It’s Monday, January 16. The last time I was in Saigon, we stayed at the Caravelle Hotel, which is just around the corner from where I am now at the Bong Sen Hotel. The Caravelle, as with everything, looks really different—new, modern and not pockmarked by bullets and, generally, falling apart. The last time I was there, a gun battle broke out in the alley behind the hotel between the VC and the Vietnamese police. The Grand is just down the street, and the Continental is just a few blocks away. The 170th was about six blocks away, but I was not able to get by the location and get some photographs. John Merwin, who was here a few years ago, says it’s now a coffee shop. Go figure. They are getting ready for Tet—the Year of the Dragon—and the decorations are staggering in their beauty and technical complexity. It’s all pretty weird not seeing people running around with all sorts of weapons, gun jeeps, armored vehicles, Dusters at checkpoints and not worrying about someone trying to kill me. Interestingly, needless to say, it is not like Afghanistan. Also, the Vietnamese are so forgiving and loving that I have a whole new concept of the Buddhist way.
At the museum, we were addressed by three former members of the National Liberation Front, also known as the Peoples’ Liberation Armed Forces, whom we called the Viet Cong. Viet Cong is actually a derogatory term which the US and South Vietnamese government coined in 1957 and which loosely translates into "Vietnam traitors.” Their stories were pretty terrible. The two women were arrested for being “betrayers of the Fatherland,” and the man was a school teacher who became an NLF commando. All of them were held in horrible conditions and tortured. In fact, one of the more disturbing photographs I saw at the museum was one of American soldiers water-boarding an NLF soldier. The two women were imprisoned for five years and the man for seven. He had actually been sentenced to death, but his life was “spared” in exchange for the release of a US POW. While I do not condone or belittle the manner in which our soldiers who were prisoners were treated, it seems to me that there is a distinct difference in terms of what they did and what we did.
We were serenaded by seven young Vietnamese, all victims of herbicide poisoning and horribly deformed. The piano player was born with no eyes. It looks like his forehead goes all the way to the bridge of his nose. It was wonderful listening to them and seeing how they have adapted to their disabilities. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.” I now believe that there is a special place in Hell for the people who invented this shit and our government officials who authorized its use, here. These were second- and third-generation victims and for what was done to them and to my brothers and sisters who served, here, for me, there can never be forgiveness. There were many pictures on the walls of the museum, but I found that many of them, like the killing of the students at Kent State, were things already familiar to me. There was a whole wall dedicated to the massacre at My Lai. Seeing them up close in this way was very disturbing and I had to leave the building at this point.
We left Saigon and traveled to Tay Ninh City on the Cambodian border northwest of Saigon. On the way, we made a slight detour and stopped at the Michelin Plantation, a place where I was on several operations during the time in late-1968 when I was TDY at the 44th EOD in Cu Chi, the main base camp of the 25th Infantry Division. As soon as we left Highway 22, I knew immediately that we were on the road to the Plantation and I had shivers running up and down my spine. When we got there, the rubber trees were still being tapped and the straight rows were just as I remembered them. I got off the bus and just stood there; and then I broke down. It was my first really emotional reaction to being here and it was overwhelming. The group surrounded me and I talked about what it was like when I was here. You never saw the enemy. They were in spider holes, or in tunnels, and they would suddenly appear and hit the front of the column we were with trying to get to whatever we had been called out on. Then they disappeared. Usually, a solider had stepped on an anti-personnel mine, or an APC had hit a huge mine and we were called out to look for additional devices. We always found more. Often, American soldiers were stepping on Bouncing Betties that the fucking French had left behind when they were there protecting the Michelin riches from the rubber industry.
From the Michelin Plantation, we traveled to Nui Ba Den, the “Black Lady Mountain.” As usual with many things in Vietnam, we misinterpreted the name and referred to it as the “Black Virgin Mountain.” One of the women in the group, Marlene, lost her husband near Nui Ba Den on January 31, 1970, while flying a rescue mission that no one else would take. It was his second tour. We had a wonderful ceremony where she was finally able to let go of the pain she has been carrying in her heart for the past forty-two years. We all cried with her. Thanks to Song, our wonderful tour guide and interpreter, we were able to get within twenty-seven meters of the grid coordinates where the Army said his chopper went down. Marlene spoke to Joe and it was simply one of the most moving events I have ever participated in. I took my chip from The Wall (I explain this in the picture to the right) and laid it on his picture and let him know that the next time I went there, I would find him.
