Reviews

Vietnam and the United States, Forever Bonded

8/7/2013

Lt. Bruce Logan, right, Cu Chi Region, 1966-67

Bruce Logan served two tours in Vietnam as an officer, and counted himself lucky when he returned to the United States. Now he and his Canadian wife, Elaine Head, consider Vietnam a second home.

Some Americans go back to confront their bad dreams in the cities and countryside. They are often touched by the conciliatory tone of word and deed.

In a village outside Hanoi, Logan and Head were invited to a feast at the home of a woman named Phuong. In a matter-of-fact way, she described President Nixon’s Christmas bombing of 1972, the bodies and the rubble. The former officer expressed his sorrow for the carnage.

“In response, Phoung turned her misted eyes to mine, laid her hand on my forearm and said, ‘I am so glad that you did not die in the war and that we are here to have dinner together in my house.’

“At that, everyone had a silent cry, for long ago pain, for the moment we had shared, and for the gift of forgiveness in Hanoi.”

Logan and Head tell many stories like this in their book, Back to Vietnam: Tours of the Heart, published by JOTH Press, Salt Spring Island, B.C. and First Choice Press of Victoria, B.C.

My wife and I had similar experiences in 1991 when we were visiting Vietnam as part of her child-care work. People casually divulged details of the war – but only if we asked. Mostly they demonstrated reconciliation, north with south, Vietnamese with Americans.

Not everybody goes back. I have friends who lived through terrible times in Vietnam and do not care to go back. I was never there in wartime; I understand. I had a nice visit with Sen. John McCain once, and asked why he and his buddies help send goods to Vietnam. He shrugged, quite modestly, suggesting it was the right thing to do. I think about that when I see him on television. There is a good man in there.

Like many combat veterans, Bruce Logan kept the war inside him, but he and his second wife, Elaine Head, visited Vietnam in 2006 with a group of veterans and their families. The book has touching stories of finding old foxholes, places where soldiers and civilians died, where horrible memories live, tempered by the forgiveness of the Vietnamese, that sometimes feels like a miracle.

The glorious byproduct of the visits was gaining a family. In the World Heritage town of Hoi An, just outside Da Nang, Logan and Head met Le Nguyen Binh and his wife Quyen, who operate Reaching Out, a distributor of hand-crafted goods made by people who might be consider disabled. My wife and I have purchased some of their high-quality goods. (I wrote about Binh and Quyen in a previous post.)

Binh and Quyen have made a standing offer for Logan and Head to live in Hoi An, and be cared for in their old age, perhaps even be cremated there. Not yet, Logan and Head say, politely. They still conduct tours for Americans who need to return to Vietnam. Their sweet book is graced by their anecdotes, their adventures, their bond with their other home.

Bruce Logan in Vietnam; Elaine Head and Bruce Logan

Brian Savin

8/8/2013 02:56:55 pm

Reconciliation with the enemy you were sent to kill must be a very strange thing. I never went to war. My father, a sailor in WWII, didn't recommend it. He saw zero glory in armed service. And he never talked about it. I remember visiting home when Hirohito was invited by President Ford to Washington in 1975. My Dad was glued to the TV as it was televised live. He didn't even notice I had come into the room. After a long while I said, "I guess you never thought your would see this day." He turned a look at me, tightened his lips and shook his head, saying nothing. He turned back to the TV. Wow, I thought.

Presidents who play war with our children's lives should burn in hell -- every one of them.

George Vecsey

8/9/2013 01:28:22 am

Brian, I guess there are all varieties of going to war. But I know officers from Vietnam who feel betrayed by Johnson and McNamara. I've been able to travel to Japan and Germany, and cannot link the events of my early childhood with the modern societies (and friends) I see today.
The attitude in Vietnam is an example to all. I met a surgeon who went back to work in Saigon after being held in camps for three years. He said, it's everybody's country. And Bruce Logan and Elaine Head were greeted by people who had survived the war, and welcomed them. The experiences they relate in the book are very touching. GV

Thor A. Larsen

8/9/2013 12:21:05 pm

What a wonderful story of reconciliation,forgiveness and thereby healing of former pain, suffering and mental stress. A perfect model for international issues based on past injustices. If this model was used by the Palestinians and the Israelis, Secretary of State John Kerry would have an easy time in his diplomacy efforts to realize a two-state solution.

Ed Martin

8/9/2013 03:55:00 pm

There is an irony in Thor's mentioning of John Kerry.. Kerry was a bonafide hero in Vietnam, and got "Swiftboated" by the crypto-Nazis.
May his work for peace bear fruit.

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8/10/2013 10:16:05 am

Thor and Ed

If an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord was only as simple to achieve as the relationship that developed between Logan/Head and Binh/Quyen. He was a participant and they victims in an unnecessary and unpopular war between two countries for a limited period. Over time, relations between the two countries were normalized.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a long standing one between two peoples who are vying for control of real estate in a country that was partitioned at birth.

