Thang Nguyen 555

Half a decade is long enough for facts to turn history. Post-Vietnam generation has grown up and grown old. Victimized or victorious, memories of war would soon recede and retreat further, through a thin veil or dense fog (in the Deer Hunter’s fictional tale, a steel-town window screen).

The other day, while listening to music in an MRI wait room, I could place that voice and face on the album cover (w/ the cat, sitting next to the window). But only later after googling that I recalled Carol King.

How quickly we forget names (the visual and audio stay longer). More so for names associated with past trauma.

Like Vietnam. A country, a landscape, a travesty or a war. Our brain space needs de-cluster job, to make room for post 9/11 Iraq or Iran. 58,220 names faded and forgotten, finally get revisited today March 29 on the national mall.

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

To NOK (next of kin) or to girls who hadn’t yet married to GI’s, played by Meryl Streep – the bouquet girl – in the Deer Hunter.

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

We came to contain resulting in 58,220 who did not come back. The living wishes to forget while the dead wish to be remembered.

“How I wished there had been someone to whom I could say ‘Thank You’ .” quoted Graham Green.

I know you were with good hearts, well-intended with unintended consequences.

Ask not.

At least, future generations would think twice about “boots on the ground”. That alone saves lives, not to mention neighboring countries and evolving flying technology as witnessed now.

I remember 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, being on the outside of wall-off “Bell after break-up” by Judge Carter.

How much more when vets felt, NOT welcome, even spit on and called names out of disgust.

In an uncomfortable situation, people opt out or quietly disappear e.g. packing away the uniform, the beret and while at it, those ideals and ideas about peace and justice in American (John Wayne) way. ”

Only frogs boiled in warm water would stay put. Most in the heat of battle – even during the long Cold War – jumped out. I never forget in Storm of Steel, which tells a story of an army officer visiting next bunker, then return only to find his bunker was no longer there (blown off). Even the dead (buried in cemetery) got killed twice. WWI and WWII = burial I and burial II.

Humanity, in Latin, would mean “bury”, hopefully to be remembered every once in a while.

On reflections, who profited, who were harmed, who actually enjoyed i.e. “destroy to save”? George Kennan even denied he push his diplomacy theory to the bitter 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, “and I pretend to pray”. In the fox hole, many prayed with all sincerity non-denominationally. I came across a May 2, 1975, obituary on the WSJ by Peter A Kann. Nations don’t die people do, except for this opinion piece.

The long overdue hug and embrace was in stark contrast to the iconic V-J Day Times Square kissing sailor and unknown nurse photo. It doesn’t matter where you stood on the spectrum of political persuasion.

When history called, they came. Containment or holding the line, long and hard, like Sisyphus. Mysteriously, the Iron Curtain came down, albeit lagging. by a few decades (Berlin Wall).

The “tearing it down” as Reagan’s insertion into his final script. Vietnam Memorial Wall up, Berlin Wall down. ” Just one more ride” into the sunset.

“I don’t want to fade away…give me one more day. Please. In your heart I want to stay…”