Parthian Shot (ii)

From novelist Loyd Little of the Civilian Irregular Defense Group, IV Corps

I drifted through 2 afternoons reading this novel as a dream, as so many across 5 centuries have read that Alonso Quijano, hero of the early modern novel, read his chivalric romances. You get lost then wake up.

El ingenioso hidalgo got up off the couch to act out his reading as Don Quixote de la Mancha. We his readers dream of his hard knocks as he sleepwalks through early modernity.

The knight was ingenious in that he lacked common sense. His servant Sancho Panza supplied just enough to keep his master going, what these days we call enabling a codependent.

In the dream of Parthian Shot nearly everyone is a servant. The Americans are all sergeants of the United States Special Forces. Sergeant means servant. Their lieutenant has just enough sense not to lead these men.

The major they report to at Danang is convinced that they already have been sent home to Fort Bragg here in North Carolina, since the paperwork says so. The only officer who exercises command to negotiate reality is a major of the Hoa Hao, who oppose both the Republic of Viet Nam at Saigon and the Vietnamese Communists there in the delta of the Mekong.

The rainy season sets in and the revolutionaries take a chokepoint on the river so the Americans are stuck anyways. The Special Forces team and their Nung fighters sign on with the Hoa Hao as mercenaries. Then the ingenious sergeants in their green berets consult with the RAND Corporation

to arrange that both the United States of America and the Vietnamese Communists each think that they have pacified the district, so nobody has to fight. An economy emerges in the peace, supported by the investment and management of a joint stock company. They sew then distress VC flags as battle souvenirs for one side,

and ship bales of bright fresh ones to the other. Everyone has got a share, as Joseph Heller had evoked American war with Milo Minderbinder’s enterprises in the novel Catch-22. Many war stories in the 20th century evoked a separate peace, and many American ones set in the Republic of Viet Nam have lampooned business.

This dream is not a satire but wish fulfillment. Everyone really does have a share. It took me a while to catch on because the author is droll and his narrator is wry, both bright men coping with an awful reality by making jokes. But their withdrawal grows into a serious proposal for another way of life.

Staff Sergeant Phil Warren really is describing peace and prosperity at Nan Phuc. The author Loyd Little really is writing after the withdrawal of the American occupation of the Republic of Viet Nam about a possibility that ended just after he left, when the Americans came.

This was the fourth Viet Nam letter of 4 so far presenting the author Loyd Little. The first posted on April 20, 2022, the second on June 25, 2022, and the third on October 24, 2022.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.

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