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Healing the Wounds of War

By Steven Stratford

The following article was written by Steven Stratford, the Executive Director of the Veterans Vietnam Restoration Project. He is a Vietnam veteran and a member of VVAW. In this article Steven relates his experience of returning to Vietnam as a member of VVRP Team IV. In March, 1992, the members of Team IV spent four weeks at Xuan Hiep building a health clinic alongside the Vietnamese. Xuan Hiep is a tiny village which lies along Highway 1, 85 miles northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.

Since 1989, the VVRP has sent eight teams of Americans —almost all whom are Vietnam Veterans—to northern and southern Vietnam. Team members, who spend four weeks in country, deliver medical supplies and work with the Vietnamese, many of whom are also veterans, to build health clinics and other socially beneficial facilities. By participating in these projects, team members are healing themselves while reconciling for all Americans with the Vietnamese people. When the projects are finished and donated to the local community, team members tour Vietnam visiting the places where they served.

In early February at a place in Sebastopol, California called Magic Mountain, the members of VVRP Team IV began assembling. "We came from all over the U.S. to meeting and develop ourselves into a cohesive team before undertaking our journey. We got to know one another, shared stories about our first trip to Vietnam and shared our motives for returning. We decided who would take care of which responsibilities and we packed the 1,200 pounds of medical supplies we would be delivering. In other words, we built a strong sense of community among ourselves and began to get in touch with the variety of emotions which had lead us there.

On February 21st, we were met by our hosts, the People Committee of Dong Nai Province, when we landed at Tan Son Nhut Airport. We were to have been transported to the village of Long Hai; or at least that's where we thought we were going. Instead we were taken to the Dong Nai hotel in Dien Hoa. The VVRP had received permission from the Vietnamese government for Team IV to complete the construction of a partially built health clinic in Long Hia and that is what our U.S. Treasury License gave us permission to do. However, things had changed.

We were told that we were to meet with Mr. Binh, President of the Dong Nai Peoples Committee, three days later. At that meeting, we were informed that, due to recent redistricting Long Hai was no longer a part of Dong Nai Province. Consequently, we could not build our fourth medical facility there. Instead, we were asked to build a new medical clinic, from the ground up, in a little village called Xuan Hiep.

First we requested an inspection of the new proposed site and surrounding area. We wanted to determine the need for a clinic at the proposed location. We also requested a visit to the original site so that we could see for ourselves that the people there understood the situation.

We decided that the need was even greater at the new site, but, we were concerned about not having enough money to build a completely new clinic and we were also concerned about whether we would have enough time to build it in the four weeks we had allotted to this project. However, after being assured that the local Peoples Committee would make up the difference should we run short of cash and that the construction would be done on time, we agreed to build the clinic where they asked us to. Two days later, construction was underway.

During the construction period of our stay in Vietnam, the Peoples committee supplied us with housing; and oh what housing it was! We were put up at the Hoa Binh ( Peace) hotel, at K-4 Park, near Long Khanh. The Hoa Binh Hotel is unbelievably beautiful. It's a huge hotel that was built shortly after The Liberation. It was a place for Vietnamese Officers to retreat after the War.

The three story hotel is surrounded by a moat and surrounding the moat is an unbelievably beautiful park. All the roads and ponds are bordered by handcut stone walls. The second and third stories of the Hotel each have sweeping verandas and the grounds around the hotel are covered with beautiful flowers and plants.

We had expected to be housed in mud or grass huts, so you can imagine our surprise when we were shown our accommodations. We even had running water and sporadic electricity. We were thrilled!

The job site was nine or ten miles north of the hotel on Highway 1. Every weekday morning at 6:30am a van would be out front to take us to work, and at 2:30pm it would return us to our hotel, where we would spend most evenings sharing the day's activities with one another.

The day before we began clearing the land to build the clinic, the Vietnamese burned all of the weeds off the site. In the process two land mines exploded. After the weeds were burned off, a bulldozer that looked as though it might have been used during the U.S. Civil War, scraped the ground clean. What it began to uncover was shocking to say the least.

