Vietnam: 25 years later

Whether in images taken by "the enemy'' or from a distance of thousands of miles and 21/2 decades, a war can still haunt.

By CURTIS KRUEGER

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 30, 2000

Twenty-five years ago this weekend, Americans watched something new and unforgettable: the televised scene of the fall of Saigon, the last gasp of the first war the United States ever lost.

An Associated Press special report with stories, photos and video.

Heartbreaking footage showed U.S. helicopters rising to the sky, leaving our South Vietnamese allies behind.

Other wars gave us images of victory: Marines planting a flag on Iwo Jima. Vietnam gave us the helicopter icon, a symbol of retreat.

More than a generation has passed. Some Americans in their 30s cannot remember the war, but they probably studied it in history class.

The American men and women who served in Vietnam cannot forget it.

Today they carry mental scrapbooks, stuffed with pangs of regret, the pride of loyal service, images of three-wheeled bicycle taxies and women in Ao Dais dresses, the heavy dampness of lush jungle, the biting smells of explosives and rancid flesh.

The scrapbooks keep filling. They bulge with postwar memories too: snide comments from people who never served, innocent questions from veterans' own children. The war ended, but for Vietnam veterans, the memory of war is a living thing.

Here are a few of the snapshots, borrowed from people in the Tampa Bay area who served in Vietnam before anyone had a chance to write a history book.

Ia Drang Valley, November 1965

He joined the Army in 1957, right out of high school, planning to become a career soldier. He never dreamed the service would take him to Southeast Asia. Instead, he shipped out to Europe and patrolled the Berlin Wall.

But by 1965, the war was heating up, and a career soldier could expect to see combat. So Ron Benton, a platoon sergeant, spent six months training with his troops in a new concept: Helicopter warfare.

[Times photo: Jill Sagers] Ron Benton, who was awarded a Bronze Star, wonders what happened to those left behind in Siagon.

He arrived in Vietnam expecting to win. "I always thought that Americans had the best military on God's earth, and history shows that we've won every battle that we've ever been in."

After three months in Vietnam, his platoon crossed a flat valley en route to a landing zone in the Ia Drang Valley, near the Cambodian border.

They had 2 miles to walk, and everyone knew the danger. Earlier, the 1st Battalion/7th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division had spent two days in a firefight with communist North Vietnamese Army soldiers. Benton's battalion, the 2nd, had come in to help.

Now the 1st Battalion had airlifted out, and Benton's 30-man platoon was leading the 2nd so they could fly away, too. Later, B-52s would fly in and bomb enemy soldiers believed to be hiding on a nearby mountain.

But just short of their destination, Benton's platoon made an ominous discovery: Two NVA soldiers, hiding behind a large termite mound. Were they lost, as they claimed? Or part of an ambush?

Bullets answered the question.

A furious NVA attack divided the battalion. More than 100 American soldiers fell in what became known as the fiercest battle of the war to date. It lasted all that day and into the next.

Afterward, survivors faced a new mission: removing the bodies of American soldiers, littered through the bush.

Thirty-three years later, Benton, who now lives in Safety Harbor, was honored with a Bronze Star for heroism. "He skillfully led his men in protecting their perimeter and enabled his unit to eventually repulse the enemy attack," the award reads.

But even before the battle of the Ia Drang Valley, Benton had begun wondering about how the United States would win in Vietnam. In other wars, you seized ground and defended it. Here, American soldiers took territory, drove out the enemy and left for a new hotspot.

Meanwhile, the enemy came back. And soldiers kept falling.

As a sergeant, he could not express doubts to the troops under him. But with his peers, "you'd sit around on your downtime, have a beer, and say "What in the hell are we doing here?' "

In 1967, after 10 years' service, the onetime career soldier decided to leave the Army and work construction. He later served in the National Guard, stateside.

Fourteen years ago, he and his wife opened the Little People's Learning Center, a preschool in Safety Harbor. He handles the maintenance. More than three decades after he trudged through the jungles of southeast Asia, searching for the enemy, he now scouts the grounds of the preschool, looking for limbs that need to be cut, walls that need painting. If someone attacks, it is a preschooler wrapping both arms around his knees, laughing and calling him "Mr. Ron."

Long Binh, July 1969

By 1968, the United States had a war at home, too. Karen Offutt knew that. But she decided, "I wanted to see for myself what it was about." She dropped out of nursing school and enlisted in the Army, joining the Women's Army Corps, or WAC.

She was trained as a stenographer, worked at the Pentagon. In 1969, just two years after she had been playing clarinet for the Quartz Hill High School Rebels in California, she flew to Long Binh, where the United States had a large base.

"The first night in country was overwhelming. That's when it hit me where I was," she said.

[Times photo: Dan McDuffie] Karen Offutt, who served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970, talks to veterans groups to raise awareness about the women who served.

"You could just hear boom-boom-boom, all night long, and the beds were shaking and the walls were shaking, and I was just petrified."

The mortars that blasted into the base didn't seem to know she was just a stenographer. And it was the same in Saigon, where she was soon reassigned.

When she returned home, it was silence that surprised her. She wanted to talk about her experiences. No one else did.

She used to tape record letters to her parents, and sometimes the mortars would explode while she was talking. She would refer to them on tape: Don't worry, Mom. They're not near me.

But back home, it was like they never happened. Her family and friends did not want to discuss what happened there. She got the message, and stayed silent for years.

Then, in 1986, she went to see a model of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Porterville, Calif. A man she did not know reached out.

