In this compelling episode of The Renegade Lawyers Podcast, join me as we delve into the gripping tales of Vietnam with author and friend Ed Linz. We explore the personal stories from his book "A Filthy Way to Die," unravel the complexities of the Vietnam War, and discuss the profound impact on those who served. Ed's journey from submariner to heart transplant survivor and teacher adds a unique perspective to this deep dive into history. Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation on war, life, and the pursuit of understanding.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
In this compelling episode of The Renegade Lawyers Podcast, join me as we delve into the gripping tales of Vietnam with author and friend Ed Linz. We explore the personal stories from his book "A Filthy Way to Die," unravel the complexities of the Vietnam War, and discuss the profound impact on those who served. Ed's journey from submariner to heart transplant survivor and teacher adds a unique perspective to this deep dive into history. Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation on war, life, and the pursuit of understanding.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
I had lived in a bubble during the Vietnam War. You may have been a youngster at the time, but I was out on submarines chasing Russians and, quite frankly, the war was a total, complete abstraction to me. I was at sea chasing Russians so when I came into port I wasn't married, so I was chasing women and really oblivious to what was going on. So when I started talking to my classmates, I said oh my god, I had no idea that this was going on. I had no idea what was involved in this war. So I decided to try to capture as many of the stories as I could, quite frankly, before we died we're all 80 or 81 right now and I wanted to make sure that this information, which I think is very important, was captured for successive generations.
Speaker 2:An organization that helps good people succeed by coaching, inspiring and supporting law firm owners. Join us for today's conversation.
Speaker 3:Hey everyone, this is Ben. This is the Renegade Lawyer podcast, where each episode I get to interview people inside and outside of legal who are making a ding in the world. And today we're going far outside of legal. We're actually going back to Vietnam, and I have an author but, more importantly, a good friend who I've known probably now for 20 or 25 years. Ed Lins is the author of A Filty Way to Die. I'll show it up here on the screen, but we'll have links to it to the Amazon page and so and I've known Ed through my church and also I knew him when my daughter was running cross country at high school level and he coached a rival team and actually has at least one state championship banner to his name. Ed is the author of several books, including an older book about his life story, his heart transplant story, and so we'll have links to that and I can talk about that in a second as well. This book really is primarily a compilation of 60 interviews that I did with I think they're all classmates from yes, they are.
Speaker 1:There was one that was a widow of a classmate that had a tie in an interesting tie in and the book begins with the history of Vietnam War.
Speaker 3:For those of us, as I was saying before, we went live. I was alive and alert, but I was eight, nine, 10 years old, and so I really appreciate. The book is thick and interesting to read. So, ed, thanks so much for carving out some time and getting on with me today, because I think this is a the overall topic war and a filthy way to die is so important, particularly as we read the headlines every day, and now those headlines actually have a direct effect on human lives who are United States citizens. It's a heavy topic. So thank you for writing the book and taking the time. I know it's been a labor of love for you. So let's chat for a bit. How are you?
Speaker 1:first of all, I am fine today. I can see perfectly with my left eye now, since I've had cataract surgery, and I'm anxiously awaiting to get this one and I'll be without glasses.
Speaker 3:Let's go. Let's talk a little bit about your backstory because it's interesting. I know that you were a submariner, obviously graduate of the Naval Academy and I've written several other books, so let's just start there. Who are you and what has brought you in 2024?
Speaker 1:I was born in Kentucky. Ben grew up on a farm. I escaped to out of Kentucky via the Naval Academy. I had never really seen a ship before, but I learned how to spell it and I majored in math there. When I graduated I went into nuclear submarines. I ended up having command of a nuclear submarine. I also benefited from being the Navy for not only traveling all over the world, but I did have one two-year tour where I actually attended Oxford University, christchurch College, and obtained a master's degree in economics and politics while I was over there.
