Who Would Have Thought That Returning To The DMZ "Would Bring Me Peace" by Charles W. Bruton, Jr., Team XVIII
I'm a Vietnam Vet; from June of 1968 to June of 1969 I flew as a FAC in a Birddog over South Vietnam in Northern I Corp and the Southern part of North Vietnam. After surviving that experience I swore I would never go back and was fortunate that I was able to avoid a second tour.
I was surprised when I felt perpetually drawn to return to the area where we went hunting for Charlie every day. I fought that thought daily, it was a place I once hated and feared, but I felt drawn and it could no longer be ignored.
I finally realized that not only had my soul had been won over by Vietnam's natural beauty, but mostly by the heroic actions of its people in both North and South Vietnam. The stoic nature of the ARVN soldier and the discipline and determination of his North Vietnamese counterpart amazed me. Each of us was doing what had to be done at that moment in time and each was trying to make the best of a bad situation. I admired and respected them as warriors and hoped they had the same admiration and respect for me.
Emotions run deep when you survive such an experience, not a day would go by that a sound, a smell, a taste, or some triggering event, would bring me back to what we did during that traumatic year of my life.
No one, but a vet, can truly understand how these past events can still play a major role in how you act and react to events today. Some vet's appear to have adjusted well and are able to appear normal in everyday life. Many others our haunted, so much by past events that it affects forever their ability to live at peace with themselves. I was fortunate I had Vietnam Vet friends who would act as a sounding board and provided tremendous council when it was needed.
I was also fortunate to be able to return to Vietnam. I found an ad in a veteran's magazine and knew instantly that VVRP my ticket. Mission # 18 was going to Quang Tri Province, the old DMZ area. I knew that area like the back of my hand, but only from the air. Now I would see the area from the ground. This area was my AO; Dong Ha was the airport I flew from every day supporting the Marines of Northern I Corp and the 109th Artillery Group.
We would be staying in Dong Ha and VVRP Mission # 18 would be working on 10 homes and an orphanage. This time our mission was not to find the enemy and destroy them, but to work with Vietnamese Veterans and Non-Veterans that had been disabled in the war or had been injured by unspent ordnance left behind after the war. Our mission was to help them build a new life by assisting them in building a new home.
All this was taking place in the same area that I had directed artillery and air strikes as well as directing the guns of the Battleship New Jersey. What I remember leaving behind was nothing but barbed wire, bunkers, bomb craters, scorched earth and total destruction. Now 34 years later I would be able to view it again, but this time with a mission plan that would to build and to mend.
I have to say that the experience was fantastic. My nightmares are gone! My vision now is of a people who have forgiven us, a people that appear extremely happy living their new life of peace. In Vietnam today construction is everywhere. Everywhere we looked the country was under construction with people actively building homes, offices, factories, schools and hospitals.
The people are vibrant, the street are packed with motorcycles and bikes. People on the move, full of life, and most of all, they all seemed genuinely happy to see us. They sought us out to say hello. We really were welcome in their country, and especially welcome in their homes. I had to remind myself that this was the DMZ, this was Dong Ha. I was working with the same people that had shot at my Birddog daily, but now I felt totally safe and a welcome guest. We helped build ten homes and a computer room for an orphanage.
More work needs to be done and I plan to assist as much as I can. Seldom have I participated in a project that I felt was doing as much good as VVRP. The work at times is more symbolic than actual hard work, but the results are dramatic. They do most of the work we provide the materials. They have a new life in a new home; we gain a new life, at peace with ourselves by helping them accomplish this. The recurring nightmares have stopped, replaced by images of beautiful countrysides, happy people, no guns or planes, a growing economy and people who have forgiven us.
I needed to forgive them and by going back I found the way to accomplish that. I also was able to realize that the two MIA pilot friends, Don Harrison and Mac Bird, whose bracelets I wear, are not MIA's in my mind any longer. I walked in the area that Don Harrison and his back seat were shot down in North Vietnam. During that walk I realized that although they are lost, and until found, will always be MIA's, I now know they are really gone. I now feel they are not alive and knowing that have lifted a great weight from my shoulders.
