Pride and Denial- Front Matter/Back Matter
Front Matter
Reader’s Favorite Book Review
Congratulations on your 5-star review
READER'S FAVORITE 5-STAR REVIEW RATING
PRIDE AND DENIAL by Wayne Coker is a military story set against the backdrop of WWII. It's a non-stop action thriller that begins with a team of OSS agents sent on a mission infiltrating the Nazis in the unforgiving winter conditions of the Austrian Alps. Later, after a secret presidential meeting, they’re on a new mission in the blistering heat and torrential rain of Indochina’s jungles.
It’s a “cold misty winter day” in February 1942 when the story begins at a time when the US is now facing war in Europe and the Pacific. Toni Nakni, the protagonist, a recent honors graduate of Stanford is riding fence on his father’s ranch. Later in the morning, Toni gets a surprise visit from an OSS agent, a precursor to the CIA that changes his life forever with him graduating from the OSS secret training Camp-X as a Navy Lieutenant.
Three years later Commander Toni Nakni is assigned an impossible mission. Toni and his two intelligence operators RAF Wing Commander Manfred Schroder and US Army (former Mafia hit man) Sergeant Fino Caruso parachute into the enemy’s Austrian Alps leaving death in their wake to Hitler’s National Redoubt—a fortified area of last resort.
Three months later, Toni has a secret meeting with General Donovan and President Roosevelt, then off to Indochina for an incredible story (a true event) of the OSS team and the Viet Minh going to war against the Japanese.
The story is told in a fascinating style and readers will enjoy the way the author brings elements of the setting — both historical and physical — into the writing. The descriptions are detailed and they evoke powerful images of the war front. One of the things that I found most interesting in this novel is a philosophy of war that clearly comes out through the narrative, and readers will also enjoy the author’s insightful commentaries and exposé on the human condition.
I enjoyed the lively conversations and well-crafted dialogues that showcase the author’s creativity. Wayne Coker lightens up your read with laughter as they exchange wit, wiseass remarks, and retorts allowing you to get a feel of the spirit of solidarity in times of war.
While Pride and Denial can be read as an entertaining military novel, it also comes across as a powerful indictment of the evils of colonization and the blunders of power. It’s compelling, well-written, and utterly captivating. You won’t skip this one if you love military stories.
INTRODUCTION
To the Vietnam Story
I would hope you take the time before, during, or after you finish the novel to read, from a historical perspective, the stories in the back matter following Chapter 53. It has relevant facts in the writing of this book that includes how the United States became entangled in a war with Vietnam—some truths take their time.
In a short summary, the Vietnam War began with a sequence of events that started with the French colonization of Vietnam in the late nineteen century through the early 1950s. During the late 1940s the United States followed in the footsteps of France, except, for different reasons up through the end of the Vietnam War.
With the story being wrapped around the idea we humans when in positions of high responsibility or power carry with it our pride and eventually our denial. Pride is part of human nature we develop in loyalty to our belief system during a rise in accountability that results in one’s overestimation, competence, and accomplishments. Then self-deception creeps in and denial takes over ignoring information that refutes or challenges any alternatives. But knowing it could be true, we collect evidence of our belief, but this bias only leads to further our denial.
HISTORIAN WILEY SWORD HAD THIS TO SAY ABOUT PRIDE WHEN REFERRING TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERACY DURIN THE CIVIL WAR...
In very many cases, Jefferson Davis’s assessments of his generals were so poor as to be ultimately ruinous. As the war progressed unsatisfactorily, Davis’s decisions about his generals, and stubborn pride in sustaining them, perhaps contributed the most to the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy.
YOU WILL SEE PRIDE AND DENIAL PLAYED OUT TIME AND AGAIN AS YOU READ THIS FASCINATING STORY AND BACK MATTER.
The truth is like poetry—and most people hate poetry…
Michael Lewis, the author of The Big Short, overheard this assessment in a Washington D. C. bar…
Many looked on the Vietnam War protesters with disdain not knowing the truth, but when everyone is home safe
—no one wants or cares about hearing the truth…
This story is by a homeless Army officer Vietnam veteran Wayne shared a table with, in a small town restaurant while on the road…
Important Back Matter
A Comprehensive look at Pride and Denial
Ancient mythology tells us a hero in denial is the ultimate symptom of pride in one’s overestimation, competence, accomplishments, or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.
To gain a deeper understanding of Dante’s Inferno, one would read the seven deadly sins. The seventh deadly sin of pride is considered the first and foremost sin. With this in mind, you’ll realize those laden with a heavy dose of pride and little vision will be unable to forgive small offenses in the larger context of things.
For those with little vision, Mao Zedong would have told you…
We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.
We humans, when given authority with high responsibility or power carry with it, our pride, and hereafter our denial.
Pride is part of human nature we develop during our loyalty to a position in life and then blinded to alternatives laid before us while denial takes over and outright rejects them.
We have a tendency to confirm our position by ignoring information that refutes or challenges it while collecting evidence of our position, but this bias only leads to further our denial. The more you deny its existence, the more influence it carries and in time will devour you without you ever knowing it was there. In the end, one will be seen in a humiliating retreat.
Proud people seldom make good leaders because they think it’s unbecoming to take advice or help from subordinates or followers.
Pride makes you unteachable with you knowing it all, resulting in any probability to increase your knowledge or expertise.
Hmm… Do we know of any leader with such traits?
President Abraham Lincoln wrote… Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
When a leader knows their own fallibility and has a modest opinion of one’s own importance, they will find a profound sense of imagination and a meaningful vision of the future as did Washington and Franklin. And these men helped build a nation.
