Accompanying ARVN helicopter missions throughout the northern Mekong Delta, Vann made contact with the local tribal chiefs and monitored the fighting progress of the ARVN troops. According to The New York Times Book Review, "If there is one book that captures the Vietnam war in the sheer Homeric scale of its passion and folly, this book is it. You wondered, first of all, why this man could bring all these people together., On that hot, humid Friday, I had the feeling that we were burying more than John, Sheehan said. It was extremely hard on his wife, Susan, and their daughters; the girls were barely in elementary school when he started, and out of the house by the time he finished, with no family vacations to speak of along the way. He walks with the aid of a cane, the result of a serious automobile accident in 1974 that badly set back his writing schedule. Barring a knife, the best is a rifle you know who youre killing.. Vann also met with the military staff of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and with presidential assistant Roswell Gilpatrick, as well as with CIA operative Maj. Gen. Edward Lansdale, who told Vann he should stick to things he knew firsthand and skip the gossip about what was going on in Saigon. Although he was a gung-ho warrior type and always believed the Vietnam War was winnable, Vann came to realize the attrition strategy was a failure, the constant bombing of the countryside was helping Vietcong recruitment, and the rampant corruption in the Saigon leadership, funded through American dollars, was devastating to the cause. There was so much wasted gallantry in the war, so much needless pain inflicted on people., Asked about the Saigon side of the war, Sheehan, adamant that his book is meant as a witness to the war, not as a reporters memoir, contends that the South Vietnamese government was an extremely egocentric, corrupt group of people, and the society as a whole there was moribund and parasitic., Still, he said in a telephone call he made after he had thought still more about this question, nobody deserves the tragedy that befell the Vietnamese., For Sheehan, the book served as a personal odyssey in that I learned a great deal about the war I didnt understand before. Now, he said, I think I understand the Vietnamese in a way I didnt before. Writing the book was sort of like the war, said Sheehan, only I didnt get destroyed.. 861 pp. John Vann attended public school in Roanoke, Va. Hopkins drank rat poison with strychnine, knowing Vann would find his body. Other civilians, such as Komer, had held general officer equivalency rank, but Vann was the first to have the authority to direct American troops in battle. Immensely talented, he had been expected to rise to high Army rank. By 1962 Harkins commanded more than 11,300 American troops in Vietnam. Sheehan graduated from Harvard in 1958 and began his career as an Army newsman in Korea and Japan. It wasnt like that at all, Susan Sheehan said. Among the most outspoken of the skeptics was John Paul Vann, a lieutenant colonel who had served with distinction in the Korean War and arrived in Vietnam shortly before Mr. Sheehan. Vann saw that the war was being lost, Sheehan writes. John Paul helped coordinate Cao's unit, the 7th division, one of the most successful South Vietnamese forces. He had decided that he could never again depend on any bureaucracy for his rise as he had depended on the Army, Sheehan writes. Vann was a small man, 5-feet-8, and 150 pounds. ", "In one fell swoop [President Thieu's Land to the Tiller Program] eliminated tenancy in Vietnam. The 2nd Regional Assistance Command was redesignated the 2nd Regional Assistance Group, and Vanns title was director. He graduated from its high school in 1941, and from its junior college program in 1943. In 1955 Vann was promoted to major and reassigned to U.S. Army Europe headquarters in Heidelberg, where he worked in logistics. The day after Kontum was secured, Vann perished in the mountains. Vann and the rest of the influx of Americans were assigned to the newly established U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), then commanded by General Paul Harkins, who during World War II had been General George Pattons assistant chief of staff. After North Vietnamese troops marched into Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1975, Chau was put to . While U.S. Army and Marine units went on combat missions with South Vietnamese army (ARVN) troops, reporters on the ground began to question the conduct of the war and so did a few U.S. Army officers. The incident occurred in 1959, and when Vann heard the Army had records of the charge, he tried to steal the file. 1966. In his first tour of duty early in 1962 as military adviser to the South Vietnamese, John Paul Vann took exquisite pains to fortify the soldierly kidney and gloss the image of General Huynh Van Cao, commander of the Seventh ARVN Division, author of the autobiography He Grows Under Fire, and so prone to shrink under it that he once called off an Hopkins was a pedophile, and Mr. Sheehan writes there is no doubt he molested Vann. [3] They had five children.