THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 24, 1995 TAG: 9501240002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
American soldiers in Vietnam often photographed enemy bodies.
``We had a habit of doing that,'' said Larry Hammonds, vice president of the local chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America. ``It was part of that revenge attitude that Vietnam veterans had, a way of remembering that if one of our brothers was killed, we got back at them for it.''
The Vietnam War, now more than 20 years behind us, was nasty and personal. It was no conventional war, with large armies fighting over territory like two huge football teams, a scrimmage line between them. Instead, tiny units clashed up close, too close, and the object was not so much to seize land as to kill as many enemy as possible - to drive up the body count. Do you remember the evening news giving each day's body count?
Try to imagine deer hunting in strange forests with the deer shooting back from behind trees and killing your friends. The war was like that.
Once you lost a friend, the war was personal, as Hammonds noted. Once you lost five friends, it was very personal.
Our Vietnamese enemies were eager to fight; our Vietnamese allies, reluctant. Our jokes were racist and bitter. The way to win the war, many fighting men agreed, was to take all the good Vietnamese out on ships and then to pave the whole lousy country - turn it all into a single parking lot. The punch line went . . . then sink the ships.
Vietnamese were not Vietnamese to the men fighting them. Vietnamese were gooks or slopeheads.
American soldiers returning home were called ``baby killers.''
Flash ahead to the present and what do we find? American veterans of that war attempting to account for Vietnamese missing from it. James Brazee, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America, came to Norfolk recently to accept from local veterans photographs, maps, diaries and war souvenirs - anything to help identify some of the 300,000 missing North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. He is to take the items to Vietnam next month.
The hope is that our efforts to account for their missing will lead to greater efforts by them to account for the 2,200 missing American troops.
Beyond that, however, is a humanitarian effort to ease the pain on both sides.
The war is long over. To us, the Vietnamese are humans again. To them, presumably, we are humans too, though they had it harder. We were in their country; they weren't in ours. Both sides lost adults in their prime; they lost the aged and children.
It's a barefaced lie that ``time heals all wounds.'' Limbs, for example, do not grow back. Still, time surely helps heal wounds, especially the ones to the heart.
If once mortal enemies can care for one another and cooperate, we should, at minimum, dream of a day when caring and cooperation prevent wars. Don't hold your breath; don't even let your guard down. But keep dreaming. by CNB