An Unusual Vietnam Vet

Jacques was the most interesting Vietnam veteran I ever met. His mere existence revealed so much about that war.

We met in federal prison. Jacques was there for a false declaration at customs and the use of a false passport. He was doing two consecutive five-year sentences for using the same fake name in both instances. What they really wanted Jacques for was drug smuggling -- probably heroin -- but for some reason, they couldn't make those charges stick. So they gave him ten years for using a name that wasn't his.

Me? Before prison, I was in law enforcement, or maybe more accurately, I was engaged in law enforcement activity. I was trying to prevent my government from continuing its criminal actions in Southeast Asia. The government saw it differently: they called it "attempted interference with the operations of the Selective Service System by force, violence, and otherwise."

We disagreed about who were the real criminals. Unfortunately, the prosecutors and the judges were on the government's side -- probably because they were on the government's payroll. So, five years. Thank God I didn't use a false name on my passport!

Jacques and I had a common interest. Before getting locked up, I had played in many local and national table tennis tournaments, and Jacques had been on the junior national table tennis team. We ended up playing a lot of ping pong together. He told me he had left the junior national team, lied about his age to join the military, and was sent to fight in Vietnam.

I asked him if having been in the war had changed his attitude about it. He pointed to himself, raised his eyebrows, and, in his beautiful accent, said emphatically, "Me? Communist!." So I asked him why he had volunteered for the military, and he made two imaginary horizontal lines on his upper arm and said, "Stripes! Sergeant!"

Jacques talked in these short sentences because English wasn't his native language. The junior national table tennis team he had been on wasn't ours. It was the French Junior National Table Tennis Team. Jacques was French. He had been sent to Vietnam in 1947 to help France regain its colonies in Indochina. We now know that by the end of that colonial war, the U.S. was funding 80% of it. Then the French left and we continued.

Wow! Jacques had fought 25 years earlier in what was essentially the same war I was imprisoned for because of my law enforcement activity. Jacques was indeed a Vietnam veteran -- one of the earliest. His story made it ever so clear to me that Sandstone Federal Correctional Institution was the right place to be in while my government, supported by its army of prosecutors and judges and wardens, continued its massive and horrendous criminal activity.

I don't think I ever told Jacques how his mere existence as a Vietnam veteran had made my prison time easier. After prison, I never saw him again. He was probably deported.