standpoint... the day when the last American's
left: April 30, 1975.
Why this story? Why at this time? Why write about civilians in
war? What happened to Signal Corps stories? Why
do we need to know about this stuff?
Because as Army Officers we should know the
consequences of our work. We should know the
consequences of poorly thought out military
strategies. We should know what happens when
President's micro-manage their military and
lose a war. We
should know what happens when we allow our
government to use war as just another mode of
political discourse.
While it may be true that war is just the
continuation of politics by other means, that
does not mean it is an acceptable substitute for
dialog. Not when the civilians of the country
involved pay the price of this dialog, by living
in real time the harrowing parts of war, more so
than many of the soldiers that fight it.
The truth is that for most civilians for which a
war is ostensibly fought, their life becomes one
of a living hell, one reflecting the gruesome,
cold, hard realities of war, realities which
change their life forever.
In our next article we discuss this topic,
hoping to make the point that us Officers that
fight wars must be the ones to step forward
first, and shield civilians from harm. This we
must do in the midst of the war, as well as at
it's end.
Yet how can we do this if we are the first to
leave the battlefield when a war ends... as in
the case of Vietnam? How do we protect the
civilians that remain behind as we board our
transports home? And what kind of trauma do
those civilians face post-war? One would think
that now that their war is over, all would be
well again.
As we all know from Vietnam, that is not the
case. Often the trauma that follows a war is
greater for the civilians that remain behind, than what was felt during the war.
How and why this is so is the subject of the
documentary movie we post in our next article.
Not directly, mind you... but indirectly. That
is, while the main story of this documentary is
about the effects the Vietnam War had on one South
Vietnamese family, it is the backstory that we
are interested in. The backstory is the part
that is of importance to us Army Signal Corps
Officers, because it tells of the sociological
trauma war brings to the civilians who live in
the warring country, after
the war is over.
Watch our movie; learn what causes the stress, pain and
suffering of the civilians that endure war, and
let it burn into your mind a determination that
America never again allow itself to lose a
war... not if it cares for the civilians for
which it fights its wars.
This page last
updated 01 December 2017.
New content is constantly being added. Please check back
frequently.
Update 19 October
–
Just found out that graduates of the former Artillery Officer Candidate School program at Fort Sill
formed an association back in 2002. The association is active and
is
planning its next reunion for April, 2018. You can check out their
website here.
Like our Army Signal Corps OCS Association, the
Artillery OCS group came together to support charitable and educational
activities, as well as
to capture the history and stories of Artillery OCS
graduates. Be sure to check them out, and if you
graduated this OCS program, join their organization!
In War The
Veneer Of Civilization Is Very Thin
The Physiological, Sociological And Psychological Impact Of
War On Civilians, And What The U.S. Military Must Do About
It
The movie that follows speaks to the psychological,
physiological and sociological damage war levies on the
civilians that live within a war zone. In the case of this
movie, the civilians that are the subject of the documentary
include the nuclear family of a South Vietnamese couple that
lived through the Vietnam War, until its bitter end.
Until you have seen the movie and watched how “our” war
impacted this average family of the South, it’s hard to
believe how much pain war can bring. That’s why we show this
movie to you here… to help you, as former Army Officers, understand and internalize
the true impact of war on the people it is ostensibly fought
for.
Are the results of a war poorly managed and fought worth
going to war to achieve? Is such pain worth going to war
for? When one looks at the impact of war on civilians, can
war ever be justified?
That’s not for us to say. The issue here is not whether war—the
Vietnam War in particular—was a righteous war or not.
Instead, the issue is what kind of impact does war have on
the civilians of the country a war is fought in. What is the societal impact of war on
people?
Let us reemphasize this: in this article the issue we are studying relates to the impact war
has on the individual members of the society for which it is
fought, not the principles it is fought for. We think that
if you watch this movie—titled
Oh, Saigon—and concentrate on the sociological
impact of war on such people, you will find that in our
case, as former Army Officers who have all spent time in
war, we may think we know of the pain of war, but as this
movie will show you, we know only our own pain. There are
other sides to the pain of war, and this movie speaks to
them.
- - -
The family involved in this documentary includes a father,
who served as a Major in the South Vietnamese Air Force, his
wife, and their three children—one of which was born of an
earlier marriage in which the father was killed by the Viet
Cong. To underscore the sociological ravages war places on
ordinary people such as this family, the movie uses as a
foil to the befuddled and troubling circumstances that take
control over the family’s life various South Vietnamese
uncles and aunts, some of which turn out, post-war, to be
rabid communists.
