When the tsunami blasted coastal Thailand on the day after Christmas, our son who'd been in that country for two years with the Peace Corps was perfectly safe -- and not simply because his duty station was hundreds of miles away, in the northeastern uplands
Wondering as a war grows distant
By Steve Ford
The News & Observer
Raleigh, N.C.
April 24, 2005
When the tsunami blasted coastal Thailand on the day after Christmas, our son who'd been in that country for two years with the Peace Corps was perfectly safe -- and not simply because his duty station was hundreds of miles away, in the northeastern uplands.
After all, he was on a little holiday sojourn, and he might well have decided to enjoy his time off lounging on the beach at Phuket. But instead of heading south to that tourist mecca, Eugene had opted to visit a charming city of tree-lined boulevards, lakes, art galleries, cafes and architecture conjuring up a French colonial past.
He was perfectly safe because he was in Hanoi.
He'd gone there to visit a friend from home (Paul Schuler, former N&O reporting intern and accomplished golfer) whose first job in Vietnam had been at a golf resort.
For me the ironies have been swirling ever since.
Six days from now it will have been 30 years since the forces of communist North Vietnam completed their takeover of the ill-fated South, capturing the presidential palace in the city then (and colloquially still) known as Saigon and sealing in ignominious memory the image of Americans fleeing by helicopter from their embassy roof.
Americans in Hanoi? Yes, there had been an unfortunate few (not to mention the occasional war protester of the Jane Fonda variety for whom hospitality was sickeningly contrived). We'd seen what happened to guests at the Hanoi Hilton, that notorious prison for captured pilots where only the strongest lived to tell about it.
It scarcely seemed possible to imagine in those awful days of war and loss that Vietnam and the United States would reconcile, that Hanoi would welcome Americans to savor its serenity and culture, that Saigon, as Ho Chi Minh City, would shake off defeat and postwar score-settling to rise once again toward the top of the Asian economic heap.
That a reconciliation could occur speaks to Vietnam's pragmatic need to establish ties of commerce and cultural exchange with its former enemy across the Pacific. But there has been in evidence a genuine cordiality toward Americans, incongruous perhaps in light of the war's terrible toll, but displaying what could be called a largeness of spirit -- a working out of the maxim that time heals all wounds, that it is preferable to look toward the future than to dwell on the past.
On the American side, those who would have punished Vietnam with a perpetual cold shoulder wisely have given way to those who see the benefits of full engagement. It has not been out of line to extend a helping hand to a country punished so cruelly by U.S. military might, even if all that firepower was expended for naught.
Of course, it wasn't simply firepower we expended. It was manpower -- the lives of 58,000 Americans, forfeited in behalf of a cause whose communist-thwarting justification may once have seemed plain but which now escapes the net of logic like fine sand.
These were young people mainly of my generation, packed off to fight a war that their leaders should have known would prove unwinnable. Let's not even entertain the thought that they died so Americans one day could relax on holiday in Hanoi, or advise a Vietnamese businessman at the driving range as to how to cure his slice. It needn't have taken a war to accomplish any of that.
There are nine families who shortly will observe another wartime anniversary, mourning the men who died when a UH-1D Huey helicopter was shot down on May 9, 1970. Five of those lost were from the unit with which I had recently completed a year's service, the Army's 221st Signal Company. They, like me, were photographers, and they were returning to a base at Pleiku from an assignment during that spring's U.S. strike into Cambodia.
One of the quintet, Douglas J. Itri of Boston, had been a good friend of mine. It was such a cruel twist, this unassuming fellow with a wry sense of humor who had simply wanted to do his job and go home. He was 22 -- two years younger than my son Eugene.
A unit history of the 221st, which operated in support of the Army's Southeast Asia Pictorial Center, recounts that eight of its photographers were killed in the line of duty. Along with Doug, those from the company who perished in the crash 35 years ago were Christopher J. Childs III, 30, of Augusta, Me., Ronald S. Lowe, 21, of Norfolk, Va., Larry C. Young, 22, of Sunnyvale, Calif., and Raymond L. Paradis, 21, of Nashua, N.H.
The only slim consolation for those who remember them is that even in their death -- even in their country's defeat, for that's what it was -- along with tragedy there can be honor.
