In July of 1989 in a remote village east of Huế in Thua Thien Province, Viet Nam I unexpectedly found myself face to face with two former VC soldiers that I had helped capture while leading a patrol twenty years earlier.
The first man emerged from a trail tunneled by overhanging bamboo, smiling. As he walked closer I asked him if he remembered, "Anh nhớ không?" He nodded, smiling and replied, "Nhớ!", and came on down the trail to greet me. We shook hands and he gripped my forearms as is the custom there. The second man soon joined us. We shook hands and the three of us stood arms-around-shoulders while a group of villagers, some of whom still remembered me from twenty years earlier, gathered around smiling, chattering and cheering. I was dumbfounded. The emotions were those befitting a welcome home.
Thus the first milestone of a transition, a change in the way I would come to view the war in Viet Nam, was set in place. There were events buried deeply in memory that would rise again, hauntingly so, in the months and years ahead. These would later influence my views and reinforce my opposition to the war in Iraq from the very first moments I had an inkling of that predictably sad misadventure, for I had walked a similarly bloody trail nearly four decades earlier.
Searching for the Truth and Longing for the Rush
Part 1 - The Girl in the Green Shirt
There are some veterans, a small minority, who saw the war clearly for what it really was even while they participated in it. For others of us it took much longer. Some, perhaps a majority even, at least from my experience, are still fighting the war in their hearts because they believe we were somehow not allowed to win it.
Most of my own war time experiences were spent in rural areas in joint USMC - South Vietnamese militia units, living among peasant farmers and fishermen. There were no officers in our units in the field. We were normally led by a sergeant, sometimes a corporal and on rare occasions, even a lance corporal (E-3). Our numbers varied but usually there were about 12 of us and a Navy Corpsman (medic) plus a variable number of South Vietnamese, District or Province level militia, troops. The first commanding officer and one of the early proponents of the Combined Action Program was Lt. Colonel William Corson. He would later author a book, The Betrayal.
In his book Corson
argued that the Saigon government supported by Washington was corrupt and incompetent and that it was perceived by ordinary Vietnamese as being as much of a threat to their well-being as the communists. Unless the United States devised policies to take this into account, the book said, the war would be lost and American servicemen would have died in vain.
Michael Peterson, a former enlisted CAP Marine wrote in his book, The Combined Action Platoons -
The CAP Program was one of the few regimes in which mostly young American enlisted men associated intimately with Vietnamese for long periods of time in a Vietnamese setting.
Michael Peterson understood how many of us felt when the end came in the closing days of April 1975. In his book he wrote:
For American veterans the taste of defeat was especially bitter and their pain was compounded by the general indifference or even hostility from their countrymen. In silence they grieved their lost comrades and their lost cause...For CAP survivors the pain was intensified by the loss of friends and even "home" for they had lived and worked in Central Vietnam's hamlets to an extent few Americans could claim. They left behind Vietnamese who were not faceless peasants , but rather individuals: colleagues, friends and even families.
Most Americans felt a huge sense of relief when the war ended but it was not an easy time for veterans. Naive as I still was, I had never expected such an outcome but then I had never really understood the war either. I would spend much time in later years looking for answers and hoping to find vindication for our actions, for what has been referred to by some as a "noble cause".
The first opportunity to return to Viet Nam came nearly 20 years after my last departure from Da Nang on Easter Sunday of 1970. There were 8 of us former CAP Marines, and one former Navy Chaplain, in our return group. It was 1989 while a punitive trade embargo was still in place and when it would yet be years before the normalization of relations between Viet Nam and America.
We spent a few days in the North and, somewhat to our surprise, found the people very friendly. They would usually first ask if we had been pilots and assuring them we were not they warmly welcomed us. There are many fond memories of Hanoi including a family, total strangers, who loaned me their family bicycle one night to travel to the old section of town to visit some people I had met the previous evening. Members of our group met and talked with NVA veterans and with Vietnamese soldiers still in uniform. There was no apparent animosity. For me the adrenalin began to flow again after nearly two decades of having a low interest in a life, a life in which everything important still revolved around Viet Nam. It was exhilarating and it would become addictive.
In 1989 we had "handlers" who generally kept track of us and served as our tour guides and interpreters. It was easy enough to slip away from them by skipping out on the planned tours of the day and going out on our own. No matter where we had gone they always knew where we had been and who we had talked to and what we talked about. It was spooky but it also added to our excitement.
The Vietnamese refer to the fertile rice growing lowlands south of Da Nang as "The Cradle of the Revolution". The American military units operating in the northern portion of the Cradle during the war called that area "Dodge City". (Scroll down - nice story about recent visit by veterans and others to that area, with photos)
After our friendly receptions in the North and in the Hue area I was cheerfully optimistic about visiting the hamlets adjacent to another combined unit where I had been in 1968. These hamlets were located along the eastern edge of "Dodge City". I ventured out alone from our hotel, the Phuong Dong, and boarded a crowded south bound bus fashioned from a very old Datsun pick-up truck. The driver seated me in the front seat between him and his wife. I carried with me a photo from 1968 taken in our unit's AO at the local village market place. Below is the photo I carried. I had written on the back of the photo the nickname of the girl in the green shirt. She was probably 14 or 15 at that time.
I disembarked near the village market and was greeted by several elderly ladies and yes, they knew her and she still lived nearby. They led me to her home and a curious crowd followed us. "Thu" remembered me by my local nickname and after exchanging pleasantries and inquiring of one another's families she said that she would prepare dinner and invite me to eat with her family that evening. But there would be no dinner. After a sentimental tour of a portion of our former AO I was arrested by a local policeman and questioned for several hours before being escorted to Da Nang to be further questioned by the Cong An (Security Police).
The policeman told me that he had been about 12 years old when I was there during the war. A crowd had gathered round, mostly curious children, and he pointed to them and told me "we were all VC", that Co (Ms) Thu was a VC and asked me if I did not know that our countries were still enemies. He wanted to know what I was doing there and who I had talked to and what we talked about. He told me over and over again how miserable their situation was during the time of the American presence there.
It was very hot. I was thirsty and my limited Viet vocabulary had eventually deteriorated to only "I don't know" and "I don't understand". Eventually the questioning ended and the policeman hailed a passing bus and I boarded with my escort. I was not sure where we were going but felt some relief in the fact that we were headed north towards Da Nang.
My police escort was very young man, in his early twenties, unarmed as far as I could see, quite polite, gentle even and yet firm. As we disembarked at the Da Nang bus terminal he asked quite innocently and politely in Vietnamese "Is America really rich?" I answered in the affirmative. He inquired about my family and in turn I asked about his and if he was married. He replied that he was too poor to take a wife and told me what his monthly salary was, the equivalent of about three dollars per month at that time. One of the ladies from the village, who had boarded the bus when we did, caught up with us and slipped a small piece of paper into my hand. The young policeman ignored her and I put the note into my jeans pocket without so much as glancing at it. The peasant lady from the village quickly disappeared into the throng of people near the bus terminal.
My visit to the Cong An went well. Their place of business was a simple house near the center of town. A young child slept near the doorway in a hammock shaded from the late afternoon sun. My hosts offered tea and we talked for perhaps and hour. They would once again point out that our respective governments were not on friendly terms. My response was that even though our governments were not on friendly terms there was no reason the people of our two countries could not be friends. Finally as the sun was going down behind the Annamite Mountains one of them drove me, on the back of his Honda motorbike, to the hotel where our group was staying. I apologized for any wrong doing. He told me - "no problem, you didn't do anything wrong".
I could not sleep that night. The note was from the girl in the green shirt, Thu was not her real name but only a nickname. She had written her address and asked me to write to her. My thoughts wandered back to 1968 and some very unfortunate events that had taken place there. These were things, I suppose for one reason or another, I had wanted to forget and nearly had. Here is the note from Co Thu. She had written her real name and address, portions of which I have redacted. Then she wrote "If you can send some gift to me at this address, I thank you. I was your friend during the war."
In Part II I'll relate some events from 1968 and correspondence from Thu after 1989 and how that would lead, a few years later, to an evening at the home of her uncle Bon and his family in Da Nang. She also wrote that her Uncle Bon had fought against us.
I'll also link to an "album" on line with some photos for your viewing. The quality of some of them is not so good. They are old and scratched but I've cleaned them up as best I can.
Finally I'll relate some events which will explain to you a few of the reasons why, even though we did our best, we were not winning any hearts and minds.