by Stephen Sossaman
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Like every other business, the Vietnam War was cyclical, alternating between tedium and panic, profit and loss, order and chaos.
In late 1967, The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong needed time to rebuild and resupply their units. This was a laborious process because they had to infiltrate everything by human porters through thick jungle while avoiding American aircraft. The Americans simply helicoptered in resupply, and helicoptered out press releases.
But Cpt. Earl Chanser was not slacking off. On his first day after being rescued naked from the jungle from a botched patrol, he managed to acquire the Ukiah Cola distribution rights in Vietnam through his Taiwanese shell corporation — they had rights only in South Vietnam so far, but his Singapore agent was in negotiations for distribution rights in North Vietnam. That would ease consolidation when the war was finally won.
On the second day, Earl Chanser achieved two great successes — he got his jungle crotch rot remediated, and at his request his business associate, Congressman Tommy Trimmer, introduced a bill which would make Vietnam a Federal Reserve district. Once that was finalized, Trimmer would work to get Chanser appointed chairman.
Crime is so much easier at the top, where the watchdogs are sleepy regulators, not hyper-alert German Shepherds with no sense of humor.
But the Army still had its problems. One big one in Thuong Duong Province was getting harder to explain away to MACV headquarters in Saigon. Chanser paid little attention until the morning that Gen. Bazilisky summoned him for a tete a tete in the general’s latrine.
Latrine meetings were not standard operating procedure, but Gen. Basilisky heard from Pentagon friends that President Lyndon Johnson sometimes called in staff for discussions while he was sitting on the toilet. Gen. Bazilisky knew that one secret to getting promoted was emulating the boss.
Fortunately, the general’s latrine was no ordinary latrine. While Gen. Basilisky strained over operational complexities and canned meat, Chanser sat in the elaborate Qing Dynasty chair that had been quietly requisitioned from the Da Lat provincial governor’s office while he was out of town plotting a coup.
“Chanser, we have lots of problems here.”
“Sir, I can explain everything.”
“Not you, Chanser — yes, you are a big problem, but sometimes problems can be solutions.”
Oh, that sounded like a rule. Chanser already had his notebook out, since it made superior officers think he took them seriously. Chanser was gathering notes for the how-to book he planned to write for aspiring opportunists.
Turn one problem into a solution to another problem.
Chanser had no idea how that could work in practice, but he soon figured it out.
“Chanser, you probably know that the Army and ARVN lose too many vehicles to ambushes. Especially armored personnel carriers, and those APCs don’t grow on trees.”
Chanser knew the vehicle losses well, since he got a cut from the outsourced vehicle repair shop operated by a North Vietnamese cadre’s nephew, and he got a cut from the scrap metal sales to Japan — Japan was beginning to make cars out of recycled steel from trashed American military vehicles. No one in the Army knew inventory and cash flow as well as Cpt. Earl Chanser.
“One — just one! — illiterate and malnourished Vietnamese with a rocket-propelled grenade can punch a hole in an APC faster than an Auburn fan can punch a hole in a can of Schlitz.”
“Yes, Sir. RPG-7 damage does not buff out easily.”
“Chanser, you think outside the foxhole. I want you to find a solution to this problem.”
“Do you want the solution now, or after you’re finished, Sir?”
“I want it now, damnit, Chanser! My memoir won’t have to reveal where and how I got my brilliant idea.
Gen. Basilisky stood and his Japanese toilet automatically flushed and played taps.
Chanser rose, too.
“Sir, the Vietnamese think they have to show respect to political leaders — well, not President Thieu, of course. But it’s not like America, where we like to ridicule our leaders.”
Gen. Basilisky turned red.
“We can’t solve our problems in Vietnam by guessing how they think, Chanser! Leave the cultural stuff to that Quaker crowd.”
“But Sir, we can exploit Vietnamese loyalties, just like American political parties exploit ours — you know, Sir, that having loyalties creates vulnerabilities.”
Gen. Basilisky would have to think about that a while.
“The Vietnamese love Ho Chi Minh, like he was some sort of George Washington with a beard, Sir. I learned all about Vietnam in Business Week and Reader’s Digest.”
“If that’s true, Chanser, the Vietnamese will never have any decent stand-up comedians. But how does that respect stuff protect our APCs?”
“Sir, you know those pictures of Ho Chi Minh — the wispy white beard, the kindly expression?”
“I do, Chanser. How a man looking that blissed out ever got elected is a mystery to me.”
“What we should do, Sir — if you agree — is have big posters of Ho Chi Minh printed, and . . .”
“Get your head out of your ass, Chanser! Ho Chi Minh should buy his own damned posters, not expect that from American taxpayers! We do enough already!”
“But Sir, if we glue those posters all over our APCs, no Vietnamese would dare to blow a hole through it. You and I might have fun puncturing pictures of LBJ or Nixon on a dartboard, but Vietnamese think differently.”
Gen. Bazilisky stopped with a jerk, as he always did when a new idea startled him.
“You think that might work?”
“Sir, I do. And you can take that to the bank.”
“But what about our fine allies? The government of South Vietnam, their army — they don’t want to see Ho Chi Minh on their military vehicles.”
“Sir, I bet some would be happy about that — and for us to buy off the others, our poster budget just needs a few well paid, powerful Vietnamese media consultants, as usual. And besides, those posters will save our allies from losing a lot of trucks and APCs that they would have to ask a tightwad Congress to replace.”
“OK, get it done, Chanser.”
“Yes, Sir! Of course, I’ll need full access to the division’s slush fund to expedite the printing and installation of the Ho posters. If we call this a pop art installation, we might even get a grant. Pvt. Grubber learned all about that grants stuff at Stanford, and he has probably filled all the sandbags by now.”
So Chanser got a direct order to do what he had already planned to do on the sly. He contracted with his shell company in South Korea to print the posters. And for two cases of stolen Chinese Scotch, he got the secret CIA station in Laos to airlift the posters to division headquarters for free, so that whole fictitious transportation budget line item was pure profit for Chanser.
Otherwise idle enlisted men managed to completely wall-paper every US and South Vietnamese armored personnel carrier in the province. Chanser made sure the posters were not waterproof, to ensure re-orders.
But why solve just one problem when you can solve two, using other people’s money? So Earl Chanser ordered that the posters show a smiling Ho Chi Minh holding a can of Ukiah Cola. For Chanser’s new Ukiah Cola distribution operation in Vietnam, that was the kind of celebrity endorsement that money couldn’t buy. Uncle Ho had a lot of influence.
The Chanser magic worked brilliantly, as you knew it would. RPG attacks went way down, and Ukiah Cola sales went way up.
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Stephen Sossaman was a fire direction computer with the 1/84th artillery, 9th Infantry Division, in Viet Nam. His work has appeared in Paris Review, Military Review, and elsewhere.
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