Speaker 1:I started writing back in 1979, just doing weekly columns under a pen name called Eyes Right, which I still do periodically. But I got sick in 1994. I got out of the Navy. I was teaching physics. I got sick. I was given two years to live due to this very rare disease called cardiac sarcoidosis. I had no symptoms when I was given two years to live, but they rapidly came, which was an arrhythmia of the heart. I was blessed, truly, completely, totally blessed by 1994, receiving a heart transplant when I only had a few weeks to live. I'm forever grateful to the family and to my donor. Her name was Monica was my donor, a beautiful 33-year-old woman who had a brain aneurysm and never woke up.
Speaker 1:I went back to coaching and teaching. I wrote a book about it, called Life for O, which you alluded to, and I was back teaching in 2000,. And I wrote a textbook about how to team-teach science to students that have disabilities, and I wanted to write a novel. So I retired in 2011 from teaching and coaching and I wrote the novel in 2015. It's called Hurdling to the Edge, and then continued to write.
Speaker 1:I was guilty, felt guilty. I had not talked to my parents, so I did a lot of research about their generation in the 1990s, kept all the interviews and wrote a book, although they never threw anything away. However, I live here in Virginia now. I was going to go to our church together with you and I started going down to the Naval Academy on the first Wednesday of every month to have luncheons with my Naval Academy classmates, and I had lived in a bubble during the Vietnam War. You may have been a youngster at the time, but I was out on submarines chasing Russians and, quite frankly, the war was a total, complete abstraction to me. I was at sea chasing Russians. When I came into port, I wasn't married, so I was chasing women and really oblivious to what was going on. So when I started talking to my classmates, I said oh my God, I had no idea that this was going on. I had no idea what was involved in this war.
Speaker 1:So I decided to try to capture as many of the stories as I could, quite frankly, before we died. I'm in the 1980 or 1981 right now, and I wanted to make sure that this information, which I think is very important, was captured for successive generations. In doing so, I also did a tremendous amount of research about how we got into the war, what the history of Vietnam was and all of the mistakes that were made leading up to us getting into the war, where we ended up losing not only 58,000 Americans and this is the tragic part two to three million Vietnamese, most of whom were innocent bystanders, plus untold Laotians and Cambodians. So anyway, that's a background for why I got into the book and I'm very passionate about it now, because I'm more informed, and I'm hoping that my book will help people to become more informed about this, not only what took place then, but to be aware of what really happens when the war takes place.
Speaker 3:And I want to come to the book in a second, but I do want to talk about your teaching experience, because here was a guy that had a ton of world experience, a ton of education, and you became a very popular high school teacher, including teaching classes, I think, not only to kids with disabilities, I think, but kids who probably were not otherwise interested in learning about chemistry or physics or science. And I remember you telling me tales and stories of really at least getting people interested some of these kids interested in what you were teaching. Overall comments on your journey through education and or what you were saying, because I'd be really curious about that.
Speaker 1:I love teaching. I just love the interaction in the classroom. I'm not someone who stands up and sits at their desk and teaches, I'm an in your face teacher, walking around the whole time. I had very high standards in terms of what I expected the students to learn. I learned wherever you put the bar. That's where students will go, and I probably, quite frankly, ben, if I were back in the classroom teaching now, I'd be fired after about one day, because I'm politically incorrect and I try to encourage a free exchange of views in the classroom, and that's not what happens these days, I think.
Speaker 1:So there's been a diminution of standards. The expectations which I had for my students and which I held them to, would not be allowed today, because there are some people that you know. The only people that ever failed in my class were those who didn't show up. I can't teach an empty seat. If I could get them in the room, I could get them motivated, but you do have some failures to the people not showing up, and that's not tolerated anymore. If I tolerated, a school system, for various reasons, mostly for political correctness cannot handle someone getting an F or even a D, and so, consequently, the course has been watered down so that there are no Ds or Fs. And who suffers? The students themselves suffer because they're not stretched to the limits of their ability. But more importantly, in my opinion, the nation suffers because our young minds are our best resources. But it's a far greater natural resource than any coal, any oil, any whatever. Is on the minds of these youngsters, and to not fully exercise them and make them seekers of knowledge, that to me is criminal, totally criminal.
