Daniel Cano
Note: After watching the destruction of a once beautiful country, Ukraine, I decided to revise a past La Bloga post, exploring this writer's personal experience with war and its aftermath.
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| A Time for Peace |
1.
It was a cool spring day in Santa Monica,
California, as I walked across campus where I’d been teaching before my
retirement. A colleague approached from the opposite direction. A few nights earlier,
I’d run into him at a local movie theater. We’d both been there to watch the film,
the Last Days in Vietnam, directed by Rory Kennedy, youngest daughter of
Robert and Ethel Kennedy. At the end of the movie, Ms. Kennedy answered questions
from the audience. The film disturbed me, so I didn’t hang around to hear her talk.
My friend, a
Cornell grad and zealous 1960s anti-war protester, had spent a summer in Ho Chi
Minh City where he taught English to Vietnamese students. Vietnam had seeped
into his consciousness. He had read my book Shifting Loyalties, inspired by my year
in Vietnam. We’d spent many hours talking, over coffee, about the 1960s politics,
the anti-war protests, the war, the Vietnamese people, and culture. We’d formed
an unlikely alliance.
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| Chicanos at war |
On this
particular day, he waved me towards him and asked how I’d liked the movie. I told
him I was disturbed by the images, even after all these years, mostly South
Vietnamese trying to escape the northern mongrels at the city gates, not unlike
the recent chaotic flight of Afghanis from the throes of the Taliban.
I couldn’t
exactly put my finger on the exact reason for my dismay. Honestly, much of it
was simply reliving the experience and sensing emotions I believed I had locked
away a long time ago, memories I’d worked through with some friends at the Veterans Administration in West Los Angeles.
My friend
told me he’d asked Rory Kennedy to screen her movie on campus, for students and
faculty, even if Vietnam was a distant memory for most. She agreed. He asked if
I’d say a few words of introduction before the screening.
I
appreciated the thought, but I declined. I’d had enough of war, writing, and
talking about it. I was one of the few Vietnam veterans on the faculty. It had
been nearly twenty years since I published the stories about my time in Vietnam.
They’d been difficult to write, reliving tragic experiences that had lain
dormant for so many years.
When my book was published, I’d driven across
California participating in readings, panels, and lectures. I began receiving
letters from Chicano veterans, expressing their gratitude for the slim book, telling
me how appreciative they were that I’d given a voice to their stories. Family
members of veterans would come up to me offer their thanks. I received a letter from a Latina who told me her father had been killed in Vietnam when she was a
child. She never knew him. After reading my book, she said she felt closer to
him, understanding what he might have experienced.
Then there
was an incident in one of my classes as I taught Charley Trujillo’s book Soldados, my own book, and Jorge
Mariscal’s Aztlan in Vietnam: Chicano and
Chicana Experiences of the War. A Vietnamese American student raised her
hand, and said, shyly, “I never knew Mexican-Americans had fought in Vietnam.”
Her words
rocked me. Maybe, they shouldn’t have. The media had pretty much ignored the
contribution of Mexican veterans, not only in Vietnam but in Korea and WWII, as
well. In his book the Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw failed to mention
the sacrifices of Chicano veterans, even though they received more Medals of
Honor than any other ethnic group during the war.
He didn’t
even mention the name of Marine Pvt. Guy Gabaldon, a Chicano from Bellflower,
CA, who, in the Pacific, over the course of a month, single-handedly accounted
for the capture of more than 1000 Japanese soldiers, the most enemy ever
captured by an American in any war. For his efforts, Gabaldon received the
Silver Star, yet hardly a word from the media once he returned home, his daring
exploits conveniently forgotten. A movie finally did appear, an Anglo in the lead role, no mention of Gabaldon.
I called my
friend and told him I’d reconsidered.
The Introduction
Good afternoon, and welcome. My name is Daniel Cano. I’m a faculty member here at Santa Monica College, and I’d like to say a few words before you begin watching Rory Kennedy's film, the Last Days in Vietnam.
