YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN!
By
Chaplain Stan O’Loughlin
My great adventure began last July when I was informed that my four sons were giving me a gift of a trip back to Vietnam. Apparently through the years they had heard some of my Vietnam stories and believed it was something that would mean a lot to me, ( I found later that they had underestimated the cost and so between them they raised enough money to get me there. Fortunately my wife came through and gave them the money to get me home. It pays to have a good and loyal wife.) So as the plan emerged it was decided my youngest son, 26 years old, would go with me and we would add Thailand to our itinerary. We decided early January would be a good time since the rainy season would be over and the weather as temperate as it was going to get. My son found a really great travel agency on the net that was willing to tailor a personal trip for us. I cannot say enough good about their work. It was perfect in every way.
Ambush Alley Approach to Unicorn Island
I must admit that my first thoughts were that I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go since I have lots of fond memories of my time with my brother soldiers there but like all of us, have some that are not that fond and some real unreconciled feelings as well. But it is pretty hard to tell your sons you don’t want to go after they had come up with what they believed to be my dream and made such financial sacrifices to raise the money. So I began to create some personal goals for the trip. My first was to pay my personal honor to my brothers who didn’t come home. My first feelings were of course those from the units I was privileged to serve with (15th Combat Engineers, 3/60th Infantry) in 1968 but as I thought more I included all of our brothers and sisters who were there during those war days. After I got there I came to include in my prayers the enemy soldiers as well, as I will write more later. I felt I could do this by offering a prayer at as many sites as I was able. My second goal was to return to the Delta and see if I could tie together some of my unresolved feelings, my third was just to see more of the country than I had been able to do in 1968.
Entrance to Dong Tam Canal 0n Unicorn Island
So I left Orlando late afternoon on January 5th and flew to Los Angeles and then on to San Francisco where I was to meet my son who was coming in from Charlotte, NC. After a bit of confusion we met in time to catch our China Airline flight to Taipei a 12 hour trip. There we were to change planes for an almost 5 hour flight to Bangkok. We had a several hour wait in Taipei and I was very apprehensive since I had a minor cold and was sneezing and blowing my nose some. I was nervous because as soon as I got off the plane I saw a big sign saying if you had those symptoms among others you should report to a certain place to be examined and likely quarantined because of their concern about SARS. I kept thinking, “Stan don’t sneeze or have a runny nose!” and apparently it worked since we left for Bangkok without delay. We had a several hour wait there and then on to Tan Son Nhut Airport.
More Canals Gate to My Tho As we began our descent to the airport my anxiety level went up not knowing what we would find. When last I saw the airport, as you will remember, it was primarily a military operation and somehow I was surprised that all it was now was a decent sized commercial airport. Of course at first it was unsettling to see that all the Customs and Immigration folks were all wearing what appeared to me to be North Vietnam military uniforms. But they were courteous and at least no more bureaucratic than my experience with our American folks. By now it was almost 11 p.m. their time and it was a real downer to find that my suitcase had not arrived. Fortunately I had packed an extra set of clothes and my toilet articles in my carryon. So I went to the Lost Baggage office and was greeted by some very serious, very formidable women in uniform. But, bless their hearts, they were very helpful and ultimately they were the ones who searched out wherever it was my bag had gone.
Familiar Canals Rex Hotel
From there we met our guide who took us to a big Volvo and we were driven to the Rex Hotel in the heart of the city. Since it was so late and dark I didn’t have much of an impression of the city. What did strike me was that several of the authorities at the airport asked if I had been to Vietnam before and when I said I had they welcomed me back. Also my Guide was very interested in where I had been stationed and very positive in attitude.
The next morning we met our Guide for a tour of Ho Chi Minh City. I became amused though, after awhile I realized that other than officially, everyone still seems to refer to it as Saigon. Our first stop was Cholon and here I began to get a few feelings because the last time I had seen it was during the May offensive and in my memory it was pretty well destroyed. But when we drove through it to the big marketplace I didn’t recognize a thing. Then it dawned on me, I’m not the brightest guy in the world, everything had been rebuilt since 1968 to include the Market. In the city we saw some things I remembered well such as Notre Dame Cathedral and the Main Post Office and then we were off to all the war stuff. One quickly realized the truth of the old adage, “He who wins the war writes the history”, since as you would imagine it is all propaganda. We visited the old Presidential Palace which is now a large museum they call: “The Reunification Building”. This was not too bad but what really got to me was when we visited the War Remnant Museum. There they had lots of old military artifacts from the war. Most of it was older ordnance than I knew in my day and obviously taken from the South Vietnamese Army but all labeled as captured from the Americans. What really got to me was a building filled with photographs, mostly taken from American media, which showed atrocities as if they occurred every day as well as pictures and extended statements of young John Kerry, Robert McNamara and Jane Fonda to mention a few. When one of the museum folks showed me the My Lai photo and said something to the effect, “This was a very bad thing to happen.” I responded that it certainly was but I am surprised that they didn’t show some of the things the Viet Cong did in the villages of the Delta or the buses blown up and that sort of thing. His response was, “That never happened” to which I answered, “Take my word for it, it did” and the subject was changed. What disturbed me most were the Americans who signed a Visitor’s Book with comments like, Thank God you won” or “How can I express my guilt and sorrow of what our soldiers did here.”