[4]. In 1954, Vann joined the 16th Infantry Regiment in Schweinfurt, Germany, becoming the head of the regiment's Heavy Mortar Company. The Vann family realities are murky. As the attack continued through the following day, Tan Canhs defenses finally collapsed. Chronicles the military career of Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, profiling his military and civilian roles in the Vietnam War The funeral -- Going to war -- Antecedents to a confrontation -- The Battle of Ap Bac -- Taking on the system -- Antecedents to the man -- A second time around -- John Vann stays Soon American troops were patrolling with the ARVN regulars, and American helicopters were providing covering fire on search-and-destroy missions in the South. A week later, at his Washington memorial service, Vanns family felt that he wasnt getting the respect he deserved. It wasnt out of desperation either she was a hard-drinking partyer who kept all her earnings for herself. On the morning of April 23, 1972, Tan Canh was attacked by a large NVA force that included T-54 tanks. Few of the Pentagons senior officials wanted to read his report, however. On the same day, the White House released the text of the citation accompanying the medal, which read as follows: It was the most unlikely of guest lists. Random House will launch the book Friday with a 100,000-copy first-run printing. [1] However, the war ended before he could see action. His position was the equivalent in responsibilities of a major general in the US Army. Abcarian: Mask mandates? Vann shared his misgivings with them, and they in turn filed news reports of alleged ARVN ineptitude. A Bright Shining Lie opens with an incredible scene, Vanns funeral, full of Washington power: Senator Edward Kennedy and the Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg were in the pews; pallbearers included the former commander of United States forces in Vietnam, William Westmoreland, and a future head of the C.I.A., William Colby. Daniel Ellsberg was there at the chapel at Arlington Cemetery; so was Maj. Gen. Edward Landsdale, the model for The Ugly American and the man who helped establish Americas initial military presence in Vietnam in the 1950s. This article was written by Peter Kross and originally published in the April 2007 issue of Vietnam Magazine. But at various times, Sheehan came close to being overwhelmed by him. I think we can hold out longer than that." As Sheehan noted: John Vann was not meant to flee to a ship at sea, and he did not miss his exit. Confident to the point of arrogance, John Paul Vann had an unbridled sexual appetite that led to the charge of statutory rape that would keep him from attaining the generals status he coveted so dearly, Sheehan writes. Hes a compelling figure: tough, brash, energetic, hardheaded, and with enough charisma for a dozen Audie Murphy movies. Abrams, who had a relatively high opinion of Vann, was open to the suggestion, but there were still the institutional and legal hurdles of placing a civilian in a military command position. [4], It received the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights 1989 Book Award given annually to a book that "most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy's purposes his concern for the poor and the powerless, his struggle for honest and even-handed justice, his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance, and his faith that a free democracy can act to remedy disparities of power and opportunity. Nonetheless, Vann exercised de facto operational command over all U.S. military forces in his sector. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1961. If Kontum fell, Pleiku would go with it. In 1971, Vann was made a senior adviser for the Central Highlands in charge of all military personnel, effectively a major general in the Army. Book I tells of Vann's assignment to Vietnam in 1962. Its not as if he was obsessed with John Vann.. Books VI and VII give an account of Vann's return to Vietnam in 1965 and his doomed attempt to implement a winning strategy for the U.S. Army and how he eventually compromised with the military system he once criticized. The war was accelerating and Vann could not stand to be away from it. This two-story farmhouse was once the home of Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann, a well-known and vocal Vietnam War hero. The system was a huge success; soon supplies that had once been tied up in red tape were flowing to the proper units. He worked for a time in Tokyo, then was sent to Vietnam. 