Return To Vietnam
In 1996, thirty years after the battle at Ky Phu, I had the opportunity to return to Vietnam. Martha joined me and a group of other Americans for an emotional trip back in time. R.C. Suciu, a writer for Leatherneck magazine, joined the group and documented the events for the August 1996 issue of the magazine. What follows is part of his account.
The Colonel and the Poet
Spring comes to Vietnam just after the monsoons. The planting begins in earnest, and the entire expanse of Indochina turns a lush multiverdant hue. Colonel Barnum and I went back in April of this year, to a place where we had both fought 30 years and four months before. We returned to Vietnam in the spring.
The approach to the airport in Hanoi brings the arriving tourist in over rice paddies north of the city. The circular ponds scattered through the maturing rice are the telltale scars of bomb craters created so methodically those many years ago. To the casual or intent observer there is no other significant evidence of the war visible during the flight.
There was a brisk warm breeze that greeted our exit from the plane. That same breeze smartly snapp0ed out the red banner, with the gold star center, above the airport terminal building. If there was any lingering question about the outcome of the war or hope that perhaps it had all been a bad dream, that red banner provided the wakening answer. We were in the People's Republic of Vietnam.
Our adventure back in time came about, in no small measure, because of the efforts of retired Marine Col. Warren H. Wiedhahn. He and his staff at Military Historical Tours in Alexandria, Va., put together our trip. When we cleared immigration and customs, Col. Wiedhahn was on hand to greet us with transportation, guides and interpreters from Vietnamtourism, the official government agency assigned to our trip.
The first few days of our excursion were spent in Hanoi, a place none of us ever saw or reached as Marines. It is a busy city, the seat of national government, a city of parks, museums and monuments. It is a city dominated by the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh.
The mausoleum, an imposing gray edifice where the revolutionary nationalist rests, is the focal point of broad avenues and parks. It is vaguely similar in design to our own Lincoln Memorial. On the overcast day we arrived, hundreds of visitors quietly stood in orderly lines outside of the mausoleum, waiting to see their national hero.
It seems odd to suggest that we went to this place to pay our respects, but we went, and it was not merely idle curiosity that took us. Any of our number could have remained outside, but we all entered. We passed in file to see the embodiment of the cause we fought so valiantly against. The white-uniformed guard of honor stood at rigid attention as we entered the tomb and made our way to the glass sarcophagus and paid our respects to an old enemy.
I
watched and listened to Col. Barnum with great interest and some writer's
curiosity. Initially, he indicated some reticence to visit Hanoi, but
seemed pleased at the way the tour was progressing. He posed for a photo
in front of Ho's Mausoleum and mugged it up, wearing a local NVA helmet, with
some local teens, but we were still in the north--remote distant and
safe. The south was still ahead.
Barnum's story starts in the south. It's somewhere there in the south where the demons, the old wounds and memories linger. It was in the south where our war raged and to some extent continued emotionally unabated until this return. It's in the south where the story truly begins--and we were going south.
The conclusion of a military action (Ky Phu thirty years earlier) usually signals a respite for the participants, an opportunity to reflect, regroup emotionally and at the very least to lick their wounds. Barnum's action provided no such respite. That action that he had fought would change his existence, add a page to Marine Corps history and lead him back for this retrospective in 1996.
The inclusion in this trip of other combat Marines from the drama that was Vietnam proved to be both enlightening and stimulating for a variety of reasons. The accumulated exposure of the participants covered the Marine Corps' involvement in Vietnam from the late '50s to 1971. The willingness of t his group to open up and relate their experiences filled in a significant number of intellectual holes and gaps.
Most combat veterans see only a small, narrow piece of war. They can relate what befell their squad, platoon or company. They can describe the ground they fought across, the friends they lost and how they felt. I gleaned more about the direction of the Vietnam War from graduate courses at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., than from my own personal observations with a rifle company in Vietnam from 1965 to 1996.
