I was referring to me and my group of friends and family and, as well how I perceived those in the community. I think everyone was pretty decent to the enlisted, as they were brothers, peers, classmates, friends, those whose number came up. I can't think of a person I know from those days who had anything but compassion for our boys.
Actually I have friends who've been there within the last year for a bicycle trek. They had a fabulous time. Here's a story I found, revisiting Viet Nam and the shock of finding no evidence of American presence:
vvrp.org
Return to Viet Nam
by Nancy Smoyer, Team VII
In April 1993, I went back to Viet Nam for a month with the VVRP. Our group was small, three combat veterans and myself, a Red Cross Donut Dolly. We spent two weeks renovating a clinic at Cu Chi and two weeks traveling north to Hanoi. We worked and traveled with former Viet Cong and NVA soldiers, which added an unexpected but very welcome and therapeutic element to the experience, especially since I was stationed at Cu Chi during Tet. It was an unsettling experience to be introduced to a fellow worker who was the head of the local veteran's group, learn that he had been at Cu Chi during the entire war, and realize that this man was lobbing mortars and rockets at me during Tet. However, during the two weeks we worked together on the clinic, we formed a special relationship in spite of our language difficulties. He gave me his gold star pin and I gave him a pin from the 10th anniversary of the Wall; we joked and teased and spoke of friendship and peace. His face became the face which humanized the enemy for me.
My primary reason for going back was to get over the feelings of anger and animosity I've carried for the Vietnamese for 25 years. Although I was well aware intellectually that my feelings were for the most part irrational, I also knew that I wouldn't get over them until I went back. From my experiences on other trips to Third World countries, I was pretty sure that those feelings would disappear almost immediately, which is, in fact, what happened. However, there were other aspects I hadn't foreseen.
Even as we were driving from Tan Son Nhut to Cu Chi, I found myself thinking "What are all these Vietnamese doing here; where did they from?" and "Where are the GI's?" It was so strange and upsetting to see NO American presence, nothing to indicate that we had ever been there. It made the whole thing -- the war, the losses, the pain -- seem even more of a waste. During the first few days I found myself getting more and more depressed.
Then, at the end of my third day, I had a revelation. I realized the I was mourning the loss of "my" Viet Nam. My denial has been in thinking about Viet Nam as being unchanged since I left, complete with GI's and fire bases and choppers everywhere. Instead, I was hit in the face with a completely different country, a new reality, which I didn't want and couldn't accept. My bargaining has been that if I keep connected with vets and activities related to Viet Nam, then the experience stays alive and not over. The anger I've felt has been toward the Vietnamese people, the Vietnamese government, AND the American people and the American government. Those feelings of anger have spilled over in many parts of my life. And then there was the depression which I've dealt with in various forms for years, and which was hitting me full force again right then and there.
After working with the Vietnamese veterans and going into their homes and meeting their families, it was impossible to continue car-rying my negative feelings. As I read "The Tunnels of Cu Chi" and crawled through the tunnels, saw pictures in every home we visited of family members who had died in the war, visited the massive graveyards and memorials to the war dead, heard about the 300,000 Vietnamese who are still missing, I gained a compassion and understanding which I hadn't allowed myself to feel before. I had accomplished what I came back to Viet Nam to do.
Even though I now understood much of what I was feeling and had even gotten over my negative feelings toward the people, I was still not at the point of acceptance. As I told the guys, I wasn't ready to give Viet Nam back to the Vietnamese. Then, after a week or so of being unable to talk about my changed feelings toward the Vietnamese people without choking up, I realized that it was over. I was done with Viet Nam. Not done with the vets or with the aftereffects of the war, but done with the country and with the people. It's their country, they fought for it (on both sides), they earned it; and although I now care for them whereas I didn't before, that part is finished. I still have all the other aspects of Viet Nam (the war, not the country) to deal with, but at least one is taken care of.
Now I have two Viet Nams -- the one in my memory and in my pictures and in my vets, and the Vietnamese Viet Nam. It had been "my" country" for a while -- my GI Viet Nam -- and yet it was theirs, and should have been, all along. I had been afraid of losing my Viet Nam, of having to replace it with the "real" one, but now I realize I can keep them both -- different but the same, separate but together, entwined.
Post Script -- I originally wrote this about a month after I got back. Since the trip something has happened which I hesitate to identify because I can't believe it's true or real. I had listened skeptically as I heard others talk about a change in themselves after going back Viet Nam. And yet somehow that change has happened to me. Friends have noticed that there is something different about me -- I'm a little more tolerant, a little less impatient, a little more open and less negative. Somehow the cloud has lifted a little bit -- I feel lighter.
I've heard that when one feeling leaves, space is made for something else to move in. I know that a lot of anger has left, but I can't identify what it is that has taken its place. I keep being afraid that the old me will return, and it may; but this reprieve has shown me that there is another side, another way to be. That realization is what makes me want to share this experience with others in hopes that they, too, might find, or make, the opportunity to let go of some of the pain. |
