Leaving Vietnam was sad for me...the guys in my outfit I was leaving behind...watching it so quickly disappear as we climbed into the clouds...knowing, even then (8/69), how it was going to end. It depressed me for a long time. Then, when the South fell in 75, the same sense came sweeping back in on me.
Alot of that dissipated though when I went back with my daughter in 2000. We really had a great time there, and I found that what I remembered best about the people in the South was still true. Vietnam is slowly but surely coming back together again, even in the North.
If we finally win the War On Terror, we will have ultimately won the Vietnam War. If we don’t...then nothing else will matter.
Thanks for the memory. (Saw Bob Hope too, Chu Lai-Christmas 1968.)