In 1969, I
received my discharge from the Army, where I’d served in Vietnam with the 101st
Airborne and stateside with the 82nd Airborne, two divisions with
distinguished military histories, including a legacy among Chicano paratroopers
who’d served honorably since the inception of both divisions.
I tried
to regain my footing in civilian life. The county was in turmoil. America protested
the war in the streets, on college campuses, and in the home, disillusioned Vietnam
veterans often leading protestors. They’d received no welcome home parades, nor did they expect them. Once
discharged, we struggled to assimilate into society, many never did.
To avoid
the Vietnam stigma, I grew my hair long and enrolled in community college. Like
other Vietnam veterans from my hometown, I rarely talked about the war. It was as
if we’d gone away for a couple of years, returned, and were back in the neighborhood. "Hey, where you been?" a high school buddy asked me.
It didn’t
matter how many masks I donned, how long I grew my hair, how hard I labored at
work or in school, or how many substances I abused, the war was always there, the albatross around my neck.
Sometimes I’d wake before dawn, remembering the name of another location in Vietnam. I'd leap from my bed and go into the garage where I'd nailed a large map of Vietnam to a wall. I'd mark a new location with a colored thumbtack, the map a collage of reds, blues, greens, and yellows. While in-country, it had always been another plane, another convoy, another helicopter, and another mission, death in our wake, both theirs and ours. Dubbed by the media -- the “Nomads of Vietnam,” we rarely saw our base camp.
Since I couldn’t put the war behind me, I immersed myself in it, reading whatever I could about the land, people, history, culture, and politics -- always searching, I suppose, for the war’s elusive justification.
At the time, we still had
troops in Vietnam, and, as a young veteran, barely 21, I heard rumors of drug
use, racism, refusal to obey orders, and fragging going on, over there. No one sacrificed except those who served and their families. 90,000 people filled the Rose Bowl to watch UCLA play USC. I thought of my friends still in the jungle.
Then
came April 29th, 1975. As I sat in my living room, I watched the news reporting the fall of Saigon, the chaos on the streets, mayhem at
the embassy, and the desperation of the last helicopters leaving the rooftops. My
emotions ranged from depression to anger, from bitterness to betrayal, and, I thought,
what a waste it had all been, the loss of friends, of so many young lives
-- for nothing, absolutely nothing.
The opening of T.S. Eliot’s "Wasteland" came to mind, “April is the cruelest month….”
Then there was the voice of the young Vietnamese student in my class who had said, “I didn’t know Chicanos had fought in Vietnam.”
I think about the first American captured by
North Vietnam, Everett Alvarez, an Air Force pilot from San Jose, California, who
spent eight years in Hanoi military prison, the second longest term of any
American. Then there was the last American serviceman to leave the country, Marine
Sgt. Juan Vasquez, who wouldn't board the final chopper out until all his
men were safely aboard.
As our government's lies surfaced, I became so
jaded. I refused to vote, to
recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or to hold my hand over my heart during the National
Anthem. I hid Vietnam in a cardboard box: the souvenirs, photos, medals, and
citations. I didn’t want my son or any of my nephews seeing them and glamorizing
war. I never wanted to see another Cano in uniform.
3.
My
generation had been bred to hate communism. We hid under desks in elementary
school as protection from the atomic bomb the Soviets were sure to drop. Our television news reported East Germany was being turned into a prison camp and
Slavic countries were being crushed under communist rule. Politicians told us communists planned to rule the world and confiscate our property, our
religion, and our rights as a free people.
Was that
the war’s justification – communism? If that’s true then why then did Nixon open
relations with communist China, after it armed Korea and North Vietnam, responsible
for the lives of so many Americans? Why had the communist Soviet Union, East
Germany, and Baltic countries collapsed under their own weight? Why do we trade
with Vietnam and talk of opening relations with Cuba (finally)?