I would add; the measure of a leader is when he confronts himself with combative forces all helter-skelter in his head, each disputing the other and thinking they’re right—but one is untrue. To understand the distinction marks a leader.
You will soon read how denial plays out time and again as the story unfolds in a sequence of events during WWII. It clarifies how the pride and denial of people in positions of power in governments and the military affect us at a personal level.
You, however, the reader, must be the judge of all I have to say in this introduction to—THE DENOUEMENT OF VIETNAM ONCE CALLED FRENCH INDOCHINA
Below the Waterline of Pride and Denial
THE UNDERLYING BACKGROUND AND ORCHESTRATION OF THE NOVEL'S WRITING
The book’s characters portrayed are men you will find in the military of most countries that develop strong friendships with those in their company and depend on each other to stay alive.
Our U.S. military men come from a hundred different countries, races and beliefs all speaking a language called American. They often find themselves exchanging wit, wiseass remarks, and retorts during play or stressful times helping them get through the day.
With that idea in mind, you’ll find finely drawn personalities in the novel’s characters where at appropriate times, humor surfaces with jousting of dialog, typical among the brave men of our military.
To enrich the ongoing dialogue that runs throughout the book, I have at times thrown in slang words from the 1930s through mid-1940s. For those who are unfamiliar with American culture, you can use the novel’s Glossary when you see single quotation marks like the word, ‘applesauce’ in the dialogue.
You may also notice the writing for the narrative and dialogue is structured, unlike most any novel you’ve ever read. It’s written in such a way as to let the reader feel as they are observing the interaction between the characters. It’s clean and straightforward allowing one for a quick assimilation of the ongoing action and exchanges in dialogue.
The characters often light and smoke cigarettes during their dialogue due to the simple reason; every person in the military during the Second World War and through 1975 had a pack of cigarettes issued in their daily rations. They thought of smoking as a good way to handle stress, depression, anxiety, and much of the time, boredom to the extreme. Even today, and for the same reason, deployed troops smoke at twice the rate of civilians.
There is no record to my knowledge, of any French assassination team mission to kill Ho Chi Minh as I have portrayed in the novel, it is without exception, my imagination.
From Lieutenant Colonel Patti’s historical book—Why Viet Nam? I have taken a few of Patti’s timeline of events that took place in Vietnam for accuracy. Then paraphrasing some dialog from Ho Chi Minh during dinner at the Bac Bo Palace interacting with fictitious dialog from my character Toni Nakni, but at times taking Lieutenant Colonel Patti’s position.
I also wrote a reenactment of Patti’s book on the release of the POW’s at Dia Lam airport, and the preliminary steps in the surrender of Japanese forces in northern Indochina. I felt these were important events of OSS history in Vietnam worth telling again but from a scripted, educational, and entertainment point of view.
The Story Behind the Story
LIEUTENANT COLONEL ARCHIMEDES L.A. PATTI (1913–1998)
Patti was an American army lieutenant colonel and former commander of the Office of Strategic Services, who in 1945 headed the OSS operations in Kunming and Hanoi.
During 1980, he authored Why Viet Nam? – Prelude To America’s Albatross.
In his book, he gives us a close look at his work and relationship with the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh.
Patti had this to say in a 1980 interview, but I would add it’s a sad commentary on our government’s Pride and Denial…
In my opinion, the Vietnam War was a great waste. There was no need for it to happen in the first place, at all—none whatsoever.
During all the years of the Vietnam War, no one ever approached me to find out what had happened in 1945 or in ’44. In all the years that I spent at the Pentagon, Department of State in the White House never was I approached by anyone in authority.
However, I did prepare a large number, and I mean about, oh, well over fifteen position papers on our position in Vietnam. But I never knew what happened to them. Those things just disappeared—they just went down the dry well.
The first French Indochina War fought by the French exclusively was in itself a mistake…
From the very beginning, the United States became involved in 1945. In late fall of 1945, we allowed the French to return to Indochina with American Liberty ships. And armed and equipped them with American equipment, which was all lend/lease equipment which they had really no right to use for that purpose.
In 1950, I found in the records that President Truman had at that time, authorized the allocation of ten million dollars, not appropriated by Congress for that purpose. But for the purpose of assisting the Chinese in China. But instead, the ten million dollars was sent to the French to give to their people in South Vietnam to pursue the war.
In 1954 during the Geneva Conference after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, and the French defeated, we again had a chance to pull out, and we failed to do so at that time. This was the third time we had failed to leave but got ourselves in deeper and deeper.
In the ’60s, again, we got involved to the point where it became an American war—lock, stock, and barrel. Which cost us something to the tune of 56,000 men which we left in faraway Vietnam.
Then, we have to the tune of 300,000 men, which are today sitting in veteran’s hospitals maimed, without arms, legs, or sight, or anything else, and in bad shape.
Moreover, having torn apart a nation—the United States—which was worse than the War Between the States, by the way. It was … it was a terrible situation. No, it need not have happened.
It happened. But, we had every reason to not let it happen. Ho Chi Minh was on a silver platter in 1945. We had him. He was willing to, to be a democratic republic, if nothing else - socialist yes, but a democratic republican.
He was leaning not towards the Soviet Union… Which at the time, he told me that USSR could not assist him, could not help him because they just los… won a war only by dint of real heroism.
The Soviet Union was in no position to help anyone. So really, we had Ho Chi Minh, we had the Viet Minh, we had the Indochina question in our hand.
But for reasons, which defy sound logic, we find today that we supported the French for war, which they dubbed “la sale guerre,” the dirty war.
Moreover, we paid to the tune of 80 percent of the cost of that French war and then we picked up 100 percent of the American-Vietnam War. That is about it in a nutshell…
