Interlude - Part One

 

I not sure if these interludes are something of interest here but I find that as I watch programs that deal with the military, I see errors that would be easily corrected if those creating the programs knew what they were doing. I’ve run into two examples in the last couple of days and thought that I would mention them. These observations are based on my military experiences, which, I think are relevant here.

First, I saw that The West Wing was available on HBOMax and since I have enjoyed other Arron Sorkin shows, I thought I’d see how this one went. The secretary to the President (Martin Sheen, if you must know), Mrs. Laningham, was not in a Christmas mood. She was asked about that and told a rather sad tale. It seems that her twin sons had been killed in Da Nang, and I’m not sure if it was at Christmas time or not. I only know, based on the story it was in 1970.

She mentioned that they had been in medical school and were preparing to be doctors. I say it this way because I don’t know if they had graduated or were in their residency, or what exactly their status was. Anyway, they received notice that they were about to be drafted and although they could have gotten student deferments as so many others did (like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump to name but two). These young men wanted to serve and they became medics. So, they deployed to Da Nang and were apparently killed together.

I say hogwash… History tells us that this wouldn’t have happened. During the Civil War, a mother, Lydia Bixby received a letter of condolence from President Lincoln about the loss of her five sons in the war. History suggests that two of them, and possibly three, survived the war. No matter here because Lincoln believed, and history suggested, all five had been lost. The government did nothing to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

In 1876, George Custer rode to the Little Bighorn with his brothers Tom and Boston, his brother-in-law James Calhoun (married to Custer’s sister Margaret) and his nephew Audie Reed. All five were killed in the battle. An article in a newspaper noted that the “unhappy Mrs. Calhoun” had lost a husband, three brothers and a nephew in the fight. It was worst loss by a single family at the time.

Fast forward to World War II. The five Sullivan brothers, from Waterloo, Iowa, joined the Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor. They required, before enlistment, that they serve together, a request that was granted. All five were killed when their ship was sunk in the Solomon Islands. This resulted in a prohibition of allowing brothers or family members from serving together in a combat environment.

Fast forward to August 1968, and my graduation from flight school. You might wonder about the relevance of that but there is a reason here. Every member of the class received orders to Vietnam with a single exception. We had two brothers in that class. I don’t remember if they were twins or just brothers, but one got orders for Vietnam and the other got orders for Germany. At the end of the year, the brother who had gone to Germany would probably receive orders for Vietnam. In other words, the Army prohibited sending both brothers to Vietnam at the same time.

Yes, I know that National Guard units that deployed to Iraq often had family members serving together. This could be siblings, spouses, or parents and children. Most of those units were in combat support roles as opposed to direct combat but the fact remains that they were deployed together. However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were rules that prevented this sort of thing from happening and the units discussed on the show were active duty as opposed to National Guard.

The second annoyance was an episode of Jag. An American fighter pilot fired on what he thought was an enemy position. He said that he had seen tracers fired up at him twice and on the second time, he engaged, killing three members of the Coalition. The pilot was court martialed for a variety of reasons, none of which are important here.

Here’s what I know. American, and by extension, Coalition Forces, used red tracers. In Vietnam, the bad guys used green and white tracers. When the pilot was fired on and saw red tracers, that should have alerted him to the fact the soldiers on the ground were friendlies. And, we learned, in the show, that they weren’t shooting at the pilot, but at a target that was part of an exercise (again, apropos of nothing, but an exercise using live ammunition in a combat zone?)

Tracers at night. Photo courtesy of USMC.

Yes, I know that an enemy might be using captured weapons and ammunition which would have put the red tracers into the weapons, but that would be extremely rare. Yes, while in Vietnam I did have an AK-47, which had been captured, but I also had an M-2 carbine with the red tracers.

The point here is that the red tracers should have given the pilot a reason to suspect that it was a friendly unit. And I do know that tracers looked awfully big at night even if they weren’t coming close. While in Iraq, I had one magazine loaded with all tracers because I knew of the psychological effect of those tracers when engaged in suppressive five as opposed to pin point targeting.

Sure, these are little things but they do show the lack of understanding of the military and they miss the little inside things that would lend greater credibility to their stories. I just thought I would mention these things because, well, I wanted to.