Names on the Wall

The morning began with unusual jocularity.  Perhaps because we were beginning to get to know each other, or perhaps because it was Friday, and we were facing two days off.  Snippets were developing into anecdotes and occasionally into full-fledged stories.  We had sparred enough to fall into a comfortable banter, accepting the fact that we had been here together forty years ago.  I could sense the beginning of a bonding much like the one we had during the war.  As the minibus dodged one moped after another, one of the vets pulled out his iPod and a small tower speaker the size of a cracker package.  The sounds of “Running on Empty” filled the bus.  We sang along, miserably out of tune.

Our language patterns reverted back to the war years.  Expletives, always to be expected on a construction site, were replaced with “Choi oi; or “choi duc.”  That Vietnamese man or Vietnamese woman once again became papasan or mamasan.  “You number one G.I.” (good) and “You number ten G.I.” (bad) worked its way back into our speech patterns.

Our homeowner continues to amaze us.  Thi, pronounced “twee” is a single parent of two daughters, one fourteen and one nine.  She is at the site when we arrive and works harder than any homeowner I've seen and harder than us.  Her husband was killed in an accident, and her house is being built on his family land.  It will be twelve feet wide and twenty seven feet long, skim coated brick with a fiberglass roof.

Beside it is a lean-to, the “house” the three of them live in now.  Four bamboo poles hold up two tarps.  Three more tarps form the sides and the back.  The front is open.  It is furnished with a chest of drawers, a small chest, a bed frame with no mattress and an altar that displays a photograph of her late husband flanked by two vases stuffed with incense.  Crayon drawn artwork is taped to the tarp over the bed.  The kitchen is in a shed four feet from the lean-to.  There is water, but there is also a meter; we surmise Thi cannot afford to use the water too often.  The tarps bake in the hot sun.  When it rains, there is no place to hide.

Thi brings us sour water from the stream that runs through the village to mix mortar for the bricks. The sun starts beating down.  The iPod with its Goliath speaker cranks up and we juke, jive and lay bricks to the songs of Bob Dylan, Carol King and Rod Stewart, returning to the sixties together.  Then a song I have never heard begins.  In a soft melodic voice, a woman sings about names on a wall. The words described how once those names had lived, they had breathed, they had families, now they are names on a wall.  I realized she was singing about the wall in Washington DC where the names of sixty thousand Americans killed in Vietnam are etched in black granite.  I swallowed hard, suppressing the anger that was building inside; at least most of it.

This is the story of RM.  RM was a LRRP- long range reconnaissance patrol.  He has three Purple Hearts, but none of his wounds were of the “million dollar” kind--the kind that got you sent home.  It is Saturday, and we are in Cu Chi.  The Cu Chi tunnels are a huge tourist attraction; Disneyland on a Vietnamese scale.  The tunnels are famous because of their size and complexity; a network of tunnels over 200 kilometers long that provided access to underground bunkers, a kitchen, mess hall, armory and a clinic. Craters formed by hundreds of bombs dropped from B-52s mar the landscape.  Yet the tunnels held up.

The paths we walked at Cu Chi were the paths RM patrolled in 1969 and 1970. After his first wound, he was treated and returned to his unit.  He was assigned to a team for the next morning’s patrol.  His best friend stepped up and asked that he go instead, to give RM a little more time to recuperate. The team was inserted the next morning.  Thirty five minutes later, RM's best friend was dead, and there was one more name to add to the wall:  Ray Enzie.

 If you would like to follow Neal’s personal blog, it’s here:  http://shootingfromthehip.net/

So who’s writing this blog anyway?

Neal Pointer was drafted on Christmas Eve Day of 1969.  He began a one year tour in April, 1971 in the Republic of South Vietnam, as a combat photographer. 

Once again, Neal was drafted – this time to write a blog about his experiences during a very special Habitat for Humanity Global Village trip.  This is a blog about the fourteen short days when 20+ US Vietnam veterans joined together to build a Habitat home for a widowed mother of two girls in the Province of Tien Giang, city of My Tho, Vietnam.  

After volunteering for eight years building Habitat houses, Neal believes that affordable houses should be an opportunity for all deserving families around the world, not an unreachable dream.

Here’s Neal at a Veterans Day celebration at Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity.  (Neal is the old guy in cammo!)

If you would like to follow Neal’s personal blog, it’s here:  http://shootingfromthehip.net/

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.

If you would like to follow Neal’s personal blog, it’s here:  http://shootingfromthehip.net/

Hard at work or hardly working?

