Still, it’s not quite as bad as China or North Korea. Ho Chi Minh is respected, not worshipped. I was in Ho Chi Minh City on May 19, Uncle Ho’s birthday, which is a public holiday. The celebration was muted; business went on as usual. The Vietnamese have seen a lot in their lifetimes, and the past is rapidly receding. They seem more interested in the future, in improving their lot, than in looking back.
I had the good fortune to link up with Vietnam Battlefield Tours for much of my trip to Southeast Asia. Vietnam Battlefield Tours is more of a labor of love for a handful of Vietnam veterans than a true business. The organization often brings along, at no charge, veterans who are unable to afford the cost of the trip. Their prices are very reasonable, and it’s the only tour I’ve ever been on where no tipping is allowed, not even for tour guides.
Our guide, Tex, is a decorated Marine veteran who has taken groups to Southeast Asia more than forty times. One of the founders and directors of the non-profit corporation, Tex is one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met, a respected friend and mentor to hundreds of people who served during the war.
Many of the people Tex takes to Vietnam are veterans of the war: soldiers, Marines, and airmen looking to return to a country they were once very glad to be rid of. Some bring wives or children, eager to explain to their family what they did in a war so many years distant. A few are so old or lame that they have to be helped on and off the bus; others are eager and able to hit the ground and search for familiar sights in a changed country.
Our tour included a group of college students, several veterans, and even a couple of college professors. The emphasis was on battlefields, military museums, and other sites of interest to those who had served in the war.
Tex usually plans the itinerary to include a stop at a spot where each of the veterans served. A few want to go to a certain firebase or to a location where they were once in a fierce firefight; others want to return to an area where a buddy died in action. Sometimes, children come back to search for the spot where their father was killed.
An early stop was at the Hoa Lo Prison, better known to American POWs as the Hanoi Hilton. The building was originally built by the French in the late nineteenth century to house Vietnamese detainees, including political prisoners fighting for independence from French colonial rule.
On August 5, 1964, naval aviator Everett Alvarez, Jr., flying a strike mission after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, was shot down and became the first U.S. POW sent to Hoa Lo. Hundreds more were incarcerated between 1964 and 1973, the majority of them pilots and backseaters shot down during the Rolling Thunder campaign. The number of new POWs fell off until the bombing of North Vietnam resumed in 1972 with the Linebacker campaign.
The North Vietnamese had several prisons to house American POWs, all appropriately named by their U.S. captives. Alcatraz sheltered some of the recalcitrant Americans, Dirty Bird placed the POWs next to a power plant, and others included the Zoo, the Briarpatch, and the Plantation.
The common theme for POWs up until around 1969 was torture—rope bindings, beatings, starvation, no medical care, leg irons, and prolonged solitary confinement. Following Ho Chi Minh’s death in 1969, the treatment of the POWs slowly began to improve. After U.S. forces raided the Son Tay Prison Camp in the fall of 1970, most of the POWs were moved from outlying prisons into the Hanoi Hilton.
From time to time, the North Vietnamese would bring in American anti-war activists for a visit. People like Jane Fonda or Tom Hayden would testify to the damage caused by U.S. bombing and the great treatment POWs were receiving. Fonda even found time for a photo-op sitting atop a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun.
Like the rest of the war, that’s all history now. Most of the Hanoi Hilton was demolished and replaced by high-rise buildings. There’s still a Hilton hotel in town, but it’s located several blocks away and is known as the Hilton Hanoi Opera.
What is left of the original Hoa Lo Prison serves as a museum that mostly documents the Vietnamese experience under French colonialism. The entrance to the massive stone building is through an art nouveau-style arched doorway labeled “Maison Centrale”—the French big house. The prison cells were poorly-lit, poorly-ventilated rooms that sweltered in the summer and froze during the winter. The Vietnamese prisoners were kept in leg irons or in group stocks. One room holds the guillotine used by the French; gruesome photos on the wall show baskets full of heads severed by the instrument of death.
