Thoughts of Vietnam from 36,000 feet above Alaska

Written by Jonathan Smylie

We are in the fifth hour of our 14 hour flight from Atlanta to Seoul. When we reach South Korea, we’ll spend about three hours in the airport than fly to Bangkok, a 3 ½ hour flight. Our flight so far has taken us out of the U.S. by way of the airspace over Montana. We are now somewhere over the empty northwest territory of British Columbia, Canada.
The map clams we’re passing over Alaska Highway 97 just south of the border between BC and the Yukon Territory. Find that on the map. For the speed freaks among us, we’re traveling at 579 mph and for those old friends in the northeast who love to talk about the weather; the outside temperature is -59 degrees F.

Alaska is about an hour ahead of us. A state of oil and ice, few people and to me memories of my parent’s vacation there a few years ago. Their descriptions of traveling north of the artic circle and of a long bus ride over gravel roads through a massive state park where bear walk close to the bus are still strong memories to me. As geography goes it’s an odd addition to this country’s makeup, but so is Vietnam to our history.

In the process of telling friends about our plans, I’ve collected a variety of responses. One of my buyers reacted to our plans by asking, “What are you going over there for, to eat dog?” Another said, if you got to go that far away, why don’t you just stay away.” The kind neighbor around the corner from us, who spent many weeks in Vietnam a few years ago said that within days of arriving in Hanoi she was looking for a job in hopes of staying for a year. Another friend, now a retired cop living in Wilmington, told me yesterday he had been based in Cam Ranh Bay and was in charge of an ambush squad. A neighbor, who lives in our townhouse complex and who recently retired after being a military lawyer in Germany for 30 years, told me he was there for a year in 1969-70 as a “grunt” then insisted we try a special, strong, seasoning sauce that the Vietnamese mix with their rice. “What makes it so good?” I asked. “It’s made of fish heads.” I can’t wait.

It’s now -70 degrees F. outside.

I jest read Amy’s childhood memories of Vietnam. Mine come mostly from TV and newspaper pictures. A few of the dominate ones: Friday night news with Walter Contrite when at the end of every week he would announced the number killed on both sides, as if it were a score board. I recently read there had been a truth telling a few years ago when the Hanoi government made public the real numbers, so large you wonder what’s real but they claimed 1.1 million North Vietnamese soldiers were killed during the American War. In rough visual terms, that’s about the equivalent of erecting a facsimile of the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington every 50 miles along Highway 1 as it stretches from Saigon to Hanoi.

Other memories: The helicopters, the thump of their rotor blades. The peace demonstrations. The college girl, her arms raised, as she knelt beside the fallen student at Kent State. The monk burning outside the Pentagon. The naked little girl running down the street after being napalmed.

And then there’s the memory closer to home, a conversation with my mother after our government had signed the peace accords and the local churches planned to ring all the church bells for 12 minutes to symbolize the 12 years we had been at war. Someone had asked her, “Don’t you think that’s too long?” And in her stern and dignified way she told me that she answered, “I’ve waited 12 years for this war to end. I’m happy to listen to church bells for 12 minutes.”

We recently watched The Dear Hunter; they don’t make moves like that anymore. It came out when I was 18 and I watched it many times back then. To me it captures some of the craziness of what we did over there and the craziness it left inside our collective consciousness. It also reminded me that the floating, unorganized memories and knowledge I have of Vietnam, leave something unsettled in me. That’s a good thing, I think. Faulkner said something once about if you can observe without judging, you come to understand that everything reveals character. I look forward to observing character over the next three weeks. By the way, all the Koreans on this plane have pulled down their window shades and are sleeping. I don’t get it, in my world it’s just 6:30 pm. In Soul it’s 7:30 am. They’ve been awake all night.

We just passed Anchorage. Lime Village is about 200 miles ahead—that’s your next geographical challenge. The temp is -61 degrees F. It’s time to walk around the plane, before the lower back tightens up too much.