Posted on 04/25/2005 6:07:46 AM PDT by Dubya
ESCONDIDO ---- Ruben Rojas couldn't wait to revisit Vietnam, the place that had scarred him.
In 1970, he had returned home from his tour of duty, a 21-year-old with a Purple Heart and a lot of rage.
"As I saw my friends either being killed or wounded, I had this tremendous hate for those people," Rojas said. "I hated that country and I hated the people."
Those feelings have finally evaporated, he said last week.
Rojas, now 55, returned April 17 from a seven-day tour of Vietnam and its historic cities. He joined 11 other Purple Heart vets, who were selected by the Veterans of Foreign Wars in a nationwide lottery. Rojas, an Army veteran, was the only member of the group from California.
He said he got news of his selection on Dec. 1, the anniversary date of his original return from Vietnam.
Like so many other young people in 1970, Rojas had been a student and anti-war protester. He said he took off a semester from Mesa College in San Diego to earn enough money for a car ---- and was immediately drafted and sent to Vietnam.
Thirty-five years later, he says he was eager to join the VFW trip.
"The fact that I could hate that much always bothered me. One of the reasons I wanted to go back was to get a chance with the Vietnamese people on a better level," Rojas said, sitting in his Escondido home last week
"And I found that. They were so nice to me."
The anger Rojas felt dissolved, he said, after seeing that the Vietnamese people have apparently moved beyond the conflict that killed more than 58,000 Americans in action and 5 million Vietnamese. Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and the collapse of the South Vietnamese government.
Rojas found that his memories no longer fit reality. Somehow, that was a relief, he said.
"Almost everywhere I went, young people would come up to me and ask if I'm American," Rojas said. "And I said yes. And they said, 'Would you mind if I practice my English with you?' Nowadays everyone is speaking English, and they all want to come to America."
"Invariably, the next question they would ask is, 'What state are you from?' And I would say California. And they all went crazy and started calling their friends over."
Rojas said he practiced his Vietnamese, too, learning to say things like "hello" and "thank you."
"The words I knew before in Vietnamese were, 'Stop, show me your ID or I'll kill you,'" he said. "You see the difference. The words before were only commands and always yelled."
For the first time, Rojas said, he befriended people who had once been his enemies. He recalled meeting a man and a woman who used to be Viet Cong guerrillas. They showed him their wounds, some of them the ghastly results, they said, of torture by South Vietnamese soldiers.
The show-and-tell was in the spirit of camaraderie, he said, not bitterness.
"She told us through an interpreter that the people consider the war is long over," Rojas said. "She said we should take a message back to the U.S. that they have genuine affection for us."
Rojas said Vietnam was a foreign world at times ---- not because it lies 8,000 miles from San Diego (the trip took 26 hours), but because it didn't resemble the country he remembered.
The touring veterans first stayed in a lavish, Western-style resort in Ho Chi Minh City ---- nothing like the dense, isolated jungles Rojas once fought in. He dined on platters of seafood, noodles and fresh fruit.
"Everything was five stars about it: the food, the landscape, everything," he said of the hotel. "But it's all surrounded by a wall. As soon as you walk outside it's poor, dirt poor."
He saw a strange mix of new and old, of healing and wounded, of ultramodern and primitive.
"There are Internet cafes as you walk down the street. Some of it is so modern and up-to-date," he said. "Some people working next to that were working with tools that were thousands of years old."
For Rojas, the visit to Vietnam concluded a healing process that took nearly two-thirds of his life.
As a young man, Rojas returned home to an angry America, he said. He was surrounded by college students opposed to the war, so he didn't tell anyone he was a soldier.
"I basically turned my back on it," he said. "I think because I didn't mention it or process it, it just kind of cooked inside of me."
Ten years later, Rojas had his first conversation about the experience with his brother, he said. Ten years after that, the nightmares came.
"They would be more vivid and more violent, and that's when I started to 'medicate' myself," he said. "Whether it was alcohol or drugs, I was medicating myself not to feel those feelings or dream those dreams ---- which only made my life worse."
His wife, Bev, begged him to see a counselor. She had watched him suffer a long "spiral downward" that left him isolated from everyone but his wife and their twin daughters.
"Because of my wife's suggestion and my wife's love for me, I went," he said. "It was probably the best thing I ever did for myself."
