Vietnam Cambodia 2007

15 - The End/Dispatch from Happy Valley

2007-07-15T18:12:00.000-07:00

"If you give a boy a whistle …" is Jean's observation of a human condition we have all experienced. If we have it - authority, power, machine or toy - our first option is likely to just use it.

In 1971, I was given a whistle - command of some Birddogs. We flew into the hills to the west of Tuy Hoa everyday. And everyday we would fly near a pretty little valley, with rich rice paddies at the bottom, orchards up the sides - and a system of caves where the two met. We called it Happy Valley. It was in a "free fire zone," meaning anyone found in there was automatically a bad guy that we could blast, no questions asked. I took it upon myself to do just that, for little more reason than just because I could.

I enthused another "boy" to join in my game. His "whistle" was a platoon of helicopter gun-ships - and more than a few of our mornings were started by popping over the top of a ridge to surprise those down in Happy Valley - me going in first to find targets - his guns coming in hot, not far behind.

Our human targets on the ground were growing food - food not controlled by the South Vietnamese government, and therefore was food available to "Charlie," the Viet Cong. Such was the logic that made this Happy Valley a valid military target. Good enough for boys with whistles.

The last time I went into the valley, it was going to be a fine day. The clear sunrise would make good shadows of the little bodies trying to reach the safety of the caves - before our rockets and bullets rained down on them. And that day, as sometimes happened before, out of those caves came a stream of bullets in return. Some passed thru the aluminum skin of my plane and one continued up through the floor of the cockpit between my feet. It continued up even further.

With hindsight, I realize that these targets were just farmers - staying on their land in spite of our "Strategic Hamlets Policy" which attempted to move everyone in this agrarian country into "relocation centers" that were no better than nasty refugee camps. Places where rice farmers were fed rice from Louisiana while crammed into crime, hate and most of all - a desire to return to the family fields - fields like the ones in Happy Valley.

When the plane was being inspected for repairs, the maintenance chief asked me to come out and sit in the cockpit. He then ran a long thin fiberglass antenna up through the holes in the plane, along one bullet's path. He pushed up until the tip of the antenna poked me in the throat, right under my chin.

I sat for a moment, then noticed the map case I kept on the door of the plane. The canvas case had belonged to my grandfather, left over from his war - and it was full of holes. The chief then asked me to hold out my hand and into my palm he dropped a bent-up stainless-steel hose clamp. It was a robust little bit of hardware, made in America. The clamp had deflected the bullet into the maps. Otherwise it would have gone into my head.

I have a photo of me holding the damaged map case, smiling like it was all a boy's game. Not the first holes in a plane, and not the last. The hose clamp is home in a drawer, as is the remains of that bullet - which had lodged in the maps inside my grandfather's case. I kept the case too - I kept it all … including the memory of that valley and those little shadows. Is that why I'm back here?

Jean and I finally got to Happy Valley - after a difficult couple of days filled with little events that makes travel with some kind of goal so rewarding. We found the old farmers who have lived there all their lives. They offered us mangoes and tea.

We found their fields beautiful, their children and grandchildren happy - and I found out some more about my past - and about myself.

Back home now, and everyone wants to know how a return to Vietnam affected me. I was asked a telling question: If I was given the chance, if I could somehow regain - not my youth or naivete - but the drama, the life/death importance, the compression of time and the intensity of emotion of being at war … would I do it again?

I paused before I answered, and that pause WAS the answer. Just pausing to consider was an admission that all the wounds, guilt, pain, and passage of time has not overshadowed my human cravings ... my innate acceptance of war as a force of my nature.

War certainly affected my life, my family's, and that of the too many others - friend and foe - that intersected with mine. But never have I had such freedom or such responsibility, such fear and yes … such fun. I say this not to endorse war, but to admit that after this return to Vietnam I am probably no different than the rest of humanity. If you give me a whistle, I will still be … just a boy.

- Rod Resigned

15 - Dispatch from the Barber Shop

2007-07-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

We have already had the Bus Story, so I can't use this Dispatch to tell about hitchhiking from Tuy Hoa to Nha Trang. Or about the cross-country bus snatching us up off the side of the road, moving some rice sacks and a Buddhist nun to make us a seat. And there was this big pig and weird stuff on the roof - but one Bus Story per trip. That's the rule!

I especially wanted to do this coast by road. Called Vung Ro, I had only seen it from the air. My Birddogs were barely able to reach freeway speeds, and often flew below the lampposts - but peacetime at ground level is necessary to get a really good look. And this coast is a looker! Smooth city-sized white granite boulders stacked down out of the jungle into a deep turquoise sea. Brightly colored fishing boats bob at anchor off untracked beaches - and lanky coconut palms dance in the breeze. It is all I could have remembered - rivaling Big Sur or Amalfi. Even the big pig oinks his approval.

The first time I arrived in Nha Trang, I needed a haircut. I had been in Vietnam for just 2 days and had yet to see a real Vietnamese up close. Just out of flight school, my "Airborne white sidewall" haircut had become a little too fly-boy for the reputation of the colonel to whom I was about to report.

Only option was a street barber with hand clippers and a comb, standing in front of a mirror hung on a fence. I was nervous just being on the street, seeing "Charlie" in every face. Nervous became terror when the straight razor came out. The scare stories fed to us back in training got into my head and I slowly unholstered my .38 under the cape he had clipped around my neck. So young, gullible and green. So long ago.

My barber today is too young to be the same guy, but everything else is unchanged - well except for the young and gun part. There is nowhere else to get a haircut quite like Vietnam. In America he would need medical, dental, chiropractic and massage permits - and if my language skills were any good, a psychiatric one as well. It takes over an hour and costs 2 bucks.

I have to get spiffed up this time to report to Jean. I am expected to do more about this fabulous cuisine than just wash it down with beer on the beach while she attends a fancy hotel's cooking school - she wants me to learn a bit too. After she has spent a month stomping through old mine fields - how can I refuse?

This country has yet to enter the packaged food world - it is all freshly cut, caught, cooked, and consumed. We go to the markets and make lists of herbs and spices. We do dawn at the docks to see the fishing fleet disgorge its catch. We roll spring rolls, doctor dipping sauces - and I eat all my homework.

From Nha Trang we opt for a train ride down the coast on the "Reunification Express." The old French tracks are to be ripped up for a Saigon- Hanoi bullet train, similar to the one California has yakked about for a decade. I will bet on theirs running before ours. The changes they have accomplished in the few years of open markets is astounding. And back in town, we find Saigon still going full speed ahead. But not us … my shoes are shot, Jean is shopped out, visas have expired and our flight left a week ago - and every other one is full until next month.

That ain't so bad as a weather check shows it is still rain and cold at home. There is always more to see here, more to eat, more to ponder - and high thread-count sheets to type another Dispatch while Jean snoozes in her birthweek present (a single day is so limiting!) - the majestic Majestic Hotel. I use to sneak into places like this to join the buffet line, but feel out of place draping my mosquito net over the antique headboard and cutting dragon fruit on the marble tabletop. They note the date off her passport and deliver a cake to the room. Majestic indeed!

If standby works, it all will be over too soon - and mail and messages will slap me back to reality. I enjoyed this trip immensely and hope to be able to ponder what it did for me - and try to pen that into one last Dispatch. Then print up the photos and toss them under the coffee table with all the others.

Knowing that my observations might be read by others, has made this a more productive trip. Thank you. You forced me to be more inquisitive and introspective, certainly more than my first trips here - and I look forward to further thoughts and discussion, with you ... or myself.

