Download PDF of this full issue: v17n3.pdf (13.7 MB)

Third Tour of Duty

By Barry Romo

This was my third "visit" to Vietnam. In 1967-68 I served in the 196th Light Infantry Brigade (soon to become the American Division). As an infantry platoon leader and then battalion S-2, my "tour" was cut short when my nephew was killed in the post Tet Offensive in 1968 and I escorted his body home. Bob was one month younger than I, was killed along the DMZ and returned home in a closed casket. I was walking down a hill on patrol, was picked up by a Hewey and was in San Francisco that evening (given time changes). It was a mind-boggling chain of events, from killing and death, C-rations and leeches, to beds and booze and hamburgers and TV in just 24 hours all on a ticket paid for by my nephew.

In December, 1972, I returned not to South Vietnam but North Vietnam on a peace delegation that included Joan Baez. We flew into Hanoi with Christmas presents for the POW's. Nixon and company had other things in mind than peace on earth: he broke the bombing halt with a surprise attack on Hanoi and all of North Vietnam, dropping more tonnage in 10 days than had been dropped on Japan in the second World War.

Death and destruction were daily occurrences along with heroism and friendship of our hosts. Bac Mai Hospital, the largest in Indochina, was bombed on three different occasions and destroyed. Houses and apartments buildings were pounded out of existence.

On our way into Hanoi we had stopped at a small hamlet outside of a bombed-out railroad yard. Telford Taylor, a former general and chief prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials, had pointed it out as proof of pinpoint bombing. The children of the daycare center came out to play and sing for us. Telford continued, "Bombing destroyed the yard totally, yet did not hit this civilian area—no war crimes here."

On the way out of Hanoi we passed that railyard—the one that was already destroyed. This time the hamlet was destroyed and all those babies dead.

The trip this time would be in peace time. I had been lucky—I had fought in the South as a grunt, had surveyed under American B-52 bombing in the North; I was the only person to have both experiences and now was returning.

This trip would be no easier than the last, only different. The shadows and memories: the ghosts are still present after 20 years.

In walking the streets I found myself not looking up a lot, uneasy to look at the Vietnamese in the face as if doing so would somehow be disrespectful. As a westerner there was more than a twinge of guilt for what we had done there.

I also found myself smiling (almost giddy) at intervals, just being in-country. I found emotions I thought gone (blocked out). It was a joy akin to the feeling of coming home.

We were treated extremely well. We stayed in the governments foreign ministry house. We enjoyed excellent meals, had cars and an interpreter, access to government offices and knowledgeable people. We walked the streets of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City alone, unattended, not followed, not attacked and not afraid.

Vietnam was clean compared to most third world countries—hell, compared to New York City—and decidedly Vietnamese in appearance. The all-encompassing U.S. presence is but a memory now, and thousands of bicycles jam roads instead of cars and trucks with only one working street light in our whole trip.

Visiting Bac Mai was almost too much. In 1972 when I visited, the hospital was in ruins, people were going over the area with cranes and hands to recover people buried in the rubble. The head of the hospital, in a semi-state of shock, had said who proud he and his staff were that no patients had died, only staff. But bombs were still going off. Now we saw the hospital rebuilt but, at the end of our hospital tour, we stopped to take pictures of a monument built to those who had died in the bombing; I found that the list now included an 8-year-old child.

I found myself numb again, that old defense mechanism—don't feel because you might feel too much. Don't look inside yourself because you might not like what you see. Don't enjoy yourself too much because you don't deserve to—guilt!

The Vietnamese don't really lend themselves to these feelings. They are just too damn friendly, courteous and respectful. The guilt was there because of what Americans had done, what we former GI's had been part of, not because of what the Vietnamese said or did. In fact they seemed to go out of their way to spare our feelings.

In 1972 when I was having a particularly hard time remembering, Mr Quat, our host, had a discussion with me. He said that guilt was destructive, that as an emotion it had no place to go. It could not be built upon. He touched my heart when he said that guilt and hate would get me nowhere, that I had been used in the war, used by my own government and society, that then I had no choice. Now I did and I had made the correct one. Now I opposed the war, opposed the killing, opposed to the destruction of the land and the countryside: that emotion—love—could be built upon. In closing, he said, you've seen the war from both sides, suffered with the Vietnamese people; later, during peace, I could share in their joy like no other.

No wonder journalists, politicians, military officers have such a hard time accepting defeat from so gentle a people, people who could talk of love while bombs were dropping, and mean it.

In a certain sense a curtain has closed on one period of our lives. I believe every vet should visit Vietnam again. To face those memories and to say goodbye to the nightmares: the country is open for visits, so go already.

—Barry Romo
VVAW National Office