Vietnam pulls veterans back

Oct 12, 2009
www.newsobserver.com

BY RUTH SHEEHAN
Staff Writer

Over bowls of steaming pho, the soup that is Vietnam's national dish, eight veterans sat at tables in Dalat Vietnamese restaurant joking about their coming journey to the land they learned to hate and love in a war long ago.

Beneath the banter hums a taut wire of apprehension.

All of these vets got to know one another as guest speakers in Bob Matthews' course on Vietnam in the Wake public schools. They've thought about Vietnam, talked about it, studied it.

But when they hop aboard the plane Tuesday, bound for Ho Chi Minh City, they'll be returning for the first time in decades to more than a country. They'll be returning to a year frozen in memory, a year they describe alternately as the best and worst of their lives. Traumatic, terrifying. Every detail etched, every moment in Technicolor.

The official reason for the trip is to form a "bridge back" to Vietnam, to bring bicycles and books, mattresses and medicine to schoolchildren and orphans. They look forward to seeing how the country has changed. But there are some ghosts, perhaps some demons, waiting, too.
The question is: Can they finally be put to rest?

Consider the story of David Samuels, a helicopter pilot who, at age 21, commanded a gunship platoon that protected choppers carrying troops into combat or pulling them out under fire.
Samuels, awarded a Silver Star for his role in one daring mission, was shot down three times and came to see himself as wearing a protective shield.

But on one mission, near Tay Ninh, his chopper was swooping over the tree line when he noticed to his right an enemy soldier with a semi-automatic aimed at Samuels' heart. Samuels yelled and jerked the chopper out of the line of fire. Apparently, the soldier's weapon jammed.Samuels' gunner got the soldier in his sights and squeezed the trigger.

The moment has haunted Samuels, now 62, ever since.

"It was him or me, and I survived," he said. After the firefight ended, Samuels landed his chopper nearby and, against regulations, took the dead enemy's weapon.

Later, he discovered a wad of papers in the weapon's butt: a diary. His friends are pushing Samuels to have the diary translated and return it to the family of that dead enemy soldier. For as long as these vets have searched for MIAs, they believe it's only right to tell the family of the man who died aiming at Samuels that he died doing his duty.

"I'm not sure I can do it," Samuels said.

Goals and worries

Bobby Thrower, an Air Force flight mechanic for the T-39 Sabreliner, understands Samuels' trepidation.

Thrower, 65, flew all over the region, carting four-star generals, ambassadors, even Bob Hope and his wife.

"I didn't slog through jungles; I didn't kill the enemy," he said. "For years, I didn't consider myself a veteran."

But before he ever landed in-country, he assisted the leaders of the famed Son Tay raid, in which American forces tried to rescue POWs in North Vietnam. The raid was dramatic, but the prisoners were gone. They'd been moved to another camp.

It was Thrower's request, as the veterans group was putting together its itinerary for the return to Vietnam, to visit Son Tay. The area is officially closed to tourists. To go, they must seek permission.
"I've been practicing what I need to say and what I'm willing to say," Thrower said. "But I'm not always very smooth. And I'm not going over there and kiss commie boot."

Joe Harsch, 60, has different worries, starting with arriving in Vietnam unarmed.

From 1969 to 1970, Harsch served as an Army "LRRP" -- for Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol. His missions, lasting anywhere from a half-day to six weeks in Cambodia, involved a team of five to seven men sneaking quietly through the jungle to try to find out what the Vietcong were doing. They traveled in the dark of night, deep in enemy territory, with total radio silence.
"It was a tense time," said Harsch, a master of understatement.

Harsch said his rational brain tells him it's OK to travel around Vietnam as a tourist, without a gun on his hip. But he still remembers his tan lines from stretching out on China Beach with a holster strapped to his chest.

Lee Wilson gets a knot in her stomach when she thinks of stepping off the plane in Vietnam. The last time she did, as the member of an Army engineering unit, was at the beginning of the Tet Offensive of 1968. The air was thick with the odor of gunpowder and blood.

"There was no safe place to be in Vietnam," she said. "You know when you narrowly avoid an accident, that pucker factor? Try that for a year and a half."

Wilson, the only woman in the group of vets making the bridge back, still gets teased that she was actually a nurse in Vietnam. On her first day at Long Binh, then the world's largest military base, her commanding officer checked her credentials by asking whether she could make coffee. They never got along.

Back at home, the women's movement was in full swing. But the anti-war movement was, too, as many in the group learned the hard way. One was derided by a stewardess on his flight home.

One got into a shouting match with a protester at a local rally. Another was offended to learn that it would be best, when traveling in the U.S., to shed the uniform for civilian clothes.

Ron Harris, 63, an Army MP who served from 1968 to '69, said the contrast between life in Vietnam and here at home was jarring. He went from hitting the dirt, wishing the buttons on his shirt would disappear so he could be closer to the ground, to attending a fraternity party with a childhood buddy. As it turned out, the friend had invited him to the same annual do Harris had attended before shipping out. Even fixed him up with the same local gal.

Everything was the same. Except Harris.

"I came home to Wake Forest, so people were pretty good to me," Harris said. "But nobody wanted me to talk about it. I needed to talk, but even my mama wanted to pretend it had never happened."

In part, that was the impetus behind Matthews' Vietnam course, which the vets on the trip helped fashion and then helped teach. For some of the guys, it meant telling their stories for the very first time. For others, it meant setting the record straight.

Stories told, finally

Bud Gross, 68, who served earlier than the others, said he was stunned to see as the war unfolded how many war correspondents got the story wrong. That didn't change much after the war ended. "When it came to Vietnam, in the kids' American history books there was about a paragraph, and that's generous."

Matthews, the retired teacher who brought this group together, was an Army classified radio specialist in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. He takes pride in the fact that the Vietnam course, launched in the early 1990s, remains one of the most popular electives in Wake County schools. It has since been adopted by 700 districts in more than 30 states.

Of course, the vets knew, and the kids quickly understood, that it was not just a history course. There are lessons to be learned from every war, on and off the field of battle.

They take comfort in the fact that the abuse they suffered after the war may have changed things for the vets returning now, from another unpopular war. Nowadays, even the most vociferous war opponents do not blame politicians' decisions on soldiers simply doing their jobs.
"I like to think we had something to do with that," Gross said.

The 12-day trip will be packed with meaningful moments. Visits with schoolchildren, time at a Catholic orphanage, China Beach, Son Tay. A boat trip will highlight the country's beauty, which they remember as astonishing even against the backdrop of the war. One night they'll gather at the U.S. embassy to honor the 43 North Carolina soldiers who remain missing in action.

The vets are bringing thousands of dollars in donations, and 36 suitcases packed with medical supplies, books and other treats for the kids. At several stops, they'll fill vials of sand for a friend who lost his leg in Vietnam.

Bill Dixon, 65, an Army Engineer from June 1967 to 1968, said they all left part of themselves in Vietnam. But they came back stronger in some ways too.

"Vietnam changed us forever," said Dixon. "We're not just making the bridge back. We are the bridge back.