- Standby Stew

14 - Dispatch from a Long House

2007-07-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

Tribal people usually have some ritual or rite unique to them - some things they do to separate themselves from the "others". The Special Forces (Green Berets) of our 1968 Army lived with the tribes here in the highlands - and were a tribe unto themselves. As a young lieutenant, showing up in a tribal village, I was fair game for such rites and was the victim of my desire to fit in - and the Green Beanie-boy's desire to show me how tribal they had become.

These mountain tribes have peppers so hot that tissue damage ensues. Monkey, tiger and dog served charred and shared by hand. Rice whiskey mixed with blood and pulled thru a straw so long you could suck a dent in the top of your skull. Surviving such self-inflicted cruelty was rewarded by a thick brass ring being snapped over your wrist, a tribal token of acceptance.

I awoke one morning in these highlands with such a bracelet and the hangover to have earned it. I had a few more before I left this area - of both. Most Americans had to spent their war "behind the wire" - unable to mix with non-military locals. My youth and the extreme contrast in cultures prevented me from then appreciating the opportunity I was given. Me, from a people who walk on the moon, while my host's people revere that same moon as a goddess. An incomprehensible divide.

The villages and tribes that bet on our side, did not fair well when the North rolled in to rule. Several places I wanted to visit, especially around Pleiku, no longer exist. Others are forbidden to foreigners and others require permits and government minders. Kon Tum is small and out of the spotlight - a better bet.

(click on photos to enlarge)

Our first night, we walk the dusty streets of Kon Tum, find incredibly good food at a simple street stall, and ask around for a guide. I want a tribal man who can translate and knows the ways of the highlands. One name comes up again, and we seek out Nguyen Do Huynh. Though ethnically a Viet, his father was orphaned and raised by tribal people - he lives with them and we take an instant liking to him as we discuss our quest.

I unroll a strip of woven cloth - mostly black with distinctive patterns of red and white trim. I got this in a village outside Pleiku in 1968. It was likely woven by a topless old woman, with black teeth, smoking a long stemmed pipe - who is now long dead. It is a treasured relic of my youth and is in pristine condition.

Huynh (sounds like Who-on) knows at once which people use this pattern and agrees to lead us into an area where such people still live. He speaks their language, his language, my language - and it turns out some French, Mandarin, Russian, and who knows how many others. Arrangements are made. We will leave early, right after breakfast.

We awake in a hotel run by the government. They try, but they are still the government. The breakfast is included but the little street stalls would offer far more inspired cuisine. Some strapping young lads, short hair, walk in - and Jean strikes up a conversation we have rehearsed, "Are you Americans? From Hawaii? Well! MIA search team? How interesting! I know you can't discuss it but … more coffee? Found any interesting crash sites? Some cream? Any of them involve Birddogs?"

There are still many missing-in-action Americans, and more than a few Birddogs were never seen or heard from after departing one of our little airstrips. The US is spending a lot of money sending teams to locate and recover any remains. The Viets from the North lead them around and send us the bills. I think if the bones of my youth were on a hill here, taking them would almost be grave robbing - more of my existence would now be of my hill, than of my mother's arms. More than a 100,000 Vietnamese MIAs are also without gravestones.

We use motor scooters to leave Kon Tum and cross a suspension bridge into tribal lands. We trek and talk as we visit several tribal villages - while Huynh answers our questions, quotes Faulkner, Poe, and Uncle Ho - and generally demonstrates the surprising breadth of his world and mind.

The tribes here have mostly given up their nomadic life, but still slash and burn the jungle to plant the same crops they have for centuries. They fish and hunt and drink rice whiskey - and have pets named Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. But they are doing OK. Not as well as their brothers in the North who benefit from an additional generation of Marxist equality, but not as badly as they would have under the prejudice of the South. National policy from Hanoi seems good, but local administration is suspect.

The Bahnar people still maintain their huge longhouses as the civic center /rec room of each village - and they are quite a sight. I find an old Special Forces scout up building a new longhouse and end up in the rafters, wrapping vines around roof supports, and hearing his story. Stories are everywhere.

Jean is invited into another where a class on basket weaving is taking place. A government sponsored instructor helping the tribe produce a cash product. They don't weave their own cloth much, as clothes are cheap. They don't walk as much, as scooters are cheap too. But now they must do something to get the cash to buy what they once made themselves. Cut extra wood, grow extra crops, catch extra fish - or learn to make tourist baskets. Economics 101.

We travel by dugout canoe for half a day. Our boatmen catch tiny fish and stuff them into a section of big bamboo - some jungle herbs go on top. We stop for lunch, strike a fire and drop the bamboo on the coals until steam pipes out.

A banana leaf for a plate, chopped peppers and some cold rice - lunch is served. We have some toothbrushes pilfered from a hotel to give their kids along for the ride. Big smiles and white, sugar-free teeth.

We pass other kids, just out of school, swimming and fishing in the clear river that snakes past their little village. They play free, safe, naked and happy - while kids in my neighborhood are encapsulated by worried adults, fearful of the society in which we live. Savages? Hmmmm.

When we must, we return to Kon Tum. And over beers we discuss our experiences. Huynh tells of the 1975 panicked evacuation of the highlands as the NVA roared south. ARVN troops tore off their uniforms and fled. Thousands died but he was saved by the sandals shaped tan on his feet, supporting his claim to be just a student. The northern soldier reversed his bayonet and cut-up a ration of rice - a slice each for Huynh, his mother, father and baby niece. They did not eat again for the 4 days it took them to return to Kon Tum. We share many serious thoughts with him into the night.

As we part he pens a poem and hands it to Jean:

It was a windy day
I had nothing to say
Clouds keep moving on a blue sky
The blue in her eyes

The soldier coming back

The former battlefield
After 40 years
From the edge of the bomb crater
The wild flowers blossom up.
Raining down from his wife's eyes
Tears!

If you want to go on the hike of a lifetime, I have his address.

- Reflecting Rod

13 - Dispatch from the Chicken Coup

2007-07-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

We should have been more suspicious at 5AM, when a chain-smoking guy opened the back door of an aged little sedan, and said, "OK, OK" - his only English. We had been told there was no direct transport from Hoi An to Kon Tum. But we kept looking until we were sold this early pick-up in what we were told would be a van for transfer to Da Nang to catch "big air-con bus leave at 7." This little car was the van's replacement, and the "big bus" in Da Nang turned out to be only a big van - with aspirations to be something much bigger.

We had no written tickets, but were just pointed at a row of mini-bus/vans facing out from the bus station's east boundry - each van with the cities of its route painted on the nose. The fellow squatting in front of a Ford marked "Kon Tum - Da Nang" said, "OK, OK" and motioned for us to get in.

After sitting in the dark and otherwise empty van for a few minutes, we used pen, paper and pantomime to try and find out the departure time. I pointed to my watch and asked, "Toilet?" "OK, OK" was barked with a gesture toward a knot of people sitting on tiny stools at the tea and noodle stalls behind the van. Behind them was my destination - worthy of its own Dispatch.

The sun comes up and the other passengers materialize just before we roll, two hours late, toward Vietnam's central highlands. All 14 seats hold young Vietnamese workers. Except for the driver and his assistant, each rider brings aboard various bits of luggage for us to examine in an attempt to guess what they are up to: A heavy toolbox and hand saw; a plastic bag of manuals of some kind; 50 kg. sack of something; rolls of rubber hose - and 7 large cardboard crates of incessantly peeping baby chickens.