Speaker 3:You and I, we could team teach and maybe then we'd last two days before we, I think, on my bucket list and I tell Sandy, this is one year like for one semester. I just like to be a bus driver, a school bus driver, and playing my tapes and I would be making their day get off to a really great start. Okay, so you spent your years while the Vietnam War was going on in submarine, chasing Russians you talk about this in the book because the waters around Vietnam were really too shallow for a submarine. And then. But when you reconnected with your classmates and started to have discussions, and then when Anna did research, talk to us a little bit for those who weren't aware alert, haven't studied history. Kost, what was the Vietnam War about? How did we get into this war that was literally on the other side of the world and could not have affected us one bit?
Speaker 1:if we had not got it.
Speaker 1:I have a map behind me on the wall there that I always keep here just to remind me about the geography of Vietnam. It's important because it's a very long, narrow country. It's only 30 miles wide at one place. Their historic enemy has been China, because China is up on their northern border. They've been invaded by them and controlled by them several times over the generations, but the new era really began in 1857 when Napoleon invaded and it became a colony where the French were milking it for everything they could. They co-opted, you might say, the intelligentsia there in Vietnam and helped them control that large population and it became a rice and rubber factory and the regular people were just terribly mistreated.
Speaker 1:Around the early 1900s there started to be a lot of dissidents that developed and people were starting to rebel against the French. If you go to Hanoi and visit this Hanoi hill where our POWs were kept, the museum is actually over three quarters. Not about the American war, as they call it. It was about the French and the terrible tortures, all these gruesome exhibits of where the French had all these ways of torturing the Vietnamese. One of the people that became a rebellion against the French was a guy named Ho Chi Minh you probably, I would suspect, Ben. You don't know his real name.
Speaker 3:You don't know his real name.
Speaker 1:I thought it was like. His real name was like the Vietnamese name that you see often Nguyen was. His first name N-G-U-Y-N, middle initial was A and his last name was Quoc Q-U-O-C. But it adopted the name Ho Chi Minh. And he was an interesting guy, I think one of the most influential people of the 20th century. He traveled all over the world. He even lived in the United States for a while. He was a short order cook up in Boston. He was on ships that went around the world. He fluently spoke six languages. So when he was in Russia he could talk directly in Russian to Stalin. When he was in China, he could talk directly to Mao. He was ruthless in the sense that he learned. He married a Chinese woman and someone said to him why did you marry this Chinese woman? He said I wanted to learn Chinese and so it took two years he dumped her. But the interesting guy is, when World War II came, the French were in control, but when the Japanese came in they took over and when they took over they basically the French quieted down and there was the Vietnamese. M-i-n-h was the communist group up in the north and they had been fighting the French and then they started fighting the Japanese. They didn't want anybody in their run in the country but themselves. We actually helped Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese by air drops during the war, including providing medical services for Ho Chi Minh when he became ill. So when the war ended in 1945, the French suddenly decided oh, it's our colony, we want it back. Ho Chi Minh came to the US and begged the US to help them in terms of becoming an independent country and ironically and I think it's very ironic we decided to go with the colonial power France, instead of siding with someone seeking their freedom, just as we had done. And ironically, the French had helped us gain our independence and instead of us helping the Vietnamese gain their independence, we decided to go with the French. And there's a very interesting history associated with from 1945 to 1950.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you or any of your friends or listeners have heard of the long telegram. This was key to US policy for the next 25 years. There was a US diplomat in Moscow by the name of George Hennan K-E-N-N-A-N. And he was not the ambassador, he was like number two or number three, but he spoke fluent Russian. He understood the Russians and talked to Stalin a lot and he wrote a 5,300-word telegram back to the State Department in about 1946, which became known as the Long Telegram, in which he outlined how he felt the United States should approach not only the Soviet Union but communism in general, and this basically set up the policy of containment that we don't want communism to spread, and because this then became known as the domino effect, where we felt if one of these nations fell in Southeast Asia, the next would fall. The next would fall pretty soon, all of the area would be communist and which would be a big problem for us.