The price of this healing event, cost nothing more than a little time and money. The gift of forgiveness I received from the Vietnamese people has healed me from the scares of the past. It has allowed me to rest at night knowing that it is over and all is well with the people on the DMZ. That gift is priceless!
That year represented only one sixtieth of my life, but after 34 years it still dominates my thoughts, especially when it was quiet and I have time to think. Now my quiet time is restful and now my thoughts of Vietnam are peaceful. It now has been put into perspective and I can go on enjoying the good things the Lord has provided. Since that weight has been lifted from my shoulders I appreciate my family and friends, and even more the experiences of the past are now in proper balance.
The VVRP is to be commended and I will always be grateful.Thanks a MILLION your project has changed my life.
My Family thanks you.
And I do also. Charles W. Bruton, Jr.
Captain
Catkiller 18
220th RAC
1st Aviation Brigade
Under the Wing of the VVRP
by Jane Scotti, Team XVI
When my husband learned of the V.V.R.P. several years ago, he was immediately attracted to the concept of vets going back to Viêt Nam for constructive purposes. He began to support their projects with small donations and toyed with the possibility of becoming a member of some team in the distant future. Eventually it occurred to me to renew my own passport and be prepared. If I could wheedle myself into the right position, perhaps I could join him for a portion of the trip. As it turned out, I went the whole nine yards under the wing of the V.V.R.P. with Joel and Team XVI.
"Viêt Nam," how that war and that word have impacted the lives of my entire generation! Whether soldier, student, dodger, or protester, we all played a role during the decade that defined us as young adults just coming of age. Our identities, political and moral values were shaped in the turmoil of the sixties. Even a young woman such as I, safely ensconced in a small liberal arts college in rural Ohio, could not escape nor ignore what was happening on the other side of the planet. In time, the decade of the sixties would catch up to us all. Try as I might to outrun it, it caught up to me three years ago when my combat veteran husband hit the wall (big time!) with his PTSD.
When Joel decided to go back, I knew how very important it was for me to go too. I needed to see, smell and feel the country that had permeated our lives. I needed to relate to the descriptions I'd heard of hooches, beautiful beaches, rice paddies, and water buffalo. I needed to taste the food and know the heat. I was tired of living with 30 years of memories that were not mine. I was tired of not knowing where I fit into the picture as a "veteran wife." I needed to have my own relationship with Viêt Nam.
I also needed to be with my husband when he returned. As we neared our departure date, I struggled quite consciously to maintain a position of having no preconceived expectations regarding our trip, the impact it would have on Joel and the other vets on our team, or it's value as a conduit for healing. I desired only to bear witness to whatever might unfold and hoped that I could "stay out of the way." Needless to say, the anxiety level had reached a high point for us both as we finally found ourselves touching ground in Hanoi.
We were a small group. Only five members made up T-16. But had a writer set out to create the widest variety of personalities in the most limited number of characters, he could not have done better than the five people who comprised T-16. We were: 3 male Viêt Nam veterans, two females, one married couple, three single people, one daughter of a PTSD vet, two raised Catholic, two raised Jewish, two raised in the environs of NYC, two raised in the same corner of Ohio, two on their second trip with V.V.R.P., one currently living in the deep south, and three currently living in the Pacific Northwest. There existed multiple ties of commonality between each and every one of us. Such is the luck of the draw.
During our orientation and training weekend stateside, we formed a quick and solid bond as a team. This bond remained strong and effective throughout our time on the project work site and well after our departure for personal travel. Our V.V.R.P. sponsorship provided us with many valuable connections in country, so that once we were technically on our own, we were still able to parley the association into many incomparable encounters and experiences that we would never have had otherwise. The fact that the foundations for work and travel had been so successfully laid by previous teams, certainly facilitated our journey and made it all the more rewarding. Though we were told beforehand by the V.V.R.P. staff that this would be the case, our fears that we would be at a total loss in Viêt Nam were only laid to rest when we actually got over there and began to experience how easy it was for us to get around.
