(Samuel Trautman)
Patrick,
I have a plan, but you too have to burn this letter as soon as you’ve read it.
It's imperative: don't forget for any reason.
First of all, stand firm.
They can't keep me away from Vietnam for long; on the contrary, I have a likely date for my return already.
And you have to believe me when I tell you that we can do it.
There's a lot of intelligent people here, we are not alone and we won't stay here twiddling our thumbs waiting for an all-out, conventional war that is never going to come, not like Westmoreland thinks.
Using guerrilla warfare, the Vietcong are literally winning, so I see no reason at all they should ever start fighting in the open, as he thinks they are going to.
West-dick-head-Moreland.
It wouldn't make any sense at all... And that's the reason it's never going to happen.
All of his predictions have been wrong so far, and we both know it.
That man is a dickhead.
Westmoreland hasn't understood anything about this war, and yet he commands us all: that's the real problem.
Had he just let those who know how things work do their job, we would have never gone so far.
Anyway, crying about the past is pointless.
Let's think about the future.
I have a plan to get the Triborder-zone out of the current situation and yes, we can do it.
But you have to start acting right now, and on your own.
I know what I am asking you.
I know what this means to you. I am fully aware of the risks this is going to put you in.
Think about it as long as you need, and take your decision freely.
But remember that if you want to do something, now's the time.
Not in a year or two, when I will be present too...
We must unlock the situation now, even at the cost of facing up to our higher ranks, my friend.
If you ever accept, that's the plan.
Here's what you are going to do.
Go to your South Vietnamese officers, and tell 'em that corruption amongst privates must come to an end.
In a few months, corruption must be a matter for commanding officers only.
Tell them that if they succeed in taking corruption away from their privates, they'll be able to manage it on their own, and so doubling the income for themselves, at least.
We need to clean up just the troops, and that would be a good result already.
This is going to be the first phase.
It will be long, complicated and dangerous, but you can do it and even without me.
Then we will pass to phase two.
What I am going to write costs me a lot, believe me.
I reflected a lot about it, and I wouldn't be suggesting it to you if there were any other options.
When me and the Baker teams get to Vietnam, you should have succeeded in confining the briberies to your South Vietnamese officials only.
Then we will take them down, one by one.
Maybe not every single one of them, but most of them for sure, until all of the others will have learnt the lesson.
I know what you are thinking right now.
On the other hand, you will agree with me that we can't go on with the kind of people like those ones are.
They are too prone to changing their allegiance, and selling weapons to the Vietcong or doing anything else but fighting the Vietcong.
They couldn’t care less about it, and we both know it.
In order to really make a clean break with the old habits a brand new generation of South Vietnamese officials is required, but we have no time to get rid of all of the bigwigs and the men supporting them at the same time.
We must waste them.
If we just had the time necessary, I would send em all to the martial court... But I just can't. We need to act now. All of this commerce of weapons, slaves, drugs... It has to end and right now, if we really want the South Vietnamese starting to think about their country's needs, not just their own business.
Once we’ve made a clean sweep of all of those assholes, corruption will be out of the field once and for all, and no one will ever sell even a single bullet to the Vietcong any more, not after seeing what our Baker teams dare to do to those who step out of the line.
All things considered, the Vietcong does the same with their own men, so we have to do the same too.
When you are at war, you either become as bad as your enemy is, or you die. Am I right?
The Baker teams will disguise themselves as member of the Arrows*.
This won't be an issue at all, because I have agents working for me amongst them already, and we know how to act like them.
I have planned everything already and we are going to do it clean.
In the meantime, the second Baker team will go over the border, in order to destroy the sanctuaries*.
I don't give a shit about Laos' neutrality. No one give a shit about it in this war.
Washington is going to approve it or go fuck itself.
Because you don't know about this my friend, but we have run dozens of clandestine operations over there already, with no written clearances and without reporting what we do there to anyone.
Everything's done by word there, and wearing no uniforms, with the only difference that this time we are going to do it for ourselves.
We are going to do it just for me and you, to save our part of the Triborder-zone.
Anyway, I wasn't the one who invented this shit.
They were the ones who ordered it in the first place, and I am now doing it again but for my own purposes, which are better than their ones are for sure, by the way.
I just have to say the word to my men again and Washington could never stop me in any way.
Thousands of American and Vietnamese lives are at stake.
I am tired of thinking about the public image, international affairs, Jonson's re-election or other bullshit like that. My men are kicking the bucket out there. The time has come for us to start fighting this war in order to win it, not to just re-elect this or that guy, or to just keep the US international public image in its place.
Enough with all of this crap. Enough!
Should South Vietnam ever fall apart, the commies would wipe an entire society out: panic, refugees, mass retaliations...
I foresee a million deaths, if this is what is going to happen.
I don't think it would be so different from the Jewish holocaust during WWII, but I don't think Washington fully understands it, or they would do things in order to get some results, not to just have this guy or that guy elected again.
I’d better not think about it, because doing so makes me feel sick.
Going back to us...
If we get the ARVN work, we can really pacify the tri-border zone,
Talking about the rest of Vietnam... I don't know, Patrick. We can't win the whole fucking war just you and I. But if we give our best, we can get a lot, trust me.
See you soon, and don't forget to burn this letter up as soon as you finish reading it.
Samuel
*Arrows: Vietnamese, anti-communist and nationalist group of the terrorist kind, but anti-American too.
They wanted to re-unify the two Vietnams, but under a paramilitary dictatorship not backed by either the USA or the USSR.
The truth was that they were working with both the United States and the Vietcong depending on their money or territorial needs.