The Mekong and Ben Tre

The drive from Tay Ninh to Vinh Long was beautiful. Lots of rice paddies, farms, villages and cities whose names are unimportant. We arrived in Vinh Long on the Mekong River, south of Saigon, in the early afternoon and boarded a water taxi. On the trip up the river, I sat on the fantail so I could get a good view of things including the boat with the great paint job on the front and the banana boat in the pictures to the right. Our hosts were Tam Tien and his wife, both former Viet Cong soldiers. Song Tien is a man who simply smiled and laughed all the time and it was infectious. Again, the friendship and forgiveness of our former enemies was painfully obvious.

Tam Tien’s “business” is called “Song Tien Tourist Inn” and I guess you would call it a Bed & Breakfast. We had our own Spartan rooms with a small desk, wall-mounted fan, and hard— but comfortable— bed with the mosquito net like the one I used when I was last here. In fact, I think the fan was the one I left behind in Phu Bai. Man, was it noisy. As soon as we arrived, we had a wonderful lunch complete with huge fish with their heads still attached. I have to admit that I am not a seafood person, so I filled up on noodles, rice and vegetables. They eat a lot of fish and shellfish, particularly shrimp. Believe it, or not, much of the fish and shellfish are farm-grown and at the docks we saw men loading huge sacks of fish food onto their boats to take to the farms. There was great conversation among the group members, as there has been during the entire trip.

I have become good friends with all of the folks in the group and, particularly, with Vela, from Arkansas. His name used to be Tom Smith, but he changed it to Vela Giri during a pilgrimage to India in the 90’s. He is Native American and one of the most spiritual people I have ever known. I know that my son, who is very into the Zen way, would really like him. It turns out that meeting him has reinforced my belief that Vietnam was a very small war, in many ways. Vela was in the 2d Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade. This is the same unit that I helped support with the 184th’s on-site team at LZ English in 1968 - 1969. He got to Vietnam in 1969, after this unit moved to Camp Holloway, on the street, or had a beer “together” at the EM Club, or I was on an operation with his company and, of course, we never knew each other, then. Peter was with the 2d Battalion, 94th Artillery Regiment, in Northern I Corps. He was in one of the few Army units at Khe Sanh during the siege that began during the 1968 Tet. We were there at different times, but we humped the same ground. What are the odds? Apparently, they are good because this has happened to me on many occasions.

After lunch, we had some free time so I was working on my last post and a chapter from my book that I will share with the group. Brian—from Pennsylvania and New York—was going to perform a piece from a play he has written and asked me to be his “sound man” since I had the only laptop with a decent sound-system. His play is about Vietnam veterans and suicide and the scene he was going to do has music by Wagner and the Rolling Stones’, “Sympathy for the Devil.” They were weirdly appropriate for what he was doing for us and a group of four other former Viet Cong soldiers and Song Tien and his wife. Our interpreter/tour guide, Song, and his friend, Tran, are former South Vietnamese soldiers. The former Vietnamese soldiers of both sides have fully reconciled and they do not seem to have suffered from the maladies—other than those related to herbicides—that American veterans have, particularly PTSD, high rates of suicide, addictions, homelessness and all the rest. The former South Vietnamese soldiers and VC are one people and this was clear from the obvious friendships between them and the sharing of business opportunities between these former enemies. I have to be clear, though, that the former ARVN are not treated as well by the government and receive no pensions as do the former VC and NVA. I guess that it is just another version of, “To the victor, go the spoils.” Despite this, the love and care they have for each other is palpable.

Brian’s play was extremely heavy and I cannot really explain how it went, other than to say he played the main character, as well as two others. It was powerful and chilling, since my work for veterans over the years has, unfortunately, brought me into contact with men who have ended their lives before their time on the planet would normally have been over. When it was done, he received a long standing ovation from our group, as well as our former allies and enemies. We then formed a circle and had a discussion that lasted more than two hours. The insights of our new friends were amazing and their love for us was obvious and closely felt. They had, largely, no idea that so many of us had suffered so much and that our country had not welcomed us home as returning warriors who had gone, many of us voluntarily, to war to defend our country and our fellow citizens. They could not understand how our government had treated us so shabbily and how we had to fight as hard at home, as we had in Vietnam, for recognition and benefits for our injuries, physical and psychic.

Here, for instance, it is assumed that if you have any form of cancer, or other disease that may be even remotely caused by herbicide exposure, you are cared for at government expense and receive a pension. Even second, third and fourth generation children, thought to be injured by herbicide poisoning, are cared for and their parents receive payment to help care for them. There is no Institute of Medicine taking ten or more years to decide if something that has fucked up so many of us is “presumed” to be caused by herbicide exposure. Every place that you travel, here, you see children with the most horrible deformities imaginable. If our use of these deadly poisons was not a crime against humanity, then nothing is.

Given all of this, the love and forgiveness that all of us felt from our former enemies, and even our former allies, was simply more profound than anything I have ever experienced and I am sure that is true for all of us in the group who served, here. How could this be? By and large, I believe, had something like this occurred in our own country, there would be no forgiveness—ever. It is truly sad to me that so many Vietnam veterans whom I know still have nothing by hatred for the Vietnamese people. Not just the VC and NVA, but all of them. I say to all of you reading this who served, here, that your hate is misdirected. It is our government that your anger should be directed against. It is the military planners and the generals who flew over you while you were fighting for your life that should be the recipients of your ire. We were being shot at, dying and bleeding and they got medals because someone 2,000 feet below them was shooting at us. I ask you…how fucked up is that? When I think of the dozens of men whose VA cases I have handled, who are now dead because of herbicides, I have to admit that it makes me a little homicidal. After our discussion, we all sat down to a wonderful dinner and then turned in. Despite the mosquito net, my ankles were pretty chewed up the next morning. Same same like the last time I was here.

