30 years later: A war of yesterday: Vietnam looks ahead
By Mary Kay Magistad International Herald Tribune
SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2005
HANOI On the 30th anniversary of the fall of what was then Saigon, North
Vietnam's victory and the end of the Vietnam War, many here recall those
momentous times well and many more have little idea - or much interest - in the
sacrifices and hardships an older generation suffered.
Vietnam, like many other developing countries, is a young nation now.
More than two-thirds of Vietnamese are too young to remember the war, and they
tend to look forward, not back, even on an anniversary such as this one.
One of those who remembers well, however, is Le Doi Ung. On the North's
final advance into Saigon, he was a war artist, sitting atop a tank and
sketching the battle scene, when the world went black.
Two days later - on April 30, 1975 - his comrades would take Saigon, now
known officially as Ho Chi Minh City. But Le Doi Ung, blinded by incoming fire,
would not be among them - an absence he regrets today.
"Suddenly, there was blood pouring from my eyes," he said, recalling how
a rocket had hit the tank that morning, shortly before North Vietnamese troops
swept into Saigon. "I thought I was about to die - so I grabbed a piece of
paper, and used the blood from my eyes to paint a quick portrait of Ho Chi
Minh."
The original of that portrait now hangs in the Ho Chi Minh museum. But Le
Doi Ung has a copy: It is a few abstract lines of dark red, with a scrawled
line of text underneath that says, "I dedicate my youth to you."
That kind of single-minded idealism sounds almost unbelievable to the
more cynical ear of today. But that idealism, along with sheer tenacity, helped
North Vietnam win what the Vietnamese call "the American war."
Americans increasingly questioned and opposed the conflict, which
eventually claimed 58,193 American lives. But North Vietnam lost more than 1.1
million soldiers and two million civilians - in addition to two million
civilians lost in the South - and kept fighting.
It was not so much out of a belief in communism, many Vietnamese say now,
but out of a primal urge to protect what was theirs.
Many U.S. soldiers, and French soldiers before them and Chinese soldiers
after them, can attest to that Vietnamese tenacity on the battlefield. But many
Vietnamese civilians also did whatever they had to do.
In the case of Nguyen Thi Hong Xiem, that meant spending part of her
early childhood in a maze of dark, cramped tunnels, about a dozen kilometers,
or seven miles, north of the demilitarized zone between North and South.
The fishing village of Vinh Moc had been bombed in 1965, so villagers
spent 18 months building more than a kilometer of tunnels beneath where their
village had been. Each family had a living space carved into the clay wall of
about 1.2 meters by 2.4 meters, or four feet by eight feet - barely bigger than
a tomb.
There was one toilet, one washroom and a kitchen for the 300 villagers to
share. The saving grace was a stunning view of the sea when villagers emerged,
whenever American planes were not flying overhead.
Xiem remembers spending much of her time, at age 3, in her family's
cubbyhole. "We couldn't really play," she said. "There wasn't enough room. But
I wasn't really afraid, because I just thought that was what life was like."
The tunnels also had a "maternity ward" - another cramped cubbyhole dug
out of the clay wall - and Xiem's younger brother was born there in 1967.
Xiem does not remember that day as well as the day, eight years later,
when word went out that Vietnam was reunified. "We were all very happy and
relieved," she said.
To celebrate, her father swam across the Ben Hai River, the former
dividing line between North and South, to buy clothes and other things for the
family on the southern side. "He swam back, carrying everything on his back,"
Xiem said.
Life since the war has been mixed for Xiem and her family. Her brother -
the one born underground - was playing with a friend when he was 15 when they
found some of the unexploded ordinance that still litters this part of Vietnam.
It exploded, killing the friend instantly, and taking off Xiem's brother's toe.
Her brother recovered, and is now a fisherman, doing what his father and
his grandfather did before the war. Xiem herself runs a little outdoor stall,
selling Coca-Cola and Wrigley's gum to tourists, including American veterans
who come to see the tunnels. She said she bears them no hard feelings, but
wishes they were doing more to help the area they once bombed so thoroughly.
A few kilometers south, on the other side of the Ben Hai, American
veterans with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund - the same group that built
the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington - are indeed working. They are helping
to remove an estimated 300,000 tons of unexploded ordinance left over from the
war.
That ordinance, throughout Vietnam, is reported to have killed as many as
35,000 people since the war ended - one-third of them children.
"This ordinance - some of it is American, some of it is Communist as
well," said Jan Scruggs, president of the fund. "It ranges from
rocket-propelled grenade rounds to bombs, to cluster bomb units. There's a wide
range of ordinance scattered in Vietnam, especially where there was heavy
fighting. And it's going to take some time to clear this up."
The veterans are focusing their attention on Quang Tri Province - much of
which was a free-fire zone during the war. The project has particular
significance for Christos Cotsakos, who gave this project its initial funding.
He was wounded in Quang Tri Province as a 19-year-old. Ever since, he
said, the Vietnam war has been a significant influence on his life. That, he
said, is part of the reason he wants to give something back now.
Some of the U.S. veterans have, in their work for the fund, met soldiers
who were on the same battleground, fighting them, more than three decades
earlier. "We've met a lot of the people who were shooting at us, and the
amazing thing is, they really like us," said Scruggs, the president of the
memorial fund.
"They really respect the fact that we came here, and we had the courage
to fight them, and we had the courage to come back and be their friends," he
added. "One of them kissed me, actually."
North Vietnamese veterans are a little more reserved when they speak
about their former American opponents.
"In the wartime, most of our cities, villages, bridges and construction
were destroyed," said Nguyen Huu Dang, who fought in Quang Tri.
"The war has cost our country very much, in terms of people and in terms
of economy and infrastructure."
"But now," he continued, "our country has official relations with the
United States, and the trade relationship is better and better. And we would
like to close the past and advance to the future."
That is certainly what Vietnam's younger people have been doing.
In a nation as young as this one, the energy and initiative of a postwar
generation are driving an economic surge that has doubled per-capita gross
domestic product in the past decade.
When they think about the war at all, it is often not with the same
reverence that their parents felt about it.
Even the war artist, Le Doi Ung, seems to feel that way. Light has come
back into his life, albeit blurry light, and it has allowed him to pick up his
paintbrush again.
After eight years of total blindness, he received an eye from a donor who
had died. Ung's other eye is made of glass, and he complains that it keeps
falling out when he is trying to work.
He still paints, wearing thick glasses given to him by an American
professor and holding the paper close to his face.
He still wishes he could have stayed with his unit those final two days,
to paint his comrades hoisting the flag above the presidential palace in
Saigon. But as the 30th anniversary arrives, he is clearly basking in the
luxury of being able to paint about something much more pleasant than war.
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