I started today off with a car and driver, thank God, and we headed off to the DMZ. First stop was Dong Ha where we picked up an interpreter who has escorted many vets. I stayed for a while at Camp Carroll and smoked the pipe and made an offering of oriental sage. All that’s left is one single slab of black top. The rusty dust is now pepper and rubber trees and quite lovely. You look up to Dong Ha Mountain and it looks a little like Pendleton. Than you look to the left to the Mountains of yesterday and you remember.
The next stop was the rise above Con Thien. I slept there with 2/26 one long night years ago. We were seranaded with bamboo knocks and an early am visit. Now, it’s a forest of rubber trees and full of vegetation. The guide told me that two years ago, a group of 3/3 vets came and they spent the night in tents. He said that they smoked cigars and drank wine, telling him it was an old Marine tradition. I didn’t tell him that tradition was that we’d smoke and drink anything and anywhere if it was available.
We then had lunch in Dong Ha before stopping at Quang Tri. What we knew of this town is now gone. Bombed for two years by both sides of Vietnam following the Eastern Offensive of 1972. On both the trip up and back, along the sides of the roads were deep craters. The guide told me that over 5,000 Quamg Tri Province Vietnamese have been killed from old ordinance and mines since 1975. My driver’s mother-in-law lost her leg reaching for a piece of fruit in Phu Bai in 1982.
I didn’t know how I would react to all of this. There have been a few tears from the losses then and their losses after. Maybe tomorrow will be different but right now I feel very much into the present and it’s allright. Not numb, just okay. To all of the Marines who fought here, the Vietnamese y want to say hello again and the greeting smiles are for real. Ooga, I got a shot of the old Quang Tri school. It was pretty much destroyed in 1972, but right next to it is a brand new bigger one with happy kids. I got a pic of that too. I’ve found a cyber cafe that can scan pics so I’ll get the camera developed tonight. Hopefully, I can finally send some photos.
S’lan,
Tom