The interplay of the actions the family takes with these
people—even as the mother and father try to bring a
semblance of normality to their life as the streets of
Saigon begin to fill with NVA soldiers—as the city falls to
the enemy—creates the lesson in all of this. As you’ll see,
even with the help of the greatest country on earth, the
United States, in helping this family evacuate the city and leave
for America on the day in 1975 that Saigon fell, normalcy
proves beyond the means.
The drama in this movie is palpable, but again, that is not
the point of this presentation. The point is for us as
former Army Signal Corps Officers to learn of and
internalize the sociological impact of war on the civilians
of the countries we fight in. And in the process, to pass on
to those who we have influence over our views as to how
wars—future wars—should be conducted. This especially as it
relates to the debts we owe to those civilians of the
countries that host our wars, and who in the process support
our efforts through their tolerance and acceptance of the
pain our wars bring to them.
Regarding this topic, what we know is this. There exist several behavioral and
social science disciplines concerned with the impact of war
upon society. In this documentary we will see the
ramifications of these sociological areas of unease come to
light. One of these that few of us who fight wars pay much
attention to is the ability of war to reorder society.
Most of us former Army Officers know that this happens
within the countries that provide the soldiers that fight
wars—e.g. within our own country, America, as it geared up via the draft
(i.e. via military manpower recruitment and training) to
provide the soldiers needed to fight the Vietnam War. What
we tended not to pay attention to back then however was how
this sociological effect and reordering of society came into
play in the place where the war was being fought... South Vietnam itself.
Today, so many years later, we now know that the effect
that took place in America also took place in the war zone itself,
South Vietnam.
The difference however was that the impact on society within
the war zone was multiplied a thousand fold over that felt
here in America. That is, what we now know is that if war reorders
society in an allied country, as the country prepares to
support its ally, it does the same and more within the
warring country itself.
As we look into the future, this simple fact must be kept in
mind. It must be remembered if we are to avoid in future wars the mess America
created when it ignored this basic societal tenet in
Vietnam... or for that matter more recently in Iraq.
As for Iraq, here we are referring to how Paul Bremer, the second
head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq (i.e.
governor of the occupation) single handedly caused the
dissolution and reordering of civil society by creating instant
unemployment for over 250,000 former Iraqi soldiers, when he
dissolved their units. In the process he brought chaos to
the country, set the
stage for a rise in sectarian violence and created
ISIS.
In the case of this movie, if one pays attention to the reordering of life that takes
place behind the scenes in this documentary,
one will see the same thing happening as that which befell
Iraq. For South Vietnam's civilians, as America’s intent to leave the war became more and more obvious, society began to break down. People
who normally were allied if not keen supporters of the South
Vietnamese government began to switch sides… with the result
that friends became enemies, families were broken, and
both danger and death set in. In simple terms, the
immediacy of the conflict and its changes on life created a
reordering at the macroscopic level of life.
What we know then is that war can have many different
impacts on societies, one of which is its reordering of life as the
war unfolds. The type of impact war has on society depends
very much on what the society was like before the war
started, what
the war was about, how popular the war was, whether the
particular country involved won or lost the war, and other
such variables.
With a history of winning its wars, for many, many years
America paid no attention to the impact wars it fought had on the country of
the war itself. All we cared about was the
impact the war had on our own country. For example, the
major impact of WWII on U.S. society was fairly positive.
The war stimulated the US economy and helped to get it out
of the Great Depression. It wasn’t until later in our
country’s life that we began to experience wars ending
without clarity. And when that happened, even then our
thoughts were usually for our own. If Korea was left in a
perpetual state of war, so be it. If Vietnam ended up “going
communist,” ah, what the hell… so what?
What
was lost in this way of thinking was the realization that at
some point in time in the future these outcomes would come
back to haunt us… by bringing to our own shores troubled
civilians from the war zone, by creating enemies in waiting
for us around the world, or by leaving the failed zone of
war in worse condition then when the war started in the
first place. As we now know, one of the worst of the
societal impacts of failed wars or wars of no-consequence
has turned out to be the degree to which individuals that
come out of war zones of this type are able to act with
agency and autonomy that proves—by societal norms—neither
contingent nor context-justifiable.
In other words, forced migration and the negotiation of
identity suddenly become issues of relevancy. So too is the
emotional, intellectual and economic impact of people
wandering the earth holding wavering points of view based on
instable foundations of memory, the value of property, the
impact of trauma, history, and other narratives that tend to
make such people combatants of society.
As this documentary will show, for the people of South
Vietnam, by 1975, it appeared that the Vietnam War was a
clear loss for the United States. And while much of
Indochina did become Communist, validating the domino theory
that was presented to justify America’s involvement in the
war in the first place, its existence left few psychological scars for America.