Speaker 1:One of the guys who was very intimate with this telegram was a guy named Paul Nitzi, n-i-t-z-e. Nitzi was a lifelong bureaucrat and a very powerful one in a lot of different administrations. At the time he was working for the National Security Council and he wrote NSC 68, which came out in 1950. This is what set postwar, postwar Apollo for the next 25 years and ironically and it is really ironically Nitzi was the guy who handed us our diplomas. He was Secretary of the Navy at that time, in 1965, which in essence became death sentences for nine of my classmates.
Speaker 1:I subsequently, when I was working after I finished with submarines, I worked in a Pentagon and arms control. And I got a chance to meet and talk with Nitzi and I took him a photograph of him handing me my diploma and we had a big laugh about it. Very interesting and powerful guy. But this is what was the cornerstone of policy for the US during Truman, during Eisenhower, during Kennedy and during Johnson, this policy of containment. We will do whatever it takes to keep communism from spreading, beginning in about 1950, we started sending the word that I hate really strongly advisors to Vietnam, and these guys were providing a lot of weapons, a lot of advice, etc. I don't know if you've ever read this book. It's the novel.
Speaker 3:The Quiet American.
Speaker 1:The Quiet American.
Speaker 1:It's a novel written by Graham Greene and it came out in 1955, based on his experiences from 52 to 55 in Vietnam, living there. It's a very he's an incredible writer, he's British and just amazing. But if you read the book, how in the world could you possibly get involved there? Because everything he's talking about with respect to the French and their problems, well, he just simply duplicated them. And here's a novel that lays out exactly the problems that are taking place in Vietnam and why they're insolvable for a foreign country.
Speaker 1:And the CIA was bringing plastic explosives in this book there and they were searching for a quote third force. A third force would be a South Vietnamese government that could be supported by the US to take on the Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh to stop this flow of communism. And so we sent three billion, that's B dollars, to the French before they fell at the end, ben Fu, at the critical battle in 1954. But following that, then we started trying to find Vietnamese leaders, who were essentially puppets we could support, to fight against the North. When the war had ended, the World War II had ended, they had a big conference in the Geneva conference that divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel. You can't see it up there, between North and it's right at the 17th parallel, there's a river that runs along.
Speaker 3:Very helpfully. In the book you have maps.
Speaker 1:Yes, anyway. So the idea was they'd be divided within two years, in 1956, and they would have free elections where all the Vietnamese could vote for whether they wanted to be the North or the South. The South had absolutely no intentions whatsoever of having these elections because they knew they'd get crushed Because everyone up in the Communist North would be directed to vote for the North Vietnamese government and about one third of the people in the South were North sympathizers who became known as Viet Cong. But they were Vietnamese who lived in the South who didn't like the Southern government. You ended up setting up this guy named Diem for a while. It became president and his vice president was a guy named Nu in HU. It was brutal and they were running the country with the CIA and us providing all these supplies, forces and everything, including a lot of material support for them to fight the Viet Cong. They weren't going North, they were just all fighting there in the South.
