 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Hello and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii and it never got quiet. This is a half-hour program that explores the Hawaiian connection with the Vietnam War. I'm your host, Vic Kraft. It seems that every outfit in the military has its own radar or Riley. Call them grave robbers, gophers or scroungers. There are one or two people in the organization that circumvent normal channels to get things done. Not all of them have higher motives. Today our guest will describe for us his fictional account of one man who manages to manipulate the system for his own benefit and along the way actually does some good by accident. He has written a book titled Loveless in the Knob. Our guest is retired U.S. Army Colonel and author Jim Borsba. Jim is a graduate of Michigan State majoring in journalism. He also attended the University of Michigan, the Prestige of Sofia University in Tokyo and the U.S. Army Command and Staff College. Jim has been an integral part of Hawaii politics having worked on several successful campaigns and also as the director of communications for the governor's office and the Hawaii State Senate. He's held several command and staff positions during his career both on active duty and in the reserves. Jim is a partner in the marketing firm of Starve Segal McCombs. He has also served a number of community activities and societies among them, Pacific Historic Parks, which oversees the Arizona Memorial, Diamond Head and three other national parks. Aloha Jim and welcome to the program. Aloha. In my family attending Michigan State and going to Michigan would probably end you up in a court of appeals. It's dangerous territory. Amongst other things, we had one of our nieces marry a guy from Ohio State and during the reception the Ohio State people were on one side of the room and the Michigan State people were on the other. So I don't know how you managed to do it and survive, but that seems like an accomplishment in itself. Well, I went to Michigan State right after I graduated from high school and spent four years there getting my degree in journalism and then it was some years later, in fact over a decade later, I was assigned with the Army near the Pentagon with Soldiers Magazine and yours at Michigan had an off-campus type of school that you can enroll in and I worked there for classes about a year and a half, got my Master's in Business Administration. Okay, we'll forgive you then. So I did it because it was going to help me and my family, I think. Well, your time in Vietnam, you were attached to what? I was with the American Division underneath, which was there were three grades. I was with the 196th Infantry Brigade, which is now stationed right up here at School Field Barracks and at Fort Shafter and then I was a Bravo Company of the Second Infantry, Second of the First Infantry. So you were essentially a private hump on the boonies? I was drafted in the summer of 68, went to basic training and AIT advanced individual training and then we shipped to Vietnam and somehow ended up in the infantry. I didn't expect that to happen but because I had a college degree but I ended up being an infantryman, I ended up being the RTO, that's the radio guy that carries the thing on his back. Plus carrying a weapon and having this? Plus the weapon and you know I carried food and ammunition and blankets and all kinds of stuff. I probably carried 70 or 80 pounds of my back when you added the radio on. But actually the radio probably saved my life once. I got blown off the back of a tank, slammed into a tree with my back and it cracked. The radio was about this big. It cracked the radio but I could still go get them to walk. You sent a letter to the manufacturer, I hope? No. We laugh about those things now and at the time it happened it wasn't that funny. No, funny at all. So what year were you in country? I got to Vietnam in the spring of 1969 and left in the spring of 1970. From the, I would say, from late April, early May I was out in the infantry and I stayed there until the fall at which point I ended up getting a job back in the rear with special correspondence unit. And again, I think because I had a degree in journalism, you know, you talk and meet people and stuff. And anyway I ended up going back there and I was signed with about five other people. We answered congressional inquiry letters, which we didn't sign. Commanders did. And we also wrote the letters to next again for people who have been shot and killed. That had to have been very depressing. That went to the commanding general who had signed those, of course, yeah. Yeah. And did you ever manage to get to Foucait? No. Oh, okay. Never got to Foucait, you had it. Or Queen Yawn in that area. I spent so much time out on, you know, LZ's like LZ Baldy and Hawkeill and those things. And we were the northernmost Army unit. The Marines were just north of us. And in fact, there were several large battles that we took apart in which the Marines and the Army were together going in to do things. Because of our location. That would be a revelation. It's the Army. No, we were friends. We were friends. It wasn't a lot of friendly fire and there's no such thing as friendly fire. Well, let's get into your book as far as Loveless in the Nom and just hold it up here and let folks see it. I'll see if I, here we go. You've created this character fictional and I asked you once before. I hope this isn't an autobiographical. No, no, this is a character. The events in the book are real events. Most of them are real events took part during the Vietnam War. But the character's made up and he's, if you read the book, he'll seem real clearly. He's