A mile out of the station, we stop to pick-up a woman waving at the side of the road. She climbs in behind us and people shift a bit to make room. The driver's assistant is hanging out the side hawking for more, while the van does all possible driving stunts to speed us along - horn blazing and chicks peeping in reply. This process continues for the next 2 hours as we drive west - until, counting the unhappy baby, and the coughing old man - we are 20 plus cargo. We slow and stop again - right in the middle of the road as usual - and 7 men run to the van, greeted warmly by the assistant (that I now refer to as the "door gunner"). Surely they come to greet a long lost uncle and maybe his chickens - but no. Is it possible? In they pile! Our bags are jammed on top of the chicks. They peep in protest - and keep peeping and peeping and peeping.

The door gunner now has a man sitting on his lap and motions yet again for me to slide over. I hold out my hand a say, "Dong!" (money) - we both know I was overcharged for these seats. He turns away, "OK, OK". I have an arm braced against a window post to keep the crush from flatting Jean and her camera - which is clicking away out the window at a wondrous countryside that rises up from the coast. We follow a wide river valley that narrows into a canyon, climb over several twisting passes, past waterfalls and farms and over the mountains that make-up the spine of this long and narrow nation.

At some point, the chicks begin to escape their broken cases, peeping urgently at their freedom - they flow into the few spaces remaining inside this van. It is an Adventure, and Jean laughs when she points out we still have more legroom than we did on the 19 hour United Airlines flight that brought us here.

Six hours later, we turn south toward Pleiku, on the new Ho Chi Minh Trail Hwy. We pass through Doc To, the site of a Special Forces camp that was attacked by NVA tanks - a reverse Battle of Kinh Mon of sorts. In the van are now 28 humans. I calculate that a chicken peep requires at least some energy and therefore each chick should have already expended calories equal to its body weight. Peep, peep, peep!

My sense of adventure is growing weak and almost snaps when we find ourselves at a bus station 13k out of town - and they want us to hire motorbike taxies to take us to a hotel. I know that the boxes of little peepers, the rolls of irrigation hose and other cargo must be bound for Kon Tum town, and refuse to let Jean exit the van. The chicks peep, peep, peeping around her feet. The door gunner pulls our bags off, and I put them back on. They point to the taxi drivers coiled around our discussion. I force a smile and again point to the "Kon Tum" painted on the van. "OK OK" the driver relents, and we tag along to drop off the cargo, including helping to capturing the escapees. Peep peep! We made it alive to Kon Tum - sadly, not all the chicks did.

I started my first tour in Vietnam in these highlands in early 1968, flying the Birddogs of the 219th Recon Airplane Company - call sign "Headhunter". The job was very different than it would be later on, up North in the DMZ. Headhunters were scattered all over 3 provinces of the highlands, in ones and twos - plane, pilot and crew-chief would stay in a small Special Forces camp, Provincial or District airstrip - flying in support of whatever activity was going on at the time. I had to become familiar with many of these interesting little spots, mostly populated by minority hill peoples we use to call Montagnards. The Viets called them savages. Kon Tum was one of those interesting little places.

I spy an unmarked SUV parked outside the only real hotel in town. It is loaded with packs marked "US ARMY." This could still be a very interesting little place! All we need now is a local trekking guide, a cold beer or two - and some dinner for my hungry bride. "Honey, how does chicken sound?"

- Rooster wRangler Rod

12 - Dispatch from Southbound

2007-07-11T14:35:00.000-07:00

A Vacation is where you expect life to be better than at home … someone else does the housework, you idle at a pool or golf course - and you drink the drinks you don't know how to mix. An Adventure, on the other hand, is where you want to experience what is NOT at home … comfort, communication, convenience - and maybe even a little safety, must be sacrificed to get where you want to go. We keep telling ourselves we are on an Adventure and so can excuse the unexpected, put up with the unpleasant, and see humor instead of horror. And you really can't have an Adventure without something like a Bus Ride Story. It would be like Steve McQueen without a chase scene.

We have been studying Vietnamese driving habits for about a month now. We have our theories and hypotheses - which really can only be tested further by practical exercise. This starts with motorbike rides during the DMZ part of the trip - Jean on one with Mr. Diem and me on another with its owner. Oh yes, we also had all our bags and theirs … and it was raining. We crossed the Cua Viet River a couple of times and actually lived! But there is not much traffic up there - not valid proof of theorems.

We left Dong Ha and headed south in something they call an "open bus". This means you buy a ticket from a company whose buses drive up and down Hwy 1, and you can get on and off as you wish - dependent on their schedule and open seats. Mostly tourist, mostly white, mostly English spoken, mostly comfy - and we stop for toilet breaks.

Alas, such easy travel also cuts out the best part of this route - the climb over the Hi Van Pass - a cliff-clinger of switchbacks and grand scenery. It was an ambush heaven during the war, as truck convoys loaded at the Da Nang docks, wormed their way north toward the DMZ. The pass is neatly bi-passed now, by a long modern highway tunnel, right through the mountains. We travel like we are on vacation, and so completely miss the adventure of the pass.

Then comes Da Nang city and another old airstrip called Marble Mountain. The old runway is under a 4 lane road of busy traffic passing our concrete hangers that are still in use - no room to land a Birddog now. The famed mountains have been quarried into a different shape than when I last was here. The shanty refugee town the GIs called "Dog Patch" is gone too. Good riddance. But China Beach is still receiving visitors, although the surf is pretty flat today.

We have been in Adventure mode pretty hard for a while. It is time to play tourist and unwind - and Jean has just the spot picked out - the little town of Hoi An. This pre-colonial village is full of very old buildings and is so cute that both sides left it alone during the war. Today it is the first town in the country to convert to a purely tourist economy. Charm is poured on, cars and even scooters are largely banned, and the entire population seems coached in how to make a tourist fat and happy - for a price.

Rotund, sunburned and poorly dressed tourists buy trinkets and take photos of the Vietnam of the travel brochures. (Some of us look so slobby and sloppy I wish our Immigration Service would do some screening of who we let OUT of the country.) Laundry delivered, Dispatches sent, air-conditioning on high … and cocktails served. Our $20 hotel has a pool overlooking the conical hats working the rice paddies. This is vacation!

We are ready to test traffic observations, so we rent a motorbike - no check-out, no paperwork - just hand 'em the money and they hand me the keys. Jean folds up her map and off we go - her mother would not approve! After a few initial minutes of terror, I find the horn button and put theories to the test. We go to the beach. The surf is poor. A girl wants to sell us cold drinks and delivers the line every surfer has heard on countless beaches on countless coast, countless times ... "You should have been here yesterday" she tells us - "It was bigger yesterday."

We get out of town into the countryside lanes too narrow for cars. The white-knuckle grip eases as we putt along paddy dikes, past slow flowing canals and a river. Away from road noise, the birds and butterflies are a constant companion. We have a better chance to turn our heads and enjoy what the country offers for us to see.

One traffic obstacle, on every road in Vietnam, is the farm animals that seem to have uncontested right-or-way (except for that one slow chicken). One favorite is the ox carts piled high with straw - slowly plodding down a road like a haystack parade float - often with no driver. Apparently they've been trained to home in on home, while being chased by their own food.

Another are the sad faced old water buffalo - which used to be the plow-horse of the paddies - but have been largely replaced by internal combustion and so are kept for meat … or maybe mozzarella. A buffalo calf blocks our way and I slowly squeeze by - my horn ignored. The mother, a big ring in her nose, is grazing just off the road with a jockey of a man sitting cross-legged on the big beasts wide back. He is reading a book and chatting on a cell phone! We had to have a photo - and with smiles and gestures Jean ends up on the buffalo with him taking her picture with his cell phone. Great laughs but Jean notes this water buffalo had not seen water in a while - at least any clean water.