From the moment we landed in Hanoi until we departed from HCMC (Saigon) a month later, we were warmly welcomed wherever we went. The people are eager to host visitors to their land. They moved mountains to see to our physical and emotional comfort, and to assure us that they were delighted that we had come "such a long way" to see them. I was astonished to find that Americans, in particular, are especially well received. As the locals became aware of our nationality and then that the men in our group had served in the "American War," their response was nothing less than amazing, and frequently ran the full course from curiosity to concern, to compassion and then forgiveness. More often than not, the focus of their interest was in what we were doing now, how many children did we have, how was life for us after 1975. And if I heard it once I heard it a dozen times, some casual conversation between Joel and a local resulted in their saying, "It wasn't your fault. You were so young. It was a mistake made by your government. They just didn't understand." I will forever remain astonished by this particularly unique grace of the Vietnamese people.
As anticipated, I certainly did bear witness to my vet's return to Viêt Nam. I watched him replace a bad memory with a wonderful one. I watched him rediscover and then go on to explore a country that he had tasted in the '60's but not been able to enjoy. I watched his pre-travel anxiety melt within 24 hours of walking around Hanoi. I could not, however, remain in the position of only an observer. In a country as exotic and wonderful, how silly to think that one could refrain from becoming involved. So, when the plate of silkworms was offered around the communal table, I ate. I sweated, laughed, cried, packed, unpacked, shopped, bartered, slept, swam, hiked, biked, ate, and badly botched up the language with the best of them. I was forming my own relationship with Viêt Nam.
My trip was a wonderful mix of fabulous vacation and deeply emotional journey. A dichotomy of pleasure and tears. It can only be experienced to the fullest when approached with an open heart. The mind is of no matter for, as I found out, it only served to get in my way. Going with no "preconceived expectations" was, in itself, a form of mindset.
The lessons we learned were many. Of greatest importance for me was grasp the perspective from which the Vietnamese view our decade of intrusion in their country. Their history as a nation spans several milleniums. Viêt Nam has always had to fight to defend its borders from aggressors, and sooner or later, has always regained its sovereignty. Our brief time in this land is but a dash on a very long timeline. The country has moved well beyond those years in which we seem to be stuck.
One vivid image serves to illustrate the essence of this pragmatic approach. We were travelling along rural roads, outside of Saigon in the vicinity of Tay Ninh and Cu Chi, in a landscape that still bears visible scars from the war. Shallow craters were easily discernable from the roadside. To my delight I saw that the water buffalo had long since put them to practical use. Each depression was just the right size to accommodate one animal in a perfectly glorious and private mud bath. What a lesson! "Make the best of what you get, and get on with it," said the grinning Water Buffalo to the American Tourist.
I thank the V.V.R.P. for being who they are and doing what they are. It was a joy to travel the entire length of Viêt Nam under the reassuring wing of this truly unique organization. To paraphrase the sentiment expressed by fellow team member Chuck Katon, I will never again hear the word "Viêt Nam" and think of a war, rather I will think of a country filled with people who share a wonderful perspective and a deep, abiding, culture.