The long and troubled history of their conflict since the peace following the end of WWI and the subsequent creation of the state of Israel is well documented, as well as the several opportunities for a peace accord that were missed. Both sides have had agreement on potentially workable frameworks for peace, but the lack of trust, suspicion and hatred has always been an obstacle. Neither side ever prepared their people for the possibility of peace prior to any of the talks.

Each failed opportunity led to increased frustrations, hardening of positions, rocket firings, more settlements and the present stalemate. John Kerry is trying to get beyond the normal rhetoric with low key diplomacy by building trust with both parties. In a simplification of this approach, you try to break the cycle of “they must do something before we agree to something.” A commitment made by one side is brought to the other and you build on that.

Kerry is attempting this at a time when the Middle East is very rapidly changing. Also, Israeli-Palestinian positions have hardened considerably in the past ten years. My family observed this on a very personal level.

My wife worked for a Jerusalem based foundation as the executive director for the United States. Donations were targeted for specific Jewish, Arab or Christian projects in Jerusalem. She had befriended a liberal Palestinian woman who was the director of two community centers. When Arafat was still alive and there was serious talk of a two-state solution, my wife asked her friend how she felt. She believed that there must be a Palestinian state for many reasons, including pride, but that she would still want to live in Israel. She was an Israeli and felt that she would have a better life there. She felt that Arafat was a crook and not to be trusted.

This past New Year, we were in Israel for three weeks, much of the time with our two children and their families. We overlapped for a week in Jerusalem. All nine of us met with the Palestinian friend and her husband for dinner in East Jerusalem. The two friend would be able to catch up after ten years and it would be an enlightening experience for our children and their three teenagers

The Palestinian couple later invited us for dinner in their apartment, but our kids had left and we were staying with Israeli friends. They insisted that we come as it is a matter of pride for a Palestinian man to reciprocate hospitality and our friends (who were very liberal) were welcome. They lived in a former Arab village and this might have had some effect on the evening, but I do not think too much.

The first thing that struck us when we entered their apartment was a handmade map of Israel with no boundary lines, but it was called Palestine. Without going into the details of the evening’s conversation, it was very clear that was not the liberal Palestinian woman of ten years earlier. There was no acknowledgement of her earlier comments about Arafat and the evening gradually deteriorated and ended when the husband said that the United States was responsible for 9/11, which we later learned was a common belief. His argument was that the US had the most to gain from the attack as it gave us the excuse to invade Irag.

The Israeli Palestinians have no representation Jerusalem politics, so no one is looking out for their interests. They will not vote because that would acknowledge Israeli sovereignty.

This is the hardened environment that Kerry has entered. As hopeless as it seems, events in the country and region are suggesting that it may be even more dangerous for both parties not to have a two-state accord (I’m not sure it could be called a solution).

I wish Kerry all the success as continued failure is heading everyone toward a major disaster. Too often when you look back on historical didasters, the question is often asked--"didn't they see it coming?"

Ed Martin

8/10/2013 02:28:53 pm

Thank you George for the thoughtful reply and the disappointing news. We have visited Israel of the years and supported a couple of organizations working on understanding between people of differing religions. I too wonder if the clock can be wound back to when the seemingly satisfactory deal was on the table but Mr. Arafat backed away. What seems so unlikely is that both sides will back away with a half-loaf, or anything less than a whole loaf. I wish some intermediate position could be agreed upon for say five years, and then at that point, another step forward with the idea that the backlash from the first agreement would have died down. Shalom. Salaam, Peace.

George Vecsey

8/11/2013 02:38:36 am

Thanks for the comments. Ed, Alan told me bits of that encounter when we met for lunch a year ago. I cannot even comment on the Israel/Palestinian situation because it's too distant from my experience, but I was in Vietnam, very briefly, 20 years ago, and was struck by the way essentially one people were able to knit (probably superficially) and also greet visitors (we were coming in with certain aid to child-care agencies and hospitals.) The past was there, but as backdrop.
On a bus trip outside Hanoi, I asked our interpreter about the odd circular ponds, used for irrigation and fishing in farm areas. Very matter-of-factly, she said they were bomb craters, and she told us a bit about how her school was bombed during (what I would call) the Nixon-Kissinger bombing. She was answering my question, not laying on history as guilt. The couple who have "adopted" Logan and Head run a large (and excellent) crafts outlet -- Reaching Out -- for disabled workers (Binh is in a wheelchair from a non-warfare hospital accident as a teen-ager.) They have made themselves entrepreneurs -- job-creators in the very best sense of the word. What happens in Hoi An could be a beacon to many corners of the world. GV

Charlie Accetta

8/11/2013 04:47:20 pm

George - My 91 year-old uncle served with an Army Tank unit during the Okinawa and Saipan invasions. He hasn't spoken of it directly until recently. All we knew in the past was that he was claustrophobic from the tank duty - he sold appliances at Macy's Herald Square after the war, but never rode the elevator to his department.