Other back-road sites:
Off the main roads, gas is dispensed from plastic soda bottles displayed on a box in front of the entrepreneur's home. Purchased by the liter, prices are about twice that of home. A place where bottled water is cheaper than gas? What a concept!

A trash truck goes door-to-door playing a repeating ice-cream vendor's tune over loud speakers. Out comes the villagers with bags and baskets full. Recycle is done on the spot - with glass bottles and cans and plastic jugs being bagged and piled on top of the truck. Of course, masked and gloved women do the dirty work, while the male driver sits inside smoking - with the windows up.

An amoeba of hundreds of little ducks herds across a canal and flows up the bank into a freshly cut rice field. I don't think bird flu is flogged into a fear frenzy by their media - sigh! They don't know what they are missing.

A bride in full regalia passes on the back of a scooter - a few miles later, another one is shielding her makeup behind a hat - an auspicious day for weddings, we guess. Rice harvest or lunar dates? We don't know.

And of course the colors of Vietnam are the rice field - lime and water's glint off newly planted paddies, a deep leprechaun green of mature fields … and the bronze patina of the heavy ripe grains bending down in wait. Waiting for that lady in the conical hat - to stoop and cut the stalk with her curved knife. Vietnam is in view - with all the smells to match. And life is good!

But I haven't told the bus story! Why? Because we haven't had one yet. But tomorrow we board a "public bus" to climb into the Central Highlands. A Dispatch is sure to follow - if we live.

- Scooter Stew

11 -Dispatch from Kinh Mon

2007-07-10T16:51:00.000-07:00

Mr. Diem is 63. He was captured by the NVA when they took Da Nang. For the next 6 years he did hard time in one of re-united Vietnam's many "re-education camps" - learning to be a good little Marxist - it didn't take. He bargains hard for every dollar while still making this client happy.

Mr. Diem is one of the several old vets who learned their English fighting with us, and now makes a living taking other old vets, like me, on tours of their youthful escapades. One of my escapades involved a name on my old map - a village that, in 1968, had long disappeared into the moonscape of the DMZ. Americans died here. Many more would have died except for a unique event in this war of jungle and swamp - a cavalry charge by a small group of tanks.

The weather had turned from poor to terrible for our troops on foot in the DMZ - no jets could see to drop bombs, no helicopters to fire rockets or bring more food or bullets - or even take out the wounded. The enemy was even too close to safely call in artillery. Deprived of our superior technology, it was man-to-man, and the enemy held all the aces - more men, known terrain, prepared positions and re-supply. A disaster was in the making.

Decades after this battle, I get an email out of the blue. A writer doing research wants to hear all I remember about that day. He knows his craft and has hunted down a large number of others who had been involved. The Internet Age brought us all back together - after 40 years.

That crazy general, that I still do not name, was "quite the man with the local ladies," says Mr. Diem - his ex-boss use to party with the general. This same general watched the operation unfold from a bunker in Con Thien, our "Hill of Angels." It was called Operation Rich, but now is known as the Battle of Kinh Mon - a place where the weather and the unexpected moves by his foe, set up the possibility that over a hundred of the general's brave men would die.

Tanks were put on Con Thien, for defense - and were never intended to roar off on their own. But they became the only chess piece left - a spur-of-the-moment, unplanned, unscripted charge into a most un-tank friendly place - the mines and mire of the DMZ.

It takes some persuasion for me to get Mr. Diem and our driver to try the route the tanks took that day - only part is a road of sorts.

Today it is at least dry and warm, and the village of Kinh Mon has come back to life. On one hilltop now there is a small house where another Birddog beat an anti-aircraft gunner to the draw. An old woman there says there were "big holes" here when she returned to start a farm. It looks a lot better from down here today, than it did from my little Birddog above the tanks, way back then.

The area had been mined, over the wars, by four armies … counting ours. The first tank was destroyed almost immediately after leaving Con Thien. Then another tank was hit, and then another - but they kept on moving until they could bring their big guns into action. Shock and awe! The enemy stopped and withdrew - and the cold, wet and grateful infantry huddled behind the tanks all night - some warming themselves until passing out in the exhaust gas of the engines.

I never met those tankers. I only spoke to their commander by radio that one eventful day that none of us will ever forget. Thanks to that skillful writer and the miracle of the internet, I have a name to go with the radio call-sign.

That ballsy young officer, who's men and tanks saved the day (and a general's career) became a busy city attorney in Arizona. He has a family and is not much interested in the war. He did offer to buy me a drink, and I hope to take him up on that one day to show him some old pictures - and to tell his daughters what a brave man they have for a daddy.

- Recalling Rod

PS: The Battle of Kinh Mon is featured in a book, 100 Feet Over Hell, by Jim Hooper.

10 - Dispatch from the DMZ

2007-07-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

The last time I stood to attention and saluted on this spot, I was getting a medal. A crazy general had decided the hilltop called Con Thien was a good place for an awards parade. Con Thien means "Hill of Angels", but the GIs and Marines who worked here called it "the meat grinder." It is reported to be the most heavily shelled spot of the American War - just a rocket lob south of the border between the two warring Vietnams.

The first time I was atop Con Thien, I just wanted the little ceremony finished, so I could get onto a helicopter and get the hell out of there. This time, I had flown halfway around the world to climb into the old French bunker on the top, look north to see what the Demilitarized Zone looks like - and hear what this hill's angels may have to say to me after 40 years.

Walking through the elephant grass-lined path up the hill, there is little sign of its past infamy or glory. But closer attention notes bits of sandbags and identifiable debris mixed into the soil around the rubber trees that are being planted to cover most of our former bases around here.

We meet a man and wife, armed with hoes, clearing rows through the brush to plant saplings. They are paid 4 dollars a day to plant the trees, and get to sell any scrap metal they find - iron bombs and steel junk, brass bullets and copper wire - bringing in another couple of bucks per day. He pointed out their recent finds - a handful of bullets and 2 live M-79 grenades - he pointed with half a hand.

A De-Militarized Zone is the maximum oxymoron. Like the one in Korea today, the Vietnamese DMZ was the most militarized place of the war. Both sides had jets; both sides had tanks; both sides had huge artillery guns, and both sides lived underground - us in bunkered bases like Con Thien, and them in underground villages like the Vinh Moc tunnels.

We drive across "Freedom Bridge" into the North to go down into this amazing tunnel complex, now a tourist draw. Some parts are 60' underground. It housed an entire village dedicated to keeping supplies flowing to the DMZ forces attacking the South. Over 2 miles of large, stand-up size tunnels with kitchens and sleeping areas - and even room for the 17 babies born there during the war - 16 are still alive and in the army.

The small museum houses a 12.7mm anti-aircraft gun for me to try on for size. On the wall is a photo of a Birddog that was shot down nearby - that's what Catkillers flew … Army O-1 Birddogs. And these tunnels, the guns that protected them, and the bigger guns they supplied, are what Birddogs hunted.

As I stand in a tunnel entrance, it is easy to see why they were so damn hard to find from the air. The holes that held their protective anti-aircraft guns without their camouflage, are easy to see from ground level - we pass several sets. Looking up, I can imagine how my little white face must have looked, peering down from a Birddog - a tempting target. They missed me, mostly … others were not so blessed.

