Hello Can you give me some advices and guidelines on the opening scene of my book which I hope to be a hook? The scene take place inside improvised US military mortuary during the Vietnam War just after the Tet Offensive which resulted with a huge casualty figures within the US troops. The situation of the over capacities of classics mortuaries had forced the US military official to transform a giant stored cooling chamber destined originally to store food into the improvised Morgue . It is during this occasion that the father of my unborn hero who happened to be a US civilian mortuary technician contractor who have the responsabity of the site encounter the mother of my unborn hero. The mother of my hero is a Vietcong spy who stole information and intelligence and convey them to the Viet Cong outside the camp . (This episode is historically true and verified there are many stories related to Vietcong spies in US bases . Mostly spies are the Vietnam civilian workers such as carpenters ; Cleanning technician ; etc etc ) _________________________________________ So my problem is to build a scene where the Vietcong looking to steal information of the exact figures of US casualties by grades by place of death etc etc … My female character must use her sexual skills to lure the technician and steal inforamtions or instead its is more appropriate to have a robbery scene ? P.S Sorry for my English I am French native speaking person .
thats an unlikely aim - the vietcong wouldn't have cared about american body count, (especially as they got their own ass kicked during tet) ... the vietcong spies were mostly looking for info on forth coming operations and weaknesses in security Also the Tet offensive did not result in huge american body count - there were 3407 allied KIA's during tet, of which around half were American. bearing in mind that there were American bases across south Vietnam, KIAs weren't all centralised in one place at one time (and that is assuming the bodies were recovered which not all were) so there would be no need to create a giant mortuary... the whole thing fails the believability test
I'm thinking a rumour about the US ambassador being among the corpses and she has to rush back to Ho Chi Ming to verify the liquidation. Although she's some kind of peasant in a hat, sees the Belgian ambassador all splat with his tie, and possibly draws the wrong conclusion about westerners. Something sophisticated and cultural that loops toward resolution in chapter 24 when she falls loveways toward young Luc de Tintin-Chat.
Actually, there was a large US Army mortuary at Tan Son Nhut airbase in Saigon. But a foreign ambassador would never have been taken there.
Thank you sir for your contribution. I have done a little bit research on the internet and I come accross this image of aligned beds with corpses this idea of a improvised mortuary make sense .
yes there was , but all the KIA from tet weren't centralised there all at once because a) the offensive took time and casualties were out processed as it went along, b) not all the casualties during tet were military and procedures were different for civilians, c) tet wasn't a discrete battle, there were engagements going on both before and after it... notably Khe Sanh, and d) not all the casualties were fatalities straight away, soldier or marines who were sent to the USS Sanctuary, or flown to japan, for treatment were not returned to Saigon if they died. ergo a medical technician at the mortuary would have no useful information for a vietcong spy to gather
They do need theses informations for their propaganda machine . Higher Americans casualties can be a big moral booster . The vietnam war was the first war cover entirely by mass media like Voice of America and Radio China . Pentagon can give figures that not arrange the Vietcongs ? In modern times I remember the war of Information between Saddam Hussein and Gle Shwarkoff during the first Gulf war . [QUOTE=" Also the Tet offensive did not result in huge american body count - there were 3407 allied KIA's during tet, of which around half were American. [/QUOTE] During Tet offensive American suffered the most higher week lost at 543 killed and after the Tet OFfensive McNamara resigned as secretary of Defense
Tha Thank you sir for this idea . Instead of a spy looking for number of casualties in American side I will rather change it to a spy wanting to verify rumours of the killing of higher military officer or a son of US president killed during the shut down of militaries helicopters or something like that .
Yes Kira Ann I choose rather Da Nang Air force base for my story which was the largest in central South Vietnam . Thank you very much for your contribution .
Ah Ah Ah ! No bad as idea but i would rather take a person like someone looking like late Senator John McCain
Finally the reason for the intrusion into the morgue of the female spy will only be a literary decoy in order to bring the story into the morgue. Once inside my spy during the inspection of each body and checking the label and identification badge attached to each body, she will be in front of one corpse which will mooved her and which will be one of the important turning points of the novel. She will discover by the physical appearance that the dead soldier is undoubtedly of Muslim culture and being herself a Muslim from the Muslim minority community of Vietnam ,the Chams people. _________________________________________ Were there Muslims soldiers in US army during Vietnam war ?
I strongly suggest a lot more research into the vietnam war - probably a good place to start is Max Hastings book 'Vietnam'
