tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post1037200458569299318..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Bernard Fall: Death on The Street Without JoyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-18857406925327628532024-01-27T20:59:05.205-08:002024-01-27T20:59:05.205-08:00Thank you for this.Thank you for this.DonW LAhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05893215584432085508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-84404044833199745232012-02-12T17:23:18.346-08:002012-02-12T17:23:18.346-08:00Tom,
Thanks for further thoughts/notes on Bernard...Tom,<br /><br />Thanks for further thoughts/notes on Bernard Fall (what a great name he got at birth, heading into the life he went on to live in all its turns and travels) and thanks Curtis for your note/thoughts on the poem.STEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-72070746836545344372012-02-12T04:59:49.769-08:002012-02-12T04:59:49.769-08:00Like it was only a moment ago;
McNamara, Hough, W...Like it was only a moment ago;<br /><br />McNamara, Hough, Westmorland, et al ....<br /><br />the names have changed but they're yet driving-the-tanks & dropping The Napalm !<br /><br />only difference now and "they" learned this from the news-reportage from, what the Vietnamese call The American War,<br /><br />to censor the war-fare news... and NO REAL PHOTOS/ or<br />"on-site" reporting except what is Approved .<br /><br />I'm a-tellin you, my memories now right back in the 1962-67 or so !<br />Further?<br /><br />we've been in the Horse-Shit<br />so long<br />we can no longer smell the Stink !Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-80046935263813877202012-02-11T23:19:52.134-08:002012-02-11T23:19:52.134-08:00Bernard Fall's sixth and last trip to Vietnam ...Bernard Fall's sixth and last trip to Vietnam began in December 1966. He was on a sabbatical year, was being financed by a Guggenheim grant and his wife had just given birth to their third child. For eighteen months he had been suffering from an incurable disease, retroperitoneal fibrosis, had been through several surgeries, lost one kidney, and felt, as his wife would later put it, that "his 'machine' was failing him".<br /><br />So an air of fatality hung over the trip; "there were those among us who felt we wold never see him again," Dorothy Fall said.<br /><br />Vietnam had long been Fall's "beloved country".<br /><br />His first trip there came in 1953, researching his doctoral dissertation on the Viet Minh, the guerilla force commanded by Ho Chi Minh which was then engaged against French colonial troops. That trip he paid for with savings from his student days. He accompanied the French military on operations in the North. From a base in Hanoi he made his way deep into the provinces, visited villages, interviewed tax collectors, and gained his first inklings about the infrastructure of the Viet Minh. He learned their hold on the people and the countryside was far more extensive than the French had suspected.<br /><br />On his second trip in 1957 it became apparent to him that the Diem regime in the South was far more corrupt, and far more seriously challenged by Viet Cong infiltration, than had been known.<br /><br />It was as a result of his revelation of these findings, upon his return to Washington, that he fell under U.S. government surveillance.<br /><br />He had retained a French passport to enable him to travel in zones where Americans were non grata. In 1962 he obtained a visa to voyage to the North, where he interviewed Ho Chi Minh and Pham Van Dong. After that trip, having by this time developed academic and professional connections in Washington, he became an American citizen.<br /><br />From thence until the end of his life, he led the complicated existence of a man with many countries, caught between several worlds, entirely at ease in none of them.<br /><br />He was accustomed to fraught circumstances. He had lost both parents to a war (his father captured and tortured by the Gestapo, his mother deported to Auschwitz), had fought Nazis in the French resistance as a teenager, become a university professor, worked as a private contractor for Uncle Sam, waded through jungles and swamps with different armies and come close to death so many times that it must in those closing moments have greeted him as not entirely a stranger.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-69594777486901094452012-02-11T19:07:34.572-08:002012-02-11T19:07:34.572-08:00"One side just loses first." I expect t..."One side just loses first." I expect that sums things up pretty well, though I feel pretty hopeless at the moment, at least in this country under this president, this administration, that anything is likely to change. (I didn't really expect anything different.) I can't get exercised blaming past presidents or generals. These are ever-advancing problems and here we are now "same as it ever was." (Since that's the first and last time I'll ever quote a David Byrne lyric, I hope I've done so correctly.) <br /><br />Steve's poem complements this post really, really well. "torn right corner"; "inside, which stilled"<br /><br />I love the poem and don't know how he does it.<br /><br />I remember knowing about, but not understanding the significance of Bernard Fall's story, and my memories all come -- waking and sleeping -- in NY Times' typeface and black & white period photographs.<br /><br />Reading this material is, I think, a wonderful, but unusual way to spend Saturday night. It was a great day. We're having one of our typical (for this winter) snowstorms -- pretty, reasonably heavy, but nothing (thank heavens) really sticking or accumulating.<br /><br />Earlier today we decided to drive to a place we'd heard about but never visited - a sort of honest English pub translated to Pennsylvania horsey countryside called The Whip in Coatesville. It really was great. I'm not the world's biggest Andrew Wyeth fan, but one remarkable thing about Chester County is that the colors are exactly Andrew Wyeth's palette. Since he's a painter American kids tend to be introduced to at an early age (I'm thinking of Christina's World) and because that for me intertwines with the Bernard Fall story and Vietnam, it comes together as a mood, without obviously making any sense. CurtisACravanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00315707533118640284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-47427708704789843552012-02-11T13:33:00.948-08:002012-02-11T13:33:00.948-08:00Tom,
Amazing, what a story -- never had heard of ...Tom,<br /><br />Amazing, what a story -- never had heard of Bernard Fall (good for Curtis, and you too!) -- thanks for such gripping ("astonishing") stuff. From Heller's fiction to Fall's Last Tape ---- ("Could be an amb") . . . <br /><br />2.11<br /><br />light coming into fog against invisible<br />ridge, gibbous moon in fog above branch<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> the color which belonged to<br /> it, torn right corner<br /><br /> the word “forms” experience,<br /> inside, which stilled<br /><br />grey rain cloud against invisible ridge,<br />whiteness of gull flapping toward pointSTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-46299682859815896352012-02-11T12:39:57.626-08:002012-02-11T12:39:57.626-08:00Ah, yes, ‘Nam. A place and a time and a nightmare—...Ah, yes, ‘Nam. A place and a time and a nightmare—of our own devising. We turned a corner back there, discovered limits, lunged ahead anyway, learned nothing, except to carry a bigger stick. The rich and powerful were consolidating the empire they’d carved out during prior episodes of serial warfare. The industrial killing machine set new records. We learned the mathematics of body counts. We did carpet bombing using ‘bomblets’; we did high-altitude terrorism. The dead fueled the economy. Lies were as thick as maggots on a mule carcass. It was a long moment of national angst. Then we found a tunnel, at the end of which a light was said to exist. Designated portions of the world were made to suffer and bleed toward this light, while being hammered with liberty and democracy and free markets. At night we partied. Nobody wins a war. One side just loses first.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-25160263932811691972012-02-11T08:04:56.278-08:002012-02-11T08:04:56.278-08:00Astonishing in every respect. I'd forgotten a...Astonishing in every respect. I'd forgotten about Bernard Fall. It's always remarkable to see how "big" events are composed of millions of small details, including sneaky hands and devilish, frightened, jealous and petty minds. I had lunch the other day ("downtownish") with a friend who is so practical and competent in his work and so dreamy in his thoughts. He described to me his beliefs about the new millenium and how all the signs are present that things are coming together in positive utopian ways. Clearly, he's seeing different street signs than I am. CurtisACravanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00315707533118640284noreply@blogger.com