Over the past ten years he started to open up. It began when his grandson was appointed to USMA at West Point, and then went on to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. Naturally, his grandson had questions that my uncle felt obligated to answer. I think that saying aloud what he had held inside for so long was therapeutic, that hearing himself relate the stories was a cleansing of sorts.

I visit him every Thursday after work. When the subject happens to come up, he feels free to remember that which he once couldn't bear to. Of course, at his age, it can get repetitive, but I prefer that to silence. All of the soldiers who faced death on the field of battle and survived came home accompanied by their demon memories. It's always good to hear when one of those devils has been exorcized.

George Vecsey

8/12/2013 01:01:25 am

Charlie, good for you for getting your uncle to talk. It's not easy for vets to open up. I've got friends who allude to Vietnam service elliptically but usually as a point of reference.The book by Logan and Head graphically describes vets going back, sometimes discovering the exact spot where they were in danger. Of course, the other side is the people who live there every day. I think the visits help both "sides." I was touched by the encounters of Vietnamese and Americans in a new age, going forward. Definitely worth reading. GV

Gene Palumbo

8/12/2013 07:32:23 pm

In case you don't check the Times every day, just wanted to let you know that George has a column in Tuesday's paper.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/sports/soccer/back-home-still-taking-on-the-world.html

Ed Martin

8/14/2013 01:32:05 pm

George writing on soccer in NYT brings smile, always. Watching Altidore get a hat trick to lead U.S. victory in friendly, 4-3 also brings smile.

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8/17/2013 07:38:27 pm

In a borough extrinsic Hanoi, Logan furthermore Cranium were invited to a gala at the house of a dame named Phuong. In a topic-of-deed method, she described President Nixon’s Christmas bombing of 1972, the bodies also the debris. The quondam general expressed hellos grieve for the slaughter.

Alan Rubin link

8/19/2013 01:54:57 am

I was 10 years old when WW II ended and very excited that all my relatives would be coming home. We had a world map on the wall of our dining room where pins had marked everyone’s location. I did not question it at the time, but those who fought in the Pacific against the Japanese NEVER spoke about their experiences. I later learned that Japanese soldiers fought to the death, had a take no prisoner’s policy and brutalized their prisoners.

Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption” vividly describes the treatment of prisoners by the Japanese.

I’ve been in a history study group for the past four years. We meet once a month at Alta Wine Bar in Lenox, MA (a plug for a friend for those who visit the Berkshires) and discuss a wide range of topics. The focus is on the individuals behind the events.

One theme that permeates most of our discussions is the number of unnecessary wars that the United States has been involved in since the end of WWII. The combination of arrogance, racial and ethnic superiority and an almost complete lack of history and the cultures of our advocacies is appalling.

“The Coldest Winter” by David Halberstan describes how we got into an unnecessary war as the result of Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s UN speech that indicated that the Koreas were not in the United States sphere of concern. North Korea, China and Russia all miscalculated that we would not interfere if North Korea invaded South Korea.

Only five years after the end of WWII, the United States' powerful army was a shell of itself. General MacArthur’s army of the Pacific, headquartered in Tokyo, was at less than half strength and very poorly trained. He considered the North Korean’s to be an inferior race whose army would run when they were confronted by the Americans.

Shortly after the war started, the American forces were forced into a defensive perimeter, but quickly battled to a stalemate. The North Koreans signaled for peace and indicated that they were willing to withdraw to the original boundaries.

General MacArthur turned it down and then advanced north, thus bringing in the Chinese. Instead of ending relatively quickly with limited casualties, the Korean War lasted more than three additional years with about 55,000 American deaths, mostly due to one man’s arrogance. MacArthur had wanted to end his military career as the man who united the Koreas.

Another depressing example is “A Wicked War: Polk, Clay Lincoln and the 1846 U.S. invasion of Mexico” by Amy S. Green. President Polk, using deception, lies and tainted diplomacy, convinced congress to declare war on Mexico as well as grab California. Polk considered the Mexicans an inferior people and that it was willed by god that whites possess the territory.

Since the first settlers arrived, the United States has expanded at the expense of minorities. The “Manifest Destiny” (which we all embraced in high school history) is essentially an expansionist policy based upon racism.

Both books are on www.historystudygroup.com, our studys group's web site which was just started. All the books that we have studied, as well as suggested reading, will be added as time permits.

The United States is a great country, but we have our worts.

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8/20/2013 04:32:30 am

Charlie, decorous for you for getting your uncle to babble. It's negative calm for vets to honest up. I've got cohorts who degree to Vietnam benefit elliptically yet typically as a point of footnote.The tablet by Logan furthermore Cranium graphically pictures vets going dorsum, quondams discovering the explicit discolor where they were in jeopardy. Of way, the further part is the persons who reside there all lifetime. I cogitate the sojourns hand both "flanks."

Charlie Accetta

8/20/2013 04:40:18 am

I think your Martian-to-english translator is on the fritz, Rush.

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Ich möchte geehrt -- GV

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Vietnam and the United States, Forever Bonded

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