The first little jewel the dozer scraped up was a live U.S. mortar round. Before that day was over we had unearthed three more mortar rounds, and before the week was over, we had found numerous antipersonnel mines, antitank mines, hand-grenades, artillery rounds, rocket launchers, M-16 barrels, thousands of rounds of live M-16 ammo, ammo-cases, helmets, and GI boots-all military issue.

It only took the bulldozer a few days to clear the land. However, throughout this process the local children would chase along behind it trying to find anything uncovered that might be of value (scraps of metal, plastic or glass primarily). On Friday of the first week I was buy digging out the foundation footings, when a ten-year-old Vietnamese girl walked up and handed me a live U.S. hand-grenade with a very rusty pin.

The locals saw that we were saving up all the ordinance we found at the foot of a flagpole on the site, so the little girl though she was helping us out by giving me the grenade. Needless to say, this was a powerful experience, especially when coupled with my experience of the following day.

On the weekends most of the Team would either go to Saigon or Vung Tau. That first weekend we went to Saigon. While in Saigon, a few of us went to the To Do women's Hospital, a place I had visited in August 1991. This hospital has a whole room full of the preserved remains of hundred of Agent Orange casualties (aborted deformed fetuses) and a wealth of statistics on the damage Agent Orange has caused the Vietnamese people. On this visit I discovered they had a new ward.

On this ward were about 20 children, all under the age of two. Every one of them had a leg, an arm, or both missing-or had their face severely damaged-as a direct result of the live ordinance the U.S. left behind. This scene, coupled with the memory of the little present the ten-year-old girl had given me the day before, had a devastating effect on me.

Most Americans don't' realize that the U.S. is still killing and maiming innocent civilians 20 years after our troops came home. The millions of tons of munitions we left behind literally litter the countryside, and it is usually the little children who accidentally discover them. You see, children tend to wander where adults don't. Their naiveté coupled with their budding curiosity makes for a dangerous combination in a booby trapped countryside.

Once the ground was all cleared, and the foundation laid, the walls of the clinic began going up rapidly. One week into construction in the building began to take shape.

The foundation consisted of large hand cut granite blocks placed on a bed for fist sized granite gravel. On top of the foundation went the earthen brick walls.

Although most of the American vets on the Team had some construction experience,, we were not accustomed to the Vietnamese methods of building. The Vietnamese provided the skilled craftsmen; we were the grunt labor.

In all, there were 13 VVRP Team Members on the job and 28 Vietnamese. Many of the Vietnamese workers were formerly our enemy, but as the days turned into weeks, they became our friends.

By the end of the second week on the job the roof was going up. Hardwood rafters were embedded into the brick walls and earthen brick tiles were place on top of them.

Three weeks into construction, all that remained to be done was the finish work. Tiling the floor, installing electrical fixtures and glazing the windows didn't take long.

By the 23rd of March the clinic was compete. To christen in completed project, we planted a peace pole in front of the clinic.

The area where we lived and worked during the first month of our journey was a very volatile spot during the War. Neither side ever rally controlled this free-fire zone. Evidence of the War remains everywhere. Many of the buildings damaged during the war have never been repaired.

You couldn't take a stroll through the surrounding community without seeing many amputees struggling to eke out a living in this war torn district. Huge areas of the landscape are barren. To this day, virtually nothing will grow in these vast wastelands where we dumped our chemical weapons. Grossly deformed children attest to the fact that the dioxin has made its way up the food chain.

Twenty years later, craters still mark the spots where our bombs fell, but like most everything we left behind, they too are recycled. Now they are used for swimming holes, duck ponds or fist farms. The innovations and fortitude of the Vietnamese are nothing short of amazing.

Upon completion of the Xuan Miep Medical Clinic, the Team split up. Many of use still had unfinished personal business to tend to, having to do with our war time experiences. A few Team Members chose to return home early, but most of us wished to return to the areas where we had served. For me, that meant returning to the heliport at Tan Son Nhut where my barracks once stood.

Ever since the War, the sound of helicopters overhead has caused me to reflect on the madness I had witnessed. At times, these reflections consumed me and I would find myself reliving experiences that I had never learned to cope with.