...For me, like many children of veterans, the defining aspect of my life is Viêt Nam. My father served with the United States Marines and, although wounded, survived two tours in Viêt Nam. To say that his experience there shaped the person and father he became would be more than a simple understatement. It defined the course of his entire life, influencing his work, relationships, and sense of self. And the course of mine. When the opportunity to travel to Viêt Nam with the VVRP arose I jumped on it. Like the veterans I accompanied, I, too, was seeking healing and closure. I wanted to be able to move forward with my life free of the hold that Viêt Nam had over me. It had ruled my life for 23 years. And while I knew that it would always be a part of me, I could no longer allow it to define my existence. So as a member of Team 16, on my second trip to Viêt Nam, I was determined to let it go. And I succeeded. It happened at our work site in the village of Loc San in Du Loung district. Two team members had the foresight to collect pictures and letters from their veteran friends. On Memorial Day we take time out from our work to hold a ceremony in which we offer these mementos to Buddha. Raised a Catholic, I know little of the Buddhist religion, but it seems appropriate since it is the religion of choice in Viêt Nam. Our Vietnamese host helps us set up an alter to Buddha with a statue of him, an offering of food, and incense. We used a small bowl in which to burn our offerings. We began by bowing with our hands folded three times just like the Buddhist monks. Jane, the wife of a Viêt Nam veteran, then read a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh: Veterans of war have experience that makes them the light at the tip of a candle, illuminating the way of understanding for those who do not know so well the causes and results of war and the way to peace. Chuck and Ed recited a prayer in Hebrew as Indian sweet grass burned. As Joel started to burn the letters and pictures from the veterans at home, I burned a picture of my father as a young soldier. As the flames slowly enveloped it, I breathed deeply and pushed the air toward heaven. I hoped to help let the boy in the picture go, help him float with my breath to God and peace. Other team members gave their offerings and eventually we became silent as we watched our pain and other's be enveloped by the flames. Our interpreter, whose brother died fighting against us, was unable to hold back her tears and, soon, neither are we. I realized I am no longer the little girl that led me to Viêt Nam and that I no longer need to feel her pain. The team knelt and cried together while birds flew overhead and a light breeze tickled our skin. I knew that I and many of my fellow team members achieved our goals for our trip in those brief moments. Afterwards, a member of the team shared how he had had the same recurring nightmare for twenty years. One night during the trip the dream returned except this time, instead of ending with death and terror, it ended peacefully. The relief this veteran received was exactly the kind I always hoped my father might find. I left Viêt Nam knowing that veterans--and others impacted by the War--can actually heal and believing that someday my father might also. This VVRP trip will remain as one of the single best and most important experiences of my life for as long as I live.
Journeying with the VVRP
by Dan Knox, Team XI
On September 26, 1997, Team XI gathered in Sebastopol, California. Consisting of five people, four veterans and one significant other, we began the process of going from strangers to a team in a short period of time. The experience was similar to an encounter group, "kind of touchy-feely" as one veteran observed, and each of us was asked to share our lifetime and war experience. During the next several days we engaged in bonding exercises, learned a process for arriving at group decisions, and agreed on a covenant of behavior vis-a-vis the Vietnamese and our fellow team members. In retrospect, I believe it was helpful and necessary for team cohesion in the face of what was to come.
We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) on October 1. Although warned that our experience would be different and possibly difficult, the impact of the country was nearly overwhelming. The heat, humidity, noise, language barrier, different food, and constantly being an object of attention pounded the sense of body and mind. To me the VVRP was an ideal vehicle though which to endure and grow in this very different place.
The project site was in Loc Ninh, Bien Phuoc province, located approximately 85 miles north of Saigon on Highway 19, 12 miles from Cambodia. It is an extremely rural area where no westerners had been seen for several decades. There we spent three weeks building a house in the Social Care Center for orphans and elderly. The bubble effect intensified, the language barrier was greater and the group was a constant object of attention. The work was draining because it was all done by hand in a harsh environment.
The project work and the VVRP team became a source of stability as I explored an internal world of war memories, seeking ways to heal wounds still felt from the war. The intensity of being alive in an environment made up of reminders from a wartime experience was extreme. In my youth, 30 years ago, I walked this land as a soldier consumed by violence and now here I was again. Each of us was alone with our thoughts to heal, share, and remember while relying on our own psychological and spiritual resources garnered over the years from the war in our youth to the time of our return. The bond with other team members was important to me and I was grateful for the group work we did before we arrived. The sharing of thoughts and feelings during long nightly conversations while sitting on a balcony overlooking Loc Ninh are experiences I will treasure forever.
After the project, our group began our tour of Viêt Nam, including our old battlefields. We saw much of the countryside, major cities, and ethnic peoples. We explored the land by van, bicycle, and on foot -- all the while intensely observing the different rhythms of life. Spending the night in a M'Hong village where the daily activities are a thousand years old is a memory filled with awe. Along the way I saw there was little left of the war. It has all been absorbed back into the life of Viêt Nam. Firebases are overgrown with vegetation, base camps by agricultural production, and airstrips with houses, animals or cultivated trees. By the time we arrived in Hue, and the end of our time together, I was ready to proceed alone, thanks to the VVRP and the Vietnamese people. The journey was a difficult 47 days filled with joy, sadness, old memories, new perspectives, and the mental strain of growth -- an experience rich in all I could have desired.
Return to Viêt Nam
by Nancy Smoyer, Team VII
In April 1993, I went back to Viêt Nam for a month with the VVRP. Our group was small, three combat veterans and myself, a Red Cross Donut Dolly. We spent two weeks renovating a clinic at Cu Chi and two weeks traveling north to Hanoi. We worked and traveled with former Viêt Cong and NVA soldiers, which added an unexpected but very welcome and therapeutic element to the experience, especially since I was stationed at Cu Chi during Tet. It was an unsettling experience to be introduced to a fellow worker who was the head of the local veteran's group, learn that he had been at Cu Chi during the entire war, and realize that this man was lobbing mortars and rockets at me during Tet. However, during the two weeks we worked together on the clinic, we formed a special relationship in spite of our language difficulties. He gave me his gold star pin and I gave him a pin from the 10th anniversary of the Wall; we joked and teased and spoke of friendship and peace. His face became the face which humanized the enemy for me.
My primary reason for going back was to get over the feelings of anger and animosity I've carried for the Vietnamese for 25 years. Although I was well aware intellectually that my feelings were for the most part irrational, I also knew that I wouldn't get over them until I went back. From my experiences on other trips to Third World countries, I was pretty sure that those feelings would disappear almost immediately, which is, in fact, what happened. However, there were other aspects I hadn't foreseen.
Even as we were driving from Tan Son Nhut to Cu Chi, I found myself thinking "What are all these Vietnamese doing here; where did they from?" and "Where are the GI's?" It was so strange and upsetting to see NO American presence, nothing to indicate that we had ever been there. It made the whole thing -- the war, the losses, the pain -- seem even more of a waste. During the first few days I found myself getting more and more depressed.
Then, at the end of my third day, I had a revelation. I realized the I was mourning the loss of "my" Viêt Nam. My denial has been in thinking about Viêt Nam as being unchanged since I left, complete with GI's and fire bases and choppers everywhere. Instead, I was hit in the face with a completely different country, a new reality, which I didn't want and couldn't accept. My bargaining has been that if I keep connected with vets and activities related to Viêt Nam, then the experience stays alive and not over. The anger I've felt has been toward the Vietnamese people, the Vietnamese government, AND the American people and the American government. Those feelings of anger have spilled over in many parts of my life. And then there was the depression which I've dealt with in various forms for years, and which was hitting me full force again right then and there.
After working with the Vietnamese veterans and going into their homes and meeting their families, it was impossible to continue car-rying my negative feelings. As I read "The Tunnels of Cu Chi" and crawled through the tunnels, saw pictures in every home we visited of family members who had died in the war, visited the massive graveyards and memorials to the war dead, heard about the 300,000 Vietnamese who are still missing, I gained a compassion and understanding which I hadn't allowed myself to feel before. I had accomplished what I came back to Viêt Nam to do.
Even though I now understood much of what I was feeling and had even gotten over my negative feelings toward the people, I was still not at the point of acceptance. As I told the guys, I wasn't ready to give Viêt Nam back to the Vietnamese. Then, after a week or so of being unable to talk about my changed feelings toward the Vietnamese people without choking up, I realized that it was over. I was done with Viêt Nam. Not done with the vets or with the aftereffects of the war, but done with the country and with the people. It's their country, they fought for it (on both sides), they earned it; and although I now care for them whereas I didn't before, that part is finished. I still have all the other aspects of Viêt Nam (the war, not the country) to deal with, but at least one is taken care of.