Why did we
kill two million Vietnamese, more civilians than soldiers, and sacrifice nearly
60,000 Americans and bring so much pain to hundreds of thousands more? And what
of the terror wrought on Chile, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador under the
auspices of salvation from communism? Today, except for the House of Saud, we are more indebted, financially, to China than to any other country.
Everywhere
I turned, I saw the reminders: Tet, Kent State, The Chicano Moratorium, My Lai,
Hearts and Minds, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, Desert Storm,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Al Qaeda, and ISIS.
In 1995, past Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara published his memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of
Vietnam. The word “Lessons,” leaped out at me, as if the slaughter in
Vietnam had been a scholarly exercise. Essentially, the point of McNamara’s book
was to say: “Sorry. Looking back on it, we made a terrible mistake.”
A terrible
mistake? By 1967, when I left Vietnam, McNamara, Washington, and the Pentagon knew
the war was wrong, immoral, and unwinnable. To his credit, though late in
coming, McNamara told President Johnson the truth. It was time to end the war.
Instead, Johnson, worried about losing the next election for being soft on communism, continued sending young Americans into those steaming jungles, like tossing wood into a
fire. For speaking out, McNamara found himself gone as Defense Secretary and
reassigned to the hinterlands, heading the World Bank. Americans began questioning the war.
Nixon had promised to end the war if he won the presidency. After he took office in Washington, instead of pulling out troops, he continued to escalate the war, setting our bombers loose on Cambodia and Laos. When the North still didn't relent, Nixon, privately, threatened to use nuclear weapons. When he heard Nixon was considering the use of nuclear weapons, Daniel Ellsberg, a one-time hawk, working at Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, decided to release
parts of what became known as the Pentagon Papers, proving Washington's lies about Vietnam, including its reason for entering the war.
The Papers showed how, historically, South Vietnam
had, flat-out, rejected Washington's offer to send troops to Vietnam. Our government threatened to
cut the rogue dictator's funding. The South relented and accepted U.S. troops, fearing it
would escalate the war and destroy the country, and, probably, expose the "take" of corrupt politicians.
For eight
more years, the slaughter continued, each U.S. administration fearful of
“pulling the plug” and being labeled soft on communism and possibly losing the
next election to the opposing party; all the while, young Americans were
falling in horrible ways. The media hid the savagery from the American public.
4.
A few years
ago, as I walked through a local bookstore, I noticed a title glaring up at me
from the rack -- The Tiger Force: A True Story of Men at War. I thought...the Tiger Force, and the memories came flooding back.
My unit, A battery, 2/320th Artillery, had supported
a recon platoon from the 1/327 Infantry, called the Tiger Force, guys we admired,
wild, insanely brave men (many kids), who’d go into the jungle in small teams
to observe enemy movement but often ended up initiating contact with much
larger forces. A creation of Colonel David Hackworth who tried convincing the generals: the only way to fight a guerilla war was with a guerrilla
army, and not the stodgy, large-scale WWII style military operations.
I bought
the book, took it home, and read that from June through October 1967, in the
Song Ve River Valley, the Tigers had self-destructed and executed an untold
number of innocent villagers in the most heinous ways. They turned rice paddies
and farms into blood-soaked fields, making the Manson families’ murders look
like child’s play. And it hadn’t been a secret. The officers knew but did nothing
to stop them, in fact, in some instances, encouraged it, anything to increase
the ever-important “body count.”
That’s when
I was there, June through October 1967. We’d been in the Song Ve Valley during
Operation Oregon, a mission some called “Rawhide” to remove all villagers from
their ancestral homes and into relocation camps, a plan many villagers rejected,
part of the “hearts and minds” policy, to win over the people. It did the
opposite. It turned them against us.
Of course,
at the time, we knew none of this. We were ignorant of all military strategy
and just followed orders, waiting for the next fire mission.
