Sliding Away

So Long Ago...

Half Century ago - 1973 - in the first week of March, myself and a few remaining US soldiers boarded a chartered airliner in Saigon’s airport to depart Vietnam. A ceasefire had been negotiated by the US, South Vietnam, North Vietnam and the Provisional Government of Vietnam several weeks earlier. Under its terms all US troops were to leave Vietnam by the March deadline. Staying behind would be only those few assigned to the Defense Attache Office of the US Embassy.

We were leaving close to a decade of involvement in a war characterized by some as either stopping the spread of communism, an insurrection, a civil war, a delayed reunification push or a raw conquest by the North. No matter what?it was labeled, our military involvement was over. It was costly in terms of American lives. The Wall in Washington lists over 50 thousand names of those killed in action. Many more were injured and disabled due to combat. We furnished immense amount of supplies to the South Vietnamese forces to equip and enable their ability to conduct operations against their enemy from the North with their allied local insurgents.

Despite all of our efforts, the South lasted merely two years after we left. In April 1975, the North completed its reunification by military force into one Vietnam governed from Hanoi. The red flag with a yellow star in the middle flew over Vietnam.

The two year interlude was considered a “decent interval.”?It alluded to the reputed statement made by Henry Kissinger during the negotiations for the ceasefire. He asked for an operational pause for a time by the North in order to allow the US to depart without the seeming stigma of defeat.

The Government of South Vietnam was in place and controlled most of the country when our remaining troops left in 1973. No major combat occurred?during 1974. The North kept its word to pause military operations.?We left without having to appear defeated.

CIA analyst Frank Snepp titled his book Decent Interval using Kissinger’s reputed words. It was published in 1977 describing and documenting American activities during the interlude and final months and days of the South’s existence culminating in the famed roof-top extraction of the US Ambassador from the Embassy in 1975.?

While there are multiple military explanations offered for the South’s 1975 collapse, including criticism of our own legislative and executive reluctance and inaction to provide meaningful support to off-set the North’s offensive efforts that re-started in January 1975, an understanding of the context within which this war was conducted is needed.

To gain it or at least get a kaleidoscopic understanding of the War reading the works of several authors can be useful: Bright Shining Lie and its companion volume After the War by Neil Sheehan; We Were Soldiers Once and Young by Hal Moore & Joe Galloway; Last Reflections on a War by Bernard Fall; and, Centurions (especially part one of the volume) by Jean Larteguy should provide a start. For those inclined to more literary works, reading The Quiet American by Graham Greene should prove illuminating as well.

Now a half-century later even the most junior soldiers who served are reaching into their seventh decade of life. Those who were serving then as senior NCO’s and officers have for the great majority passed on leaving?only a few survivors?to be a witness to that time.

As James Michener in his Pulitzer Prize winning work Tales of the South Pacific writes within its first few pages “They…will be remembered as long as our generation lives. After that…they will become strangers. Longer and longer shadows will obscure them…”?As part of the generation who served in Vietnam, Michener’s words ring true. The shadows over this war are getting longer as time moves on. It is probably safe to say that for most of today’s Americans this war is a distant echo at most.

Having returned several times on business and family occasions to Vietnam, it is clearly evident that a generational change has inevitably occurred there over those 50 years since we left that early day in March of 1973.

A whole new population has grown up in Vietnam with no personal memory of the conflict nor of the social turbulence that was part of the war.?They have experienced a peaceful life with minor exceptions during this time.

Their economy has become increasingly westernized through adaptation of the marxist system to the practices of capitalist commerce by the so-called doi moi? policies started in the mid Nineties. Increases in per capita personal wealth, more access and higher levels of education, availability of medicine?in rural areas, and an overall modernization in infrastructure such as highways, new bridges, high-rise buildings and sanitation throughout the country is notable to anyone who spends any time in the country. While the governance is conducted by a one-party system, it is not a heavy-handed presence in daily life for its citizens.

There are Vietnamese emigre organizations in the US and other countries who have hopes for a future political change in Vietnam. The flag of South Vietnam with its bright yellow background with three red stripes still flies in predominantly Vietnamese communities of Orange County in California.

Yet, in spite of such emigre political activity and remembrance of what once was before 1975, generational change is evident. There are frequent travels to visit family members still in Vietnam, remittances are sent to family members there, and business is conducted for various products and services by companies here and over there. Vietnamese emigres are seemingly compatible on a personal and practical level with the political reality post 1975. In the half century an adaptation and evolution has occurred even in those most affected by the fall of Saigon in 1975. The old generation has passed on with the new crop evolving with its own perspectives on their relationship to the former homeland.

So too, have the majority of Americans in regard to the war long ago including myself.

Post Script:?There is a basic historical truth to consider here.?Things that mattered greatly once upon a time are no longer cared about so much as time passes moving forward and as other things begin to take shape to become important to the current generation.

That is not to say, that the earlier event does not carry its legacy but as it becomes more and more remote, its consequences and importance belong mostly to those who knew it personally.

So after a half-century, for us who participated in the war it still remains a personal core experience of our lives. It is a memory of our service and of those others with whom we served. But likewise a recognition that our experience is sliding into a mist of time.

When the centennial of the?March 1973?US troop departure from Vietnam arrives in 2073, it will be but a footnote in history paid by 50,000 lives whose names remain on the Wall.