11 -Dispatch from Kinh Mon

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.

12 - Dispatch from Southbound

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

13 - Dispatch from the Chicken Coup

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

14 - Dispatch from a Long House

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

15 - Dispatch from the Barber Shop

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

16 - The End/Dispatch from Happy Valley

"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 little boy.

- Rod Resigned