One was my friend Lee. We went to flight school together - he lived next door. We had famously rowdy poker games - he once won another pilot's Oldsmoble, then gave it back the next day. He danced on the tabletops at the officer's club, we dueled with champaign corks - we lived life large. And he was large, and of a body shape that was not flattered by our flight suits, and so picked up the nickname "Blivet" after a joke of the day about "10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound sack".

He became a Catkiller, one of several of my classmates that were sent to the unit. I volunteered to join later. We were roommates in Phu Bai and he was my mentor - teaching me how to stay alive while flying in the DMZ. I was in my plane, Lee and his observer Steve, were nearby in theirs. We hung over a target talking on the radio - and then a shell came up and picked him. Not much more to say. Not much more is known. He was one of the best of us. I guess the angels didn't know.

It took effort to find the spot in North Vietnam where Lee ended his last flight - some research in Washington, the National Archives, CIA documents, MIA researchers work, etc. - and most importantly, my own maps from that time.

The maps were kept for many years by my mother, sent to her by another Catkiller that was taken too soon, Terry Scruggs. He became my new roommate and shipped all of my stuff home after I was medi-evaced out to a hospital in Japan. Thanks again Terry.

A good road now runs north from Con Tien toward the site … past the National Cemetery where tens of thousands of gravestones stand … across the Ben Hai River, and across the DMZ into North Vietnam. A cow path leads me further thru any mines, up a draw, past old trenches and craters and I am alone. There is a tiny creek running clear, adding its babble to the birds. This could be the spot … or not. It is not important - I am here for me, not them. 40 years is a long time but you are never too old to cry.

Trees have grown tall around a meadow, flowers bloom, bananas grow wild - it is a place at peace. May Donald Lee Harrison and all the others be at peace - and may the angels of this beautiful country never again take wing to war.

- Reunification Rod

9. Dispatch From a Catkiller

2007-07-10T14:36:00.000-07:00

Americans flying in this piece of sky 40 years ago would be dodging surface-to-air missiles and the "Bandits" arising from the Mig fighter bases that were down below - known to our pilots by the code names Crab and Lobster. Flying down from Hanoi today, we trust Air Vietnam's shiny new AirBus 321 to pass us safely and in comfort. Breakfast is served. We pop out in drizzle about 1200 feet above the rice paddies, on final approach to Phu Bai airport, the old home of the 220th Recon Airplane Company … call-sign "Catkiller."

The airport is way bigger now, and the modern runway covers much of where our compound stood - trees cover the rest - but the old control tower is still there, almost lost behind a big new terminal befitting its status as the regional airport for the ancient Imperial Capital city of Hue.

You can travel easily and cheaply here. Flight Hanoi/Phu Bai - $53. Airport Mini-bus to Hue - $2. Hotel overlooking the old Citadel - $24. Having a big rat run across Jean's sandals while dining at the floating restaurant on the Perfume River - priceless! Jean sits still for almost anything, but it was a very big rat!

We do the sites. The huge red flag again waves over the main gate to the Citadel. It cost 150 US Marines to pull it down after the North took Hue during the Tet Offensive. The cost to the Imperial vintage buildings was high too, and evidence of battle is easy to see. But some of the old imperial glory has been restored. The Forbidden City is now open even to non-eunuchs, thank goodness, as the vasectomy would be inconvenient to verify at the ticket booth.

The little airstrip the Catkillers used inside the old walls is gone. All aircraft there were lost on the first morning of the Tet attack. But the Duy Than Hotel is still going strong - and Missy Kim, Bargirl number 4, sends her best to old friends in America - you know who you are. She may be a little long in the tooth now, but that tooth is the gold one, and it still has some sparkle.

It is raining and Jean opts for the dripping doorway of a noodle shop for a bowl of the national dish - pho - pronounced "fur". It is great stuff, goes well with good local beer, and table manners allow it all to be slurped. A little different pho recipe here than up in the north. Hue has pride in its regional cuisine left over from the Imperial Court - where 50 chefs made 50 dishes each day for the Emperor - and no repeats for a year. But I will repeat pho a lot.

We plot our assault on the DMZ assisted by a modern cell phone net, and a girl who works at our hotel. She is from a village just north of the Ben Hai River in an area of the DMZ some Catkillers knew too well. She is excited that I know where she lives. The population of Vietnam is young, too young to remember the war - they react to it as I might have if greeting an old Luftwaffe pilot 40 years after WWII - curiosity not animosity - even though both my parents lived in London thru the Blitz.

They young Viets have a buoyant optimism and good humor - better off than their parents and confident that life will be even better for their children. They are a pleasure to be with. But tomorrow we will be with the old generation - as we arrange to hire a 63 year old ex-officer from the losing side, doing guide work out of the town of Dong Ha. That's our destination for tomorrow - and another old home of this old Catkiller.

- Soaring Stew

8. Dispatch from the Ho Chi Minh Trail

2007-06-24T16:21:00.000-07:00

I open my eyes and dawn's aurora backlights the jungle. Other eyes look back into the sweaty cave formed by my mosquito net. Without my glasses, I cannot make out the species, phylum - or even count the legs clinging to the netting. Arachnid or insect … or even reptile? It don't matter … everything living in Cuc Phuong National Park is protected. A lost world of forest and butterflies first opened up as the Ho Chi Minh Trail was being cut south from Hanoi. It is the first national park in Vietnam, opened by Uncle Ho himself in 1969, right in the middle of my war. He thought it a pretty special place, and we do too.

Jean is waiting for me to wake up. She knows I will want to see the huge grey hunting spider that streaks, mouse-like across the floor of our little Park Service cabin - she also wants me to evict him.

We have hired a translator and driver to escape the hectic din of Hanoi. The as-seen-on Discovery Channel attractions like Halong Bay and the hill station at Sapa are axed from our trip list. Packaged tourists and the things they expect are not what we are craving. We want to talk and be with the people of Orlando, not just see Disney World.

The old Ho Chi Minh Trail is being paved over and made into a major north/south highway - it will be traveled by big trucks rather than the loaded-down scooters and bikes they used to feed their winning war machine. Hopes are high to complete it all the way to Saigon by 2010 for the 1000th birthday of Hanoi city. The project is running behind schedule as cost, corruption and the god-awful terrain slows progress. It will be a welcome addition to the narrow and poorly engineered Hwy1 that is now the only N/S route.

I, and a lot of my fellows pilots spent a lot of time and effort bombing, strafing, shooting, and laying mines - attempting to put a crimp into Uncle Ho's pipeline. I would climb into a tiny plane, built by Cessna for the Korean War … and another young man would climb into the small observer's seat behind me, and off we would fly. Both of us would peer out of the open windows, searching the ground for something to kill - or something that was trying to kill us.

These overloaded obsolete little aircraft were kept flying by even younger young men - that most of us pilots hardly knew. We flew mainly by day, and so they pulled long nights to repair and make ready for the dawn's early light. It was the height of human trust for us pilots to bring back a plane, broken or damaged, and hand it to a pimply-faced kid to fix. In the morning he would say, "She's ready to fly, sir," and we would hop in and without a pause, fly her over the jungle covered mountains to the likes of the A Shau Valley, or into the DMZ, or as a few of us did, into North Vietnam itself. (Even into Laos, but you didn't hear it from me.)

Even more trusting were the Aerial Observers in the backseat who were not pilots, but ground officers trying to watch the targets, while the pilot snapped his control stick right and left - dodging the treetops or worse … dodging tracers or puffs of smoke that popped open as anti-aircraft shells hunted the little plane's path. Our observers used the open window for other things too, and most lost weight during their tour.