a coward and a liar and he doesn't want to, he never wanted to go to Vietnam. Never wanted to go in the Army. But he ended up getting drafted and sent over there and ends up being a prisoner of war at one point which is his own fault because he tries to escape from a battle zone by faking the heat casually and they put him in an elk hop to fly him out, he gets shot down, he gets captured. And throughout the book there are things like that. But it's all based on real events and things and I'm very complimentary I think of the soldiers and the units that are involved. But the guy himself's a character and yeah I've started a second book called Lovelace and Rising Sun and I've got a third and a fourth planned for this guy's so-called career. I'm anxious to get into it to read about it but you said it's based on incidents, hopefully they weren't your experience. But the idea of... Well the biggest battle of 1969 was Hyap Duc Hill which is near July in the northern part of Vietnam. And again the Marines and Army were both into that and this character is involved with that battle. What month was that? Do you recall? That would have been August of 69. Okay. And then I faked it. I mean President Nixon made one visit to Vietnam during the war. He had an award ceremony. There's only a country like 10 hours but this guy gets a fake award. He ends up in standing in line but he gets brought in at the last minute so that in the real news cycle people wouldn't have known he was there but the last minute the army brings him in but the president pins a medal on him and the president moves on down the line to the next and the medal falls off which it should have done. Karma. Well I don't want you to give away the plot of the book because as I said I'm anxious to get into it to see how this guy fares and maybe I can even learn something from him but the the army offers an awful lot of opportunities to... He did go to Michigan State. I'll admit that. How did you come upon creating this particular character? I mean just... I read a series of books called about a British soldier during the 1800s called Flashman series and he fought in China and India and all kinds of places like because the British were all around the world in those days and I just thought it was really unique. Those books sold really well and the character's kind of unique and I just thought you know maybe let me try something and I've had a lot of good compliments and got good reviews on this. I haven't promoted it really well so it sells just so so I think you know you can get it on Amazon, you can get it online, you can get it Barnes & Noble but that's not expensive but we'll see. My sales haven't done all that well either. If you got to remember 4,000 books are published daily so you're throwing your hat in the ring with an awful lot of other hats. That's right. So you left Vietnam. You said you were a draftee. That was a draftee, yes. But you didn't say in the field all the time while you were there. No towards the end like I said that they you're once about every third week or so we would be back at July and we get a couple days break and stuff. I ended up talking to people and somebody found out I had a green journalism and then I got contacted and said there's going to be an opening in the office would you be willing to come there and do that and said sure what the heck get me out of the infantry I'll do that it couldn't be any worse right and actually at July it was a big up big military base and had a runway and you know the ocean was there the beach was there it wasn't a bad place at all once in a while I got some rockets coming in but that's all yeah and so I just kind of volunteered to go there and work there and then when I left Vietnam I still had about half a year on my draft no time and a little less than that maybe and I you know I said they asked me where would you like to go since you were infantry and you got CIB and a couple of medals I said well or can I go in journalism so I ended up going to Stars and Stripes in Tokyo and I only wore a uniform one day a week I didn't really feel like I was in the army and I just I had re-enlisted twice and just stayed and I was a journalist. So they gave you consecutive overseas tours in Tokyo all that time? Yeah basically well I was in Tokyo or and then at Camp Zaman which was a army headquarters in the south of Tokyo. No I want to thank you because you were the highlight of the week for most of us in Vietnam when Stars and Stripes came out it was fought over. Oh everybody wanted to read it. Oh sure and it was probably one of the better pieces of journalism that was ever done. I think back in those days it was you know Stars and Stripes was all over Asia wherever our military was. Yeah and I think of the history of the of Stars and Stripes in all theaters as you know Bill Maldon the great writer and cartoon political cartoonist of the 50s and 60s he wrote up front and he was also a writer for Stars and Stripes but it's yeah it was a very reputable publication not just among GIs but I think amongst everybody. So you stayed six years there or so close to eight years in Japan yeah and what did you do? Then I had a year left and they assigned me to Soldiers Magazine which was an army's monthly publication that was over Washington DC so I went there it was a writer for about nine or ten months I remember exactly and then I got off active duty and my family and I moved back here to Hawaii and I since I already had like almost 12 years of you know I joined the National Army Reserve they're gonna get my 20 and but when I was an Army Reserve here in the 80s and 90s it wasn't any real big wars I mean we had that one in the mid-east and the late of