This trip with Col. Barnum exposed us to living history, to a dozen Marines and a Navy corpsman, all going back "to reflect, regroup emotionally and at the very least to lick their wounds."
At the point we started south from Hanoi my task, as a journalist, began in earnest: watch, listen, photograph and chronicle the events. There was no lack of material on this assignment.
We flew from Hanoi to Da Nang and then drove from there over the Hai Van Pass to the old Imperial City of Hue. One of our number, Col. Charles Meadows, who served with G/2/5 during the Tet Offensive, provided a chilling and very graphic description of the fighting.
Throughout our trip each Marine provided an account of his particular experience. During these accounts there was no member of the collected audience more intent or more attentive than Barney Barnum. The consummate Marine student, he listened, absorbed, learned, was sympathetic and often deeply moved by the burdens shouldered by his companions so many years and campaigns ago.
Over the passing days we ventured to Khe Sanh, Camp J.J. Carroll, the "Rockpile," on to Leatherneck Square and the "Peace Bridge." We took photos, listened to descriptions of various actions and recalled our own individual war.
On April 17, we left for the operational area south of Da Nang. We traveled down Route 1 to Tam Ky and west along Route 586 to Ky Phu village. On leaving our bus, we located a narrow hamlet lane that moved off through palm and pine growth to the west. We walked down that lane looking for the open paddy area that figured so prominently in Barney's story, and each of us mentally turning back the pages of history to Dec. 18, 1965.
Over three decades things change, even in a sleepy Asian hamlet like Ky Phu. Roads are rerouted; names are altered; landmarks disappear or are overgrown by accident or design. We had almost decided that this was the case at Ky Phu when the lane opened to our front and the paddies came into view.
We
came to a halt at a point where the lane ended and the paddies stretched off
in a staggering expanse to the north and south. To the west we looked
across some 500 yards to a tree-covered ridge of low hills. Colonel
Barnum was back.
For the next few minutes we all quietly looked at what had once been a fire-swept killing ground, the paddies, the defined edge of the village and a distant ridge of the covered low hills. The description that had been provided prior to our arrival was accurate.
Our
group gathered around Colonel Barnum, and he started slowly and unemotionally
at first, to lay out a picture of the events that transpired at the site more
than 30 years before. He described his arrival with the unit and the
circumstances surrounding Operation Harvest Moon. He became more somber
as he described the death of the company commander, Captain Gormley, and the
heroic efforts of a navy corpsman. Wesley "Doc Wes" Berrard.
His eyes fixed more intently on the hills to the west as he explained the
final moments before the rush across the open paddies.
When the narrative came to a conclusion, Col. George Malone, another retired Marine, and I walked back along the lane to the village with col. Barnum. It was a fairly silent trio.
Later that evening at our hotel in Da Nang, in a spirit of fellowship and fun, our group toasted Col. Barnum and asked that he share a few words. Since our day had focused on Ky Phu the colonel's comments touched on that long ago action once more.
A hush fell upon those gathered round the table as the colonel began. He spoke not of his action or medal, but rather with great pride and deep affection of the Marines the fates decreed he lead in battle. He spoke quietly of those men who carried out every order, from an unknown lieutenant of artillery, without question or hesitation. He offered that ultimately it was the Marine, always the individual Marine, willing to follow the chain of command and obey, who was the ultimate winner and recipient of the laurels that he was humbled to receive.
The assembly remained silent for a long moment, until one of our number rose and lifted a glass to our Republic, our Corps and to our honored dead.
Somewhere beyond the din and smoke of battle, beyond the glory and the heroes, quietly stands the individual Marine who follows the chain of command and obeys without question or hesitation; it's to that Marine we pay homage.
On my arrival in the United States, I passed once again through Los Angeles. At a line n the airport I spotted a solitary young Marine, a Private Craig McMichael, on his way to his own destiny. God bless you, Marine.
R.C. Suciu
|
Click HERE |