He finished therapy a year later and visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington for the first time. He sobered up and became a born-again Christian.
During his trip, the veterans' group toured various battle sites, now overgrown with vegetation, that evoked emotional stories from the men. It was a bonding experience, Rojas said, for a dozen veterans who started the trip as strangers.
Stops included places such as Danang, once home to a huge U.S. military base; the city of Hue, nearly destroyed during the war and later rebuilt; and China Beach, where soldiers were sent for a little relaxation.
Rojas' most memorable moment, he said, was standing in the once-forbidden demilitarized zone of North Vietnam and thinking: "The war happened. It's over."
"The last of all that I carried from that time has been processed," Rojas said last week, "and it's like I've been made whole."
Ruben Rojas,
a purple heart veteran of Vietnam, just finished a goodwill tour of Vietnam sponsored by the National VFW. He visited several areas that the former Vietnamese armies used such as this underground tunnel in the Cu Chi provence.
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"She said we should take a message back to the U.S. that they have genuine affection for us."
And our money!!
Bump for later.
Good sign, but is this also a cause for worry? I guess the country is really starting to prosper economically, but its still a communist state, right? What kind of message does that send to other countries like Cuba and North Korea? They can now point to Vietnam and say Communism works. Any thoughts on this?
The peaceful Muslims and all other countries like that. :^)
No I don't know what we should do.
Semper Fi.
The Nam vets really got a raw deal from America and I will help them any way I can.
I've never had a desire to go back, although I don't any particular hostility toward the Vietnamese, nor do I have any "issues" about the war. I just don't seem to have any interest in going there. Anybody else have an opinion?
Try to practice Christianity there and see what happens...
ACLU heaven...Vietnam
I dont hate them...but I sure dont gush over them
or their way of life either...
I am sure the South Koreans are glad we did not pick up our ball and go home...
imo
The Viets now have their revolution. Let them enjoy it.
Ya know while Rojas was in Nam ya think he could have demanded an accounting of the THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN POW'S & MIA'S from the Communists in Hanoi...hmmmmmmm
Ford Motor company who has a plant in Nam also hasn't done squat other than profit and fly the Communist Vietnamese flag at corporate headquarters in Michigan!
Otherwise, I couldn't care less about this trip.
Semper Fi,
Kelly
SEMPER FI KELLY
I agree
Vietnam War Missing in Action Servicemen Identified
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced
today that the remains of four U.S. servicemen, missing in action from the Vietnam
War, have been identified and are being returned to their families for burial with
full military honors.
They are Marine 2nd Lt. Heinz Ahlmeyer Jr. of Pearl River, N.Y.; Marine
Sgt. James N. Tycz of Milwaukee, Wis.; Marine Lance Cpl. Samuel A. Sharp Jr. of San
Jose, Calif.; and Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Malcolm T. Miller of Tampa, Fla.
Ahlmeyer, Tycz, and Miller will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery on May
10. Sharp was buried Saturday in San Jose and will be honored at the Arlington
ceremony.
The four men were part of a reconnaissance patrol operating near the
U.S. Marine base in Khe Sanh, Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam. They came under
enemy attack shortly after midnight on May 10, 1967, while occupying a defensive
position. During the firefight Ahlmeyer, Tycz, Sharp and Miller were killed. The
patrol's surviving members were rescued by helicopter later that morning but the
bodies of the four men could not be recovered.
In the fall of 1991 several Vietnamese citizens visited the U.S.
POW/MIA office in Hanoi claiming to have access to the remains of U.S. servicemen.
One of the men provided skeletal and teeth fragments.
Between 1993 and 2004, eight joint U.S.-Vietnamese teams led by the
Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) interviewed witnesses and surveyed the
skirmish area. Two other joint teams conducted excavations during which material
evidence and remains were recovered. After extensive analysis, scientists from
JPAC identified Ahlmeyer, Tycz, Sharp and Miller.
Of the 88,000 Americans missing in action from all conflicts, 1,835 are
from the Vietnam War, with 1,398 of those within the country of Vietnam. Another
748 Americans have been accounted for since the end of the Vietnam War.
For additional information on the Defense Department's mission to
account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO Web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo
or call (703) 699-1169.
[Web Version: http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2005/nr20050425-2804.html]
How right you are..
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