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The Healing Power of the Pen

By John Brennan

Greg Kleven, a Vietnam War veteran and an English language teacher in Ho Chi Minh City, died there on December 3rd, 2024. Greg was the first American and Vietnam veteran allowed to live and work in Vietnam after the war. Shortly before his death, his autobiography, "My War and Peace in Vietnam", was completed. Let's pray that his personal story finds a publisher. Otherwise, history will be cheated. Below is my memory of Greg, before and after the war.

Ten months into Greg's Vietnam tour of duty in 1967, he was medevaced to the USA and a Naval hospital on the West Coast near his home. He had miraculously survived a near-fatal combat wound during a behind-the-lines recon patrol near the vicinity of the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail. Fast-forward to present-day Ho Chi Minh City, and there on the front lines of a new frontier is a fully recuperated Greg, clear-eyed as never before, one of the best unknown writers of his generation as never before.

My friend Greg is an English teacher in Vietnam and an old pen pal of mine. He and I grew up together in California, and as early as the first grade, Greg exhibited skills that made him destined for the communication business. On receiving a medical discharge and pondering its implications on a future career, Greg remarked, "Like we said in our letters, there's no real civilian counterpart to a combat Recon Marine." What Greg failed to recognize, despite my many appeals, was his natural talent for writing. He possessed an instinctive skill for intelligent composition. He could turn a phrase with just about the same measure of agility and flair as when he was a kid turning double plays on the ballfields of Oakland. Greg was a highly employable artist, but regrettably, the ravages of war had silenced the muse.

I saw him periodically over the next two decades, staying in touch informally through picture postcards and the local grapevine. College, careers, marriage, kids, and moves consumed our postwar years, with sports thrown in to round out the main topics of conversation whenever we got together. The war had definitely changed him, but to what extent was anybody's guess. The little that I knew was that the subject of Vietnam, the contents of his letters, and the mention of any veteran organization were tactfully avoided. I didn't pry.

And then, from out of the blue, came news that was so off-the-wall that it literally stopped me in my tracks. Greg had gone back to Vietnam! For fear of ridicule and the fact it was illegal, Greg had quietly and successfully slipped back into Vietnam on a tourist visa for a two-week visit. Then the other shoe landed. I subsequently learned from Greg that the controversial toxin Agent Orange had been medically determined to be the probable cause in the recent death of his premature infant daughter and that he'd been personally battling severe nightmares and flashbacks of the war for several years. Things had radically come to a head for Greg.

As it turned out, going to Vietnam in 1988 was just what the doctor ordered. Greg's self-prescribed eight-thousand-mile journey virtually saved his life. He told me this himself. It's ironic to think that twenty-one years earlier, with his life in the balance, the country of Vietnam was deemed ill-suited to handle Greg's medical emergency. Yet, two decades later, it represented the perfect harbor site for this former Recon Marine.

What became a journey of emotional healing also set into motion a personal reconciliation campaign. In short order, Greg traveled to Washington, DC, with his family to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Three-Man Statue nearby. He came away from that experience with deep, probing questions: It was time to focus on the Nam issue, but how?

After several brainstorming sessions between Greg and me, the genesis for Vietnam Echos (without the 'e') was developed. We decided to self-publish an alternative veteran's newsletter with the objective of "providing information on the continuing Vietnam experience." It would be distributed free to individuals and organizations dealing with the legacy of the war.

We had, you might say, the perfect ingredients for balanced journalism. Greg was a veteran "grunt" (infantry) and I was a veteran "remf" (rear echelon) of the same war. It made for a formidable combination without the usual drawbacks commonly associated with newly formed partnerships. Although I had followed Greg to Vietnam as an Army clerk, his wartime experiences never once turned into combat chauvinism in a way that jeopardized our friendship. It was more than a mere collaboration for convenience. Its strength lay in it being a collaboration of the heart.

Almost immediately, we hit pay dirt. Greg's first cover story, What Was It Like In Vietnam, was reprinted nationally in Stars and Stripes, the nation's oldest veteran's newspaper. It felt like hitting a home run at our first swing at bat. It was to be a good omen. Two years later, we'd hit a grand slam when The Saigon Times in Ho Chi Minh City reprinted a subsequent cover story of Greg's titled Goofing Off In Hue. It was obvious that we were on the right track.

Greg's body of work during this time had reached a celebrated maturity. The world was finally getting to sample what I had been privy to for many fortunate pen pal years. Most importantly, Greg himself had found contentment and a renewed vitality in life. It was infectious, too. With Greg as my tour guide, we traveled to Vietnam together in 1992. I came away acknowledging Greg's credo that "people should now be able to think of Vietnam as a country, not a war."

To me, this one person has done more than anyone I know to help ease the pain of reconciliation between two former enemy nations. He has helped open doors for those to follow and built bridges of trust where none existed before. For Greg, it was about going full circle, which he best summarized in the final issue of Vietnam Echos: "Something tells me I'm coming home to myself; I'm finally coming home."

John Brennan is a Vietnam vet 1970-71, author of eight Vietnam War Army helicopter books with 1,000+ nose art pics.

John Brennan and Greg Kleven at Tan Son Nhut airport in 1992.

Greg Kleven in Vietnam, 1967.