Beta Pi Blog, Vol.2007, No.17B - BONUS EDITION: X-NEAL CRENSHAW UPDATE

Beta Pi Blog, Vol.2007, No.17 - X-NEAL CRENSHAW UPDATE :

Additional comment, March 6, 2007:

Sometimes, things stick in my mind, like a song that keeps playing, I can’t quit thinking about it. What’s stuck in my mind now is Neal’s new nick-name "Bronze God" - and it dawned on me - Neal is living the life of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. The Thai natives must really "worship the man . . . like a God" as Harrison Ford said in that great movie, which is one of my all-time-favorites. Here is how that scene went:

. . . special intelligence agent Willard (Martin Sheen) is escorted by chopper to an intelligence compound/airfield at Nha Trang in Vietnam for a luncheon meeting, in an air-conditioned trailer:

"I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didn't even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable plugged straight into Kurtz. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz's memory, any more than being back in Saigon was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story is really a confession, then so is mine."

Willard is questioned by two military superiors: General R. Corman (G. D. Spradlin), and Colonel Lucas (Harrison Ford). A third unidentified civilian individual named Jerry (Jerry Ziesner) is presumably a CIA operative. Their working lunch is imported Texas roast beef, shrimp and Budweiser beer. Willard is shown a picture and told about Col. Kurtz, (Marlon Brando) a highly-decorated Green Beret officer - and told that Kurtz is now insane. A reel-to-reel tape recording of Kurtz's voice is played:

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge . . . of a straight . . . razor. That's my dream . . . it's my nightmare. Crawling, slipping along the edge of a straight . . . razor . . . and surviving.... But we must kill them, we must incinerate them, pig after pig, cow after cow, village after village, army after army, . . . and they call me an assassin. What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassin? They lie, . . . They lie and we have to be merciful for those who lie, . . . for those nabobs. I hate them. I do hate them."

The General says Col. Kurtz’s "methods" have become "unsound." He tells Willard that the Army accused Kurtz of murdering three Vietnamese intelligence agents (men he believed were double agents). General Corman explains the confused insanity of the war, the temptation to play God:

"Because there's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes the Dark Side overcomes what Lincoln called 'the better angels of our nature.' Therein, every man has got a breaking point. You and I have. Walter Kurtz has reached his. And very obviously, he has gone insane."

General Corman says "he's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct - and he is still in the field commanding troops." Willard is given a mission: infiltrate and "terminate the Colonel's command." The command is repeated by the CIA operative (his only line): "Terminate with extreme prejudice."

Willard is told that "this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist."