A Luoi is an ethnic village of minority people called Paco. They are like Indians and have often been discriminated against by the Vietnamese. During the war they were much more often on our side than the side of the North Vietnamese. I met a woman who was 75--yes, they love to give their ages--who promptly told us she fought with the French against the Viet Minh in 1953. She spoke French. The people are very poor. In one family, whose children visit the construction site every day, the seven children all sleep together on a mat on the floor that is no bigger than one of our single beds. But they are very happy. All the kids smile and laugh all the time. We say, “Hello.” They answer, “Hallo.” When we respond, they mimic our response, falling down with laughter. It cracks us all up.

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Since our school site is two kilometers from our hotel, we have decided to contribute significantly to the local economy. All of us have purchased brand new bicycles for 580,000 Dong or $32.50. We will donate the bicycles to the members of the community at the end of our stay.

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I climbed Hamburger Hill today with John Ward, the VVRP Viet Nam rep, and some members of the our team. It was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the war. The North Vietnamese Army used Hamburger hill as a major fire support base. It was only a mile from Laos and was on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In May,1969 we began shelling the hill incessantly with heavy artillery, B-52 attacks and every thing we could throw at the NVA in preparation for the 101st Airborne Division's attack on the hill. The attack took three days. The 101st took very heavy casualties. The hill was eventually taken. The U.S. occupied the hill for a week before abandoning it and allowing the NVA to move right back in again. None of us ever understood the insanity of some of these tactics of the war.

Because of all the firepower, the hill’s foliage was completely decimated. Only short stumps remained of the huge jungle trees. But when we got there today, we were in the heart of one of the most pristine rainforests in the world. The only thing we found of the battle were some of the NVA battlements and bunkers. I photographed some of them, but it will not seem like much because the jungle has all grown up around them.

The hill is at an elevation of 3,500 feet. The Vietnamese haven’t learned about zig zagging up mountains or canyons like we do in the united States. The trail just went straight up and straight down. Very steep and slippery. The hike was a great experience.

On the trail, which was overgrown and somewhat scary, we found some of the Paco people bringing down scrap metal from bombs and other metallic material left there from the war. This is a very dangerous thing to do because the bombs might explode. But they take the chance because they can get 350,000 dong, or about $20, for the scrap metal of one bomb on the open market. With their meager wages, it makes it worth their while, they think, to do this work. One of these guys had a small pack filled with solid steel from the bombs that weighed about 150 pounds. We could hardly lift the rough backpack he had it in. He couldn't have weighed more than 90 pounds himself. Yet he trudged this thing down the mountain. It was incredible. Two guys carried the complete bomb down with a long stick.

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People here treat us like their greatest friends of all time, whether its in Hanoi, Hue, or out here in A Luoi where they haven’t seen many Americans. Even the Communist Government officials we have met are very warm toward us. Wherever we go, everybody of all ages, even people our age who were most likely connected to the war in some manner, line the streets to smile and wish us the best. From a country who fought us to the death almost 40 years ago, this is truly amazing to me.

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Today we visited the three kindergarten classes that will be relocated into the school we are building when it is finished. It was neat to see some of the same kids who have been out to the work site in the afternoons, including the shy little girl who got the stuffed doggie from me. The principal took us around. She was about 40 years old. The teachers were younger. In each classroom, the kids were sitting in chairs in a circle. Each class had 22 students. They did the alphabet for us and each one said and wrote his or her name. Then they sang several songs. We responded with Old McDonald and taught them to do “e i, e i, o.”

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I think the truth of war, unburdened of any official spin, is very well summed up by the NVA soldier, Bao Minh, in his great war novel, "The Sorrow of War." It stands with "All Quiet on the Western Front" in describing the soldier’s experience of war. He says:

Each of us had been crushed by the war in a different way…. Our only post-war similarities stemmed from the fact that everyone had experienced difficult, painful and different fates. But we also shared a common sorrow, the immense sorrow of war. It was a sublime sorrow, more sublime than happiness, and beyond suffering. It was, thanks to our sorrow, that we were able to escape the war, escape the continual killing and fighting, the terrible conditions of battle and the unhappiness of men in fierce and violent theatres of war. It was also thanks to our mutual sorrow that we've been able to walk our respective roads again. Our lives may not be very happy, and they might well be sinful. But now we are living the most beautiful lives we could ever have hoped for, because it is a life in peace.

Surely this was what the real author of this novel intended to say. The sorrows of war prevent the soldier from relaxing by continually enticing him back into his past. I believe he derived some happiness from looking back down the road of his past. His spirit had not been eroded by a cloudy memory. He could feel happy that his soul would find solace in the fountain of sentiments from his youth. He returned time and time again to his love, his friendship, his comradeship, those human bonds which had all helped us overcome the thousand sufferings of the war. I envied his inspiration, his optimism in focusing back to the painful but glorious days. They were caring days, when we knew what we were living and fighting for and why we needed to suffer and sacrifice. Those were the days when all of us were young, very pure and very sincere.

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During the weekend break from our work at A Luoi, a number of us, including Bud Bruton, toured Thua Thien (T.T.) Hue Province. After visiting a Vietnamese national cemetery, north of Dong Ha, I had one of the most memorable experiences of my time here.

We visited an NVA veteran and his family who were living in a nice stuccoed house surrounded by banana trees built by the members of Team XVIII. Bud Bruton had been a member of Team XVIII.

The family was very moved by our visit. They welcomed us with tears streaming down their cheeks. The word of our arrival spread quickly. The entire neighborhood came out and a big celebration took place.

What really got to me was having the NVA vet and his neighbor, who was also a vet, show me the wounds they had suffered on their legs. I then showed them my leg wounds. We hugged, tears flowing. After this, they broke out a bottle of their home made rice wine for several rounds of toasting.

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Coming back on my bike from the waterfall where we often went to swim, I punctured my front tire. I was getting ready to push the bike back to the hotel, which was several kilometers away, when a Paco boy, recognizing my problem, with hand gestures, directed me to his home. In no time at all he had the tire off the bike, the inner tube out, the patch affixed and the tire back on the bike. I was very grateful for his help and offered him some dong in payment. He resolutely refused to accept it. He had fixed my tire, according to our interpreter, as a gesture of friendship. I was very moved.

The next day we were wrapping up things at A Luoi. I had to decide what I would do with my bike. It was an easy decision. I would give it to the young man who had fixed my tire to thank him for his generosity. But I couldn’t find him. I went to his home, but he wasn’t there. I looked around the neighborhood, but there was no sign of him any where. I began to worry that I wouldn’t find him. I went back to the hotel. A few minutes later, Charlie Wishart showed up with the boy in tow. Charlie recognized him from the hat we had given him yesterday when he refused to take my dong.

I will never adequately be able to describe the look on this little boy's face when our interpreter Tuyen told him I was giving him the bike. He bowed deeply and said in halting English with extreme politeness, “Thank you.” Nobody in his family had a bike, which is understandable because they are so poor. After all, I bought mine for 580,000 dong. That amount of money is about what a Paco family makes in six months.

It is moments like this that have made this trip so worthwhile.

The rest of the team gave their bikes to various people they have met, including the teachers who were asked to divvy them up amongst needy students. I need to mention that we gave the school $750 with which to buy desks and chairs and other furnishings.

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Summing up my time in A Loui, I have to say it has been a profoundly healing experience for all of us vets; indeed the experience of a lifetime. These people, our former bitter enemies, responded to us in the warmest possible manner. It was especially gratifying that the older people who knew first hand how horrible the American war was and the terrible things we did to their country had no animosity toward us. We became friends. Their forgiveness and their friendship was what I was looking for when I came here, and that is what I found.

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Today was the greatest day I have had yet. It is because I was able to go back to the old haunts of my past in this war. Tom Dierwa, who is traveling with me, and I went on a wonderful guided tour of the Cu Chi tunnels. This was the best and most factual tour we have been on. It was all about the VC war effort and how they battled against our 25th Division. There was no bullshit propaganda; just the brutal facts and how these resourceful people fought us and our far superior forces and firepower.

I thought it amusing that one piece of information the tour guide gave out was that the 25th Infantry Division, of which I was a member, was the largest and most powerful division of the American Army in Vietnam and that it had inflicted the heaviest casualties on their people. He also pointed out that the Vietnamese had killed more 25th Division troops than the troops of any other American division.

I don’t know if we lost more than any other division, but I do know my unit was decimated when I got there in July 1969. Most of the officers and many enlisted men had been killed as a result of the great Tet Offensive of 1968. I also know that the 25th suffered a lot of casualties after I left in June 1970. I always thought my year was a lucky year because we didn't have the huge battles the division had before and after my tour.

After the Cu Chi Tunnels, things really got good. We went to Trang Bang which was a heavy VC stronghold. My unit had operated out of a fire support base, Camp Wood, a few miles west and north of Trang Bang most of the time. It was also near Go Da, which was a mere five miles from the Cambodian border and the Ho Chi Minh trail. We operated all around the area: in the famous Boi Loi Woods; in the grass prairie looking terrain near Trang Bang; in the south toward the Mekong delta; and up and down the numerous Rubber plantations. Most of the time we had no engagements. We were thrilled with that, although our generals and colonels were not. They wanted "body counts".

When we got to Trang Bang today on the infamous Highway 22, our guide showed a picture of the Trang Market I had taken in 1969 to several older ladies there. They recognized it and directed us to that exact same market. Remarkably, it looked pretty much the same. Then we went to the Boi Loi woods, only about 4 miles away. This was the site of the few battles I engaged in and where I was wounded. I had some horrific close in contacts with enemy VC there. It looks different today, but, still, it was wonderful seeing it again.

We then went to Tay Ninh City for a wonderful lunch. The lady who owned the place and served us was a former VC soldier. She began her service in 1969 at the age of 14 and served until the end of their war in 1975. She was highly decorated and is now honored as one of the six biggest VC heroes in the area. She is the only woman.

She had lived in the tunnels. We determined she would have been shooting at my tanks and me while I was trying my best to kill her. She said that her unit had felt very threatened by the awesome fire power of our tanks and machine guns—more than from anything else.

She was very gracious and smiling all the time and before we left she put her uniform on and got out all her medals and pinned them on it.

We took lots of pictures and hugged many times. She said that war is horrible and that she is always for peace now. I told her I was too. She was ecstatic when she learned about what the team had done in A Luoi.

We never cried. I did notice, however, that when we were leaving that her eyes began to water. Mine did as well.

Later, Tom Dierwa said that this was the most moving thing he had seen in his life, and that if opposing warriors, who wanted only to kill and maim each other at a young age could forgive like this, there is hope for the world. He said it was the high point of his trip. It was a truly incredible, life changing experience.

Web work by Sheldon Dunn

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Web site updated on November 18, 2007

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