294 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 79 PART 2 MARCH 2021
rently a further drive for an investigation of DIA’s lacklustre attitude is
under way. It really makes one glad one doesn’t work for the U.S. federal
government.
Which brings me to the basic mystery—why? Why is there such a desperate
need to believe what ain’t so? I can see the families and friends of the
missing having a mo tive to continue a search, however vain, and there is
apparently an organization of such families. Not surprisingly, it keeps itself
separate from SOF, which claims no personal interest.
I think a good psychiatrist would be needed to explain it; I can only offer
some pointers. First, it is obvious that SOF and its readers have a self-image
based on pa triotism of the “better dead than red” sort, a rather mindless
machismo à la Rambo, and a belief in American supremacy throughout the
world. Secondly, neither Korea nor Vietnam fitted that image. In Vietnam
the U.S. was obliged to back down in a hu miliating manner before people
they underrated, even despised. In Korea, although in the end an acceptable
peace was salvaged, in the course of the war the poor qual ity and conduct of
U.S. Army infantry units became notorious. It was even set to music—“The
Bug-out Boogie”. And to cap their discomfiture the U.S. Army was part of a
multinational U.N. force, so that British, Canadians, Australians, French and
even Turks got a ringside view. I was doing my National Service in the British
Army dur ing the early stages of the Korean war and I still remember the
secret glee with which these stories circulated. Is that “schadenfreude”? I
always get mixed up with these Teutonic terms. I mean the one that says
when someone falls downstairs, it’s always more fun if it’s a friend.
I wonder whether the POW/MIA nonsense isn’t a plaintive attempt to salvage
at least a little honour from situations that SOF readers found an intolerable
affront to their self-respect, in rather the same category as the
Rambo-type movies which show, graphically if fictionally, that one redblooded
American can lick 20 Asians after all. But I acknowledge this
doesn’t fit altogether, because the belief that there’s a raft of POWs out there
presupposes an earlier military debacle. Winners don’t lose a raft of prisoners.
Rambos don’t surrender. I have to confess I have never under stood the
American psyche and I don’t understand this.
Well, enough of Soldier of Fortune. I turn to another fascinating publication,
Amer ican Survival. This appeals to somewhat the same audience—
there are ads for ma ture videos (“Machine-gun Babes”, “P.I. Academy of Sex
Crimes Investigations”), manuals for SWAT tactics, “The Do-it-Yourself Gunpowder
Cookbook”, “Build Your Own Medieval Battle Axe”, etc. The articles
are of two types. The first deals with guns and weapons (“Firing the Heckler
& Koch SR9 semi-automatic rifle”, “Mount a Laser on your pistol”, etc.). The