For one, it did not affect the United States’ status as a
superpower. For another, although the North “won” the war,
its postwar period was filled with more fighting, poverty,
and suffering for its people. If nothing else, the
documentary film shown here will make this case.
Why was post-war Vietnam filled with such trauma and
trouble then? The answer again lies with the hidden
sociological impact that comes of war, for the people within
the country
a war is fought in. For it is the civilians within those
countries we lose wars in that suffer the most sociological
damage.
If one pauses to look around the world today one would find
that there are currently, on average, 50 armed conflicts
underway at any point in time. Add to this the fact that
across the world torture is routine in over
90 countries, and one has the makings of a troubled world
centered on bringing misery to the most basic and normal of
people. For example, civilian casualties resulting from wars and
conflicts are on the rise. During WWI only 5% of all
casualties were civilians. By WWII that number had risen to
50%. In Vietnam the number rose again, to over 80%.
Currently, at last count, UNICEF says the number is now at
over 90%.
Adding to this, UNICEF says that “in the last 10 years 2
million children have died in war, a further 4-5 million
have been wounded or disabled, 12 million made homeless and
1 million orphaned or separated from parents. At present the
United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) counts
18 million refugees who have fled across an international
border, a six-fold increase” on the numbers that were
measured back in 1970.
Students of current wars have learned that a key element
that contributes to the above statistics is that modem
political violence is being created via “states of terror”
designed to penetrate the entire fabric of a country’s
social relations, at its most basic level. The intent is to
create a terror driven subjective mental life as a means of
social control. It is to these ends that most acts of
torture and violence towards civilian populations are
directed, rather than to the extracting of information. We
see this in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Ukraine, where the mutilated
bodies of those abducted by security agents and dumped in a
public place are used as props in a political theatre
intended to stun the observing.
One can see from this then the means by which war works its
sociological impact on the civilians of a warring society.
In the documentary we show here, one can see this taking place
behind the scenes, even though it is not the point of the
story itself.
What does all of this mean? For one, from this we learn that not only is there little recognition
of the distinction between combatant and civilian in war
today—nor any obligation to spare women, children or the
elderly from its trauma—but the valued institutions and ways of life that
exist within a warring society are marked for
destruction by those seeking to topple the country. This
means that, as in Syria
today, whole populations can be targeted for destruction. In
Vietnam we saw the North take this kind of action post-war, when
they imprisoned in reeducation camps—some
for up to 17 years—300,000
former military officers, government workers and supporters
of the former government of South Vietnam.
It is depressingly clear that such strategies are highly
effective. For most post-war societies, this results in the
blurring of the line between political and criminal
violence, with the political leaders and security forces of
the winning side becoming involved in unbridled
profiteering, black marketing and extortion. In our movie,
one can see these two elements—the trauma of being sent away
for re-education, coupled with the destruction of the
societal norms that prohibit the conflating of political
violence with criminal violence—coming to the fore as the
reasons for the family fleeing the country.
For our part, thinking of these facts, how can one not
concede that the greatest impact of war on people is to
those who live within the war zone… not to the soldiers that
fight the war. As former military Officers, as we encourage
our country to go forward in putting countries like North
Korea and Iran in their place—presumably to make the world
more safe—we must also encourage it to devise better ways to
protect the civilians we seemingly fight to free.
As to finding the impetus that caused the trauma of war to
strike the Vietnamese, one must look first to why the war
became necessary in the first place, because without a cause
for war, no war would exist.
In 2009, Ms. Jessica McKenzie, a young U.S. college student,
penned an undergraduate paper titled The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Vietnamese
People: The Effects of the Vietnam Wars on Vietnam.
Ms McKenzie won numerous awards for her work and since it
supports our position on the causes of war based trauma,
sociological upheaval, and the reordering of society—with
editorial alterations on our part to her original text, and
without quotations to note the distinction—we liberally
quote from it here.
In the case of North and South Vietnam, the shared history
of their wars of liberation against the French, and the
unresolved way in which those combat efforts ended, left the
people of the two countries with problems that still needed
resolution.
Specifically, the Second Vietnam War [i.e. the one we Army
Signal Corps Officers fought in] was an extension of the
first war in Vietnam [the French Indo-China war that ended
at Dien Bien Phu]. Compounded by the complexion of the Cold
War then circling the globe, the Second Vietnam War
represented the culmination of unresolved social and
political relations. What connected the two wars most
closely was the central aim that both the North and the
South had during all of these times, to liberate and unify
the country.
Whilst this aim was lost in the process of the first war, it
was fervently reclaimed in its aftermath, by Ho Chi Minh.
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