Today we fly down Hwy 1 in the back of a four-door Ford. Troung, our interpreter/guide and his young driver, lounge in the front seat - answering our nearly unbroken stream of questions. Questions are interspersed with gasps and "oh my gods!" as Jean digs nails into my knee and another unavoidable crash is avoided. They explain everything except our questions about Vietnamese traffic "customs."

I try to relax and become like those trusting Aerial Observers. Somehow we will pull through. The huge bus, head-on to us with horn blaring, would somehow get over before we met - without flattening the 2 bikes peddling along the left gutter with 20 foot sections of reinforcing rod sagging between them. This while we are passing a truck simultaneously passing a scooter loaded with caged pigs. There is nothing I can do but to accept my fate, place my trust in my pilot, and try to do my duty as a good observer.

From my observation, it seems the centerlines on roads here, are totally arbitrary. It moves right and left as traffic load requires. A bus, 2 scooters, 3 bikes and our car going south - requires more road for passing - and all do at will. While the smaller crush (bad choice of words) of vehicles coming in the opposite direction, somehow knows to form a single line at the edge of pavement, or even sidewalk, to allow us by. Right-of-weight. The horn is used in all situations. In spite of the seeming havoc, the only casualty we have seen so far, has been one slow chicken with a poor sense of timing.

We bounce across a new bridge where the stumps of the old one, maybe flattened by my brother's F-4, still rust in the dust. I ask, and Troung tells me that his father, my same age, fought in the South. He had never been outside his tiny mountain village until he walked down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, past this beautiful national park, to fight the Americans. He was at first afraid of Americans with their "Buddha helmets" and modern firepower and "would not attack." After the Viet Cong showed him we could be killed, he "did his duty." He was "very lucky as there was a doctor nearby to keep him from bleeding (to death) when his arm was blown off."

Troung's university education, and that of his brother and sister, were paid for by the State because their father's arm never returned home. Though a Catholic and a Montagnard, he mouthed a Buddhist thought, "Out of all evil comes some good."

Then comes his questions back at me, and the one I dreaded. After a couple of days together, he must have suspected. My age, rusty phrases of his language, knowledge of his history, knowing how to squat without a chair - and of course … the subjects of my questions. He looked me in the eyes. "Were you here? Were you in the American War?"

Troung is the age of the children I chose not to have … not to have maybe in part, because my answer was "yes". Tonight, saying goodbye, I was shaking while gripping his hand. I asked him to tell his father I was sorry for all the evil … and to tell his father he had made a good son. "Out of all evil comes some good."

-Shaky Stew

7. Dispatch from a Hanoi Rice Bowl

2007-06-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

Hanoi - what a place! Everyone is so very busy - seemingly every second. The old quarter is a warren of tiny shops, each displaying a pile of the street's specialty product. There is a whole street for lacquer ware, one for flowers, shoes, baskets, brushes, sewing thread, coffins, even one for packing tape. Sales are brisk but supply-side economics hasn't arrived and competition is fierce.

Like Saigon, the scooters are everywhere. They flow through the narrow streets without any pattern or discernable reason to succeed. Scooters are parked in tight knots blocking most sidewalks and alleys. These little 40cc putts are able to carry: (Jean has picture proof) … one neatly attired office worker; or up to a family of 5; or 2 people and 3 big pigs; or 2 people and one small cow. The loads on the bicycles are equally impressive - with bundled piles often coating the bike into invisibility - skills leaned on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, no doubt.

The new Air force Museum is near their Air Force Headquarters and guards strut their AK47's. The grounds are littered with F-4 carcasses and other assorted airplane parts. It also has a big display of anti-aircraft weapons of interest to me and every other pilot who flew over here. From reading their bombastic descriptive captions, it is amazing that any of us ever got back.

Jean is told of an under-tent restaurant where most traditional dishes are available, each prepared in little booths surrounding the family-style seating area. We walk over the French railroad tracks after seeing Uncle Ho's tomb and the Ethnographic Museum. The restaurant is off the beaten track and we get lost - and then found by a gentleman who taught himself English while working as a driver at the Korean Embassy. He kindly walks blocks with us until the restaurant is in view. It is packed - mostly by Viets from the offices nearby, and a very few "round eyes" - looking both embassy and business types.

Jean is in cook's nirvana, and as always, the local foodies reciprocate her interest with detailed menus, cooking tips, and ingredient translations - some requiring hilarious pantomime for the meat courses. "If you eat that, you will die!" - a quote from a culinary coward we once met in Africa - is again invoked by Jean or me, just before some unknown substance is wolfed down, smothered in fermented fish sauce and a Campbell's Soup smile. Mmmm Mmmm Good!

A beautiful Vietnamese lady sits on the bench next to Jean - impossibly high cheekbones, flawless milky skin, and a neck that must be graced by additional vertebra. She flashes a smile as I show frustration over which dipping sauce I should use with which plate of delectables. She tells us about the food and offers hers to taste. We give her a souvenir San Francisco pen, but ask to borrow it back to take food notes. She then gives us a pen - made in Vietnam. Ours? Made in China.

The men seated next to me offer me a taste of something to "make strong." I am beginning to think sending over Viagra could save all manner of species that Asian men think "makes strong." Snake blood, tiger testes, bird nest, duck embryo, bear paw, rhino horn … are some that I have passed up … well except for the duck embryo. Jean was not impressed.

Beer is about 25 cents a mug on the street - literally - as the kegs of Bia Hoi (fresh beer) are plopped outside where locals squat at the curb for an evening cool-off, along with their city.* All the food is fresh, frequent and fabulous! After a few days of playing tourist in Hanoi, and drinking and eating ourselves into a state of gluttony, it is time to move on. Our car, driver and a sharp young translator await. Let's see what we shall see.

- Roddy Rotund

* Our personal best is 17 cents for a liter of beer in Istanbul - a record that probable will never be broken.

6. Dispatch from the Linga

2007-06-13T17:04:00.000-07:00

In 1969, some lost traveler bent down to examine strange shapes under the cool clear waters flowing down a jungle shaded mountain stream -high above the plain of Angkor. These were the long lost 1000 Lingas, painstakingly carved into the stone streambed to bless the water that flows miles away into the massive and complex waterworks around Angkor. Now cleared of mines, it is a unique attraction for those ready to make the trek.

A linga is a sacred stone phallus revered by Hindus - and until modern science interfered - symbolized a irreplaceable part of the cycle of life. They may not need us boy-toys anymore, but once we were gods! I would love to have my Indian neighbor here to pester with questions.

The later arriving Buddhists have usurped the older Hindu stuff. Stone Shivas and Brahmas wear saffron robes now, and are tended by shaved headed old nuns. The Roman church did the same thing - with old Jupiter and Minerva statues simply getting new names as their Pagan temples became Christian churches. And that big black Kabala in Mecca was getting marched around long before the Prophet was born. Religious adaptation defies the strict dogma that too many believe is sooooo pure and eternal.

The jungle is dry but humid, and buzzing with life. Breeze cannot reach us as we climb up the valley. Some botanist with too much time has placed tags near the bigger trees - but both Khmer and Latin names are Greek to me. One big root, polished by hikers shoes, identifies itself - shining like only black ebony can. It is a magic place. Alas, we passed a lot of log trucks driving up to the trailhead.

Reaching the stream, the old watchman shows us around as I hold the hand of his little orphaned ward, just turned 6. She is shy and tiny - they both show signs of past malnutrition. I can understand why movie stars must adopt one of these kids after using their picturesque land as a backdrop for some Hollywood fluff.