the early 90s but you know hardly anybody from here went to that so being in the Army Reserve you really networked well in town it was a good part-time job and plus I was saving my time for retirement and I was a first lieutenant when I came back here so I just stayed in and stayed in and in 2001 I got promoted to full colonel so it was you know a good way to try to retire then December of 03 I got called back to active duty because you know we'd went into Afghanistan late 02 and then into Iraq in 03 and I brought up several hundred soldiers from the reserves of me I was we were placed in charge of the training and the equipping for the deployment for the entire pacific basin so the Pentagon would say okay this group from Guam they're gonna go to Afghanistan the state this group from Hawaii they're going to Iraq and this group's going they would tell us where they're going but then we would do all of the training get all the equipment that we could and chip them off and we just make sure their families are all okay while they're gone and then of course at the end we bring them back kind of a big special ceremony to welcome them all yeah great outstanding yeah I want to talk a little bit more about that but first let's go ahead and take a break here and listen to these messages okay Hawaii raising public awareness I just walked by and I said what's happening guys they told me they were making music I'm Ethan Allen host of a likeable science on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday afternoon at 2pm I hope you'll join me for a likeable science where we'll dig into science dig into the meat of science dig into the joy and the light of science we'll discover why science is indeed fun why science is interesting why people should care about science you care about the research that's being done out there it's all great it's all entertaining it's all educational so I hope to join me for a likeable science welcome back we're talking with Jim Borsma retired U.S. Army Colonel and author and we were just talking on the break here about about Vietnam and motives and doing things correctly as you and I were talking earlier Jim our group that meets on Monday nights we were talking about the training involved and being prepared and it seemed as though the recruit of the army back in the 60s was rushed into combat and you were talking about grabbing units from various places within the pacific region and sending them into Iraq and Iraq and Afghanistan and you had mentioned the idea of training yeah I'm wondering how much better prepared they were than well I'm gonna give you a little bit of example up at school field barracks we had a fake village like in Iraq right they were trained in that but we had one time we would show a movie about a convoy and we'd say no this is how you have to set up your convoy this is up front this is in the back this is you know and we'd show them that that so if you're ambushed this is how you need to react to stuff then a couple days later we'd have a convoy of those guys driving somewhere and we'd ambush them and see how they would react based on what they'd seen on the screen you know so we really really wanted the details about the training now some of a lot of that came from the from the Pentagon era they came over to us and said here try this do this and so we did and it's like I say it's school field the commanding general at the time had everything set up for it really well well I wonder how successful it was because I think of the lessons learned type thing and the funny funny thing is this the 196 Light Infantry Gate that I fought for in Vietnam was called active duty about three years before I got sent up to Schofield Barracks and they were they actually we our company was in charge of the soldiers equipping them sending them the classes and the 196 was actually doing the physical training with them and so if you're in the army and you you're assigned to a unit you wear their patch on your left shoulder right you're in an army and you're in a combat unit you wear it on your right shoulder right I was the only guy at Schofield with that 196 patch on the right shoulder and I lots of people said sir you got the patch on the wrong shoulder and I said no I was infantry in Vietnam in 196 yeah that was a very strange thing but we worked with them a lot and it was very thorough training yeah and went to Vietnam we had we got training how to shoot the weapons that was about it yeah and and I'm wondering if if that contributed to the casualty rate at all I I don't know you know I didn't fight in Iraq or Afghanistan in Vietnam I could tell you it was very horrendous at times very very difficult I I remember we we we got called once ago rescue a unit in northern Vietnam and we went in there and then they called unit after unit after unit and then we ended up having like several thousand American troops and they're trying to rescue this these guys and we did most of them but we fought the the NBA the national and you know not to be at call I might even be at calling or two but the NBA was there now we drove him out of this place but then of course we all pulled back and we were told two weeks later they're back on this hill again you know it's like well what did we go I'll do that huge battle for you know take land and then then give it right back to them in a way so it was a strange kind of war yeah several of our guests previously haven't mentioned that that no clear objectives the way it was prosecuted which is another thing I think we bring up today this morning in New York City there was a terrorist action or was it yeah and several people were killed and you got a wonder I recall one of my mentors mentioning