Speaker 1:Now Vietnam, and one of the things in the book I point out one of the maps shows how it's divided into four core areas. Those were not inventions of the US, those are Vietnamese administrative districts. But up North, near the DMZ, is called Core One, but it's never called that. It's all called I-Core because of the Roman numeral looks like an I, so that's called I-Core. So if you hear people say I fought an I-Core or whatever that's up North, then you've got number two core, then three core, which is where Saigon is, and then four core is the Mekong Delta part down at the bottom where all the canals and rivers are down there. So the problem is religion. The two DMZ and in the news were Catholics and they did not tolerate Buddhists and a lot of Vietnamese are Buddhists in the South and so they would periodically brush them and then Buddhist monks would self emulate by putting themselves on fire. This got the attention of US television and very dramatic watching someone burn themselves to death sitting in the middle of Saigon on a street. The situation was exacerbated even more because this guy that was the vice president or the brother or the president. This guy knew the president wasn't married but the brother was and her name was. She was referred to as Madame New in HU and she called these on television, referred to these emulations as barbecues, and imagine the effect in the United States when they heard this and this is when the US started to population started saying maybe this isn't such a good idea, this defeat communism thing. Why are all our people going over there and getting killed?
Speaker 1:In comes General Westmoreland, and Westmoreland decides that the way to defeat the communists, in both in the South and the North, is attrition. We're not going to try to capture territory, we're going to try to get into fights. We're going to send our patrols out to find these guys, get them into fights and kill as many of them as possible with our overwhelming air superiority, fire par, etc. Etc. Etc. He had obviously never read anything written by Ho Chi Minh in General Giapp, who was his second hand man of it. They had written things like oh, we lose a thousand people, you lose one. We got a lot of people and we can handle this attrition Well, so we would go out in.
Speaker 1:The mantra then became body count. So all of our forces were tasked, when they go out, to try to not only kill as many people as possible but to count them. And that's how they were keeping school with how many bites. The great temptation is inflate the numbers. Who's going to tell you whether you killed five guys, fifty guys or five hundred guys? And so, consequently, westmoreland, by 68, had decided that the war in 67, that the war was, they were winning. And he came back and toyed a joint session in Congress, we're winning. We win every battle. That all got blew up in smoke when the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese for their New Year's is called TET. It just happened. This last month they launched massive attacks in every major city in Vietnam. Massive attack, and this totally turned the tide of American opinion. We had been told, some said, lied to that we are winning this war. And yet these guys were able to launch massive attacks in every city. We rebuffed every one of them and they had massive losses, but they won the psychological war. From that point on we were going to try to find a way to get out of it.
Speaker 1:I want to read you one thing that's not in my book, but that one of my Marine classmates wrote who was in the city of Hues up north, not too far from the DMZ. It's a very important imperial city where the emperor, the Vietnamese emperor, actually lived. I've been to this city. It was terribly torn up during the war and still has bullet holes in many of the walls of the imperial city. Let me read you what this fellow wrote. His name was Fred Vogels, and this is tough stuff to read and listen to. But I'll not soon forget Hues City. We found them buried in the sand outside the city Thousands of civilians and government workers, men, women and children murdered by the NVA, that's the North Vietnamese Army Bound in hooded, murdered in cold blood.
Speaker 1:Whole families what was the talent? 7000 plus, but who's counting? I remember that schoolhouse. They were having one of these school festivals there for all the children and their families. I was just passing by when it blew up. The VC that's the Viet Cong blew it up. It was an ideal target All those families and children That'll teach them, get it Teach.
Speaker 1:At a school there was a little child, maybe 5 or 6 years old, staggering out of the rubble. She was covered with blood, crying. She fell onto the ground just in front of me, dead, onto the ground into which her tiny body would be forever consigned. There are tears in my eyes as I write this. We've got nothing to apologize for. Compared to them War crimes Maybe we should waive the statute of limitations for man's inhumanity to man. I say that just to give you and the people listening a flavor of what really happens in war.
Speaker 1:The same fellow and this is in the book. After he got through with this tour as a platoon leader, he was assigned to work with a CIA. He was an assassin. They would go into villages and find out who the quote tax collectors were. These are the Viet Cong guys that would come in and say give us money, blah, blah, blah, basically for protection. We'll kill you all. So they'd find out who the tax collectors were. Then they come at night and literally slit their throat this Americans. My classmate was 24 years old. We was doing this. It's just. Some of the stories in the book are interesting. Some tried to show exactly what was going on and how terrible it is.