Here are some pictures from the Vietnam Veterans Build worksite.  The photos are compliments of Ezra Millstein, Staff Photographer for Habitat for Humanity International.  Ezra is producing a video of the Veterans Build - we can't wait to see the video! 

If you want to see more of Ezra's work, look at his website:  http://www.ezramillstein.com/.

Steve Klarichin

Vic Romback

Scott Parsley

Neighbor's daughter

Ezra Millstein

Introduction to Habitat for Humanity and Vietnam

Habitat for Humanity International created a journal about poverty, housing and Habitat’s response for the Vietnam Veteran Build participants.  I’d like to share some key points with you.

Background

Habitat for Humanity’s presence in Vietnam began in Danang, central Vietnam, in 2001. Now, Habitat for Humanity Vietnam specializes in integrated shelter solutions, water and sanitation, and disaster response and mitigation in partnership with the local government and microfinance institutions around the country.

Housing needs in Vietnam

An emerging middle-income country, Vietnam has made impressive progress in reducing poverty.  Official data shows that the poverty rate fell from 58.1 percent in 1993 to 9.45 percent in 2010.  Towns and cities are growing because of rapid urbanization driven by economic development.  Around 25 percent of housing stock is classified by the government as substandard or temporary.

Habitat’s response

Habitat for Humanity Vietnam mobilizes material and financial resources and volunteer labor to build or repair houses with vulnerable families.  Habitat partner families help to build their own house and contribute to its cost, typically through a housing microfinance loan.  Their repayments go toward a fund, which enables more families to build or improve their homes.  Habitat builds the capacity of local government, partner families and their communities through training and skills development.

Take action

One of Habitat’s mission principles is to put global shelter needs on the hearts and minds of all people. Out of this knowledge and conviction comes action.  Get involved in our veterans initiative by spreading the word and advocating for Habitat’s continued support to families abroad and in communities at home.

To learn more about how you can take action at habitat.org/takeaction

For more information about Habitat for Humanity in Vietnam:  http://www.habitatvietnam.org/

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.”

If you would like to follow Neal’s personal blog, it’s here:  http://shootingfromthehip.net/

Back to the Delta; putting back together what we once tore down

By Neal Pointer

As the wheels lifted off the tarmac, I uttered the words, “I will never come back to this place”; it was the same thought that every one of us was having. In silence, we flew until the captain came on the radio and announced, “Congratulations gentlemen. You are now out of the Republic of South Viet Nam.” Some clapped, some yelled, some sighed and some just sat looking blankly into space with what would become known as the thousand yard stare. Silence returned. What we believed was the end of a year-long nightmare was the beginning of years with many more to come.

I was one of the lucky ones. Harold Robbins wrote in The Carpetbaggers that Jonas Cord was unaffected by the Great Depression;  he flew over it. In the years following the war, that’s how I felt; that I had ‘flown’ over it. And for the most part, I did. It’s that ‘for the most part’ that makes me question how I’ll feel when my feet hit the ground in Saigon in a few days. 

      

Pictures on Google show the modern Tan Son Nhat Airport. I read that there is a Burger King now. And an ATM. The exchange rate is 20,800 VN Dong to the US dollar. It looks clean, well lighted and efficient. It will not be the same place I returned to from R and R in Australia in 1972. Perhaps it will offer a subtle transition before we are hit by the hot tropical air and the ubiquitous smell of diesel fuel emitted from too many motor powered vehicles.

Of the books that have been written about Viet Nam and the movies that have been made, none depict my experiences precisely. I suspect it is that way for all of us. Of the thirty two of us who will meet on April 1, I don’t know how many are veterans of what the Vietnamese call “The American War”. The one common denominator may be tears. We returned from Viet Nam to a hostile America who did not want to hear about the war. In our silence we buried a lot of ghosts; but even buried ghosts are still ghosts.

Now, forty years later it’s time to go back; this time to rebuild instead of to destroy. War, like an ill-timed insult is something that can’t be taken back. Recent headlines from Afghanistan are reminiscent of My Lai. I hope that we have learned as a nation to reserve judgment of soldiers who are thousands of miles away in environments civilians will never understand.     

As an eight year veteran of building Habitat for Humanity houses, dedications have become my favorite day of the build. We often meet for the first time the young children who will be living in the homes. Every blister, every ache, every scratch, every busted thumb becomes worth it when a child takes you by the hand and says “Come see my room.” Of the phrases I’d like to learn in Vietnamese, at the top of the list is “Come see my room.”  

If you would like to follow Neal’s personal blog, it’s here:  http://shootingfromthehip.net/