Afterwards
Eventually, the war ended. For most Americans, that end came in 1973 when almost all of the American military packed up and went home. For others, it ended in 1975. If you are old enough, you’ll remember those striking pictures of South Vietnamese citizens trying to get into the American Embassy to make their escape before northern tanks rolled into the city or of South Vietnamese helicopters being pushed off the decks of American ships. However you look at it, whether you were for the war or opposed to it, the damned thing ended badly.
As I watched the end of this very televised war, I was more sad than happy. The students my friends and I had taught at that little language school sponsored by the Air Force were still in Pleiku seven years after the classes ended with the Tet Offensive of 1968.
I have often wondered what happened to them. I suspect most did get jobs with the U.S. Air Force Base in Pleiku. And I suspect most were sent to re-education camps after the South fell. Son, Le-Linh, Xuan…all should have been offered relocation in the United States. We left much too quickly, without an exit strategy for our friends: not that we should have left later, but that we should have prepared sooner. The Green Berets have long felt that we deserted our Montagnard helpers though many of the Hmong have come to the United States. Many of the Vietnamese also found their way here, to our country, the Land of the Big PX, boat people and others. But too many were left behind and the victors did not treat them well.
Time passes and, off and on, I read about the Vietnamese immigrants to our country. Sometimes, because I live not far from the Gulf Coast, I read about Vietnamese shrimpers and the problems they have had with Texas- and Louisiana-bred shrimpers. Sometimes those problems have involved gunshots and shrimp boat burnings. I read about California’s attempts to cut back on the number of Asiatic students admitted to the University system because they out-perform “American” students though they are themselves “Americans.”
Our war keeps on getting fought.
And I still recall, quite clearly, the Vietnamese hooch maids we had, squatting in front of large metal pans to wash our clothes and shine our boots. They are speaking in Vietnamese, high, lilting, musical sentences. They do not seem unhappy for the most part, but how can we tell. I remember the two bar girls named Xuan in our EM/NCO Club, serving drinks, wiping the bar, men playing grab-ass with them.
I remember the whores of Pleiku, out in the streets, chatting with big men who carried M-16s. They’re like Maggie in the Stephen Crane story, only, unlike her, they spent their time going along to get along, to survive. They, too, seemed happy enough. But I also remember the children, so resolute, laughing for the most part as older men with stumps instead of legs wheeled by, palms open, begging, children who sometimes forgot to be happy.
War. Our war. We have to wonder why. And there is no real answer; instead, we get a multiplicity of attempted answers: standing up to the Commies, protecting American interests, domino theories, SEATO treaties, invitations, whatever. There is no answer, no good reason.
We don’t even know when it really started though everyone has an opinion. Americans were there in the 1950s, spooks mostly—read Graham Greene’s The Quiet American (1955). Read The LBJ Brigade by William Wilson (1967). Watch almost any of the films from Go Tell the Spartans to whatever Vietnam War film is most recent. No answers, only questions. Take a trip up the MeKong River with Apocalypse Now and get into that Heart of Darkness at the end.
Questions. Nothing else. Hemingway's great NADA.
We had a little war and hundreds of thousands of people died. It would be pretty, as Hem might say, to think there was some good reason.
That’s it. Het roi! Hoa Binh.
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