Two Men, Two Legs, and Too Much Suffering - America's Forgotten Vietnamese Victims

[milestogo]

On Memorial Day, lets not forget the civilians...

Two Men, Two Legs, and Too Much Suffering
America's Forgotten Vietnamese Victims
By Nick Turse

Nguyen Van Tu asks if I'm serious. Am I really willing to tell his story -- to tell the story of the Vietnamese who live in this rural corner of the Mekong Delta? Almost 40 years after guerrilla fighters in his country threw the limits of U.S. military power into stark relief -- during the 1968 Tet Offensive -- we sit in his rustic home, built of wood and thatch with an earthen floor, and speak of two hallmarks of that power: ignorance and lack of accountability. As awkward chicks scurry past my feet, I have the sickening feeling that, in decades to come, far too many Iraqis and Afghans will have similar stories to tell. Similar memories of American troops. Similar accounts of air strikes and artillery bombardments. Nightmare knowledge of what "America" means to far too many outside the United States.

"Do you really want to publicize this thing?" Nguyen asks. "Do you really dare tell everyone about all the losses and sufferings of the Vietnamese people here?" I assure this well-weathered 60-year old grandfather that that's just why I've come to Vietnam for the third time in three years. I tell him I have every intention of reporting what he's told me -- decades-old memories of daily artillery shelling, of near constant air attacks, of farming families forced to live in their fields because of the constant bombardment of their homes, of women and children killed by bombs, of going hungry because U.S. troops and allied South Vietnamese forces confiscated their rice, lest it be used to feed guerrillas.

After hearing of the many horrors he endured, I hesitantly ask him about the greatest hardship he lived through during what's appropriately known here as the American War. I expect him to mention his brother, a simple farmer shot dead by America's South Vietnamese allies in the early years of the war, when the United States was engaged primarily in an "advisory" role. Or his father who was killed just after the war, while tending his garden, when an M-79 round -- a 40 mm shell fired from a single-shot grenade launcher -- buried in the soil, exploded. Or that afternoon in 1971 when he heard outgoing artillery being fired and warned his family to scramble for their bunker by shouting, "Shelling, shelling!" They made it to safety. He didn't. The 105 mm artillery shell that landed near him ripped off most of his right leg. But he didn't name any of these tragedies. "During the war, the greatest difficulty was a lack of freedom," he tells me. "We had no freedom."

<snip>

Even those Vietnamese who didn't lose a limb -- or a loved one -- carry memories of years of anguish, grief, and terror from the American War. The fall-out here is still palpable. The elderly woman who tells me how her home was destroyed by an incendiary bomb. The people who speak of utter devastation -- of villages laid waste by shelling and bombing, of gardens and orchards decimated by chemical defoliants. The older woman who, with trepidation, peeks into a home where I'm interviewing -- she hasn't seen a Caucasian since the war -- and is visibly unnerved by the memories I conjure up. Another begins trembling upon hearing that the Americans have arrived again, fearing she might be taken away, as her son was almost 40 years earlier. The people with memories of heavily armed American patrols disrupting their lives, searching their homes, killing their livestock. The people for whom English was only one phrase, the one they all seem to remember: "VC, VC" -- slang for the pejorative term "Viet Cong"; and those who recall model names and official designations of U.S. weaponry of the era -- from bombs to rifles -- as intimately as Americans today know their sports and celebrities.

Read more at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176146/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_nick_turse%2C_from_the_missing_archives_of_a_lost_war/#more

[catnhatnh]

1. Memorial Day was declared to honor the sacrifice of Americans killed in battle

Let's do that and come next Tuesday we can start posting 8 year old articles that attack US military policies. That'll give those who actually had skin in the game a brief pause to remember friends and relatives that died too soon.

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3. Remembering the tragedy which war brings to the civilians

does not obliterate the tragedy which war brings to the aggressor. It gives a complete picture of war. Valuing human life means valuing all human life.

Maybe we should a Dead Civilians Day on which we remember the "collateral damage" of US misadventures in foreign policy.

[catnhatnh]

4. That's great

there's 364 days available. THIS day is not for that.

[Baobab]

5. All Lives matter

nt

[4bucksagallon]

2. You had to have been there to fully appreciate it.

If Nguyen Van Tu was only 4 meters away from a 105 or 155mm artillery shell that exploded he is very lucky to even be alive. I'm not a fan of Nick Turse. Some of his writings were used to denigrate the Marines and soldiers. In fact it was these same Marines and soldiers that were telling their stories to him and others about the goings on during the Vietnam war. His claim to have "uncovered" many war crimes that these same soldiers and Marines were trying to get the media to cover wrings hollow to me. Better you watch or read about the "winter soldiers" investigation or the documentary and VVAW has many other stories as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Soldier_Investigation
This post is not any way to honor veterans who have done what their country has asked of them.... A fine memorial or decoration day post....... not!!!!