The ordeal of the Vietnamese under the French was colonialism at its brutal worst. Hoa Lo was a breeding ground, a de facto training school for Vietnamese nationalists. Many of the nation’s leaders spent time at the prison.
The experience of the American POWs at Hoa Lo, by contrast, is documented mainly by old photographs. The men are shown playing basketball, singing Christmas carols, being attended to by North Vietnamese medical personnel. It seems more like a summer camp than a prison. Several signs condemn the United States for supporting the South Vietnamese and for bombing the North.
There’s no mention of torture, of course. The Vietnamese to this day deny that it occurred. The reality is far different. After the war, dozens of POWs wrote memoirs about their experience in captivity. Torture is a central part of most of their stories; many considered it a fate worse than death.
One display case contains John McCain’s flight suit, along with the parachute that saved him. McCain was shot down in October 1967 on his twenty-third combat mission and had the misfortune to land in Truc Bach Lake, right in the middle of Hanoi. Three of his limbs were broken during his ejection from the aircraft. He was beaten and bayonetted, and his flight suit cut away. (Senator McCain, who has visited Hoa Lo many times, maintains that the flight suit on display is not his.) We also visited a poorly-kept monument on the banks of the Truc Bach Lake that commemorates John McCain’s capture.
Any Vietnamese I talked to for any length of time invariably brought up John McCain’s name, as well as that of Pete Peterson. Peterson, another POW, was the first U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam. The two men are well-known, well-liked, and highly respected. In fact, there is probably no greater advocate of reconciliation between the United States and Vietnam than the senator from Arizona. McCain has led the difficult push for normalization of relations between the two countries, an effort that continues today. It’s a never-ending effort to replace old grievances with new hope.
Not too far away from Truc Bach Lake is another lake (actually, more of a pond) that contains some remnants of a B-52. Huu Tiep Lake, or B-52 Lake as it is better known, contains some of the twisted wreckage of the large bomber, shot down during the Linebacker II campaign in late December 1972. A couple of tires pierce the surface; weeds grow from most of the plane’s carcass. There is a plaque that describes the downing of the aircraft, but little else. The Vietnamese seem oblivious to the aircraft’s presence. The lake can only be reached through a maze of streets so narrow that only pedestrians and motorbikes can enter. No one gives it a second glance; it’s a relic of a war that happened a very long time ago.
It’s easy, decades later when confronted by the wreckage of American planes or the horror of prison life, to resurrect a certain bitterness toward the other side. McCain and Peterson probably long ago realized that the older you get, the higher the toll that hatred takes on your existence. They elected to let the future bury the past. Their example is a good one to try to follow.
TWENTY-FIVE
TRAVELING WITH
THE MARINES
Our group flew from Hanoi to Pleiku before beginning a week-long journey that included many of the major battle sites of the Vietnam War. With the exception of the first day in the Central Highlands, most of our time was spent in I Corps, the northernmost region of South Vietnam that abuts the DMZ.
No area of Vietnam was safe, but this was a particularly dangerous region; over half of the combat deaths during the war happened in I Corps. The U.S. Marines served in this area with great distinction; almost every Marine who died in Vietnam
perished in I Corps. Although the Marines comprised just fourteen percent of the troops during the war, they suffered more than twenty-five percent of the casualties. Their story is one of bravery and heroism.
After visiting Kontum, we headed east to Qui Nhon on the coast. From there, we turned north, visiting My Lai, the site of the infamous massacre, before stopping at Quang Ngai. We continued along the coast past Chu Lai Air Base to the tourist town of Hoi An, our base for a day trip to the Champa ruins at My Son.
I retraced my steps as we traveled north to Da Nang, across the Hai Van Pass, and onto Hue. Heading northwest, we traversed the rugged A Shau Valley before reaching Khe Sanh, site of a seventy-seven day siege. We then turned back east along the strategically significant Highway 9, detouring for sites like Camp Carroll, the Rockpile, Con Thien, and Dong Ha.
