Colored Glasses

By the way I count, I’ve been to Vietnam five times: the first a completed combat cruise; the second a cruise with an extended stay in N. Vietnam’s prisons; the third with a film crew doing a series on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon; then I tagged along on a university trip to set up an exchange program for Vietnamese students; and the last, a month-long trip from south to north by ground transportation.  A significant part of that last trip was stopping in the villages that participated in my shoot down and getting to meet some of the people who captured me.  (see below)

Each trip to Vietnam has resulted in a life changing experience.  I expect the forthcoming trip will be as significant in its own way.  The odyssey continues.

The trip consists of 12 veterans, 12 students, and a half dozen members of the college staff.  How will their individual odysseys play out?  Each of us relates to the Vietnam War era differently.  Many vets endured things beyond description that defy comprehension by the rest of us.  Some will be returning to Vietnam for the first time.  On my first return trip, I met some ghosts of the past and saw them in the new daylight of the present.  I found an unusual exhilaration walking around the outside of the fifteen-foot-high wall that I had only experienced from the inside before.  25-year-old bomb craters had found new life as a watering hole for water buffalo and a building that once held prisoners became a storage shed.

Much of what we may learn on the trip will be a result of seeing things from the perspective of others in our group.  I’m anxious to hear the views of the students who study it as history.  I expect they will bring a freshness that those of us who lived through it are unable to see.  But isn’t that usually the case?  We all look through our own colored glasses.

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Trip 6?

My friend John called.  “Dan,” he said, “Do you remember that trip I told you about with the Collage of the Ozarks?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Well they’re planning another trip and I think you should go.”

“Okay . . . how’s that work?”

“That’s what I’m about to tell you.”

In summary, he gave this pitch about the uniqueness of the College of the Ozarks in combining a Christian Liberal Arts curriculum with a dose of cultural and patriotic awareness and a work program that takes the place of tuition.  Students are encouraged to compete for the opportunity to go on “Patriotic Education Trips,” which pairs students with Veterans as they visit battlefields that students have studied and the Vets fought in.  The trips began in 2009 and have gone to a wide range of locations related to World War II, the Cold War, Korea and Vietnam.  The concept immediately grabbed my interest, but it was the enthusiasm in John’s voice that sealed the deal.  I was ready to sign on.

Since then, the college accepted me as one of their Vets, a few other details were taken care of and VOILA; we’re set to depart on the 18th of March for our Vietnam Tour.

I could rave about the beauty of the campus when we visited there last month.  I could sing praises of how welcoming and friendly students and staff are.  Did I mention the school’s nickname is Hard Work U?  Of course not, because you can learn all about it by simply clicking on the icon below.

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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.

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