Speaker 1:A fighter pilot I mean just a fighter pilot for example, out on the carriers at Yankee Station this was an area in the South China Sea which was north of DMC. They would fly off the carrier and have bombing targets. The problem is they were meaningless targets Due to political reasons. We decided we were not going to bomb Hanoi. So periodically we would bomb Hanoi. Then we'd have a break, trying to get them to go to the negotiating table. But they would fly into these cities over the southern part of North Vietnam. They were heavily defended and a guy watches wingmen get shot down and kill. Go back to the carrier and try to sleep that night, knowing that you're going to fly that exact same mission the next day, facing the same anti-aircraft and the same missiles for meaningless targets.
Speaker 1:Guys in the South were down in the Delta. It's this maze I've been down there. It's this maze of rivers and canals. It's only 10 feet above sea level max and you go through them and it's like being in an alley, literally in an alley, with all this dense vegetation on both sides. Anywhere there can be an ambush. So we'd ambush them, they'd ambush us. One of my Marine buddies, his job was to up there to Nang. They'd go out and set up ambushes. That's where they'd wait on a trail, hide in the woods until some enemy soldiers came down and they would literally, without warning, just annihilate them, leave the bodies and then take their guns and any papers that are on them and then go back and try to sleep. I don't know how you do that.
Speaker 3:I want to come back to connecting this experience to what we are witnessing in 2024 around the world, but let's talk about some of these soldiers and classmates that you interviewed. I'm curious did you have a sense that anyone had asked them for their full stories before? In other words, was this for many of them an opportunity, really for the first time, to talk freely, I think, about their experience?
Speaker 1:Really a good question, ben, because I would say over half of the people had never talked to anyone before. I had one classmate that I intentionally did not interview. His name was Gowgish. He had a horrific experience. He was a Marine. His entire company got wiped out. That's over 100 Marines that wiped out when they all the wounded the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese were coming around and literally shooting them in the head. He survived by crawling underneath a dead water buffalo. He's got very bad PTSD. I chose intentionally not to pick at that scab but to answer your question. A lot of these fellows this is the first time and they were very open with me. They shared maps, things that they dug out that they had never shown anyone else before. Very interesting stuff.
Speaker 3:What was your methodology in tracking them all down? Is there alumni directory?
Speaker 1:There is. But quite frankly, what I wanted to do was get a cross section of Marines aviators. I had lunch with the guys I had lunch with down in Annapolis. They would often say to me those were mostly in-person interviews that I did either at their homes or my home Not maybe 10 of those, but all the others were from people that said, ed, you've got to talk to. So I say how I got a hold of them. They'd give me their contact info and I'd call them up and say I didn't know most of these guys.
Speaker 1:We were very compartmentalized. If you went into submarines you didn't see the aviators, vice versa, sort of thing. Some of these guys they had classes with, but most of these people I didn't know and they didn't know me. Yet. When I told them who I was and what I was trying to do, they were very receptive. No one refused to talk. There was one guy whose story did not put in the book, who was what I call a fake classmate, that is, he was only with us the first semester of our first play beer. He ended up doing some interesting things and was involved in the evacuation of Saigon, but he would not talk to me about some stuff that he had done that was too classified. I said, for God's sake, it's 50 years ago, who cares? He wouldn't talk, so I didn't put his story in. Everyone else talked very freely though.
Speaker 3:We're always curious about people who move the world by coming up with ideas and then putting their ideas into the world, and sometimes there's a fear like, well, anyone really care that I do this work? I'd like to be a little bit about this, because there have been many books, of course, written on the Vietnam War. Where does your book place itself? Did you think about that at all? Did you just say this is an idea, this is something that has to be done, nobody else is doing it and someone has to get these guys. It was all guys, because when out in the book, women were not admitted to Naval Academy until 1976, one of my high school classmates was one of the first women in the fall of 1976 to go there. Tell me about that process, because this is work. It may be love for you, it is work, and you have other things you could have been doing. Talk to us about the mindset side.
