Book on Vietnam War Slang

[W Brewer]

Sorry, Charlie: <<radio-transmission alphabet>> is patently too transparent
for military purposes, so we called it the <NATO Phonetic Alphabet> for
RATEL, because it had nothing to do with phonetics and wasn't being used in
the North Atlantic, but was however an alphabetic mnemonic in the
Phoenician tradition. (Bloody clever deception that, wot-wot!).
I been brainwashed with Capitalist catch phrases, like Jolly Green Giant,
Mr Clean, Charlie Tuna, so that's what I thunk of back then. (Blacks,
drawing from their own cultural perspective, paid respect to Little Brown
Brutha with <Mr Charles>.)
<Vie.^t Co.^ng>  ->  <Viet Cong>  ->  <VC> ->  <Victor Charlie>  ->
 Charlie, Charlie Cong.
The clever deceptive irony of calling one's enemy <Victor> being lost on
lifers, it had to go, leaving only <Charlie>, with <Cong> added on as a
sort of  crypto-reduplication.
Whiskey Bravo, Short!!

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