Looking back over forty-one years

An eerie karma began to develop in the days preceding my return to Vietnam.  First, a fortune cookie read, “You'll be traveling to exotic places.”  Then came the realization that it was forty one years to the day that the last American troops were withdrawn from Vietnam.  It was the anniversary of the conviction of Lt. William L. Calley for the murder of twenty two civilians at My Lai. President Obama proclaimed March 29, 2012, as Vietnam Veterans Day, a national day that finally recognizes the sacrifices of American soldiers in Vietnam.  And my arrival day was slated to be April Fools’ Day.

Vietnam has always been an enigma.  We didn't understand why we were here or why Congress tied our hands behind our backs, making decisions that generals should have been making.  Vietnam was a war of firsts.  It was the first war without front lines, the first war that played itself out on national television and the first war America lost.  We, who fought it, don't believe we lost it; we just believe we went home.  There is a common saying some of us have to the comment that we lost the war:  “We were winning when I left.”

I never intended for this blog to be a waltz down memory lane.  But to understand what happened forty plus years ago, that caused a pain so deep, that so many have returned so far to find closure, can only be told in the context of “What did you do it the war?”  I expected to land at Tan Son Nhut Airbase, go to the hotel and hear the first of the war stories, but the stories didn't wait for me to get to Saigon; they began in Japan with two veterans who are not even on the Habitat build.  We missed our connecting flight and that eerie karma appeared again.  Here, Neal, is a foreshadowing of what you can expect. (I won't use names here, or throughout the blog.  If your story shows up, it is because I feel it serves as a link to hopefully make sense of what we've been through and why we are here.)

D's story  

D served as a door gunner on an assault gunship.  These were the bad boys, the ones depicted in Apocalypse Now, the ones standing in the open doors of Hueys pounding the ground with M-60 machine guns, the ones that get way too much footage in any movie about the Vietnam War.  D’s wife is Vietnamese.  They were on their way to Vietnam to attend her father's funeral in Chu Chi, but may not make it since we were delayed.  D is a large man but stooped by age and his past.  He says little; she does the talking.  I could tell she adored him and he her.  Someone at the table asked about his experience in Vietnam. “He mean.  He real mean.  You don't want to see him coming,” referring to him as a door gunner.  D sat looking at a concoction of what was supposed to be shrimp with rice, then looked into my eyes and said, “Three Purple Hearts.”  His eyes were deep set, puffy and dark.  His mustache drooped at the ends of his lips to his chin.  It appeared that he was looking at nothing.  Then he uttered, “PTSD.”

They left the table, he in a wrinkled black suit, white shirt, no tie and white sport socks and black dress shoes, she in a woolen suit suitable for a funeral.  As he passed me, he said, “If it hadn't been for her, I would have killed myself.”

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