The
formative years …
The
Albany Academy, Albany NY
My
younger brother, Jeff Sharlet, spent his formative years well up the Hudson
River at a venerable old school in New York’s capital. The campus of the Albany
Academy with its extensive grounds and playing fields could be found just off
Academy Road. Established in the early 1800s, the school boasted a number of
graduates later distinguished in American life of the 19th and 20th
centuries.
After
the Civil War, the Academy adopted a quasi-military structure, and students,
now called cadets, wore uniforms. Classes were small; the faculty, products of
elite colleges, were dedicated; and the facilities excellent.
Private
school also came with a lively and upscale social life. The Academy boys mixed
with girls from the several country day schools of the Capital region. There
were proms, balls, and dinner dances as well as gala house parties at the grand
homes of the wealthier families.
In
a word, the Albany Academy was not a bad place to get one’s education in a
pleasant setting while enjoying schoolboy life in the process.
Jeff
spent his middle and high school years at the school, flourishing there nearly
up to the end. He excelled academically, played two sports creditably well, and
performed as an effective member of the Academy’s battalion. By senior year he
was appointed an officer in one of the line companies.
Then
things began to go awry. Our father, who had provided Jeff a comfortable
existence, lived beyond his means and ran his business into the ground. Jeff
had his eye set on Dartmouth College, and through junior year his grades and
activities strongly indicated he would get in.
However,
at the end of football season that fall our father sat him down and broke the
news that they’d be unable to afford Dartmouth or, for that matter, the tuition
at any private college. Because our parents always made a point of never
discussing business in our presence, Jeff was caught completely by surprise.
As
a young man with a sports car who wanted for little, Jeff’s bright near-future
suddenly darkened. He plunged into an academic tailspin. From Cum Laude among the top ten of a class of 50, by spring
term Jeff had spiraled down to 36th in class rank, hardly competitive
for selective Dartmouth or for any comparable college, even if the funds had
been available.
Discouraged
by the changed family circumstances, Jeff took no steps to apply to college. He
seemed not to care, but the parents prevailed upon him to follow me to grad
school. I was headed to a Big Ten research university, and Jeff was coming
along as a freshman.
A
friend, remembering Jeff from their last days together before the Academy’s commencement
ceremony, recalled the two of them sitting in a convertible on a warm June
evening ‘under a Rembrandt blue sky’ happy to be putting their formative years
behind them.
For
me graduate school was a heady experience, but Jeff was lost at that large
university of some 30,000 students. Far from home and his friends, all of whom
had gone on to the Ivy League back East, Jeff knew no one. He was not a happy
trooper.
Jeff
dropped out at the end of fall semester, drifting for several months through
part-time jobs in the small university town. However, no longer covered by a
college deferment, the draft and two years of Army life beckoned. Facing the
inevitable, Jeff enlisted for three years with the promise of a year of
language study.
Thus
began a journey which set him on a trajectory quite different from his peers. The
experience and reverberations would shape the rest of Jeff’s short but
interesting life. Though serious things lay ahead and Jeff’s personal story
would end sadly, there’d also be good times and lighter moments along the way.
Out
to the coast …
Nepenthe’s
at Big Sur, California coast
Jeff
got through Basic Training at Fort Dix uneventfully. All the marching,
drilling, and manual of arms of the Albany Academy years gave him an edge – top
sergeant made him a squad leader. That meant a more comfortable billet in the
barracks and a few privileges.
He
had joined an autonomous intelligence outfit within the Army, and as promised,
they sent him to language school for a year of study. The school was perched on a hill along a
particularly beautiful stretch of California coast. Though uniforms were the
order of the day during classes, academic life took priority over military life
on the base high above Monterey Bay.
There
was a lot of free time and just a minimum of duties typically expected of GIs
in garrison. After classes and on weekends, the military ‘students’ were off
duty and could don their civvies and go where they pleased.
Jeff
had a gung ho roommate and got stuck with a starchy Marine NCO as barracks
chief. Still, it was great duty only slightly removed from the collegiate
ambiance from which Jeff and his classmates had arrived at the school.