Four lane highway to Saigon
The next day we drove north to Cu Chi. We saw where the 25th Division was located but primarily we visited the area where the NVA had their tunnel complex. I was prepared to be negative particularly after watching a propaganda film about the angelic NVA and VC courageously battling the oppressors and imperialists. But after seeing a scale model of the three level complex that housed, I believe a division, one had to be impressed. Then going out with a guide to see “spider holes” and connecting tunnels with kitchens, hospital, ordnance areas where weapons were created from our discards and bomb fragments I found myself truly admiring these folks who could do that. They had a very impressive exhibit on crude booby traps most of which we were familiar in the Delta. Of course they also showed how a substantive part of these tunnels were under part of the 25th Division Headquarters area. I had heard there was an area where you could fire weapons on a range but I have to admit that walking down a narrow path in the deep underbrush and hearing an AK-47 fire and then an M-60, for a moment it was 1968 all over again.
Returning to Saigon we prepared to leave early in the morning for a flight to Hue/Phu Bai on Vietnam Airlines. Expecting to fly on some old Russian Aeroflot reject plane I was pleasantly surprised to find new jets. We arrived at the Phu Bai Airport met our guide and we drove on to Hue and another beautiful hotel right on the Perfume River. That afternoon we had a boat ride up the Perfume River in a small dragon boat houseboat mostly constructed from old American sheets of American metal from runways and buildings. Later we visited the Imperial City and saw where so much of the Tet 1968 fighting occured. It has all been reconstructed but there are still lots of evidences of the intensity of the combat.
The next day we went to Khe Sanh where there is a war museum which predictably told how the valiant NVA soldiers kept the Americans in a constant state of panic. But it was interesting to see this site, much different than I imagined, about which I have read and seen so much. We visited a lot of other Fire Support Bases and military locations to include Camp Carol and Hamburger Hill. Almost all of these are now overgrown and deserted. We visited the DMZ and saw some historical spots from when the French were there. We also saw where the Ho Chi Minh Trail began which is now marked by a rather interesting suspension bridge. It was a long and rather emotional day and I admit I was glad to return to our hotel. Unfortunately we discovered that somewhere in all the getting in and getting out of our car my son lost his passport. This of course created a real anxiety situation in my mind but with the enormous help of our guide we got statements from the hotel that they had seen and registered it when we first arrived and my son had to write a statement about how he believed he lost it. Then we had to go to the Police Station to get a document that would allow us to fly back to Saigon. Actually beyond the bureaucracy of having to wait for the right person to authorize it and the Police Commander to sign it, a process that took most of the day, we were able to get it okay. From there we drove over the mountains to Da Nang and registered at a gorgeous five star resort right on China Beach. Unfortunately it was raining and so we were unable to see a whole bunch of the beauty of the mountains or China Beach. I should say that by this time I was truly impressed that almost all the roads I saw were paved and in some places four lanes. I’ll write more about this when I talk about our trip to My Tho.
The next morning we flew to Pleiku and met the local guide and driver there. We registered at probably the best hotel in town but it was a far cry from what we had been in. It was fine and clean but it was “pure Vietnamese” pretty much as I expected all of our hotels to be. Then we went to visit the 4th Division Headquarters area and some sites at Pleime, Bau Can and Camp Halloway. At one point, from a distance we could see the Ia Drang Valley which of course was the setting for “We Were Soldiers…” One real highlight of this time was to visit two Montanard Villages. In one we were able to visit in the home of the Chief who truly made us feel welcome.
The next morning we flew back to Saigon and were met by a new guide but the same driver as before and we were taken back to the Rex Hotel. To my delight I found my suitcase had arrived and it was like Christmas all over again. Of course our first item of business was to go to the American Consulate regarding my son’s lost passport. The Embassy of course is now in Hanoi and the Consulate is in a new much smaller building than the one with which we were familiar in our time there. That building has been torn down. The Embassy was quite helpful and my son was able to convince them that rather than the usual week waiting time we had to have that passport at the soonest since we were leaving Vietnam for Thailand in two days. So he was able to get it that afternoon but then we had to go to the Police Station to get a new Visa. Here again my son was able to convince them that we needed it sooner than the five usual days that it takes. An interesting aside, my son is a police officer in Charlotte, NC and I guess they asked him what his occupation was. He said that when he told him a police officer their whole attitude changed from indifference to total cooperation and he was able to pick it up late the next afternoon.