2 July 1924 in Norfolk, Virginia; d. 9 June 1972 in the Republic of Vietnam), career U.S. Army officer and, later, ranking civilian adviser in South Vietnam who, during the Vietnam War, advocated counterinsurgency, pacification, and social revolution while criticizing U.S. dependence on armed forces and massive firepower.Vann was born out of wedlock to John Spry, a trolley . John Allen avoids contact with his sister and one of his brothers. Four presidential administrations and a societal shift in recognizing Vietnam veterans later, Vann, a former lieutenant colonel and the first civilian general to lead American troops in combat, was memorialized in Neil Sheehans masterpiece, A Bright Shining Lie., Thirty years on, Sheehans book hasnt lost any of its astonishing power. Vann was indiscreet and generally accurate, a journalists dream. John Paul Vann (born John Paul Tripp; July 2, 1924 - June 9, 1972) was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, later retired, who became well known for his role in the Vietnam War. Back home, for my father, was close to being captured. He was an ardent critic of how the war was fought by the Saigon regime, which he viewed as corrupt and incompetent, and increasingly, on the part of the U.S. military. A poor Irish farm boy from Holyoke, Mass., Mr. Sheehan first went to Vietnam in 1962 for United Press International. John Paul, his stepbrother and two stepsisters were raised by Frank Vann, a decent, passive man who was intermittently employed and took the brunt of her cruelty. Official Register of Commissioned Officers of the United States Army. His approach made him an ally of US operatives such as Edward Lansdale and John Paul Vann, . I detect, maybe I am wrong, a receptivity to looking at the war with a new perspective., Recently, for example, Sheehan said a Navy pilot approached him and told him, I always thought we could win if we just got one more bridge. What makes the book particularly compelling is that it is both a broad look at the folly of the war and an intimate portrait of a chillingly Shakespearean character. John Paul Vann went down in a helicopter crash on June 9, 1972. Only a few U.S. journalists were in Vietnam at the time. He further angered senior military leaders by his association and friendship with two young American reporters in Saigon, David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan. By now, the pastor had been left by his wife and child, dismissed by his church, and was facing prosecution for his continued pedophilia. Despite Taylors orders to the contrary, Hamlett scheduled a meeting with Vann and the chiefs. John Paul Vann had a horrific upbringing, but during wartime, he had focused energy and was a great strategist and tactician, which is rare in an officer. Following the burial in Arlington National Cemetery, other members of the family talked middle son Jess out of handing President Richard Nixon half of his draft card, which hed torn up in advance of an Oval Office photo op. Also in attendance were such diverse individuals as Edward Lansdale, Lucien Conein, Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Kennedy, prowar columnist Joseph Alsop, Robert Komer and William Colby. In the end, however, it was air power, and specifically around-the-clock Boeing B-52 strikes, that broke the back of the offensive and destroyed the better part of two NVA divisions. Vann also incurred the wrath of his superiors by stating openly that the ARVN troops would not risk conducting search-and-destroy missions but instead assumed defensive positions whenever possible. He became a starved shark whose only goal was to trash and conquer blindly.. But it took his death for the book idea to coalesce. . By the time he died in 1972, Vann had embraced the follies he once decried. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. Various editions from 1950 to 1962. Hopkins is the genesis of our familys issues because he was an evil person who molested me and one of my brothers, John Allen says. By the time of his death in Vietnam in June 1972, Lt. Col. John Paul Vann had taken on the highest military authorities in Washington and had earned the respect and trust of a small group of newsmen. [3] Vann returned to Vietnam in March 1965 as an official of the Agency for International Development (AID). Born in Holyoke, Mass., in 1936, Sheehan grew up in an era when Americans believed in their soldiers and their wars. Despite heroic Americans like Vann, poor American leadership and corrupt South Vietnamese governance ensured American involvement sealed America's fate.5 For most Americans, Vietnam was a small, faraway country where a small-scale guerrilla war was in progress. Although he was now the civilian equivalent of a major general, he legally could not be given the title of commander. A specific request from General Dzu was the mechanism needed to make that happen. After his assignment to IV Corps, Vann was assigned as the senior American advisor in II Corps Military Region in the early 1970s when American involvement in the war was winding down and troops were being withdrawn. Vann returned to the U.S. to attend the Command and General Staff College (a prerequisite for further promotion) in 1957. Last edited on 25 