We left the crash site and traveled to the base of Nui Ba Den, where we took an incredible cable-car ride to the Buddhist pagoda located about two-thirds of the way up. On the very top of Nui Ba Den, there was an artillery unit, a signal unit, a Special Forces team and 25th Aviation, Marlene’s husband’s unit, had a gunship platoon. The only way you got there was by chopper. I flew in there for EOD missions twice that I remember, but never knew about the pagoda because we always approached and flew out from the other side. The pagoda, as you can see from the pictures, is spectacular. Again thanks to Song, the monks performed a special service for Marlene and her husband. It was very spiritual and powerfully moving. As we sat outside the temple waiting for the service to start, three monkeys chattered way and dropped leaves on me. It was pretty damn funny. The ride back down was amazing. It was dark and there was sheet lightning blasting away from horizon-to-horizon. I should also mention that there is actually a water-slide from the pagoda to the bottom but, unfortunately, it has been shut down due to some problem. What a trip it would have been to have been able to do that.
We arrived at our hotel in Tay Ninh City and I knew immediately that there web site was a hoax. What a dump. The bathroom in my room was a total Afghanistan flashback, with the shower being right next to the toilet, which would not stop running, and same wall-mounted hot water heaters we had in Afghanistan. The room also had the same rock hard bed and Samsung wall air conditioner—that barely worked—just like Afghanistan. There were geckos everywhere and many of them would race into the many cracks in the walls in the hallway. One of my new friends, Brian, was in the lobby that night doing email when a rat—“the size of a small dog,” as he puts it—walked through the lobby and out the front door as if he was the concierge. Also like Afghanistan. We left the next morning and headed for the next stop, the city of Vinh Long on the Mekong River.
I’m going to end this here so I can get it on the web. I am now in Hoi An, about thirty minutes south of Danang after spending two wonderful days at a B&B—yes, a B&B—on an island in the Mekong River, upstream from Vinh Long. It’s Friday, January 20 at 8:26PM. That’s 5:26AM on the 20th in Oregon.
At the museum, we were addressed by three former members of the National Liberation Front, also known as the Peoples’ Liberation Armed Forces, whom we called the Viet Cong. Viet Cong is actually a derogatory term which the US and South Vietnamese government coined in 1957 and which loosely translates into "Vietnam traitors.” Their stories were pretty terrible. The two women were arrested for being “betrayers of the Fatherland,” and the man was a school teacher who became an NLF commando. All of them were held in horrible conditions and tortured. In fact, one of the more disturbing photographs I saw at the museum was one of American soldiers water-boarding an NLF soldier. The two women were imprisoned for five years and the man for seven. He had actually been sentenced to death, but his life was “spared” in exchange for the release of a US POW. While I do not condone or belittle the manner in which our soldiers who were prisoners were treated, it seems to me that there is a distinct difference in terms of what they did and what we did.
We were serenaded by seven young Vietnamese, all victims of herbicide poisoning and horribly deformed. The piano player was born with no eyes. It looks like his forehead goes all the way to the bridge of his nose. It was wonderful listening to them and seeing how they have adapted to their disabilities. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.” I now believe that there is a special place in Hell for the people who invented this shit and our government officials who authorized its use, here. These were second- and third-generation victims and for what was done to them and to my brothers and sisters who served, here, for me, there can never be forgiveness. There were many pictures on the walls of the museum, but I found that many of them, like the killing of the students at Kent State, were things already familiar to me. There was a whole wall dedicated to the massacre at My Lai. Seeing them up close in this way was very disturbing and I had to leave the building at this point.