Speaker 1:I really wanted, as I said, to capture this. A lot went back to that previous book I did about the Great Depression. I did the interviews for that all over the country in the late 90s. By the time I started gathering these stories I suddenly realized those people were all dead and thank goodness I was able to capture their stories and have it at least available so people could get a glimpse into the Great Depression. So I really was passionate about wanting to get as many stories as I could.
Speaker 1:In terms of the book being a commercial success and things like that, I would like it to have broad distribution and people to read it. But my classmates love the book. They love the book. Some will call me and say I need 10 copies. I want to give these to my friends so that they can understand what was actually involved. Some of them have given with their children where they've never talked to their children about any of this. So that for me, ben was the reward in itself was that my classmates are very appreciative that I put this thing together and quite frankly, I got, like last night, an email from a widow who had read my book and her husband had fought in Vietnam and her son had died in the military, and I just got this introductory email from her last night thanking me profusely for writing this book, so that's the sort of thing that I really like about writing.
Speaker 3:And now, lessons learned? Because one of the things you talked about at the beginning of the broadcast here is a filthy way to die. I went out in the book that is oftentimes called the Vietnam conflict. You said, hell, no, it wasn't. No, it's a war. Once we sit here and recording this, in early 2024, the world is in large parts, amass and countries are at war in the United States. Who knows? Hopefully, not, maybe on the verge of something. So what lessons do you hope that readers, influencers, politicians, policymakers draw from your book?
Speaker 1:I'm very concerned about what I term American adventurism. We have US forces right now in many countries in Africa. We just found out, when these three soldiers that President Biden went to visit their bodies were being returned today up in Delaware, that we had this base in Jordan, that I would say 999 out of 1,000 or even more had no idea we even had this there. We have bases all over the place and these become magnets for people that want to poke the bear. And the problem is, when you poke the bear enough, there's enough Americans and politicians that'll say we got to make them pay. What's the price they're going to pay for this? And the next thing you know, we're bombing Iran. And the next thing you know, we're in a huge conflict that not only drains our treasury but drains the lives of many other Americans. In for what cause? This is what I'm concerned about. And the other thing is, if you looked at the faces of the three young men who were killed in Jordan, they're all young black guys. What was the woman?
Speaker 1:The people who fight our wars are poor people. It was that case during the draft, when you could get out of the draft by going to college and then, if you had enough money, you could get out of it simply by buying your way out, by paying off the right people. That war was fought. The Vietnam War was fought, as all wars are, by youngsters, our next generation, so to speak. Most of the people that were killed in Americans killed in Vietnam were under 20 years old, and you know how old your kids are and how you would feel about them being lost at that age.
Speaker 1:The politicians who make these decisions generally have no skin in the game. It's easy to send other people's children to death. It's easy. Biden will go up there and he'll make these people and you know say the right things if he can stay away and then go home have dinner, but that's it. All of the congressmen and senators who are hawks, so to speak, that want us to become involved in all these conflicts. They have no skin in the game. They have no family whatsoever in the military. They don't even have any friends' fam children in the military. They operate in different circles. So you send off all these poor people and it turns out that turns out to be a lot of people of color, and I'm simply saying that we need to really be very careful before we come involved in these conflicts because those conflicts turn into wars.
Speaker 1:With real human beings not only Americans, but people on the other side. We say, oh, we're going to take out some of the Houthi rebels over there, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. These are humans. You blow up a facility, the facility generally has some humans in it. I won't even talk about that.