Now I have two Viêt Nams -- the one in my memory and in my pictures and in my vets, and the Vietnamese Viêt Nam. It had been "my" country" for a while -- my GI Viêt Nam -- and yet it was theirs, and should have been, all along. I had been afraid of losing my Viêt Nam, of having to replace it with the "real" one, but now I realize I can keep them both -- different but the same, separate but together, entwined.
Post Script -- I originally wrote this about a month after I got back. Since the trip something has happened which I hesitate to identify because I can't believe it's true or real. I had listened skeptically as I heard others talk about a change in themselves after going back Viêt Nam. And yet somehow that change has happened to me. Friends have noticed that there is something different about me -- I'm a little more tolerant, a little less impatient, a little more open and less negative. Somehow the cloud has lifted a little bit -- I feel lighter.
I've heard that when one feeling leaves, space is made for something else to move in. I know that a lot of anger has left, but I can't identify what it is that has taken its place. I keep being afraid that the old me will return, and it may; but this reprieve has shown me that there is another side, another way to be. That realization is what makes me want to share this experience with others in hopes that they, too, might find, or make, the opportunity to let go of some of the pain.
"I can't help but wonder how my old friends would feel" Excerpts from Ted Heselton's Yen Vien journal Ted Heselton was a member of VVRP Team III. The eleven members of the team went to Yen Vien, a village north of Hanoi, where they spent eight weeks in 1990 building a health clinic alongside the Vietnamese. Ted, who at that time was a member of the Veterans for Peace Board of Directors, finished his very moving journal within days of his return to his home in Maine. The following is from his letter transmitting the journal to the VVRP: I'd like to offer my journal as a personal anti-war statement from the heart. I'm emotional about war and its consequences…When I came back I found the drums of war beating harder and faster than when I left. It is disturbing to have been away working on the damage from America's last big war and find her preparing for another…
[The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the VVRP]
The photographs were provided by Team III member Benita Keller who is a free lance photographer. You can visit her web site: www.benitakellerphoto.com. September 7, 1990 We start to descend soon to land in Hanoi, the old enemy capitol. I can't help but wonder how my friends who served here would feel right now if they were in my shoes. Or how about the guys who were killed, if they could come back? I'd like to look over in the next seat and see Bill Breece and Red Genesio. As we get closer, I can't stop the flood of strange thoughts: twenty years ago just below us there were N.V.A. anti-aircraft guns dug in there. It is a very patriotic thing to do to put your life on the line to stop a foreign power from dropping bombs on your country… We are met by the Peoples Committee from G.I.A. L.A.M. They are carrying flowers… September 8 First wake-up in Viêt Nam Chuck, my roommate, and I cross the road [that runs in front of the hostel] and head out into the rice paddies. As we walk along the paths we encounter people coming the other way, and some greet us, some don't. We are invited into someone's house for tea but that is not allowed by the government. When it gets rural, it becomes the Viêt Nam I remember, children walking on the paddy dikes and people working in the fields. I would not walk in the fields in the south this way. I wouldn't feel safe. I had forgotten about the heat and humidity here, it's really incredible. As I walk along the rice paddy dikes and watch people work in the fields I try to get a sense of the rhythm of life here. Plant, tend, harvest and process the rice. Fish jump in the ponds and ducks swim on the surface. Children play everywhere… September 9 Walked five miles into Hanoi and back today. Back and forth across the Long Bien Bridge, a mile long bridge over the Red River. Spent about three hours in the market place. We were able to walk around freely and go wherever we wanted… September 10 We spent the morning at the project and probably spent more time resting than working. The Vietnamese were very considerate of our inability to spend more than fifteen to twenty minutes in the sun and humidity. It was real clear today that our labor will be more symbolic than anything really essential… September 12 The Vietnamese masons worked the hell out of us today and we all came home sore. I felt good though, because we were almost able to keep up. When we took a break they asked me what year I was here and I told them 1968. The next question was my age, and the next, "How many children?" September 