The next day, we split into two groups. One group went to the kindergarten in Vinh Long that “Soldier’s Heart” helps sponsor and those who chose that trip also took many items to donate to the children. The rest of us—me, Brian, his wife, Karen, Lou’s wife Betty, and John—accompanied Lou to the town of Ben Tre. Lou is a retired Sergeant Major, married to a retired Major, and did three years in and around Vinh Long and Ben Tre as an advisor. Much of his time was TDY duty, beginning in 1961. There are several things I need to say, here. John is not a veteran. He is here because he wants to know more about who we—Vietnam veterans—are and to learn why we came on this pilgrimage. However, he has had his own share of trauma exposure as a former flight medic for an air ambulance service. I think he said he did this work for eighteen years. So, as far as I am concerned, he is one of us. You don’t choose to do that kind of work, or the work that many of us chose to do in the military, unless you have a certain commitment to serving your fellow human beings. I have nothing but the highest respect for him. Second, Lou is one of the only other Jewish Vietnam veterans I have ever known. In fact, I don’t think I met another Jew during my time, here, and the only two I know for sure who were here are my cousins Barry—an Army lawyer—and my cousin, Donnie—a squadron commander in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. I know there were other Jews who served, here, but Vietnam was not a war that Jews, in general, supported, my mom being one of them.

The ride to Ben Tre involved another river-taxi ride, a really funky ferry and then a bus trip that just went on and on and on since we were in “rush hour” traffic. We travelled, mostly, along narrow roads that probably have not changed much since Lou was last here. I think it took a little more than two hours. Lou says that Ben Tre has not changed that much since he was last there, other than a substantial increase in population. Ben Tre and Vinh Long Province are, more or less, the “home” of the Viet Cong and was the place where the first major VC attacks took place. The founder was a woman—Nguyen Thi Dinh. General Nguyen Thi Dinh was the soul of the Dong Khoi revolution, which first broke out in Mo Cay District of Ben Tre in 1959, then spread out to the all other provinces of the Mekong Delta. She was also the founder and leader of the renowned Viet Cong “long hair army” or “female guerilla troops”. Coming into Ben Tre, we drove by a huge Catholic monastery, surrounded by a masonry wall that had a giant cross in the stone work every ten feet. Lou told us that at one time they knew that the VC had stored 25 tons of ordnance and ammunition in the monastery’s basement, but they could not attack it, for obvious reasons. What were they going to do? Start a war with the Vatican? We eventually found several places where Lou had either been involved, or lived, including along the river where the Vietnamese Navy had river boats and had helped his advisory team defend the town. Lou said their boats were barely seaworthy. Today, the dock was lined with a long row of sleek power boats with huge outboard motors belonging to the police. We were wondering why they need all of these expensive, powerful boats and I later posited that I would bet it was about smugglers.

Vinh Long Province is a huge farming community and Lou told us that, during the war, it was the first province to actually be able to export its bountiful vegetables, fruits, coconuts and fish of many varieties. The amazing thing about being in Ben Tre is that we realized that we were the only “round eyes” we saw and maybe some of the first Americans to go there since the end of US involvement in 1973. Unlike many of the other cities we had seen, there was no economic or industrial development that we were aware of. No new high-rise apartment buildings, no condo developments for wealthy foreigners, no car dealerships, no advanced shopping districts. Other than the crush of newer moped-like motorcycles, which we saw everywhere, and a large number of small cars—mostly Toyotas, Honda and Hyundis—it apparently looked pretty much the same it did forty-three years ago, when Lou was last here, in 1969. We eventually sat in a sidewalk café and had iced tea, beer, whatever people were drinking. The locals did not seem surprised to see us and we were, generally, ignored. I am fairly certain it is off the beaten “tourist track” because it is basically a simple, poor farming and fishing community. No fancy shops or restaurants, no big Western-style hotels, nothing to attract foreigners with money to spend. I must say, however, given the insanity of Saigon, it was a welcome relief and quite lovely. According to Song, our tour guide, there are 9,000,000 people and 5,000,000 mopeds in Saigon where, by the way, we did, in fact, see a Harley Davidson Sportster. As you might expect, it was a Westerner driving it.

The ride back to Tam Tien’s B&B was quite the opposite of the ride to Ben Tre. Rush hour was apparently over and the bus driver was, in the parlance, hauling ass. We had actually driven so slowly on the ride to Ben Tre that we had not been aware of how really horrible and pot-holed the roads were. Holy crap, the ride back was spine-tingling and we hit every hole—some regular chasms—between the two shoulders. The ride back, including the ferry and river taxi, took about half the time as the earlier trip. We arrived back at the island in the Mekong and had a late lunch. At about 4:00PM, we left Tam Tien’s and traveled to the airpoty in Saigon for our flight to Danang and, then, a short bus ride to our next stop, Hoi An, which is about thirty minutes south of Danang on the South China Sea. We got to the Hoi An Hotel and Beach Report at about 2:00AM and immediately crashed.