My life is a storybook compared to their nightmares, and each legless or footless beggar gets a small bill or two - and a smile - and with my palms together, a slight bow … why? I don't know. Regret that life ain't fair? Frustration that I can't make it fair? Or maybe just guilt - that my culture produced that land mine.

Tonight, as we fly out of Cambodia, over Laos and toward Hanoi, I watch the dark landscape below. Little of my culture has reached it yet. I peeked into Laos in 1968 but must pass it by tonight - maybe again someday. But I have too much input to process already - and approaching is a place that greeted me much too warmly the last time I flew in - North Vietnam.

- Sighing Stew

5. Dispatch from Angkor

2007-06-13T14:25:00.000-07:00

There is a worldwide election taking place. The old, tired and Greco-centric "7 Wonders of the World" is getting a long overdue update. If you vote, don't forget this place! There is nothing to compare.

We steamed up the Mekong to just above Kompong Cham (you will need a good map). The Moslem Cham people of this area rebelled against the Khmer Rouge and as a result there are not too many of them left. But enough about the bad old days.

We were blessed by dry weather, a cooling breeze - and the incredible warmth of the Cambodian people we met while strolling through their villages and temples. I can almost imagine the invading armies that carved up the ancient Khmer Empire, being just invited in by the hospitable welcome that seems a part of Cambodian DNA.

The handshake, our relic of showing your sword hand is empty, is not used. The French cheek kissing is also out. Pressing together of the palms with a smiling nod of acknowledgement seems so much more civilized - not to mention sanitary in a time of bird flu and friends with runny nosed pre-schoolers at home.

But to really see their core of civilization, to find the soul of these people, to remove all doubt to their claim of having built a Wonder of the World - you only need to view the cities of stone called Angkor Wat.

When the Kings of Angkor were building this vast complex, London was still a village. Visitors then mostly came across Tonle Saip Lake from the Mekong - we did likewise. This unique water wonder reverses its flow during the rainy season and more than quadruples its area into a vast inland sea - and provides perhaps the largest freshwater fishery on earth. This protein, and the rich rice lands around it, provided the surplus food and wealth needed to construct this huge complex of exquisitely carved temples and walls - truly an epic in stone.

Several days with a tuk (motor scooter pulling a rickshaw) and driver are required to take in just the most popular sites. Angkor Wat is just one of dozens of complexes here that were covered by the jungle for ages. The scale hard to comprehend - similar to exploring a jungle-choked island of Manhattan a thousand years after the last human turned off the lights. Some sites are still climbed by ancient old trees, their roots snaking across walls and pushing apart tons of stone.

Each evening, tourists choose a high tower to watch the sunset over the jungle. In the distance, other "Wats" poke up where other tourist do likewise. The hoards of locals selling trinkets, food and drinks are prevented from entering the walls by a small army of minders and guides - except last night as we sat atop a tiered mountain of a temple called Pre Rup.

I am offered a beer - "OK, only two dollar, very cold." I counter that the price is expensive (bargaining is expected). It soon became clear that the inflated cost was needed to support the police captain who allows selected vendors access to the temple's thirsty tourists. I raise my beer in salute as the captain struts by. His English is excellent and he has no problem addressing the subject.

He joined the police 10 years ago after doing his military service. His brother got him the job when money to continue schooling could not be found. As the captain in charge of all the monuments in the Angkor area, he is paid $22 a month - while a mere guide gets that much per day. To augment, the captain gets a buck for each of the beers and sodas sold atop the temple. He offers an extra police badge for sale, I demure. The eight year-old boy selling postcards pays him another $15 a month. Still the captain is thinking of quitting the force and buying a tuk--tuk scooter to cart around tourists. We pay our tuk driver $10 a day. He can't afford beer.

But I can. And today it is HOT! Sweat drips into my shoes. And even if it's a wet heat, one must stay hydrated! Drafts of wonderfully cold Cambodian beer are about 75 cents. So we take a day off and prepare for a trip into the jungle to visit the thousand year-old underwater carvings of the 1000 Linga (phallus). Just another wonder of the world, in this wonder-filled country.

- Sun-Roasted Rod

4. Dispatch from the Killing Fields

2007-06-09T15:41:00.001-07:00

Because of my war, some of America may actually be able to find the Kingdom of Cambodia on a map. Some might even recall that some really bad stuff happened here but it was far away - and there were many other channels to watch. America had left, done with wars in these parts - and the memory and bitterness kept news of the aftermath off the front page and out of our conscience. To bad ignoring it did not make it really go away.

All over Cambodia, the Killing Fields are still fresh. Human bones still wash out of the mud, and those that put them there are still around. After all the years of butchery and crimes - that reduced this nation to a starving corpse - only 4 Khmer Rouge leaders have been charged, and none have reached trial. The Buddha tells us that to forgive brings merit - but I think Cambodians, the ones that survived, maybe are just too tired of killing to take revenge.

We arrive abeam Phnom Penh after dark and drop anchor in the middle of the river - which here is at least a mile wide. Crossing from the Viet part of the river into the Cambodian part, changed nearly everything. Big boat traffic almost ceased, electric lights ashore became rare, and the population density more than halved. Even the style of local boats changed from the standing double oars and painted eyes of Vietnam, into a Cambodian form with swept-up bow and stern. They row standing up, one from the front and one at the rear, like a gondola in Venice

At dawn we move to the city dock (an ex-US Navy barge fitted to rise and fall with the river level). Across the road stands the Royal Palace where the present king is housed. His house glistens gold with architecture both Buddhist and Hindu - all set off in neatly trimmed gardens. We tour it and the National Museum. Most of the historic artwork of this culture now graces the mantles and bookcases of well accessorized McMansions, or smart SoHo lofts. We have seen stupas with hundreds of carved stone figures - all now headless. Much of what little remains is in this museum, and we luck into a great guide - good knowledge and passable English.

She is an orphaned student, about 45 years old. Pol Pot's lads killed all her family and ended her schooling. Hell … they ended her whole school system! Later we walk through a downtown grade school that was used to jail and question thousands of suspects. The instruments of torture are left in place. All but 13 prisoners were sent to a field outside of town where their sculls are now stacked high in witness to a tale that would be otherwise be beyond belief. The last 13 were killed at the school, still chained to a classroom floor, as the Vietnamese army arrived to stop the insanity.

Jean steps over the strips of clothes and bones that poke up after the rain. Hundreds more such fields are scattered around the country … but life goes on. The capital of Phnom Penh, emptied then, is now re-populated and bustling. Their king has returned. Laughing children peddle by in school uniforms while I drip sweat on a keyboard in a well stocked canned goods store / internet café. The trees and grass now grow green atop the Killing Fields.

I can't help but wonder, as we watch delicate little Cambodian girls dance their ancient art form - how could one culture produce such beauty and such horror?

I hope my telling this tale puts our petty problems in perspective - and improves my Cambodian dreams.

- Rod un-Rouge

3. Dispatch from the Mekong

2007-06-09T11:14:00.000-07:00

Like slavery and other such human vices, colonialism is now considered bad. It had its period of respectability that has come and gone. But if we can admire the antebellum mansions that American slavery made possible … then it is OK for me to lust after the old river steamboats that once carried the colonial masters up the great rivers of the world. Mark Twain glorified life on the Mississippi; Kipling told the British Empire of the "great grey greasy Limpopo”; and Indochina served up even better sounding rivers like the Irriwaddy … and the Mekong.

Years back, Jean and I sat with dusty backpacks on the bank of the Irriwaddy, and watched an old river steamer work her way past the ruins of Pagan, Burma. That, we thought, is the way to travel! And so too did a Burmese company that has put back into service two of these boats on the Mekong – local built copies of the ones that once injected our Western ways into the watery veins of their Orient.