February 2023, at 15:43, United States Agency for International Development, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Civil Operations and Rural Development Support, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Trapped By Vietnam: Before He Could Tell the Tale of a Soldier and a War, Neil Sheehan First Had to Battle His Own Emotions", "Distinguished Service Cross Recipients, Vietnam War, 19561975", "HBO's 'Shining Lie' Draws Early Complaints", Vann's DSC award information at the National Archives, An American Soldier in Vietnam The Rooster and the Tiger, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Paul_Vann&oldid=1141539241, "It was a miserable damn performance." You dont have a daddy, she would taunt him as he was growing up, a child of white trash poverty in Norfolk, Va. Just before his 18th birthday, his stepfather adopted him and gave him his name. An influential field operator in the Vietnam War, John Paul Vann, first as a United States Army advisor and lieutenant colonel, who later worked for the Agency for International Development in a role with the authority of a major general. By the end of Vann's tour, the head of U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Lieutenant General Paul Harkins, was ready to fire him but was dissuaded from doing so out of fear of creating a media uproar. The Criminal Investigative Division was able to verify some elements of the accusers story. Maybe the war has been over long enough for us to begin to emotionally come to grips with it. The disastrous battle at Ap Bac on January 2, 1963, was a turning point for Vann. Vanns influence over Dzu was also a crucial factor in the decision. He argued that many of the tactics employed (for example the Strategic Hamlet Program of relocation) further alienated the population and were counterproductive to U.S. objectives. (Their lone daughter had just given birth.) Vann had retired from the Army by then. . We all felt a pride in dad for standing up for his beliefs, because he was having a wonderful military career that was cut short, says his eldest son, John Allen Vann, now 69. Despite the shadow of the charges and the investigation, Vann was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1961. His helicopter took several hits in the process, as he personally directed airstrikes on NVA tanks and anti-aircraft positions. [citation needed], Vann was highly respected by a large segment of officers and civilians who were involved in the broader political aspects of the war because he favored small units performing aggressive patrolling instead of grandiose engagements by large units. By Jeff Danziger. The Communist North Vietnamese, acting through their Viet Cong proxies in the South, were wreaking havoc among the populace outside of Saigon. [3] The New York Review of Books proclaimed it "An unforgettable narrative, a chronicle grand enough to suit the crash and clangors of whole armies. SAIGON, South Vietnam, Sat urday, June 10 John Paul Vann, a senior American ad viser and one of the most expe rienced United States officials ever stationed in South Viet mum, was killed in. Dzu actually spent more time with Vann than he did with Maj. Gen. Hal McCown, who was Dzus official senior adviser in the IV CTZ. Vanns second son, Jesse, was born on August 5, 1950. Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann, a bright and idealistic Virginia native whose commitment to South Vietnam's survival drove him to pathological extremes, learned this the hard way during his stint as an adviser to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) before the United States had officially committed its own forces there. We were burying what Henry Luce called the American Century., At home that night, Sheehan wrote out a memo of this uncanny funeral. The more the thought about the implications of what had transpired that afternoon, the more excited I got. As he pondered the man who had fought the war as fiercely as he came to doubt it, he recalled, It struck me that John did sum up in his life and his character and his experience there our venture in Vietnam.. Although Weyand predicted that Vann would be a hair shirt, he also knew that he would be worth the trouble. Neil Sheehan has Parkinsons, and his career has slowed down, but he is still writing about Vietnam and was most recently seen in The Vietnam War. His dapper appearance and the Irish lilt in his voice offered a fitting tribute to his writing life. The chapel was filled with people. He returned to the United States in 1957 to attend the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. As Mr. Sheehan notes, Vann turned himself into an amateur specialist on the polygraph, passed a lie-detector test, and beat the rap, but he went to Vietnam knowing his career was already lost. As Vann took up a temporary assignment at Fort Drum, N.Y., an Article 32 investigation (the military equivalent of a civilian grand jury) proceeded. One such man was a decorated veteran of the Korean War, Lt. Col. John Paul Vann. As the North Vietnamese mounted a massive three-prong conventional attack from the north, Vann planned to defeat the thrust against II CTZ using the mobile defensive tactics he had seen Lt. Gen. Walton Walker use to defeat the North Koreans at the Pusan Perimeter in 1950. He died believing he had won his war.. Tripp married Aaron Frank Vann in 1929, and young John took his new father's name. As author Neil Sheehan described the funeral, it was like an extraordinary class reunion. Here was this renegade lieutenant colonel. Melvin Laird, the Secretary of Defense, was in attendance. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and was the only civilian in Vietnam to receive the Distinguished Service Cross. I never thought I wouldnt finish the book, but it was extremely draining.. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. For Ramsey and for all Americans captured in South Vietnam, life would be brutally difficult. Journalist Neil Sheehan watched the ceremony in the chapel at Arlington National Cemetery with a curious set of emotions. Porter then assigned Vann as the American adviser to Colonel Huynh Van Cao, commander of the ARVN 7th Division, who later became a corps commander and then a South Vietnamese senator. To Mr. Sheehan and other reporters in Vietnam, Vanns version of what was going on rang truer than the sunny propaganda emanating from the White House. Instead of learning from mistakes or correcting the situation, many of the senior officers around MACVs General Harkins had begun to rein in any officers who were deviating from the playbook. He was an early proponent of the war, believing that American policies in South Vietnam were the main thing blocking the Communist drive to control all of Southeast Asia. In late 1950, in the wake of China's entrance into the war and the retreat of allied forces, now-Captain Vann was given his first command, a Ranger company, the Eighth Army Ranger Company. The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but I'm afraid we can't do it that way. He remained on the ground and tried to rally the demoralized ARVN soldiers. John Vann was my friend, I had known him in those three years I'd been in Vietnam and I'd see him periodically afterwards. George Washington had complained vociferously about the flood of questionable foreign volunteers. You couldnt help feeling you were attending a strange class reunion, Sheehan recalled. In retrospect, Neil was actually kind to my father and didnt plumb the depths of what was there. Vann witnessed firsthand how Diem refused to implement needed political and military reforms and how his corrupt brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, rewarded friends in the military. With the onset of World War II, Vann sought to become an aviator/pilot. Dad allowed him to be around his sons unsupervised. [6], After an assignment as province senior adviser, Vann was made Deputy for Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS) in the Third Corps Tactical Zone of Vietnam, which consisted of the twelve provinces north and west of Saigonthe part of South Vietnam most important to the US. Has anyone managed to find anything about what became of them. We have one year's experience twelve times over. Their mother, Mary Jane, 90, has never read it, but they both love the book and have warm memories of getting to know the Sheehans. Here were all the figures of Vietnam in this chapel. Vietnam Questions (NSSM-1) . One of Vanns soldiers was a very young David Hackworth. Vann also believed he could count on support from Weyand, who was scheduled to return to Vietnam in the fall of 1970 as the deputy commanding general of MACV, which was now commanded by General Creighton Abrams. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. (Random House, 861 pp., $24.95) In Neil Sheehan's apt and accurate phrase, John Paul Vann was "the soldier . The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but Im afraid we cant do it that way. the one irreplaceable American in Vietnam," with a spellbinding narrative of the miscalculations . William Colby (executive director of the CIA) was another pallbearer. As the fighting intensified on the Korean peninsula, Vann, now a captain, assumed command of a company in the 8th Ranger Battalion and led missions behind enemy lines. [7] For his actions from April 2324, 1972, Vann, ineligible for the Medal of Honor as a civilian, was also awarded (posthumously) the Distinguished Service Cross,[8] the only civilian so honored since World War II. He was now the father of a baby girl named Patricia. Vietnamese woman walking down a dirt road in Viet Nam, ca. From that day forward, Vann was persona non grata at MACV headquarters in Saigon. The NVA objective in II CTZ was Kontum, the northernmost key city in the Central Highlands. He was often unable to influence the military command but used the Saigon press corps including Sheehan, David Halberstam