Thang Nguyen 555

Half a decade, long enough for facts become history. A post-Vietnam generation has grown up and old. But memories of war for those who were in the thick of it would only seer deeper into the recess of the mind.

Even once viewed through a veil, a fog, or in the case of the Deer Hunter, a steel-town window.

The other day, while listening to music in an MRI wait room, I could place her voice and face once on the album cover (w/ the cat next to the window). But only later at home, after googling that I found it’s Carol King.

How quickly we forget names (the visual and audio stay longer). Even more with names associated with past trauma.

Like Vietnam. A war to forget. To make room for others e.g. post 9/11, and freshly, Iran. 58,220 names faded and forgotten, then got a revisit today on the national mall.

Welcome home. Bell Bottom Blues…”in your heart I want to stay, just one more day”.

To NOK (next of kin) and to girls who hadn’t yet married to GI’s, played by Meryl Streep – wedding party – in the Deer Hunter, we just don’t have a word for it. Collateral casualty of war? as in casual date?

He (played by Christopher Walken) isn’t coming home. He sent money but not himself. In the trench, he fought because of his buddies (one in Vet rehab wheelchair).

We came, contained and did not come back. The living wishes to forget with occasional attachment:

“How I wished there had been someone to whom I could say Thank You” courtesy of Graham Green.

I know you were with good hearts, came well-intended strategy only to end up with unintended consequences.

Ask not.

At least, future generations would think twice about “boots on the ground”. That alone saves lives.

Once I heard a Baby Bell executive talk about his manicurist (Vietnamese) while interviewing me (a sales position). I felt a surge of shame, as if being cleverly put down, “Bell before break-up by Judge Carter).

How much more when vets got spit on their faces, called baby killers or complicit in an “unjust” war. War of containment but ends up in shame and disgust.

In an uncomfortable situation, people opt out and find a path of least resistance, like quietly disappear. Just like those ideals and ideas about peace and justice in American (John Wayne) way.

Only frogs boiled in warm water stay. Most in the heat of battle – even during Cold War – jumped out.

On reflections, who profited, who were harmed, who actually enjoyed i.e. “destroy to save”. George Kennan even denied he actually had pushed his diplomacy theory to the bitter end at the far end of Earth.

It’s an irony that young soldiers listen to California Dreaming while laying around in the jungle of Southeast Asia, among mosquitoes and leeches, the song went on about “and I pretend to pray”. In the fox hole, many prayed with all sincerity to make it back and show up at the Mall.

The hug and embrace were long overdue (in contrast to the iconic V-J Day one, with kissing sailor and unknown nurse). It doesn’t matter where you stood on the spectrum of war conscience.

When history called, they came. Even contained on order. Mysteriously, the Iron Curtain came down, albeit years later. Right in front of our eyes (Berlin Wall).

The “tear down” that is called for…per Reagan’s insertion into the script. Vietnam Memorial Wall up, Berlin Wall down. An irony of our century.

“I don’t want to fade away…give me one more day…in your heart…”