There
was much to do after hours. Jeff had an old motorcycle, and he and a buddy would
ride across the peninsula to the charming village of Carmel-by-the-Sea or roar
up the coast highway to San Francisco. Sometimes they’d head off to a race
track for a day with the ponies.
By
far though, Jeff’s favorite weekend hangout was Nepenthe, a dazzling restaurant
built from redwood harvested from the surrounding forest. It was located on a
breathtaking strip of coast called Big Sur south of the language school. There
Nepenthe extended over a cliff high above the Pacific.
The
patios, candle-lit as dusk fell, afforded magnificent views up and down the
wild and rocky coast. Food was delicious, but above all Nepenthe was a
marvelous place to drink, linger, and talk into the night. It was an easy place
to forget one was serving in the armed forces.
Late
’62 Jeff graduated as a Vietnamese linguist, or lingy in the outfit's slang. Originally
he’d hoped to go to Europe on the Army’s nickel, but on arrival at the school
he’d had been bumped from a Slavic language program, so it was westward ho to
Southeast Asia.
Life in the tropics …
Enjoying good times in the Philippines
Flying
with stops in Honolulu and on Guam, Jeff found himself at a vast military airfield
in the Philippine Islands (PI), a major US base in the global Cold War. In a
far flung corner of the base – far from flight lines where fighters and bombers
constantly took off and landed – Jeff worked the graveyard shift in a
flood-lit, windowless, heavily guarded building. In effect, he was in the rear
area of the low key war underway across the South China Sea in Vietnam.
Again,
military life in Jeff’s outfit was at a minimum, and when he wasn’t at his
classified tasks, life was very good in the PI. The billets were as comfortable
as good college dorms. There was an enlisted men’s club where drinks were
beyond cheap, and for the endless sunny days of the subtropics, a large outdoor
swimming pool.
Evenings
Jeff and buddies would often gather in the pubs and cafes of Angeles City, a
honky tonk GI town not far from the gates of Clark Airbase. Jeff joined the
glee club, which meant invitations to sing at other American bases in the
islands, usually followed by excellent dinners. At one point he considered
going out for the Clark football team, which would have meant away games all
over the US network of bases in Asia.
There
were also trains to Manila, the capital, and bus trips up into the cool mountains
as well as excursions to white sand and palm-fringed beaches of the South China
Sea.
Travel
to other cities of Asia was available. On one occasion when Jeff had leave, he
flew military transport gratis to exotic Tokyo, while another time he caught
the 4x-a year leave-ship to British Hong Kong. Judging by his letters home, he
found those two great cities fascinating.
As
the saying goes, all good things come to an end, and Jeff was ordered one
evening, late summer ’63 to pack his gear and report to the flight line in the
morning. He was shipping out to Vietnam.
To the Paris
of the Orient …
A Saigon street scene, 1963
It
was a deadly serious matter that rushed Jeff and fellow lingys to Tan Son Nhut,
the capital’s airport. A coup was in the air. South Vietnam’s president was
mismanaging the country and botching the war against the Communist insurgency.
The general staff was thoroughly fed up, and President Kennedy (JFK) had lost
patience with America’s Southeast Asian client.
With
JFK’s secret blessings, behind the scenes the generals had begun plotting a coup.
The US ambassador had a liaison with the plotters, but Washington wanted to be
sure what it was getting involved in and dispatched Jeff and his team to
clandestinely monitor the electronic communications among the conspirators.
The
mission was Top Secret lest the South Vietnamese government find out what we
were up to. The lingys were billeted in the capital and transported to their
operational site in a remote corner of a US base outside Saigon. They worked
around the clock. Each day’s ‘product’ – the intercepts – was sent down to
their parent outfit in the capital to be closely analyzed.
So
sensitive was the operation that the daily product was packed with incendiary explosives
to be detonated should there occur any chance of interception by troops loyal
to the South Vietnamese president.