Speaker 1:I don't know the answer to like policing the Red Sea. All I know is that where the hell are the Europeans? They're the ones that get most of their goods coming through the Red Sea. Why aren't they involved? The only one I know that's involved is the British. We're the Germans, the Dutch, they're watching soccer, and so this is what concerns me about this. I'm not an isolationist Ben, but I understand. Evil exists. I get that, but I also understand. I do not understand why we deem it to be our role to police the world and to basically offer up our youngsters in our cash. These are expensive things. That cash that we've sent to the Ukraine, for example, could certainly have been used for a lot of other purposes that I can think of right off the top of my head, to alleviate suffering here in the US. If you look at our church, it gives out food to people. How much food could we give out to people that really need it with some of the money that went into the Ukraine. Just a thought.
Speaker 3:No, it's a big thought and I think that you and I are very much aligned, I think, philosophically, on these big life questions and how we're going to live our lives and where we're going to spend our next hour and our next dollar, and what does God want us to do. So what's next for you? So you must be doing a number of interviews. You are probably in now recurrent contact with a lot of the soldiers and classmates who are mentioned in the book. As you said, it's getting a little bit viral amongst their friends and families. Do you have another book idea in?
Speaker 1:your head I do. As a matter of fact, the AF2 I'm actually working on. My wife has Alzheimer's so I'm the primary caregiver. I have a lady with her right now so she's not here, but that takes up a lot of my time. I generally between nine. I get her to bed by 9.30 and then I write between 9.30 and 1.30.
Speaker 1:I'm about halfway through a book called Heart Transplant, hiker, talking about my hiking experiences. It's a little bit philosophical, ben, talking about the joys and the challenges of hiking, and I try to de-romanticize part of it. But on the other hand try to explain how it can capture your soul, the difficult balancing act in this book. The other one is fun. It's called Electrical Sudoku and it's a series of electrical diagrams from my teaching physics where the goal is to try to calculate what each voltmeter and ammeter in an electrical circuit is reading.
Speaker 1:And I call it Sudoku because you approach it almost like you do a Sudoku thing. Some of my students found these to be very addictive because it's intellectually challenging to do it. All you need is I do a tutorial up front for how you do it and, quite frankly, I'll probably sell a lot of these on Amazon because people see the word Sudoku. Anyway, that's how. And also I'm writing, continuing to write a weekly column under a pen name, and I just wrote one about cell phones and about how they're possibly creating a Darwinian change in the species because of people's addiction to it.
Speaker 3:No, not only the addiction, but the ease with which we're giving up the challenge of thinking oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's the brain. Yeah, I have another friend who's written a lot of books and I asked him once why the next book. He said this is what we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So people who write try to.
Speaker 1:I don't watch TV, ben, so this is what I do.
Speaker 3:Well, we thank you for this. This has been a wonderful, it's great to spend time with you. I do get to see you on many Sundays during the year and you always have a bright, cheery face. And I'm not thinking about as you told the story it was 30 years ago because I first met you. I did not know you, but I heard the story from the altar. The fella, ed Lins, who I didn't know, was in the hospital and waiting on a transplant. Was life row still in print? Is that?
Speaker 1:No, it's really not. If you go to Amazon, you might be able to get a used copy or something like that. I still have a stash of them down in the basement, but you can't buy a new copy there on it. Interestingly enough, that book is still technically relevant, and by that the procedures for how you do a heart transplant now are virtually the same as they were 30 years ago. And I'm just thrilled and humbled by the fact that I woke up this morning, because I should not have, and it really gives you a feel, ben, for how the greatest gift we have is waking up each morning, and I live that.
Speaker 3:I often say and we don't know if we have tomorrow. You do not, it's a gift.
Speaker 1:Every day is a gift.
Speaker 3:What's today?
Speaker 1:We've thought about that when this terrible accident occurred yesterday where an airplane crashed into a mobile home park down in Florida and the people inside were just minding their own business and the next thing you knew they were dead. Because I said, it's a roller coaster, All right.
Speaker 3:Continue to try to influence people. Teach history, teach physics, teach math. You are making an impact on the world. I thank you for your time today.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much for the opportunity to share these thoughts. Ben, next time you'll see me without my glasses. Take care, we'll talk soon. Bye-bye, okay.
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