Thang Nguyen 555

The things they carried….to Matterhorn…to the last chopper. While bridge left undefended per Big Minh order (Stand down, drop your weapons, go home). Boots off on retreat to town.

My friend, whom I said Goodbye just the day before, mustered up all the flip flops he could find (as you walk down the main bridge, turn first left after the roundabout you’ll pass his house) for those barefooted soldiers-turned-veterans who walked on by. No one knows who took off uniforms and just let them drop in front of VAA (Vietnamese-American Association language school). But scattered herd followed suit. Rough road ahead. Re-education camps, ration, escape attempts and eventual deaths.

From 1965 to 1975, “boots” landed in Da Nang to boots littered the streets of Saigon, shoe-shine boys were hard at work, often invisibly under the coffee tables. Aviation glasses, zippo and Lucky Strike . Dog tags, handguns and bayonets. The things they carried. Easy to ID. Just in case. In most cases.

Always with fatigue rolled-up. Always scanning immediate surrounding (situation awareness). Be vigilant To survive. To go home in one piece. Shame or honor, to be sorted out. Per Robert Stone in Dog Soldiers 74 “ we didn’t know who we were until we got here. We thought we were something else”.

For now, it’s an order. The world was watching. From the White House (where Kissinger still in tux and tie – his night out to Kennedy Center like Bond in Casino Royale) to the whore house in Vietnam.

Everybody was watching. The Associate Press, the United Press International and the Agence France Presse. Even far-flung press and places like New Zealand (who had some skin in the game), the Philippines, Poland, South Korea, Australia and of course, the American.

Everybody was watching, waiting. Especially Big Minh, eager to get back to his games of back-and-forth tennis. An All-white Elite, called to “serve” his country. A country in dire need of keys and gate keepers “I have been waiting for you since early this morning”.

My friend , with his brother to the side, was also watching through the steel gates. Here, it’s all we’ve got, flip flops for your feet. It would be a long winding road. He is my brother. He ain’t heavy.

The things they carried. Things they left behind: shattered dreams Of fighting for the right cause yet evidently landing on the wrong side of History.

Choppers, once a symbol of rescue of last resort, themselves, got pushed to the side to make rooms for yet another . “Premier Ky, may we have your John-Wayne gifted gun”. It’s a rule on war ships. No guns on board. God rest everyone’s soul on this Veteran Day of 11/11/22.

My heart goes out to my medic brother, my ex-Army Dad, my brother in law, cousins, and friends/neighbors. Never forget ăn Air Force neighbor who, to blend in, asked me for civilian clothes in chance encounter on board an USS war ship. If I ever had a chance now to offer him my closet full. Back then, as in my friend’s situation, we didn’t carry much fleeing in a hurry.

Those flip flops however say a lot about my friend and his brother. They weren’t mere watchers of unfolding history. They made someone else’s life a bit easier. We once thought we were something else. Then. Those abandoned boots littered the ground. In front of that English school: put on, take off; get on, get off. Start-finish. Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.