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VVAW Delegation Reports From Vietnam

By Pete Zastrow

The first post-war VVAW delegation to Vietnam spent 10 days in country; it is much better to visit Vietnam as guests of the government of Vietnam than as invaders sent by the U.S. government.

Our delegation consisted of Barry Romo and Pete Zastrow of the VVAW National Office in Chicago, Ed Damato from New York, Dennis Kroll from Madison Wisconsin, and Tom Wetzler from San Antonio. All of us were Vietnam veterans, all of us were long-time anti-war vets; none of us lied when we put on our visa application, "Friends of Vietnam."

Of course we all went with questions—many of the questions and their answers you will find throughout this section of THE VETERAN. But a fundamental question—how would we be received by people we once tried to kill, and who had once tried to kill us—was resolved almost immediately. We were in Vietnam as friends, and we treated not only as friends but as honored guests.

Travel to Vietnam is not especially easy; there are few flights into Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. Arrangements (for us) had to be made through the UN delegation in New York and until we arrived in Vietnam, we had no chance to communicate directly with our hosts. As a result, when we arrived we found they had planned a tour several days longer than we had to spend and had been forced to cut back at the last moment. Travel to places other than Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (except those spot within driving distance) could not be arranged.

At first it seemed strange that we could not just get up in the morning and say, "Today we want to go here." But once we saw the elaborate arrangements made for us at almost every stop we could easily understand why preparation was necessary. We were guests, and for guests one takes special care that they will feel welcome.

Although our schedule had been carefully planned in advance, we never had the impression that our activities were restricted. Whenever we had free time wer were free to go where we liked—and we did. In Hanoi we were taken on a tour of the market—the large collection of individual booths where everything imaginable is sold. It is capitalistic as any flea market in this country (only larger) and our guide apologized several times for showing it to us; it was necessary he said, that we see the bad along with the good. At almost every meeting with government officials we were told that serious errors had been made resulting in an economy that was nowhere near as prosperous as it should be.

Many of the places we visited were those we requested by letter before we arrived. Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi, the Revolutionary Museum, the tunnels at Cu Chi; other sights such as the factories, the commune, the nationalities exhibit were things that the Vietnamese wanted us to see. The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum was not suggested to us but our guides seemed please that we asked to visit it, and the experience was one not to be missed. We had asked to visit areas where we had served, but time made this difficult. The area around Dian where Tom Wetzler served as a medic with the 1st Division was part of our tour around the area of Ho Chi Minh City; we should have realized (but did not) that what we remembered as Cu Chi or Dian were the sites of American bases, not the Vietnamese towns, and our guides were taking us to the Vietnamese places.

It was difficult to realize, as we tore through the countryside in our foreign ministry van, but the lives of everyone we saw over the age of 15 must have been affected—probably badly—by Americans. We had no way to judge what scars were there. We could see that the physical remains of the American military were nearly gone. Around areas where there had been major American bases-Dian or Tam Sa Thut/ Long Bien—we could make out occasional bunker emplacements. Some of the areas in Ho Chi Minh City still had barbed wire over every wall. Conexes would appear in the countryside in odd places. We saw a few old American military vehicles being used. But the greatest reminder of the American presence is the territory still bear because of Agent Orange. There are still bomb craters (though the craters we saw as we flew into Hanoi were in fact, we were told later, being used to raise fish by local farmers); mostly, however, U.S. presence is only a bad memory.

Of the Vietnamese military we saw little. There were a couple guards, after dark, at the foreign ministry guesthouse where we stayed Hanoi. They never prevented us from leaving if we wanted to, so presumably they were there to keep people out, we saw occasional police directing traffic. Other than that, we saw no police or military presence.

The emotional trip involved in our ten days in Vietnam was longer than the physical trip, and that was long enough. The flavor of what our return meant is captured in other articles in this section of THE VETERAN, but I suspect that other vets should consider a similar travel. The Vietnamese welcomed us and asked us to arrange more such trips. There is a sense of completion: somehow, my tour of duty in Vietnam is now over. When I left after my year, I left behind friends who were still fighting the war. I left behind a sense of incompleteness, as if the final pages of the book I was reading had been torn out and I never knew the ending. The return to Vietnam was, for me, very much the end of my tour. Now I have seen what I did and what my government did to Vietnam. More important I have seen that the Vietnamese have gone beyond all that and are able to welcome me back as a friend. I learn from them what it means to distinguish between the war and the warrior, between those who carried out the policies of the U.S. government and those who made these policies.

We came away from Vietnam with even greater respect for the Vietnamese people. Each of us was ready to do what we could toward normalization of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam: the U.S. policy is ridiculous. In previous wars the US has re-established relations quickly (of course the U.S. won those wars). And the policy which will not even allow a Vietnamese to travel in the U.S. because our government refuses to grant a visa makes no sense: picture the government of the U.S. cowering in fear at the prospect of a couple of Vietnamese traveling through the U.S. Both Vietnam and the people of the U.S. would benefit greatly from normal relations. Under the present policy, everyone loses.

You may remember—as I do—thinking, when I was in Vietnam the first, what a beautiful country was Vietnam, and how nice it might be to come back someday when there was no war. For me that day had now come—I hope you get the chance and take it.