Back in Time: Advice for Returning Veterans

Old French battle sight at Hoa Binh

View Photos (21) Image © 2000 Ed Henry

It is by now, in 1999, an old story and by today's media standards not even newsworthy: America's Vietnam veterans going back to Vietnam to retrace the footsteps of their youth in a country that fractured and tore asunder one of the mightiest nations on the face of the planet. America has never quite recovered from the episode even though it's been 24 years since the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon. We can't get that image out of our heads as it's played over and over again in every piece of film you've ever seen about the Vietnam War. The war and its aftermath of guilt and sorrow is etched in our national conscience even though we don't like to admit it. The families of 58,000 Americans would rather not talk about it, countless millions of Vietnamese families are often sadly excluded in any discussion about the cost of the war in human souls. The old embassy is now gone; finally razed completely to the ground last June and I was there to witness its destruction, on a wide Saigon boulevard renamed Le Duan Street in honor of one of the more famous communist revolutionary heroes. All that are left are the big circular flowerpots and they were an important photographic image at one time, remember? Tet 1968, and the embassy is attacked by Viet Cong sappers. Their splayed and very dead bodies are lying in pools of blood scattered among the pots. I think of that every time I walk or drive down Le Duan Street.

I have a thousand of these images dancing in my head 24 hours a day because I'm a veteran of the war and its aftermath. I am also in Vietnam a lot and have been for the past 11 years since Vietnam opened its doors in 1987. You would think that after a while these visions would go away, but they don't. You would never understand it unless you had been there to experience it for yourself. For eleven years I have worked in the business of getting American veterans and their families back to Vietnam and I am constantly asked "Why? Why would anyone want to do that?"

There is a morbid human universality working here that is not easily understood by the average civilian who has never spent a day in the military. But a glimpse of understanding arises from a visit to Maryland's Antietam Civil War Battlefield or Verdun, France. We humans memorialize places of great human sacrifice and in doing so, are forced to ask ourselves questions about the futility of warfare. I work for one of the few tour companies in the United States that deals with a very large segment of the travel market. We specialize in veterans' group tours and historically based tours to important battle sites all over the world. There is usually an educational component to most of our expertly directed tours, but the majority of our customers are veterans of those battles and thus have a special direct link to those places that we frequently visit. It was only a matter of time before American Vietnam veterans would begin requesting what I have come to recognize as Return Journeys.

I took my own personal (and I should say, first) return journey back to Vietnam in June 1988. I also happened to be working as a travel agent, so it was easy for me to figure out howl would make the trip. At the time, there were lots of restrictions but no illegality about making such a trip back to a country now ruled by our former enemy. When I returned to America and told all my friends, family and veteran acquaintances about the trip I was besieged with phone calls, interviews and people wanting me to make sales pitches about Vietnam travel. I was also swamped with requests for information on how to do it. The past eleven years have been a roller coaster ride of evolution from what Vietnam was and what it is today, as we enter into the 21st Century. I feel very fortunate to have been a part of seeing the daily changes on the ground. Vietnam is not what it was 11 years ago. For the returning veteran, it is nothing at all like it was 26, 28, or even 30 years ago - and this is where the disconnect begins...

When I'm not in Vietnam on business or leading a tour, I am on the telephone all day long answering veterans' questions about Vietnam. Although there are thousands of questions, there are basically just two that begin every conversation: "What is Vietnam like today?" and "What am I going to find when I get back to Vietnam?" You have to listen between the lines of these and subsequent questions because the answers are more existential than practical "How do I get from Point A to Point B?" kinds of questions. These veterans want to go way back into a part of their youth that no longer exists and the journey can be fraught with unfulfilled expectations leading to huge disappointments. Telling them right up front they will find nothing of the former Vietnam, the former bases and the former structures may seem harsh, but if they do eventually go to Vietnam they're going to get a dose of harsh reality anyway, so better for them to be prepared for it.

Nothing of the former time is left in Vietnam. There are exceptions to this statement, but mostly, it's all gone. No more bases, no huge fire bases, no more cleared-out, bulldozed perimeters, whole lengths of former airstrips have been reclaimed by elephant grass, and any semblance of what was once the might of the American involvement in the former "Republic of South Vietnam" is gone forever. Most Americans returning to Vietnam have a difficult time understanding the psychological necessity on the part of the new regime to totally eradicate any sign of American presence in the Vietnam landscape, and it happened abruptly after April of 1975. The goal of the festering revolution was to rid Vietnam of foreigners, once and for all, and any sign of foreign involvement. The American War, as it is still referred to in Vietnam, was just another episode in Vietnam's long history of foreign meddling.

I was lucky enough to see Vietnam in 1988 when it was still a fairly frightening place. There were also many reminders of the former time. I remember going to places such as Khe Sanh, Gio Linh, Con Thien, and even Cu Chi, and though the huge American build-up had disappeared, some of these places still looked like battlefields. Eleven years can make a real difference in a tropical landscape. It's all gone now, returned to rubber and coffee plantations and Cu Chi, Nha Trang, Vung Tau and China Beach are tourist traps I'd rather stay away from. For the returning veteran, there can be a lot of disappointment if their mind is not geared for it.

I can sum up the experience in a story: I was with another veteran in Danang just two years ago and we were visiting Hill 55 to the west. There's now a huge communist monument on top of the Hill, whereupon this particular veteran had spent so many months of his youth. All the way from Los Angeles he talked about going back to the Hill, and he would show me the exact spot where he had dug so many fighting holes. I told him they were all gone but he wasn't hearing it. Once on top of Hill 55, he searched for two hours and found nothing. He shouted at me, "What the hell did they do to my Hill?"

I had to think about this before I could give him the straightest answer I could muster:

"It never was your hill," I said, "We were supposed to be guests and visitors here. We didn't own this place then, and we don't own it now. " I had warned him to get ready for it, I had tried to tell him the truth before we ever left the United States. He just wouldn't listen to me. He wanted to see Vietnam the way it was when he had left it so many years ago, and in reality, that's only a dream long gone like all the sandbagged bunkers and barbed wire, the USO shows and the massage parlors along To Do Street. Leave Vietnam in peace.

Published on 5/1/99