Some
evenings, at the end of a long day, the Tiger Force, in their dark
tiger-striped fatigues and floppy hats, would come humping out of the jungle
and into our battery area for a little security and much needed sleep. By dawn,
the next day, they’d be gone, in the jungle, sometimes, 30 days straight, with
no respite, hot meals, or showers, enough to drive any man insane.
The Tigers called
in artillery strikes. It was our battery firing the high-explosive and white
phosphorous rounds that burned and destroyed villages, simply because the
villagers hid, came out in the day to work their farms, and ignored the order
to relocate.
My hands
had removed the shells from the canisters and handed them to the gun crews who
loaded the rounds into the Howitzers and sent them on their fiery way into
those rural settlements. Do I carry the blood of these villagers on my hands? Am
I like Robert McNamara, saying, “Well, in retrospect, I was just following
orders”? It hasn’t been so easy to pass it off as a lesson learned.
In their book, the writers described a Chicano
Tiger, Manuel Sanchez, one of the few experienced Tigers in the
platoon (many had been killed or rotated home), who said of one murder he witnessed, “It was cold-blooded. The man had
no weapon, and he offered no resistance.” Sanchez “believed…that when soldiers cross the line in
the field ‘bad things happen.’” Karma?
5.
My year in Vietnam was nearly up. I’d survived. I caught the afternoon chopper out of the field, and, in an hour, I was in the rear area, enjoying beer and a movie. At approximately 2:00 AM, as I slept, the VC and North Vietnamese overran the battery. Among the dead, Wayne Podlesnik, a Pennsylvania boy who had slept by my side for nearly a year. Wayne must have woken to the sounds of mortar and gun fire. In the confusion, he ran out of the hooch, probably seeking the security of the nearest gun section. After the smoke cleared, they found his body on a hillside, a bullet from an AK-47 in the back. He hadn’t made it far.
Another
friend, a big, hearty Chicagoan, Sgt. Nathaniel Dabon, happy at the recent birth
of his new child, rushed into the middle of the battery area as a mortar round
landed near him. There wasn’t much of him to recover. In 101st Airborne lore, it would become known as
the “Battle of Sad Hill,” the guns leveled to fire at point blank range.
The next morning, a friend, Big Tom, a Wyoming cowboy, shook me awake to tell me the news. He wanted me to meet him at the infirmary, I guess, to see which of our friends was still alive. Outside my tent, it was chaos, choppers landing and taking off, jeeps and trucks racing around, and men running wildly. A jeep stopped in front of me, a small wagon attached carrying a pile of enemy dead, their eyes distant, their bodies shredded. I decided not to go to the infirmary.
I gathered
my bags and hitched a ride on a three-quarter pick-up to the local airbase in
Chu-Lai, where I’d catch a hop to Cam Ran Bay, and back home.
6.
For Vietnam
veterans, the War is not abstract nor theoretical, not like it was for
technocrats and politicians in Washington. It isn’t an academic problem. It’s
as visceral as a fist to the jaw. That’s why it is difficult for many of us to talk
about it, or to think about the horror of war without thinking of ourselves in
it.
As I
watched, Rory Kennedy’s film, “The Last Days in Vietnam,” I had I hoped I might
find the justification for the war, but no, nothing, not even in the faces of
those Vietnamese desperately seeking escape at the American Embassy, nor on the
faces of the South Vietnamese throngs waving communist flags to welcome the conquering
Viet Cong and North Vietnamese victors into Saigon, traipsing over the scattered
uniforms discarded by South Vietnamese Army.
What
Kennedy’s film captured was the U.S. betrayal of a corrupt South Vietnamese government
unable to rally the support of its own people. What I hoped she'd show, along with the fleeing throngs, was the
reunification of a country fighting foreign occupation for more than 1,000 years, or the psychological wounds of another generation of
veterans still grappling with questions about war, or as the song said, “What is war good for? Absolutely nothing.”