The SV Mekong Pandaw sails out of the Vietnamese port of My Tho - up the Mekong into the heart of Cambodia. More than a week of slowly passing through this great delta - where roads are few and life happens by the water. Anchoring mid-stream at night, and then nosing a plank to the shore, or allowing small local boats to deliver us into villages and markets. Perfect travel - easy physically, rich visually, and constantly reveling new and interesting facets of this jewel of a river. I highly recommend it.

This is NOT the Swift-boat from Apocalypse Now, or even the African Queen … no pigs and chickens or sacks of onions. Varnished teak and polished brass everywhere - a uniformed crew from Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam - and 44 lucky travelers. Jean has a knack for digging out travel gems like this. I also highly recommend finding one like her to travel with … a queen of diamonds as well as hearts.

Ashore, a Mr. Thanh buys me a chilled coconut. He is from Hai Phong and uses his BA in English from Hanoi University to stay solvent until his swimwear company can ice a deal with buyers in Australia. He is of an age that knows of my war. We sip and talk. He tells of growing up hiding in the banana grove while American bombers leveled his town and mined its harbor. His is more interested in internet sales strategies.

Then he warns me away from 5 old Viet fishermen who sit nearby - motioning to share their Pepsi jug of rice whiskey … at 11 in the morning. I don't heed his advice. The whisky is killer. Shooters followed by a slice of jackfruit and a small rock of salt. It even tastes a little like Tequila. Mr. Thanh does not join in. He is educated, well off, and from the north. The divide is palpable.

Aboard, again the common language is English. Even the crew slips into it when national tongues need straightening out. The chef is Cambodian and Jean is quickly in his good graces with her refined interest in his art. The strange fruits and local spices are a treasure to justify colonial conquest. Food is varied and fresh - and that most important item of western invention is always available – cold beer.

We will ride as far up the Mekong as the dry season water level will allow. From there, we plan on flying to Hanoi and dig into the main course of this trip. But first, a side dish that is mandatory in this part of the world - Angkor Wat.

- Riverine Rod

2. Dispatch from Tan Son Nhat

2007-06-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

Something was abuzz as we exited the terminal’s arrival area. Customs and Immigration had been painless, and with bags in hand, we found a sea of faces - all turned to us as we open the double doors into the late night heat.

Tan Sun Nhat airport no longer has its squadrons of US Air Force jets, but their huge concrete hangers are still there. The ramp where I first climbed down into the humid heat bomb of Vietnam is now covered with US built Boeing airliners, from all over the world. 40 years of change for the better.

We pre-booked a hotel off the web and airport pick-up was included, so we scan over the heads of the shorter Asian crowd for some type of shuttle bus or van. A group of white faces, Brits by the look of them, lean on their bags appearing to wait for another of their group - but instead they were looking for me! … or they thought they were.

Behind them stood a man, holding up a sign on a long stick that read “Welcome to Vietnam Mr. Rod Stewart”. After a 19 hour flight, this was a very welcome sight to us – but not to those tourists. A collective groan went up as this balding American and his jet lagged wife turn out NOT to be the rock star and consort they had hoped for. We piled into the hotel’s sedan and headed into the heart of the city.

Saigon is not as I last found her – she is now 6 million and growing. The ubiquitous smell of the GIs burning their shit with diesel fuel is happily absent. Starbucks has not arrived, but a “Gucci Coming Soon” was plastered across a storefront. Now officially called Ho Chi Minh City, she is not “just another big city” … not yet. Bicycle rickshaws are still about, but the 3 to 4 million Honda and Vespa scooters have replaced the bicycle. Toyota sedans can’t be far behind. The beautiful girls ride past, not in the gorgeous flowing silk au dai dresses and conical hats that I had admired so much - but in designer jeans and pant suits – chatting away on cell phones. The traffic is epic.

Our driver is Tuan, who no sooner finds we are Americans than announces he is anti-communist and a Catholic. He was in the Vietnamese Rangers during the war and agrees, almost wistfully, that that was a long time ago, when we were both very young. Many ex-soldiers here put their English skills to good use in the tourist industry.

It is lucky break that I learned English as a youth as my lack of language gifts are again reinforced. My phrases of Vietnamese have been mostly forgotten. I love hearing Japanese and Germans settling their hotel bills using my native tongue. Kind of makes me feel like a Latin speaker during the homogeny of the Roman Empire.

It is Friday night so we try to walk off my spinal kinks by joining other couples strolling along the Saigon River. My back injuries flaring up as I return to the land of their birth seems an ironic form of “Uncle Ho’s revenge.” 19 hour flights are not an advance of civilization.

The Saigon is connected to one of 9 navigatable branches of the Mekong River. On our first morning, as soon as we can negotiate a breakfast bowl of pho noodles and a cup of Vietnamese coffee, we will hop on a bus heading south, to start our journey on this mightiest of Asia’s rivers.

- Rock Star Rod

1. Dispatch from Gate 94

2007-06-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

Things have changed a bit since the first time I packed up to go to Vietnam. My bulging canvas cylinder of an army-green duffel bag has turned into a hi-tech red nylon case - complete with wheels - in hopes that some of the country has been paved. But this bag also has shoulder straps – I guess need for a rucksack was permanently ingrained in me at the Infantry School.

Instead of a packed pile of olive drab cotton fatigues, towels and skivvies, a helmet and nomex flight suits - I now have easy drying micro-fiber shirts and rip-stop trousers with zip off legs - made in Vietnam. My shoes are rot-proof synthetics that Velcro tight over support stockings – a G-suit for the 19 hour flight. 60 years and 45 pounds of baggage this time. The last time at 21, I was hauling the weight of my world.

That first flight was on a tired government charter by World Airways. We made two stops crossing the Pacific for fuel and visits to some other American conquests – Midway and the Philippines. I flew tiny spotter planes in Vietnam. Today’s plane is a huge 747, which is longer noise to tail than two of my flights in Vietnam. I was not always a careful pilot, and you taxpayers got the bill.

The departure lounge is full of faces of the new America. The ear picks up tonal dialects of Southeast Asia, the harshness of Korean, the choppy gate of Japanese and singing of Mandarin - interrupted by those speakers switching into English as needed.

Many Vietnamese wait to board: Young businessmen - and women, with Blackberrys and briefcases; students in shabby style; and a pair of red robed monks copying my haircut. At least my bare scalp is the same this time - but more naturally so.

I can only imagine the changes to Vietnam that have passed since I last left there as a scared and cynical soldier. Those years of combat represented a major portion of my then adult life, and undoubtedly altered me, for better or worse, away from the life I would have otherwise lived. Pointless to ponder.

So now I sit jammed in a frequent-flier’s economy seat with far less room than I ever remember. The headrest in front is reclined into my keyboard. My knees grind into an in-flight magazine. It would be funny if not for the little paper napkin (that outweighed the pretzels with which it was served) which read: “United has the most leg room of any US carrier.” We HAVE changed. A plane full of our infantrymen, accustom to more roomy foxholes, would have rebelled.

But this old traveler just looks out the window onto the largest thing on earth. I will cross the Pacific Ocean in the span of 4 hit movies and 5 meals that surpass the finest C rations. I naively had no fear the first time I crossed this ocean on my way to war. The second time I knew better and was rightfully apprehensive. This time, I fear only that, like America and Vietnam, I have changed too much for this to be the adventure it should. Tomorrow night we land in Saigon, and then we shall see.

- Rod en Route