We left Saigon and traveled to Tay Ninh City on the Cambodian border northwest of Saigon. On the way, we made a slight detour and stopped at the Michelin Plantation, a place where I was on several operations during the time in late-1968 when I was TDY at the 44th EOD in Cu Chi, the main base camp of the 25th Infantry Division. As soon as we left Highway 22, I knew immediately that we were on the road to the Plantation and I had shivers running up and down my spine. When we got there, the rubber trees were still being tapped and the straight rows were just as I remembered them. I got off the bus and just stood there; and then I broke down. It was my first really emotional reaction to being here and it was overwhelming. The group surrounded me and I talked about what it was like when I was here. You never saw the enemy. They were in spider holes, or in tunnels, and they would suddenly appear and hit the front of the column we were with trying to get to whatever we had been called out on. Then they disappeared. Usually, a solider had stepped on an anti-personnel mine, or an APC had hit a huge mine and we were called out to look for additional devices. We always found more. Often, American soldiers were stepping on Bouncing Betties that the fucking French had left behind when they were there protecting the Michelin riches from the rubber industry.
From the Michelin Plantation, we traveled to Nui Ba Den, the “Black Lady Mountain.” As usual with many things in Vietnam, we misinterpreted the name and referred to it as the “Black Virgin Mountain.” One of the women in the group, Marlene, lost her husband near Nui Ba Den on January 31, 1970, while flying a rescue mission that no one else would take. It was his second tour. We had a wonderful ceremony where she was finally able to let go of the pain she has been carrying in her heart for the past forty-two years. We all cried with her. Thanks to Song, our wonderful tour guide and interpreter, we were able to get within twenty-seven meters of the grid coordinates where the Army said his chopper went down. Marlene spoke to Joe and it was simply one of the most moving events I have ever participated in. I took my chip from The Wall (I explain this in the picture to the right) and laid it on his picture and let him know that the next time I went there, I would find him.
We left the crash site and traveled to the base of Nui Ba Den, where we took an incredible cable-car ride to the Buddhist pagoda located about two-thirds of the way up. On the very top of Nui Ba Den, there was an artillery unit, a signal unit, a Special Forces team and 25th Aviation, Marlene’s husband’s unit, had a gunship platoon. The only way you got there was by chopper. I flew in there for EOD missions twice that I remember, but never knew about the pagoda because we always approached and flew out from the other side. The pagoda, as you can see from the pictures, is spectacular. Again thanks to Song, the monks performed a special service for Marlene and her husband. It was very spiritual and powerfully moving. As we sat outside the temple waiting for the service to start, three monkeys chattered way and dropped leaves on me. It was pretty damn funny. The ride back down was amazing. It was dark and there was sheet lightning blasting away from horizon-to-horizon. I should also mention that there is actually a water-slide from the pagoda to the bottom but, unfortunately, it has been shut down due to some problem. What a trip it would have been to have been able to do that.
We arrived at our hotel in Tay Ninh City and I knew immediately that there web site was a hoax. What a dump. The bathroom in my room was a total Afghanistan flashback, with the shower being right next to the toilet, which would not stop running, and same wall-mounted hot water heaters we had in Afghanistan. The room also had the same rock hard bed and Samsung wall air conditioner—that barely worked—just like Afghanistan. There were geckos everywhere and many of them would race into the many cracks in the walls in the hallway. One of my new friends, Brian, was in the lobby that night doing email when a rat—“the size of a small dog,” as he puts it—walked through the lobby and out the front door as if he was the concierge. Also like Afghanistan. We left the next morning and headed for the next stop, the city of Vinh Long on the Mekong River.
I’m going to end this here so I can get it on the web. I am now in Hoi An, about thirty minutes south of Danang after spending two wonderful days at a B&B—yes, a B&B—on an island in the Mekong River, upstream from Vinh Long. It’s Friday, January 20 at 8:26PM. That’s 5:26AM on the 20th in Oregon.
I find it very interesting they had American stuff in the war museum. I suppose our museums offer the same thing to a certain extent, but in my mind I never think of the deeper Vietnamese side of things. What a shift in perspective it would be to be over there and see things through the eyes of the so called "other".
ReplyDeleteAlso, that's crazy you were in Saigon. When I think of Vietnam I definitely think of Saigon (and the smell of napalm in the morning). I'm glad no one is running around with automatic weapons, however, because in my experience that can really ruin a good time (Germany...).
Glad you got some r&r at the b&b, though. I'd love to see the Mekong River. I've heard so many stories, but never seen it in person. I'm sure it is a beautiful place. Keep up the posts, they're fascinating. Most importantly keep experiencing the trip and let it all sink in.