The American War

Kia Ora!

The American War. Americans call it the Viet Nam War. This sad piece of history is still fresh in the minds and on the bodies of the people of this country. We saw it everywhere we visited, from the Hanoi Hilton to Hill 57 in Da Nang to the museums in Saigon and bomb craters in the Mekong Delta.

Threading through jungle waterways

B52 bomb crater  in waterway

We paddled up streams cut through the jungle, crawled through the Cu Chi tunnels that at one time were 4 stories deep and hid secret armories, hospitals, kitchens, and openings cleverly disguised to ambush weary American soldiers. (The tunnels had to be enlarged to accommodate the fatter western tourists.)

Inside a Cu Chi tunnel

Tunnels cleverly hidden

At the museum, we witnessed photos of the maimed and dead, including villagers with degenerating disease and a generation of children born with birth defects, all from use of Agent Orange (dioxin). Over 30 journalists died attempting to express the futility and the inhumanity of war by placing armaments and soldiers in juxtaposition with peasants planting rice in a flooded paddy. It is not the first time our country has become ensnared--for whatever reason seemed justifiable at the time--in a civil conflict and sadly it is not the last.

Patch depicts cavalry horses

Cavalry horses now are helicoptors

This place and this war has personal meaning for me since it is here that my only sibling, Dodd Clifton Keller, lost his life at age 23 on February 1, 1966 in Operation Masher. I learned the unit insignia for1st Cavalry, Airmobile, his unit, and that he most likely was stationed and died at a location about 150 kilometers south of Da Nang near the villages of Tue Hoa, Ninh Hoa, and Dong Ba Thin. The map images came from a museum in Saigon, three stories devoted to evidence of the destruction and travesty of war.

I became politically active against the war following Dodd's death. I was a member of Another Mother for Peace, and still wear my medallion proudly on occasion. Generations come and go and warring does not cease. Perhaps it never will, but I believe...I still believe it might be possible someday to settle differences without killing each other.

Thoughtfully,
Kiwi Traveler