and Malcolm Browne to disseminate his views. A Bright Shining Lie is a very great piece of work; its rewards are aesthetic and [] almost spiritual". Vann, however, publicly called the January 1963 battle of Ap Bac a defeat for American and ARVN forces and a miserable damn performance. Harkins almost fired him, giving him a severe tongue-lashing. In 1943, at the age of 18, Vann enlisted in the United States Army Air Force. Because of his track record in the field, Vann was the lead candidate to become CORDS deputy for the III Corps Tactical Zone (CTZ). Vann and Vietnam: at the heart was lies. VANN, John Paul (b. Book IV details Vann's criticism of the way the war was being fought, his conflict with the U.S. military command and his transfer back to America. Accompanying ARVN units to the field, Vann quickly realized to his dismay that the South Vietnamese army lacked the will to fight. "[5], In September, 1988, Sheehan was interviewed by Brian Lamb about A Bright Shining Lie. When the Korean War began in June 1950, Vann coordinated the transportation of his 25th Infantry Division to Korea. [3], Vann accepted a job in Denver, Colorado with defense contractor Martin Marietta. By late 1961 and early 1962, the Kennedy administration started to focus its attention on the conflict in South Vietnam. Barring a knife, the best is a rifle you know who you're killing. But when his negative reports to his superiors aroused displeasure, Vann leaked his meticulously documented assessments to the (American journalists) in the country., Vann, Sheehan relates in his book, offered an alliance to the press, and we entered it eagerly. Other American advisers and Vietnamese on the Saigon side conveyed valuable information to the American reporters, but Vann, Sheehan said, gave the journalists an expertise we lacked, a certitude that brought a qualitative change in what we wrote. The citation read in part, Soldier of peace and patriot of two nations, the name of John Paul Vann will be honored as long as free men remember the struggle to preserve the independence of South Vietnam., Saigon fell less than three years after Vanns victory at Kontum. Weyand presented Vanns case to Abrams in April 1971. Initially, the Office of Civilian Operations had been established to manage all U.S. government civilian agencies working in Vietnam under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Embassy. They filmed Neil in 2011 and he looks great, says Susan Sheehan, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her 1982 book about schizophrenia, Is There No Place on Earth for Me? Its lovely that our grandsons get to see him strong and healthy, not the man who needs a walker.. COVID origins? 13 John Paul Vann Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images FILTERS CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO 13 John Paul Vann Premium High Res Photos Browse 13 john paul vann stock photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images. Vann was informed by the MPs that the girl had told a military chaplain at Fort Leavenworth about the alleged rape. Vann's wit and iconoclasm did not endear him to many military and civilian careerists but he was a hero to many young civilian and military officers who understood the limits of conventional warfare in the irregular environment of Vietnam. After the statutory rape charges were dropped, she asked if hed learned his lesson. In one fell swoop [ President Thieu 's Land to the U.S. to attend the Command and general college... Ship at sea, and from its junior college Program in 1943 been tied up in an era Americans! Asked if hed learned his lesson U.S. journalists were in Vietnam at age! 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S unit, the more excited I got barring a knife, but Im afraid we cant do it way. Over long enough for US to begin to emotionally come to grips with it 11,300 American troops in Vietnam the! The charge, he legally could not be given the title of.! Father and didnt plumb the depths of what had transpired that afternoon, the Kennedy started... 1961 and early 1962, the 7th Division, one of the most successful Vietnamese... Partyer who kept all her earnings for herself, knowing Vann would find body! What became of them and for all Americans captured in South Vietnam the incident occurred in,! College ( a prerequisite for further promotion ) in 1975, Chau was put to major reassigned. To high Army rank `` [ 5 ] john paul vann vietnamese wife in 1936, Sheehan came to. To be away from it and tried to steal the file graduated from its school... The funeral, it was like an extraordinary class reunion, Sheehan grew up in an era when believed. Young American reporters in Saigon some elements of the CIA ) was another.. ( their lone daughter had just given birth. the challenge that led! The respect he deserved a specific request from general Dzu was the mechanism needed to make that happen, with...
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