I felt fortunate to be traveling with Marine veterans. The U.S. Marines first came ashore at Da Nang in early 1965 to secure the air base, and they were still there the day I left, patrolling the country around Da Nang in order to cut down on rocket attacks. Even today, it’s easy to find Marines in I Corps. At most places we stopped, we ran into veterans of the Corps who had returned to tour the country. I would guess that more Marines visit Vietnam than any other branch of the military, probably because their experience was more intense, more visceral than most who served.
Our days were long and hot, and we spent much of our time hiking to the top of some former firebase or landing zone. While Tex had usually been to these spots before, the places were unmarked and had often become overgrown. An area that once held massive artillery pieces was now a mature rubber plantation, or simply a hilltop reclaimed by forty-five years of growth. Sometimes, aided by GPS, we would search for the precise spot where a Medal of Honor winner or a hometown hero had died.
Trekking in Vietnam is a challenge; the heat and humidity were unrelenting, and we would often head out in one direction only to backtrack up another path. Many times, the view from the top was obscured by decades of vegetation.
I enjoyed the hikes—they gave me some sense of the obstacles faced by the ground troops during the war. The college students saw it all as a great adventure and never once complained. I believe Tex and the other veterans got some sense of renewal and purpose from the hikes; they may have discovered a part of their life they left behind. (This is pure speculation on my part; Marines never talk in those terms.)
One of our early stops was at Quang Ngai, an unremarkable city well off the beaten tourist path. I’ll remember it mostly for its mediocre hotel that fronted on a dry, weed-filled river bed.
The nearby village of My Lai is a place that I doubt I will ever forget. On March 16, 1968, around five hundred unarmed civilians were killed by soldiers from Charlie Company, a unit of the Americal Division. The victims were mostly old men, women, and children. The soldiers had suffered a number of recent casualties from mines and booby traps, and were on a search and destroy mission in an area known for a heavy Viet Cong presence, a place they knew by the name of Pinkville.
The Vietnamese remember this event as the Son My Massacre, but it’s better known in the U.S. as the My Lai Massacre. The incident was hidden by the Army for more than a year and a half before becoming public in the fall of 1969. A number of soldiers were charged in the massacre and the subsequent cover-up, but only one man, platoon leader Lieutenant William Calley, was ever convicted. Calley was sentenced to life in prison but, thanks to the intervention of President Nixon, he was able to serve his time under house arrest. Jimmy Carter, then governor of Georgia, and many other public figures rallied to his cause. After three and a half years, he was paroled by the Secretary of the Army.
I was an intern in Dallas when the My Lai story broke. At that time, there was overwhelming support for William Calley and the soldiers at My Lai. The guerilla quagmire of Vietnam had been going on for more than four years. Month after month, hundreds of Americans were being killed in a country where everyone, young or old, male or female, was a potential enemy.
My Lai proved to be a pivotal event in the war. Many people, including those who supported the troops wholeheartedly, saw the massacre as another reason to get out of Vietnam. After Life Magazine published the disturbing photos from My Lai and the details of the incident slowly leaked out, public sentiment gradually changed. Vietnam became something most people wished would go away.
Today at My Lai, the facts strike you in the face; there’s no way to paper over the atrocities. A museum at the entrance of the site lists the names of the five hundred and four victims on a black granite wall. (The precise number is still debated; the U.S. claims there were three hundred and forty-seven victims.) Photographs of the massacre and of the international outcry against the killings line the wall. The museum includes a tribute to Hugh Thompson, the Army helicopter pilot who spotted some of the dead and wounded civilians from the air, landed, and carried several of the villagers away to safety.
Next to the museum is a memorial statue, cast in the heroic communist style, which shows a woman holding a dead baby in one arm while the other arm thrusts a clenched fist defiantly into the air.
The several hamlets of what is collectively known as My Lai were destroyed during the massacre and later during the war. Today, there are paths leading past the foundations of some of the original buildings. The site is a patchwork of small hamlets, irrigation ditches, rice paddies, and dirt roads. One stop marks the spot where seventy to eighty villagers were pushed into an irrigation ditch and killed.
