Blog 371 – 08.11.20

I was still a teenager when I arrived in The Republic of South Vietnam and began my eleven month long hot summer in 1970. Our plane flew into Long Bien where I along with twelve or so other guys dressed in brand new jungle fatigues hopped on the back of a Deuce and a Half (a two and a half ton Army truck) for the ride south to Saigon.

The high way was divided with lots of traffic on both sides. It was stop and go and seemed to take forever. At some point the south bound lanes were completely stopped and we watched the moving traffic across the median. Then that traffic too began to stop and a big civilian road truck did not stop in time, it ran over a Vietnamese man on a small motorcycle. They were every where in South Vietnam.

The motorcycle and rider were completely mangled together. There was no doubt that the rider was dead. The Vietnamese driver of the truck got out of the truck walked to the front and with both hands scooped and shoved the tangled mess to the side of the road as if it was no more than that. He got back in his truck and when the traffic started moving again he moved away with it.

I remember thinking, “Where in the world am I that a life has so little value.” Much is said, or at least used to be said several wars ago, of the over fifty five thousand U.S. military men who died in Vietnam, little is ever said about the upwards of a million Vietnamese who died.

I was fortunate to spend my almost year there in a supporting role. I never shot at anyone nor had anyone shoot at me. Oh, I spent severaI nights in a bunker waiting on rocket attacks that never came, feeding the mosquitoes. I used to joke when people would ask me if I saw any action in Vietnam that I saw the movie “Patton.” It was shown at the NCO Club along with many newly released movies from the states. The only person I saw die in Vietnam was that man riding his motorcycle on the highway.

John Donne, the famous English poet wrote:

“No man is an island
Entire unto himself…
Each man’s death diminishes me
For I am a part of mankind.”

I do not suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome), Agent Orange complications, or any obvious physical or mental health issues from my service in Vietnam. I am one of the lucky ones, and I know it, but I still cry at night sometimes for that man on the other side of the road and all the men and women and children who died on both sides in that little country on the other side of the world. Black lives matter, and yellow lives, and  brown lives, and white lives. LGBTQ and all the other letters of the alphabet too. Even when a particular life might seem a mess or a terrible waste I honor it as if it my own were my own for it is.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White