Vietnam, The Return (Part 3), by Jesse Gump

             

Vietnam: Forty-five Years Later 

What Are The Odds?

(Part 3 of 3)

Needless to say, I was a nervous wreck. Forty-five years is a long time. I know I have changed from a handsome young soldier into an ugly old man.

Perhaps she wouldn’t recognize me. Perhaps I wouldn’t recognize her either. Perhaps she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me. Maybe this would be the wrong person altogether. I didn’t know what to expect.

 
My driver led the way onto the front porch and shouted something in Vietnamese. I assumed he was saying hello and asking if anyone was home.

In a moment, a short slender woman appeared at the door. Her eyes flicked from the driver to me several times as if wondering what a foreigner was doing on her front porch. 

The driver handed her one of my flyers. I thought the woman would faint on the spot as recognition lit her face. She and the driver spoke in Vietnamese. I didn’t understand a single word. 

Finally she smiled and said to me, “You said you would come back.” During our encounter, those would be the only English words I would hear her say. Her name is Bah.

My driver pointed to the other girl on the flyer, apparently asking Bah if she knew her. This led to a long conversation and a lot of pointing down the street. 

After a minute my driver indicated that he and Bah would go and bring the other woman to see me. 

While they were gone, Bah’s husband chopped the top off of coconuts and poured glasses of juice. I was reluctant to drink raw coconut juice not knowing what effect it might have on my stomach, but out of politeness I accepted the glass and drank anyway.

By now I had attracted the attention of neighbors and there was a constant stream of people going up and down the road. Their eyes were all on me. 

A few stopped in and talked to Bah’s husband. I assume they were close friends or relatives but I don’t know that for a fact. I don’t think I have ever been pointed at so much in my life as I was that day. Twenty minutes later Bah returned with my other friend. Her name is Tay.

Neither Bah nor Tay could speak more than a few words of English, and what little Vietnamese I once knew had long since been forgotten. 

Our reunion was joyful, awkward, and frustrating at the same time. Smiles, touching, and gestures were our only way of communicating. There were many things I wanted to say and questions I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t. Perhaps my old friends felt the same. I regret not having a driver with better English skills. I took a few pictures for my memories, said my goodbyes, and headed back to Nha Trang. 

I need to add that I had my wonderful wife and grandson with me on this adventure. They got to share my reunion with my Vietnamese friends. I wrote this travelogue from my point of view because for an hour or two I was alone with my memories. I felt like I was in some sort of time warp between yesterday and today. 

Even now the entire trip back in time seems like a fantasy. I mean, what are the chances of finding someone half a world away after forty-five years? It was an experience I will never be able to recreate. 

You can read more about Tay and Bah when we were all much younger in my short story book, “Blame It On Bangkok”, which can be downloaded for free from the internet. 

You might also enjoy my novels based on my years of working on a long term project in Pattaya, Thailand. You can find them on Amazon in paperback, or as eBooks from Bangkok Book House. Thank you.

Copyright: J. F. Gump 2013


J.F. (Jesse) Gump's Profile and Books

J. F. Gump at Bangkok Books

“I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do, and by the grace of God, I will.” ~Everett Hale

Vietnam, The Return (Part 2), by Jesse Gump

Jesse Gump

Vietnam: Forty-five Years Later 

What Are The Odds?

(Part 2 of 3)

I took a train from Saigon to Nha Trang. After passing through the countryside, I can assure that not all of Vietnam has prospered like Saigon and other cities. Many still live in conditions that westerners would find unacceptable. But it has always been like this in most SE Asian countries.

I suspect the people are happy, or at least satisfied, with their standard of living. They have a roof over their heads, food to eat, and clothes to wear. They live, fall in love, marry, and raise families like anyone would and live into their senior years. They may not have all the amenities westerners have become accustomed to, but perhaps they are better off without them.

But I am rambling. I arrived in Nha Trang with three goals in mind:

1) See if I remembered anything from the trips I made to Nha Trang to pick up rounds for our forward air controllers in Ninh Hoa,
2) Make a trip to Ninh Hoa to see if I could recognize the old Korean Infantry base, and
3) See if I could locate my old friends in Ninh Hoa.

Nha Trang had changed so much that I didn’t really recognize it. However, I did recognize the area where the air force had once had a base (with landing strips). When I tried to enter the area on foot, I was turned away by Vietnamese soldiers. I was able to get a photo of an old Huey on the base from a nearby building so it wasn’t a total waste of time.

An Old Huey

For the record, I need to say that Nha Trang is now a very pretty city with great beaches, plenty of good restaurants, and a large expat community. I could have easily spent my entire vacation in Nha Trang. I would recommend the city as a destination for anyone wanting to visit Vietnam.

Nha Trang Beach

I hired a car with driver to take me from Nha Trang to Ninh Hoa (about 30 miles north). Even though I had made that trip multiple times years ago, I had trouble recognizing anything in the landscape. 

When I finally reached Ninh Hoa, I immediately recognized “Big Charlie” mountain, but pinpointing the old Korean base eluded me. The landscape had changed. Gone was the barbed wire fencing, the watch towers, the hooches we lived in, and the artillery battery that made restful sleep impossible. I knew the basic area but pinpointing the exact location of the old base seemed impossible. The second of my three goals quickly became an impossible dream.