Finally the next day we drove to the Delta. Several things struck me about the trip. First of all it is now a comfortable less than an hour drive from the middle of Saigon to My Tho. Almost the entire ride is on good four lane highway and there is even a bypass around the Tan An area. All of the bridges that we knew and loved have been replaced and the Ben Luc Bridge is double span with two lanes each way. It is also built up almost straight through to My Tho. There are lots of rural areas as we knew it off the main road but along the highway it is pretty darn commercial
Again I have to say that I was really disappointed not to recognize a thing of My Tho. A lot of it is 36 years absence but the city has to be at least twice as large as we knew it. We met a local guide there and I tried to explain to her I’d like to see the little orphanage we rebuilt and supported but was disappointed to be informed that the State now ran all orphanages and it is no longer there. There is now one big institution between My Tho and Can Tho.
We proceeded to the docks and we got in a motor launch for a ride on the Mekong River. I tried to emotionally remember the APL, the Colleton and the Benewah but could not visualize them any longer in that setting. They now have huge ferryboats that carry multi number of semi trailers as well as other truck and cars. There seemed to be lots more large boat traffic than I remembered. We couldn’t get near Dong Tam on the water since it is now a Vietnamese Military Base. We crossed over to old VC Island (Can’t remember the Vietnamese name) and met a little guy with a very small sampan. He paddled my son and I through about an hour or more of the small canals we all knew so well. The villages had grown but were not too different than we knew. In one place there is now a farm that raises bees for making honey and from that candy and wine. When they found I had been there before they welcomed us and we had to sample everything. There were even a couple musicians and a lady who performed some folk songs of the Delta. This was typical of the graciousness we found on the whole trip. Other than a guide at the Saigon War Museum I found no one who wanted to “rub it in” about our stay there. People seemed actually happy that we had come back. As you would expect it was a little tough paddling in that little sampan in the deep jungle areas. I found myself looking for nasties or waiting for someone to start shooting. But after a bit, for the first time riding on those waterways I began to enjoy the beauty of what was there. Later on land a real highlight was that our guide was able to take us down “Ambush Alley” (still not paved) and close enough to get a picture (from a distance) of the Dong Tam Gate.
So with that day my trip back to Vietnam came to a conclusion and the next day we left for Bangkok – which is another story altogether. In summary I would say that I met all my goals as I wrote earlier. I got to pray at a large number of military sites and my respect and honor for every military person who ever went there and did his/her job has been greatly renewed and increased. I also came to appreciate the every day Vietnamese soldier. As I saw how he lived and with what he fought and realized emotionally for the first time that he likely didn’t want to be there any more than most of our folks did. He too had a mother and father, often a wife and child and he too fought bravely and often died or was wounded. I prayed for those families as well. Secondly I brought to rest some of my own personal feelings from the war. My visit to Vietnam in general and the Delta in specific was very positive for me particularly in seeing how much had changed and how much of the change really came as an outgrowth of the war itself. I felt this in particular in Saigon where my feelings were we “won” the war in a practical sense. The city is increasingly becoming a modern westernized city with modern shopping malls and fancy stores of all sorts. The government is certainly no more corrupt than the ones that were there when we were there and probably nowhere near as oppressive. My impression is that the government in Hanoi has said, “We’ll play communist up here and you guys in the south be capitalistic and pay the bills.” Of course communism is communism and you see its evidence everywhere in terms of posters and billboards. But much more oppressively when you go to a persons home and they have to register your name in a book provided every home in Vietnam. They have to record your name, when you came, how long you stayed and purpose of visit. Also as we came to know our guides they shared stories of family members having to spend years in “Reeducation Camps” because of their service with the South Vietnamese Army. One guide’s father had been a Colonel and was killed in the last days of the war. They spoke also how their family members could not yet attend the good universities or get any significant job with the government because their parents or close relatives had been in the army.
Being able to ride the roads and canals in the Delta and able to see the beauty in a way we couldn’t in our day meant a lot to me. Ultimately the welcome and friendliness of all the Vietnamese throughout the country meant the most. Finally I certainly was able to see a big bunch of the country and in particular a lot of the military sites I’d read and heard about. Every bit of it was a fantastic experience
For anyone contemplating such a trip I certainly cannot recommend our travel agency high enough. They tailored the perfect trip for us and there was a first class guide and driver with a late model Volvo at every stop in Vietnam (and Thailand). I’ve described a lot of the military places we visited but the travel agency set us up with lots of other interesting places to visit and have meals. We stayed in top rated hotels with the exception of Pleiku and as I wrote earlier that too was probably the best there.
I would say that if you go be well rested and in reasonably good health. It is strenuous and a bit stressful to fly so far and ride so many hours in the car and of course get in and out of it frequently. The water is good but not for westerners and so you need to drink bottled water all the time. Many of the hotels provided several bottles with the room each day but in addition we found it worthwhile to buy the big liter bottles. We had no problem with mosquitoes and we were told that unless you spend a lot of time in the rural areas there is little chance of malaria.
So in closing let me say that it was truly a wonderful trip in every way. A trip for which I will always be grateful to my family and a trip of which I will have the most precious of memories for the rest of my life.