Dee Em Zed

Today was a day off from shooting, so five of the seven of us went on a DMZ tour. It was an all-day excursion from Hue up into the Quang Tri province a little to the north. Quang Tri is where you'll find the old DMZ, the Vien Moc tunnels, Rockpile base, and Khe Sanh...along with tons of other noteworthy sites we didn't have time to visit. I had mixed emotions about the whole thing. Mf father and father-in-law are both VN vets, and I respect their service greatly. But at the same time, ever since I first started to develop a political and historical conscience, I've felt in my gut that the war was a massive, stupid, and arrogant mistake...pretty much the same way I feel about our current exploits in Iraq.

Then, yet again, it's a common theme in the war memorials here to take a tone that seems to relish the deaths of American soldiers, and this seems to go above and beyond merely celebrating their victory in the conflict. I tried to stay detached about the whole thing. After all, we have our propaganda too. Is a clearly posed photograph of a VC officer leading troops in an attack really all that different from a painting of Washington crossing the Delaware? Matt rolled his eyes at the frequent use of terms like "liberating heroes" to describe northern Vietnamese soldiers, but I reminded him that we throw the word "heroes" around like confetti when talking about the military. I think we're so used to seeing military history from the vantage point of the American victor, that to see a memorial to a battle we lost, from the other side of the fence, is inevitably jarring. It's hard to decide what unbiased history is in these situations, and I was willing to politely give them their due in the matter, I just wish there were a little less blunt violence in their imagery.

As we were leaving Khe Sanh, a man came up to us asking if we'd like to buy a souvenir. He held up a tray full of tarnished medals and dogtags. That left a distinctly nasty taste in my mouth.

Khe Sanh was actually our main afternoon stop. In the morning we visited the tunnels at Vien Moc, about 10 km north of the DMZ. There is an elaborate tunnel system there that was built to serve as a VC base and to defend the locals from American bombing. All around that area, the landscape was a mess of bomb craters and re-planted forest. (It reminded me of pictures I've seen of Point du Hoc at Normandy, bombed to-hell-and-gone by allied bombers the night before D-Day in an attempt to take out large German artillery threatening the landings. During the war, Vien Moc must have looked like the face of the moon.) There are literally several kilometers of tunnels on multiple levels dug into the rock near the ocean. We went down in two of these, and it was one of the most unnerving things I've done in a very long time. In addition to being very poorly lit, they are really small. The average height of the tunnels is about five feet with a rounded arch at the top, and they are only about two- to three-feet wide at the most. Every few yards, a small cove will jut off from the side, tiny cubbies where people lived, cooked, give birth, and (I assume) went to the bathroom. It was just unreal to see what the human animal can endure when pressed.

Heavy stuff aside, most of the day was spent on the bus, which was populated almost entirely by westerners. There were three other Americans on there other than us, and a few Brits and Germans, but most of the tourists were Aussies. Also, most of the tourists here are younger. Backpacking through southeast Asia appears to be the new backbacking through Europe. We met some nice folks and had a few laughs. The white knuckle ride on that bus through the mountains was also a bonding experience.

The pictures from the trip are on my google pictures page. If you haven't already sent me email asking to see them, let me know (sminnis@vwc.edu).

Stu