“I can’t help but wonder how my old friends would feel”
Excerpts from Ted Heselton’s Yen Vien journal
Ted Heselton was a member of VVRP Team III. The eleven members of the team went to Yen Vien, a village north of Hanoi, where they spent eight weeks in 1990 building a health clinic alongside the Vietnamese. Ted, who at that time was a member of the Veterans for Peace Board of Directors, finished his very moving journal within days of his return to his home in Maine. The following is from his letter transmitting the journal to the VVRP:
I’d like to offer my journal as a personal anti-war statement from the heart. I’m emotional about war and its consequences…When I came back I found the drums of war beating harder and faster than when I left. It is disturbing to have been away working on the damage from America’s last big war and find her preparing for another…
[The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the VVRP]
The photographs were provided by Team III member Benita Keller who is a free lance photographer. You can visit her web site: www.benitakellerphoto.com.
September 7, 1990 We start to descend soon to land in Hanoi, the old enemy capitol. I can’t help but wonder how my friends who served here would feel right now if they were in my shoes. Or how about the guys who were killed, if they could come back? I’d like to look over in the next seat and see Bill Breece and Red Genesio. As we get closer, I can’t stop the flood of strange thoughts: twenty years ago just below us there were N.V.A. anti-aircraft guns dug in there. It is a very patriotic thing to do to put your life on the line to stop a foreign power from dropping bombs on your country… We are met by the Peoples Committee from G.I.A. L.A.M. They are carrying flowers…
September 8 First wake-up in Viêt Nam Chuck, my roommate, and I cross the road [that runs in front of the hostel] and head out into the rice paddies. As we walk along the paths we encounter people coming the other way, and some greet us, some don’t.
We are invited into someone’s house for tea but that is not allowed by the government.
When it gets rural, it becomes the Viêt Nam I remember, children walking on the paddy dikes and people working in the fields.
I would not walk in the fields in the south this way. I wouldn’t feel safe.
I had forgotten about the heat and humidity here, it’s really incredible. As I walk along the rice paddy dikes and watch people work in the fields I try to get a sense of the rhythm of life here. Plant, tend, harvest and process the rice. Fish jump in the ponds and ducks swim on the surface. Children play everywhere…
September 9 Walked five miles into Hanoi and back today. Back and forth across the Long Bien Bridge, a mile long bridge over the Red River. Spent about three hours in the market place. We were able to walk around freely and go wherever we wanted…
September 10 We spent the morning at the project and probably spent more time resting than working. The Vietnamese were very considerate of our inability to spend more than fifteen to twenty minutes in the sun and humidity. It was real clear today that our labor will be more symbolic than anything really essential…
September 12 The Vietnamese masons worked the hell out of us today and we all came home sore. I felt good though, because we were almost able to keep up. When we took a break they asked me what year I was here and I told them 1968. The next question was my age, and the next, “How many children?”
September 13 I worked throwing bricks again with the same crew as yesterday. We wear each other’s hats and drink from my canteen, a few small things signifying some degree of acceptance I suppose. I should not be surprised that the Vietnamese are so industrious. These 110-pound barefoot peasants are the same people who dragged the cannons by hand into the hills around Khe San. (And Dien Bien Phu before that.)
September 17 I am put on leveling out the floors, working next to an ex N.V.A. Main Force Regular who went South in 1971 and came back in 1974. We get our interpreter, Tu, and have a talk.
He (the ex-soldier) was seventeen years old when he “went South” in 1971 and he has that date tattooed on his arm… [I asked him to write in my journal. He wrote:] “We’re very happy to meet the Americans who visit to our country and long live the solidarity between the U.S. people and the Vietnamese people.”
Later on our interpreter Tu takes me aside and tells me that the Vietnamese workers on the job really like me because I don’t get mad and am always happy and easy to work with. I don’t really know if this is public relations or for real, but I do know the Vietnamese have been protective of me on the job and accepting of me as part of the crew…
September 23 End of the Day Note: I will always remember standing on one of the beaches the boat people leave from and looking out to sea. I had a really wonderful time with two different Vietnamese families today and saw the joy and love of the people; but I am also connected to their sadness.
On the way back to Hanoi we passed fifteen tanks mounted on flatbed railroad cars stopped on the tracks. Young boys were playing on the tanks. Later on, when I’d had a chance to absorb that scene, the boys on the tanks, I wanted to go back and scream “Get down off those, go back to the fields, go home!”
Years ago, when I saw my first enemy dead, I steeled myself as I walked up to view the dreaded Viêt Cong, and lying on the ground were two children in black pajamas, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. All three of us had our childhood taken that day but I got to live.
Dammit, there they are again. I can’t seem to keep the dead out of this journal: the Vietnamese dead, the American dead. Can’t do a Viêt Nam journal without a body count. One of the reasons I had such a hard time as a soldier was that I couldn’t separate the body count into ours and theirs. They were all just the dead to me. Once that happens, you might as well throw the rifle down and go home…
September 24 For my 10:00 a.m. break, I was taken through the field out back of the project to the house of an ex-N.V.A. soldier. He invites me for tea so I sit down with him and a couple of his partners. We pantomime and write and draw on his coffee table with chalk. Part of his foot is missing so I ask how that happened. He writes “M-79″ (grenade launcher that breaks open like a little shotgun) and says he was also hit in the side. He shows me on the map where he was down south.
