I am ambivalent about Vietnam. It has now been almost forty years since I left the coast of Vietnam for the last time. I find that now I don’t think about it every single day – there can be periods of maybe a week when it doesn’t even enter my mind. But there are always reminders.
I used to have the wall of my office covered with pictures of the ships in which I served, but a couple of years back I took them down. Looking at them made me think about my life then and I didn’t want to dwell upon that. There are other things more wondrous that I can contemplate. The centerpiece of my wall now contains a copy of the Painting "A Welsh River Scene" by Robert Gallon.
Lately there has been an increase in the number of magazine articles and on-line items about the war in Vietnam, so it is hard to avoid it all of the time.
I’m proud of the way in which I served. From my first training sessions while on USS Long Beach (at Gunnery School in March 1966) to my final leave taking from USS Parsons in January 1973, I worked as hard as I could to learn my trade as a Naval Officer and as a Combat Systems Specialist (Weapon Systems). In the end, I grew quite proficient at my job. I enjoyed the work, the men, and the excitement of working with such "high tech" toys.
Opposed to that feeling of pride is the never-ending feeling of some (rather significant) guilt for that very role as a weapons person. Naval warfare is warfare "at a distance." Rarely does one actually see the enemy. Only once did I think I saw a North Vietnamese tank behind the sand dunes just below the DMZ. But, as best as I can recall from the actions in which I was a minor part, I was present and played a role, however minor, in the death of 1 – 2,000 people. People I never knew, but who, as Captain Wallace noted, had families and maybe even children waiting for their return home.
It is too easy to say that "it was the tenor of the times, when communism was seen as the ultimate foe." That is too easily coupled with that concept of "warfare at a distance" to yield an all-too-cheap grace, in which I forgive myself for what should not be forgiven. It’s also too easy to say that I was "just doing my job," for that is, in the end, an attempt to escape moral responsibility. I wonder if perhaps sailors, especially, have a need to consider the morality of their actions, to remind themselves that war is a violent affair between people. It’s too easy to forget that.
I know that I did. After all, we weren’t shooting at "people." We were shooting at a MIG on the radar scope, or a "concentration" of forces over in some jungle region, that a spotter had assigned to us or an enemy site at coordinates X and Y. Our targets never had faces or lives. They were just out there wishing us, and our allies, harm, so we killed them.
I think that much of the pain comes from the realization that "they" did not have to be our enemies. We were the first to arm and support Ho Chi Minh – during World War II – when he was a guerrilla fighter against the Japanese. He admired American ways, for he spent part of his young adulthood working as a dishwasher in New York City. He was familiar with The Atlantic Charter and hoped to free his people from French domination. But with the coming of the Cold War, and our acquiescence to the French colonial re-establishment, his only home was with the anti-colonial forces of communism. He had hope that his friends, the United States, would stay with him as he sought to forge a new and free Vietnam. But by then "communism" had become the boogey-man and Ho and his people had needlessly become our enemy. Ho remained true to his patriotic vision, while we lost our will to free people from colonial oppression.
My guilt stems in part from the fact that I had become aware of these historical facts by the time of my third tour, on CTG 70.8 in 1969. And most of the killing that I was directly involved with came in my fourth tour, with Parsons, from December 1971 through December 1972. My career had become more important than my basic American principles of serving the cause of freedom. I had become an American mercenary.
I have prayed for God’s forgiveness and, as a Christian minister I know that God’s forgiveness is mine. Someday I hope to be able to forgive myself.
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