13 I worked throwing bricks again with the same crew as yesterday. We wear each other's hats and drink from my canteen, a few small things signifying some degree of acceptance I suppose. I should not be surprised that the Vietnamese are so industrious. These 110-pound barefoot peasants are the same people who dragged the cannons by hand into the hills around Khe San. (And Dien Bien Phu before that.) September 17 I am put on leveling out the floors, working next to an ex N.V.A. Main Force Regular who went South in 1971 and came back in 1974. We get our interpreter, Tu, and have a talk. He (the ex-soldier) was seventeen years old when he "went South" in 1971 and he has that date tattooed on his arm… [I asked him to write in my journal. He wrote:] "We're very happy to meet the Americans who visit to our country and long live the solidarity between the U.S. people and the Vietnamese people." Later on our interpreter Tu takes me aside and tells me that the Vietnamese workers on the job really like me because I don't get mad and am always happy and easy to work with. I don't really know if this is public relations or for real, but I do know the Vietnamese have been protective of me on the job and accepting of me as part of the crew… September 23 End of the Day Note: I will always remember standing on one of the beaches the boat people leave from and looking out to sea. I had a really wonderful time with two different Vietnamese families today and saw the joy and love of the people; but I am also connected to their sadness. On the way back to Hanoi we passed fifteen tanks mounted on flatbed railroad cars stopped on the tracks. Young boys were playing on the tanks. Later on, when I'd had a chance to absorb that scene, the boys on the tanks, I wanted to go back and scream "Get down off those, go back to the fields, go home!" Years ago, when I saw my first enemy dead, I steeled myself as I walked up to view the dreaded Viêt Cong, and lying on the ground were two children in black pajamas, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. All three of us had our childhood taken that day but I got to live. Dammit, there they are again. I can't seem to keep the dead out of this journal: the Vietnamese dead, the American dead. Can't do a Viêt Nam journal without a body count. One of the reasons I had such a hard time as a soldier was that I couldn't separate the body count into ours and theirs. They were all just the dead to me. Once that happens, you might as well throw the rifle down and go home… September 24 For my 10:00 a.m. break, I was taken through the field out back of the project to the house of an ex-N.V.A. soldier. He invites me for tea so I sit down with him and a couple of his partners. We pantomime and write and draw on his coffee table with chalk. Part of his foot is missing so I ask how that happened. He writes "M-79" (grenade launcher that breaks open like a little shotgun) and says he was also hit in the side. He shows me on the map where he was down south. Then the talk turns to one of my roommates, John Baca, who threw himself on a grenade. When he works with his shirt off, the Vietnamese are amazed at his scars. He has the worst scars I've ever seen except for burn victims… (Editor's note: John Baca received the Congressional Medal of Honor for smothering a Viêt Cong grenade with his body in order to save the lives of the men in his squad.) October 9 It has been a good day today and I am full of wonder about the trip south. There are many ghosts from the past down there for everyone on this trip. I will walk lightly on the earth below the old DMZ, and perhaps I won't disturb them. There's Dave Bosworth, my childhood friend, Terry Corson and Alan Ward from high school and Rodney Quirion's brother. Then there's Bill Breece who just had to land his helicopter and be a goddamned hero. And of course, what about all these young Vietnamese boys and girls who "went south" and never came home, or the boys and girls from southern villages and hamlets who stayed home and fought. Boys and girls who rode water buffalo to the fields and daydreamed in the sun became soldiers. No child should have to be a soldier. My working partner, Truy, must have been a boy like that once, now he looks like a veteran. We've worked on the same crew off and on for a month now and today was the first time I saw him smile. I had given him a picture of himself wearing my hat. The boy may be gone but he can still smile… October 12 I worked all day with the Vietnamese today and spent much of the day with Truy. He told me through an interpreter that it took him three months to walk down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I asked him what the toughest part of the trip was and he said "the big bombs" (500 pounders?) and "the bright bombs." White phosphorous or napalm. He pantomimes stuff raining down on him and trying to get away… October 13 Got up early, caught