Big Charlie Mountain

Bah

Before I had left the US for my journey back to Vietnam, I had dug through some of my old pictures from my military days. As mentioned, I wanted to locate the two girls who served as hooch maids during my stay with the Koreans. I wanted to see if they had survived the war and how their lives had turned out. After 45 years it seemed like an impossible task.

I found a couple of pictures of the girls and myself and scanned them into my computer. Next I created a flyer using the old photos and wrote in both English and Vietnamese, “Do you know these people? Please help me locate them.”

Tay

I gave a copy to my driver and despite his lack of English skills he immediately understood what I wanted to do. He began stopping at every roadside shop near Ninh Hoa and asked people if they recognized either of the women. The first couple of stops were fruitless. A couple of folks were able to point out the general location of the Korean base but nothing specific. Hopes of reaching my final goal faded by the minute.

On our third stop we struck pay dirt. An old woman said she recognized one of the women and pointed in the general direction of where we might find her. We stopped two more times and got more confirmation from other shop owners. Finally, an old man gave my driver specific directions. Five minutes later we were parked in front of her house. 

J.F. (Jesse) Gump's Profile and Books

J. F. Gump at Bangkok Books

“I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do, and by the grace of God, I will.” ~Everett Hale

Vietnam, The Return, by Jesse Gump

Jesse Gump

What are the chances of finding a Vietnamese friend after 45 years have passed?

After two heart attacks related to Agent Orange, I began saving my money for a return trip to where I was stationed in Vietnam.  I wasn't sure why I wanted to return, but it was a feeling I couldn't put aside. 

I finally made my return to the small village of Ninh Hoa, Vietnam, where I spent more than a year with the Korean 9th ROK Infantry. 

One of my goals was to see if I could find a couple of Vietnamese people who I considered friends. I thought the odds of finding them were nearly zero, but I made the effort anyway. I was surprised when I did locate them and they remembered me after all these years. I thought they would be dead or had moved from the village. 

It was an awkward but happy reunion. What little Vietnamese I once knew had evaporated over the years, and what little English they once knew no longer existed. Our meeting involved a lot of smiles and pointing at old photos I had with me. It was healing, in a way, to know my old friends had survived the conflict and that they were well. 

Now that I've made my return, I'm writing about my personal experiences on this venture. 

Jesse Gump

Vietnam: Forty-five Years Later

What Are The Odds?

(Part 1 of 3 Parts)

Location: Ninh Hòa, a district-level town of Khanh Hoa Province in the South Central Coastal region of Vietnam, 1968.

Situation: American GI’s working liaison for the Korean 9th ROK Infantry (which was charged with maintaining security for that specific area). I was one of those GI’s. I was stationed with the Korean Infantry from January 1968 until February 1969.

During my time in Ninh Hoa with the Koreans, my job was part of the night-time perimeter security team. That meant I worked at night and slept during the day. Well, sometimes I slept but as often as not I only slept for short periods of time due to the light, heat, artillery firing, and general activity around my cot.

As a result, I came to know the Vietnamese “hooch maids” we hired to help us with things such as laundry and general clean-up of our quarters. We all chipped in to pay for their services and the women did a good job. One’s name was Tay and the other was Bah.

In reality, these (back then) women were actually girls in their late teens, not much younger than most of us GI’s.

Because daytime sleeping was difficult at best, I spent some of my waking time interacting with our “house-keepers”. They had questions about GI habits and preferences, and I had the same questions about the Vietnamese.

I taught them English words and they taught me Vietnamese words. In time, we became friends.

Before I rotated back to the real world, I told them I would return someday. I didn’t believe it and neither did they, but I did return -- forty-five years later.

What are the chances I could meet up with those two girls/women, unplanned, unannounced, and on a date and time even I couldn’t predict? In my personal opinion the odds were about one in a million, if not worse. Still, I promised myself that if I ever went back to Vietnam I would try to fulfill my promise to my friends.

Fast forward to 2013. For years I had toyed with the idea of making a return visit to Vietnam. It was on my bucket-list. Unfortunately life has a bad habit of getting in the way of personal wants and desires. Eventually I retired and had actually saved enough money to make the trip back to Vietnam. 

I bit the bullet and made my travel plans. Pittsburgh to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). Three nights in Saigon to recover from the trip (it’s brutal) and then onward to Nha Trang with a side trip to Ninh Hoa to find my old base and my old friends. 

For anyone who hasn’t been to Vietnam recently, I can assure you it is nothing like you may remember from the war years. Yes, the people still look the same, but their clothes are more western than the silk pants, cone-shaped hats, and “áo dài” that we all remember.

Automobiles and motorbikes have proliferated beyond belief and vehicle traffic jams have followed suit. The older buildings in towns and cities look much the same but many have had face-lifts over the years. New buildings give the Saigon skyline a modern look. It’s a scene you have to see to understand.

One thing that hasn’t changed in Saigon is the heat. To me, early June in Saigon feels just like an August heat wave in the US – with 90% humidity. By the end of my second day in Saigon, I was ready to move on.

J.F. (Jesse) Gump's Profile and Books

J. F. Gump at Bangkok Books

“I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do, and by the grace of God, I will.” ~Everett Hale