My Lai is a solemn and desolate place. Everyone in our group wandered around without uttering a word. The whole experience leaves you sad and depressed. It was even more of a shock for those not familiar with the incident. I knew what to expect, so I was stunned but not surprised. Some of the college students couldn’t believe that American soldiers were capable of committing these crimes; they were incredulous when I told them of the initial strong public support for the U.S. troops.
Coming face to face with the ugly side of war is always difficult.
Later in the tour, we visited the ancient imperial city of Hue, the location of one of the fiercest battles of the entire war and the site of a horrendous massacre of innocent men, women, and children. The Battle of Hue, part of the Tet Offensive, began on the last day of January 1968 and lasted twenty-six days. The communists initially seized the entire city except for the ARVN headquarters and the American advisor compound. The country was shocked to see the Viet Cong flag flying high from the ancient Citadel at the center of the city.
The Battle for Hue was unlike any other battle during the Vietnam War. It was intense urban warfare with house-to-house fighting. The Marines entered the southern part of the city and advanced one building at a time. After crossing the Perfume River, they stormed the massive Citadel and eventually secured the Imperial Palace. The battle took nearly a month and cost more than two hundred U.S. lives.
Before they were finally driven out, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese executed as many as five thousand people. Many were civil servants, religious leaders, and teachers. Anyone linked to the South Vietnamese cause was a target for execution. Some were bound and tortured; some may have been buried alive. The number of people killed is disputed, but few people deny that the crimes took place; the only question is the exact number of victims. Yet you won’t find any mention of the Hue Massacre in the war museums of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. According to today’s government, the event never took place. The people of Vietnam have softened with time, but the official communist narrative of the war is rigid and unyielding, unchanged by the passage of the years.
Visiting the city today, it’s easy to get a feel for the Battle of Hue. The layout of the streets is the same and many of the buildings serve the same function today as they did a half-century ago. More importantly, you can still get a real sense of the fighting by watching contemporaneous reports on YouTube. Vietnam was the first television war, cameramen and reporters were present at most of the ma
jor battles, and the fight for Hue was as big as they come.
Vietnam today, like the rest of the known world, is linked to the Internet. The small hotels, the roadside restaurants, and the neighborhood coffee shops all have Wi-Fi. I was able to view contemporaneous news reports and specials before and after my visits to the battlefields. In Hue, I watched the CBS coverage as the Marines fought to capture the city. I walked where the Marines fought, traveled the same streets, entered the same buildings, and crossed the same gates into the Citadel as the Marines once did. The Battle of Hue is a great testament to the courage and tenacity of the U.S. Marine Corps.
I had the genuine pleasure of meeting some of the Marine veterans who fought during the Battle of Hue. The encounter took place at one of my favorite places in the entire country of Vietnam, the DMZ Bar. The real DMZ is probably thirty miles north of this drinking spot, but I feel like it was close enough to justify the name. The establishment claims to have opened in 1994, around the same time as the country first opened its doors to tourism.
You can’t help but like the place. The ceiling of the main room has a map of the DMZ and surrounding area. Places like Con Thien, Khe Sanh, and Camp Carroll are lit by colored lights. An inverted helicopter hangs from the ceiling, with the blades of the chopper serving as a rotating fan. The bar is far from elaborate; the room is poorly lit, and most of the light comes from the glow of neon beer signs. The floor is plain concrete, and a pool table occupies the middle of the room. The DMZ, an unpretentious drinking spot, is an easy place to get used to.
I spent a fair amount of time at the DMZ Bar, for several reasons. The menu included things like cheeseburgers and pizza, a welcome respite from the routine of rice and chopsticks three times a day. And with local beer going for less than a dollar, it was easy to get carried away by the low prices. (It’s hard not to congratulate yourself for getting beer for so little money.)
Racing Back to Vietnam Page 19
