Why Vietnam ?
Whatever is has already been
And what will be has been before
And God will call the past to account –
Ecclesiastes 3-15
In March of 1973, I left Vietnam and swept the eight years of my involvement in the Vietnam War behind me. For the next twenty years, I focused on being a Naval Officer that defended the world from aggression and later an Architect that built a better environment. Vietnam Vet was not the first thing that came to mind when I contemplated my image.
In 1994, at a friend’s urging, with reluctance, I attended a writing course for Veterans. I saw a group obsessed with anger, resentment and in some cases shame over their Vietnam experience. They were dealing with feelings that I either didn’t have or refused to face. But what they expressed in writing went to the core of human experience. It wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to write about, but the more I thought about it the more interested I became in how the Vietnam experience affected and continues to shape my life. Though I didn’t want to relive the past, I felt that I had been remiss in not giving it more attention. I wrote some about it, occasionally spoke about it to various groups and when the opportunity came to make a return trip I was ready, even eager to visit the country I had relegated to the past.
On the first trip back, in 1995, I latched onto a few simple thoughts that helped me put the past in perspective: Vietnam is a country, not a war; Vietnamese are people, not prison guards; Son Tay is a city, not a prisoner of war camp; there is no shame in what we were trying to accomplish in Vietnam; 70% of the current Vietnamese population were born after the war and look to improve their country; and it’s better to seek lessons to be learned than to vilify participants, supporters or protesters on either side.
I made additional return trips in ‘97 and 2001 and found Vietnam to be a country of contrasts, from North to South, from city to rural then remote regions and from young to old. No matter whether it’s watching Tai Chi classes and early morning exercises around Hoan Kiem Lake or getting involved in a sign language discussion with a village bamboo house raising crew or simply surviving a drive in traffic, there’s never a dull moment. The energy increases in a more personal setting, such as having a discussion about business with the owner of the family operated twelve room hotel I stayed in, or getting a tour of The Temple of Literature from two Hanoi University students and their mothers. The only time I became a pure tourist was on the boat trip around Ha Long Bay and there the scenery is simply too spectacular to do otherwise.
I’m fascinated by the new way I see things that relate to the time I was there during the war. In ’95 on the road to Son Tay I could sense exactly where I was along the way from the smells, sounds and other ‘feelings’ that I had picked up blindfolded, in the back of a truck 27 years before. In ’97 we spent three hours in a tavern swapping stories over a few Ba Ba Ba beers with two Son Tay policemen who were 12 years old the night of the Son Tay raid. They didn’t know the prison camp existed until later when rumors about what had happened were passed around. I saw bomb craters still surrounding the abandoned Hai Duong Bridge where we lost John McCormick the first line period of our ’65 cruise. The former Viet Cong fighter that I met in the south was the only male survivor in a family that lost seven brothers and a brother in law. In ’65 I dropped bombs on where he was living and fighting in a maze of dirt tunnels not big enough to turn around in. By some quirk of fate, we both survived and moved on to other phases of our lives.
I don’t seek to sweep my eight years of involvement in the Vietnam War behind me anymore. Instead, I’ve developed a deeper interest in the broader aspects of the War and all who took part in it. I’m drawn toward things Vietnamese, the people, the country, the history and culture and look forward to my next visit. I still search for meaning in this part of my past and where it may lead.