that we were going to go about this all the wrong all wrong after 9 11 that we're going to gear up the military and do all these things and go after these people and perhaps maybe that's not the way we should be doing it we went after we went into vietnam with the idea that we were going to prevent the domino theory that worked real well and we'd been through Korea we said oh we can at least do that live in north and south yeah but it was a completely different war and the way we prosecute war is different and again that gets into the training and unfortunately as you said you were getting the feedback from the Pentagon and and how to do these things and how to train people for their particular environment yeah Afghanistan we did and we had really good support in fact a more recent governor Neil Abercrombie was a congressman at the time he came over and gave a speech up on the stage there was asking me questions and a couple of troops were like sir we're not getting enough enough equipment and the kind of stuff that we need and he said you know what i'm going to make sure you get that and he did and when he ran in 2010 for governor they would made a they made a tv spot for him I mean I had soldiers coming up saying hey thanks he did this he did this force and and it's true we were having a hard time getting around all the right equipment right at first but then then it came yeah and and that's critical as far as people being in the field you want to have them well trained and also equipped properly well and I was we were shipping off National Guard and Army Reserve guys that I'd known 20 years you know a lot of my friends were going overseas there yeah so yeah yeah I think of as you said your responsibility in terms of determining what unit goes where and the people that were selected for these positions and I'm sure you're looking at their training records to make sure that everything is we even set up a medical facility so people that had mental physical or even emotional problems would stay behind until we felt they were ready to go catch up to their unit yeah and it was we're very thorough on it they went as units or the unit would go but you know if they say there's 200 guys maybe two or three might stay behind because one of them might have pneumonia I don't know they could have had an illness or they could have got hurt during training so they couldn't walk or run so we keep them behind until they were physically ready to go then they'd catch up you know a couple weeks later to their unit but but they went as a unit both going in and coming out yes almost always they went as units come in so when they came back we had a big like a basketball arena we'd march them into there and you know all the families are up in the stands waiting for their soldiers to come back that's a heck of a lot better than what we got when we came back from Vietnam yeah no we got nothing coming back from Vietnam but I will say the public nowadays is a lot more accommodating and treating Vietnam veterans much better than 40 years ago that was I was going to get into that there are some people who have made the comment that civilians don't have the attachment to the military that they used to partially because of the draft we don't have a little Johnny in uniform anymore it's a professional force and what you're saying of course you may have reservists and national guard members going and doing these jobs and they're probably far better prepared than their their drafty counterparts from 50 years ago but it's still a pressure and still you know are you doing the job right I don't know it's what do you think I mean from your experience and from your position do we have a better trained army today I think that a lot of emphasis is being put on training yeah and I think in the last 10 years of it we're being much more careful about trying to get into conflicts I don't think the army is our military is looking for wars no they're there to defend this country which we want which we need you know but I don't think we're looking to get into wars you know we went into Vietnam I mean that Ken Burns movie maybe he's gonna say the Ho Chi Man actually wrote letters to President Truman and Eisenhower saying hey you know the the the British left India after World War II you guys left the Philippines why are you letting the French come back into our country you know ask them to leave so we have our own country and our own independence so we didn't support and we ended up going into a war there that we never really fought right I don't think and and there's a lot of criticism about Iraq too you know sure Afghanistan bin Laden's there they hit us a 9-11 go get him we all all understood that but I had very senior military people come to me say look we don't all agree on Iraq but we follow the orders of our commander-in-chief so yeah that's true and so as we did Jim I want to thank you very much for being here and telling us about your book journalism is not objective no matter how hard we try we all carry some amount of prejudice towards the topic however there can be alternative journalism where an issue can be discussed without rhetoric or animosity I believe that is what we have to offer here at Think Tech Hawaii this media offers an opportunity to bring more than one perspective to the community Think Tech also provides information on a host of topics that can aid in improving your life but all this costs money we speak of free speech as one of our rights in our constitution but it requires maintenance that maintenance has been measured in the lives of those who have defended it and by those who support such efforts as Think Tech 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