War is a two way street

We were too busy as the imperial force in the Vietnam War, or so we thought, to bother with those who fought beside us; citizens of our territories like Guam and Puerto Rico, Aussies, Kiwis, Canadians and, of our close buddies, the ARVNs.  ARVNs were the mostly, if not totally, conscripted young men of South Vietnam who, unlike us, had first-hand knowledge of the tenacity, ruthlessness and fierce fighting nature of the North Vietnamese Army.

We fought two enemies:  the NVA and Viet Cong, the VC.  Though not as well equipped or trained, they were feared because of tactics that had been perfected over decades of fighting; jungle fighting, guerrilla fighting.  It was the VC that the villagers harbored and fed at night while professing to despise them during the day.  Not keeping a cache of food concealed under the floor of a hootch often led to death.  The VC walked among us and in many cases worked for us.  During one body count, it was discovered that one of the VC was the compound barber.  I suspect that was common.

This is the story of “A”, a former member of the Army of South Vietnam.  He was an American-trained door gunner on a fixed wing assault airplane.  “A” is outgoing.  His sense of humor is fraught with irony, until you take him back to the years following the fall of Saigon.

“A” suffers the deepest guilt of any veteran of the war I've met.  When we talked, his voice shrank into a hoarse whisper, bowing his head, so I could not see his tears.  “I killed my own people,” he said.  Under orders from the South Vietnamese military, which were under orders of the American military, he knew that many of attacks would result in the deaths of “friendlies,” many of whom could be members of his own family.

When Saigon fell, his immediate family was torn apart by the North's “re-education” program.  Party officials would stop him and, after brief torture, would discover that he served as an ARVN.  They beat him, stole his money and took anything they wanted.  He finally immigrated to the US.  I asked him how he felt about living in the country that for whatever reason had caused him so much pain. “I forgive the United States.  They tried to help us.  I would never come back here except that my father is on life-support, and I must decide whether it is to continue.”

As difficult as it is to make sense of the war, even more difficult is the attempt to comprehend the complexities of the impact it made on those of us who fought it.  In our lives, it was who we became; the context in which we lived.  If the experience hadn't caused us to redefine ourselves, how we were treated by society would have.  I thought before the journey began that the one word that might surface repeatedly would be tears.  And one word has:  guilt.

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