I would see the mutilated bodies of those who happened to be near the coordinates I had reported to the F-4s. I would hear the death screams of children who happened to be caught in an ambush meant for me. I would smell that awful mixture of cordite and blood in the air after a bar I was in blew up.

Thanks to the veterans of the Ho Chi Minh City War Veterans Association, I was able to gain access to classified areas of this military installation. I was actually able to sand on the spot where my barracks once stood-only now there is no heliport there, no thump-thump-thumping to hear. Now there is nothing there but a vacant field and the sound of birds chirping.

The Marijuana Eradication Team (MET) helicopters that so often fly the skies of the Emerald Triangle where I live, no long cause me the extreme discomfort they once did. Now when I hear them. I reflect on a country (thought still one of the poorest in the world) that is finally at peace.

My Lai

On March 28, 1971, I turned 21 in Vietnam. That night my live-in Vietnamese fianc? was killed when a bomb exploded at a bar in Saigon. Twenty-one years later I turned 42 in Vietnam. That night I was in Nha Trang restlessly wondering how I would handle visit in the My Lai Monument the following morning. Nothing I had read or heard could have possibly prepared me for what I witnessed the following day.

Four other members of Team IV undertook the four hour drive to My Lai with me. Unlike the previous four or five days of our journey, there was very little conversation on the road that morning. As we approached the site of the massacre. I was overwhelmed with the beauty of the countryside. I simply could not imagine such an atrocity taking place in serene surroundings. It looked like paradise.

The rice paddies were all vibrant green. The paddy dikes all had mature palm trees and flowering vines growing along them. The air was clean and bright. The people on the roadside seemed so peaceful and content. This seemed to be the last place on earth such a thing could have happened. An almost violent silence fell upon us!

As we unloaded from our van and headed in different directions, no words were spoken. "How is it possible this peace could be violated in such a way?" echoed through my mind.

My Lai is not just one monument. My Lai was not just one village. The whole area is covered with monuments that attest to the 502 innocent civilians who last their lives on the horrendous day. Statues of men, women and children caught, and frozen forever, into the positions they held as they drew their last breaths. The expressions on the faces of those statues capture the agony these people must have gilt in their last moments of life.

On the wall in the foyer in the My Lai Museum is a plague that lists the names and ages of those who lost their lives that day. Over 40 of those names are children under the age of two. The sole survivor of this massacre witnessed American troops tossing infants into the air to shoot them for target practice. The walls of this museum are decorated with actual photographs of the victims. Some of the photos show the victims just before, and after they were murdered. They show the roads and paths between the half dozen or so villages that were annihilated that day, and they are all littered with the mutilated bodies of the former inhabitants.

Team member Mike Boehm brought his fiddle with him to My Lai. As we all stood in front of the memorial, he played taps for all who perished in the War. Each of us expressed our condolences in our own private way.

On the five hour journey from My Lai to Da Nang, not a word was spoken in our van.

Our journey ended in Ha Noi, where we spent our last week. Although Ha Noi still bares the scars the War, it has largely been rebuilt to its previous splendor—the Emerald City of the Orient. The most visible scar is the poverty that still prevails. Vietnam is the third poorest nation in the world.

Join Us

The 66 American who have participated in the eight projects which the VVRP has completed in Vietnam over the past six years are proud of the roll they have played in bringing about an end to the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam. It is a historical fact that the VVRP was the very first American organization to build anything in Vietnam since the end of the War, when the "Friendship Clinic" at Vung Tao was completed in April 1989. In fact, 13 hours after President Bill Clinton finally ended the embargo in February, the VVRP receive a fax from the Ha Noi government, thanking us for the "valuable contribution" we made toward bringing about an end to the embargo.

Year after year, in spite of the obvious obstacles, the VVRP has remained dedicated to "Healing the Wound of War!" this summer VVRP Team X will return to Vietnam to build independent housing for blind Vietnamese veterans and to distribute hundreds of pounds of much needed medical supplies. Team XI will return to Vietnam this winter.