I’ve been asked to speak about the Vietnam War. I’ll offer a worm’s eye view, as befits a foot soldier. Since worms don’t even have eyes, you know how limited was my view.
It’s not surprising that we’re talking about the war in Vietnam at our fiftieth reunion. It affected our lives during the Sixties -- whether we fought to stop it, fought to stay out of it, or fought in it. Today it continues to be a presence in our lives. Last year a woman traveled to Vietnam to retrieve the remains of her pilot father. This year one of the Oscar nominees was a short documentary called “Chau, Beyond the Lines,” about a young man born with disabilities caused by his parents’ or grandparents’ exposure to Agent Orange. The film tells the story of how Chau becomes a successful artist in Vietnam. Last Sunday President Obama traveled to Vietnam. In the near future, there may be a U.S. naval presence in Cam Ranh Bay.
For historians, the war keeps on giving us previously-classified materials and translations of Vietnamese memoirs. As they become available, we learn more about what happened and why. Among my favorite books about the Vietnam War are three by Chris Appy, a historian who graduated from Amherst in ‘77. His highly-praised books include “Working-Class War,” “Patriots,” and “American Reckoning.” “Patriots” is unique as an oral history of the war told by participants from all sides.
Let me illustrate a few of the lessons I learned with three stories, followed by some of the questions that remain with me.
One morning, on patrol through the village of Dai Loc, I saw a woman walking to market with two baskets of rice, suspended from a bamboo yoke across her shoulders. Watching the way this thick piece of bamboo was flexing, I asked her if I could carry her load. I could lift it, but then I couldn’t move. Brian Bokuniewicz, the strongest man in our platoon, also tried. Same result. The woman then picked up the rice and walked rapidly down the road. As the bamboo yoke flexed upward, taking the weight off her shoulders, she stepped forward. When the weight came down, she had one foot on the ground. Thousands of years of Vietnamese culture were captured in a step that was easy for her, but impossible for me. Because I never opened this window into Vietnamese culture, I never realized where I was.
We went to war at the height of the Civil Rights struggle. When Muhammed Ali refused induction into the armed forces, I was a member of a four-person team with three African-Americans: Billy Treasvant from Detroit, Clayton Durant Turner from Chicago, and William Matthew Bethea from Philadelphia. African-Americans accounted for more than twice the share of our infantry platoon as their percentage of draft-age Americans. Racial politics were so fraught that we couldn’t use the words, Black, white, Negro, or Caucasian. Instead, we used the terms “splib” and “chuck.” Blacks were splibs; whites were chucks. I had no idea where these terms came from, but they did not offend.
We got along with each other because we got to know each other as individuals. On a listening post one night, about 100 yards in front of our platoon positions, we spent most of the time talking. It was the only way to control our fears and to make the time pass.
Where you from? Motor City, Windy City, Philly.
You married? No.
You picked infantry? No. Billy wanted to be a cook at Division HQ. Eventually he got there. Clayton just wanted out of the field. William was our uncomplaining team leader.
Why you here? I bet big on your mother in the eighth race and she came in last.
Your mother. Always, the mother. Our mothers were always with us.
The rationale for the war was the one thing we never talked about. Billy, Clayton, and William knew the only thing they needed to know about the war -- they were in it. Anything else was a dangerous distraction. Meanwhile, I was corresponding with Marshall Bloom. Our letters are in Frost Library.
For Billy, Clayton, and William, the military was a chance to get out of the house, off the block, and into a job -- and maybe end up with some money for college, a business, or a house.
Hearing reports of college students demonstrating against the war, we could only wish to be there and to have the same choices. We said the students were skating. Anyone who wasn’t with us was skating. When Clayton got transferred to the kitchen at division headquarters, he was skating, too. The image was perfect -- a frictionless puck floating across the ice.
Don’t ask soldiers about the rationale for a war; ask them how they treated the civilians they lived with. Whatever they did, they have to live with for the rest of their lives.
Another patrol started at the top of a steep hill overlooking the village of Duc Pho, near My Lai in Quang Ngai Province, a part of Vietnam that had never been conquered, not by the Chinese, not by the French, not by the Americans. As we started down the hill, a sniper began shooting at us, pinning us down behind boulders. We held the high ground, or rather, it held us -- we couldn’t get off it. After several of our people were wounded, we called in an air strike. In a little while, a jet went screaming over the sniper’s hiding place. Each time the jet dropped a bomb, the sniper fired back at the jet with his -- or her -- 22-caliber carbine. After seeing this repeated a few times, we began to cheer for the sniper. Jets had killed some of our troops a few days earlier. The lesson? You can have too much technology, but you can’t have too much courage.
I left the war in 1967, but it was a long time before the war left me. As a soldier, I often said to my platoon-mates, “Someday we’re all coming back here. We know what a beautiful country this is and how generous these people are. We’ll want to see this country at peace.” I thought it might be five years before I came back, maybe ten. My platoon mates said, “never.”
We were all wrong. It was 28 years before I returned to Vietnam. My friends were wrong, too. Many veterans have traveled back to Vietnam, some to visit and some to live and work there.
Around the time I first returned to Vietnam, an American engineer, Ben Wilson, was sent by his company to build a factory in Da Nang, on the coast of central Vietnam. Gaining approval from the government took a year. For the next two years, Ben lived in Da Nang and worked on building the factory. In his Da Nang neighborhood, he saw many children who were not in school, some living on the streets. He found a Vietnamese social worker, Ms. Luong Thi Huong. Together they founded a charity to help children and single-parent families. For the past 18 years, Children of Vietnam has been working with government agencies to help the kind of children Ben and Ms. Huong first met in their Da Nang neighborhood.
Children of Vietnam (COV) makes micro-loans to mothers to help them set up businesses they can run while raising their children. Forty percent of each loan is forgiven; sixty percent is repaid to a fund that makes new loans.
The charity provides college scholarships to students graduating from high school.
For children born with disabilities, some of which are caused by their parents’ or grandparents’ exposure to Agent Orange, COV puts together case management teams that include representatives from government agencies responsible for health, education, and disability services. This approach puts COV into partnership with local governments.
We build kindergartens and turn them over to local governments to operate. At some schools, we serve nutritious snacks twice a day to young children. We support orphanages that contain schools. And we inoculate children against parasites.
Last year we raised about $800,000 a year, mostly in the US, to support these programs. Our local staff consists of Vietnamese people working with government agencies to make sure that the programs we design and launch will be sustained.
Each year we bring donors on a trip to visit some of our program sites. This past March, we started in Da Nang on the coast, traveled inland to villages in the hills, then south to Hoi An, and finally back to Da Nang, where government officials welcomed us on the Dragon Bridge. Of course we stopped along the way for wonderful meals. Some participants rode bikes, while others rode in a van with our Vietnamese staff.
Isn't it amazing where a foot soldier's feet can take him?
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