Then the talk turns to one of my roommates, John Baca, who threw himself on a grenade. When he works with his shirt off, the Vietnamese are amazed at his scars. He has the worst scars I’ve ever seen except for burn victims… (Editor’s note: John Baca received the Congressional Medal of Honor for smothering a Viêt Cong grenade with his body in order to save the lives of the men in his squad.)
October 9 It has been a good day today and I am full of wonder about the trip south. There are many ghosts from the past down there for everyone on this trip. I will walk lightly on the earth below the old DMZ, and perhaps I won’t disturb them.
There’s Dave Bosworth, my childhood friend, Terry Corson and Alan Ward from high school and Rodney Quirion’s brother. Then there’s Bill Breece who just had to land his helicopter and be a goddamned hero. And of course, what about all these young Vietnamese boys and girls who “went south” and never came home, or the boys and girls from southern villages and hamlets who stayed home and fought. Boys and girls who rode water buffalo to the fields and daydreamed in the sun became soldiers. No child should have to be a soldier.
My working partner, Truy, must have been a boy like that once, now he looks like a veteran. We’ve worked on the same crew off and on for a month now and today was the first time I saw him smile. I had given him a picture of himself wearing my hat. The boy may be gone but he can still smile…
October 12 I worked all day with the Vietnamese today and spent much of the day with Truy. He told me through an interpreter that it took him three months to walk down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I asked him what the toughest part of the trip was and he said “the big bombs” (500 pounders?) and “the bright bombs.” White phosphorous or napalm. He pantomimes stuff raining down on him and trying to get away…
October 13 Got up early, caught a cyclo and went into Hanoi to be alone for awhile… In the afternoon I went to see what I believe was called the Natural History Museum, kind of a combination of cultural and physical anthropology. The most disturbing thing there (from the late 1800s) were iron ankle shackles the French used on the rebellious Vietnamese. The shackles were just like those used on slave ships.
There was also an ornate wooden chair, similar to those in old movies like Cleopatra, in which French colonial masters were carried by eight Vietnamese. In this same room were two whips and pairs of French handcuffs…
I may eventually forget some things about this trip but I’ll always remember the mile-long walking bridge over the Red River and the way the late afternoon sun hits the water.
Night becomes a time of reflection, a time to be honest with myself. Of course I’m here to help with the clinic and to support the VVRP because I believe in what they are doing. But in addition to helping the Vietnamese, I want to help myself…
I’ve come to Viêt Nam to mourn for myself, to mourn the death of the person I was before I saw dead teenagers and people in pieces and a platoon of amputees. I’ve come to pay my respects to the soldiers on the other side, living and dead, who fought so hard for so long and sacrificed so much for independence. And last, but by no means least, I’ve come because I’m an experience junkie. I have a need to put myself in unusual situations where the stress level and emotional level can be higher than normal. An important part of the “high” is experiencing the feeling of struggling for a cause you know to be right on both political and humanitarian grounds…
October 18 I walked out to the small hamlet off the Hai Phong Road to say goodbye and take a few more photos. I was back by noon and this afternoon’s event is a goodbye party with the workers at the clinic site. The Americans all chipped in about twenty dollars a piece to feed sixty or so people.
Later – Just got back from the goodbye party for the workers. To say it was emotional would be an understatement. I gave a short speech, John Baca opened his heart up as usual, and read a poem…
We went outside on the steps of the clinic for a group shot and my friend Truy got up close to me and put his arm around me. After this group shot, we got up to say goodbye to each other. When we shook hands we both started to cry so we walked around the corner of the clinic to be away from other people. As soon as we turned the corner we both broke out sobbing so we just held each other and cried. We both knew the tears were for the war and our dead friends as well as the sadness of parting. We were just a couple of ex-soldiers crying about the sadness of war. For a moment I forgot we had been on opposite sides. As the bus pulled away, Truy, leaning on an anti-aircraft gun someone had parked outside the clinic gate, was waving goodbye, with tears in his eyes. The guys from my old therapy group at the Vet Center would never believe this scene…
October 27 Today [during our stay in Ho Chi Minh City] there was a series of strange coincidences [so that] Mr. Kha, the driver, and I went to the War Crimes Museum alone. We came to a map of the location of different units during the war and found the Thai Black Panther division. According to the map it was near the village of Long Thanh. I only knew the base name which was Bearcat. Seventy kilometers later we were in Long Thanh talking to villagers who said in Vietnamese “Oh yes, we remember, it is called Thai Corners.” We turned off down a dirt road and drove up to what Mr. Kha referred to as a camp for “naughty boys.” We went in the gate of the reform school and asked directions to “Thai Corners.” In the process we found out that this reform school used to be a re-education camp after the war. We drove along one wall of the camp, through a sugar cane field for a hundred yards and suddenly things got vaguely familiar.
I couldn’t find exactly where our tent was but I was standing on the same ground as when I was here. It was anti-climatic, as though the journey had been more important than the destination. The boy that stood here 22 years ago has come back as a man. My real goal was not a physical location but to be forgiven by the Vietnamese people. That has happened. I can go home now.
October 30 It is time to leave this country and time for this experience to end. When we get to Ton Sun Nhut Airport everyone looks a little sad. I cried when I left Viêt Nam in February of 1969 and I am determined not to cry this time. When 20 or 30 Amerasians show up at the gate for the orderly departure program, my resolve weakens. They are such a visible and human sign of the American presence here…
On the plane Art James and I ask each other over and over, “How are we going to explain this experience to people?” I hope this journal helps to do that.