a cyclo and went into Hanoi to be alone for awhile… In the afternoon I went to see what I believe was called the Natural History Museum, kind of a combination of cultural and physical anthropology. The most disturbing thing there (from the late 1800s) were iron ankle shackles the French used on the rebellious Vietnamese. The shackles were just like those used on slave ships. There was also an ornate wooden chair, similar to those in old movies like Cleopatra, in which French colonial masters were carried by eight Vietnamese. In this same room were two whips and pairs of French handcuffs… I may eventually forget some things about this trip but I'll always remember the mile-long walking bridge over the Red River and the way the late afternoon sun hits the water. Night becomes a time of reflection, a time to be honest with myself. Of course I'm here to help with the clinic and to support the VVRP because I believe in what they are doing. But in addition to helping the Vietnamese, I want to help myself… I've come to Viêt Nam to mourn for myself, to mourn the death of the person I was before I saw dead teenagers and people in pieces and a platoon of amputees. I've come to pay my respects to the soldiers on the other side, living and dead, who fought so hard for so long and sacrificed so much for independence. And last, but by no means least, I've come because I'm an experience junkie. I have a need to put myself in unusual situations where the stress level and emotional level can be higher than normal. An important part of the "high" is experiencing the feeling of struggling for a cause you know to be right on both political and humanitarian grounds… October 18 I walked out to the small hamlet off the Hai Phong Road to say goodbye and take a few more photos. I was back by noon and this afternoon's event is a goodbye party with the workers at the clinic site. The Americans all chipped in about twenty dollars a piece to feed sixty or so people. Later - Just got back from the goodbye party for the workers. To say it was emotional would be an understatement. I gave a short speech, John Baca opened his heart up as usual, and read a poem… We went outside on the steps of the clinic for a group shot and my friend Truy got up close to me and put his arm around me. After this group shot, we got up to say goodbye to each other. When we shook hands we both started to cry so we walked around the corner of the clinic to be away from other people. As soon as we turned the corner we both broke out sobbing so we just held each other and cried. We both knew the tears were for the war and our dead friends as well as the sadness of parting. We were just a couple of ex-soldiers crying about the sadness of war. For a moment I forgot we had been on opposite sides. As the bus pulled away, Truy, leaning on an anti-aircraft gun someone had parked outside the clinic gate, was waving goodbye, with tears in his eyes. The guys from my old therapy group at the Vet Center would never believe this scene… October 27 Today [during our stay in Ho Chi Minh City] there was a series of strange coincidences [so that] Mr. Kha, the driver, and I went to the War Crimes Museum alone. We came to a map of the location of different units during the war and found the Thai Black Panther division. According to the map it was near the village of Long Thanh. I only knew the base name which was Bearcat. Seventy kilometers later we were in Long Thanh talking to villagers who said in Vietnamese "Oh yes, we remember, it is called Thai Corners." We turned off down a dirt road and drove up to what Mr. Kha referred to as a camp for "naughty boys." We went in the gate of the reform school and asked directions to "Thai Corners." In the process we found out that this reform school used to be a re-education camp after the war. We drove along one wall of the camp, through a sugar cane field for a hundred yards and suddenly things got vaguely familiar. I couldn't find exactly where our tent was but I was standing on the same ground as when I was here. It was anti-climatic, as though the journey had been more important than the destination. The boy that stood here 22 years ago has come back as a man. My real goal was not a physical location but to be forgiven by the Vietnamese people. That has happened. I can go home now. October 30 It is time to leave this country and time for this experience to end. When we get to Ton Sun Nhut Airport everyone looks a little sad. I cried when I left Viêt Nam in February of 1969 and I am determined not to cry this time. When 20 or 30 Amerasians show up at the gate for the orderly departure program, my resolve weakens. They are such a visible and human sign of the American presence here…
On the plane Art James and I ask each other over and over, "How are we going to explain this experience to people?" I hope this journal helps to do that.
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