Despite
this grim routine, Jeff and buddies had unforgettable times in Saigon, then
still regarded as the ‘Paris of the Orient’. The American presence was not yet
overwhelming, and it was still a lovely city with broad avenues and a French
flavor.
The
young Vietnamese women wearing the white silk ao dai – long tunics slit down both
sides and worn over long pants – seemed universally attractive. Fine
European-style hotels served indigenous dishes and continental cuisine. A popular
dining place was a floating restaurant moored to a bank of the Saigon River.
Off-duty,
Jeff and his pals were fond of pub crawling through the town’s many attractive
bars and outdoor cafes. But – as depicted in the film Good Morning, Vietnam – all was not quiet. An insurgency had been
underway in the mountains and jungles for several years, and its impact was beginning
to be felt in the country’s capital where the American military advisors were
concentrated.
The
insurgents – called the Viet Cong (VC) – not only conducted hit and run attacks
on the South Vietnamese Army in rural areas, but carried out terrorist
activities against places where Americans gathered in Saigon.
A
VC attack hit a movie theater frequented by US advisers and their dependents,
but more often a VC action was no more than two young men on a motor scooter
racing down a busy street and rolling a live grenade into an open air bistro.
That
happened one evening as Jeff and friends were walking along a major avenue
toward one of their favorite Vietnamese-French places. Maybe a hundred feet ahead
of them, a couple of VC cowboys sped by and the café exploded. The place was
wrecked, but miraculously no one was killed in that incident.
VC
terror was such a part of the urban scene in a city at war that GIs had grown
accustomed to it. Jeff and the guys glanced at the damage to the cafe, stepped
around it, and continued the night’s outing.
A
few days later when the café had been repaired, Jeff and the GIs went back to
enjoy the good food and pleasant ambiance. Their favorite waiters were decked
out in red sneakers instead of the customary sandals. When Jeff asked why, they
replied, “To run faster next time.”
After
nearly seven weeks on the secret op, Jeff and the initial team were pulled out
and flown back to the Philippines. Replacements continued the operation up to
the eve of the successful coup on November 1st..
High above the heat and dust of the plains
The road to the hill station at Baguio
Returning
to his duties at the 9th ASA Field Station in the PI, Jeff resumed the
languorous life of the islands. Nearby Angeles City, however, was a come-down
after Saigon with its lovely girls in the flowing ao dai, flower vendors along
the sidewalks, and, despite VC interruptions – the night life of a romantic
Oriental city edged with a frisson of danger.
But
the Philippines still had its charms for a young college boy GI with money in
his pocket and plenty of downtime. It was back to the sunny beaches, catching the
train again to the bright lights of Manila, as well as occasional free-swinging
dinner parties with fellow lingys and crypts, or cryptographers. It felt once
again like extended spring break.
As
relief from the tropical heat of the lowlands, Jeff and friends would make the harrowing
bus trip up to the refreshing air of Baguio along narrow, tortuous mountain
roads with sheer drops of 1000s of feet. In British India Baguio was the kind
of place they called a hill station, high above the dust and heat of the plains
far below.
The
only break in the daily routine from the night shift in the windowless building
and days of beer and bar girls was a tragic one, the assassination of JFK in Dallas.
Profound shock was felt by Jeff and his buddies so far from home at a terrible
moment in the life of the nation.
By
early ’64, Jeff had had it with military life. He’d been
in the forces for two and a half years with just six months to go, and was
thinking ‘short’ – shorthand for combat GIs counting the days until they were
out of harm’s way.
Jeff’s
most urgent concerns became getting his driver’s license renewed back in the
States, arranging to return to college, and generally transitioning back to
civilian ways.
But
then political conditions in Saigon became unstable, the post-coup junta proved
inept, and rumors of another upheaval were rife. Once more on short notice,
Jeff found himself transferred to Vietnam, but this time in different
circumstances, absent the creature comforts and good times of his first tour.
As
we shall see in the next posting, he was about to come face to face with the realities
of the smoldering, low intensity war in the bush.