He "put his arm around me and said "Welcome home, sister.' I still cry when I think of it, because nobody ever said that to me," said Offutt, who is 50 and moved two years ago to Wesley Chapel in Pasco County.

Since then, she has been talking to veterans groups, and trying to raise awareness about the women who served.

Southwest of Da Nang, March 1970

After a month in Vietnam, John Babler became a radio operator.

It happened in the night, as a patrol of about seven U.S. Marines, including Babler, began walking down a small trail through waist-high grass, looking for the coordinates where they were supposed to set up an ambush for Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army.

The first few men in the patrol stopped and bunched up. An explosion blew through them. It was a booby trap, possibly one made of hand grenades perched on bamboo sticks.

[Times photo: Cherie Diez] John Babler keeps the transistor radio he used in Vietnam in his office at the St. Petersburg Veteran's Center.

"The shrapnel and the concussion came flying back," Babler recalled last week. It knocked him over. It ripped into the squad leader and killed him. It tore into the platoon sergeant. "I was patching him up, and he's screaming."

It blasted into the legs and back of the radio operator, who had to be sent by helicopter to a hospital.

And because of that, Babler became a radio operator.

The night was a turning point for the Marine, who had joined up after admiring a group called the "campus vets" at the University of Wisconsin-Lacrosse.

"I heard people crying, and I saw people with holes in them, shrapnel holes in them. Then the danger of the war came through."

The remaining men went back to work, setting up their ambush in the dark.

Babler stayed rigidly alert all that night. And all that year. And beyond.

Once, during the early 1980s, working as a psychiatric technician at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, the staff celebrated a birthday.

A balloon popped.

In Vietnam, that sound killed people.

"I remember feeling, like, a surge of adrenaline, and I started crying at the nurses' station."

Babler is among those who has wrestled with post-traumatic stress syndrome, an anxiety disorder recognized by mental health professionals.

The symptoms of PTSD can include nightmares, sleep disorders, high anxiety levels and "emotional numbing." Not every veteran suffers from PTSD. And although the term was coined after the Vietnam War, it is the same ailment that was called "battle fatigue" in World War II and "shell shock" in World War I.

Babler's symptoms did not prevent him from returning to college in Wisconsin and completing a degree. He moved to Florida in the 1970s and eventually earned a master's degree in rehabilitative counseling.

He now works as a counselor at the St. Petersburg Veteran's Center, a job he says is deeply satisfying.

For the men who come to his groups, there are still moments when balloons pop and memories explode. A quarter century after the war supposedly ended, Babbler says that "I'm impressed by how deeply these men really want to make changes and to feel differently."

"It's still with us," Babler said. "We're still dealing with it here. It may have ended politically at that time, but it didn't end in the minds and hearts of these guys."

United States, April 1975

For many of the 8.1-million living veterans who served in the Vietnam era -- which includes veterans who served in Vietnam and those who served elsewhere during the same time period -- the 25th anniversary provides a vantage point for looking back.

Bill McBride, a former Marine Corps officer who is now a managing partner of the Holland & Knight law firm in Tampa, said he looks back with great pride and no regrets.

"I don't feel at all resentful of the conclusion of that war, because that was a bargain that the military makes in a free society, governed as we are as a democracy. Policies and objectives can change. I don't feel that the troops in the field and certainly my Marines were defeated, but rather that democracy decided to take a different tack. I don't feel sadness or regret."

But for others, the video clips shown this weekend to observe the milestone will revive sharp and painful questions.

Joe Footer, 55, a former Army helicopter pilot who lives in St. Petersburg, said watching that news 25 years ago "was probably the worst experience that I've ever had in relation to the war."

And he was shot down three times.

"I broke out and started crying. I couldn't take it . . . somehow I just couldn't see the honor in it."

As the helicopters disappeared into the sky, and South Vietnamese remained helpless below, Footer said it felt like the United States had said "to hell with the guys that had been our allies."

Offutt, who had volunteered in an orphanage near the American Embassy in Saigon, said "I remember watching that on television and it killed me. I sat there just crying, tears coming down my face. I thought of all the people I had known over there, the kids I had held in my arms."

Benton, the former platoon sergeant who now has the preschool, does not like to criticize anyone, but acknowledges that the fall of Saigon was extremely troubling.

He wonders what happened to those South Vietnamese allies who were left behind, as the communists moved in.

"I thought it was disgusting that we won the confidence of the South Vietnamese people and when we left, I have no idea what happened to those people."

Near Saigon, April 30, 1975

Long Pham, a 19-year-old South Vietnamese soldier stationed at Bin Wah, peered onto the highway that led to nearby Saigon. The road was filled with trucks, tanks and troops. The North Vietnamese Army was advancing to his nation's capital, soon to be renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

He heard an official announcement on the radio: Soldiers should give up their guns, turn themselves in. He got rid of his gun and his uniform, but was quickly spotted as a soldier and sent to a re-education camp in a rural area to learn "the new way."

At the camp, he worked constantly, cutting wood, building houses, whatever he was told. His only pay for two years: tiny portions of rice and soup.

In 1977 Pham was allowed to leave, and went to Soc Trang, the hometown of his father.

For the next four years, he worked odd jobs, sometimes taking long, canoe-like boats to Saigon to haul back orange juice, tamarinds, coconuts and other goods.

He had long ago concluded he could not live under the new regime. "When you live with the communists, you feel like you're not people," he said. "You can't say something you want to say. You can't do what you want to do."

Pham decided, "I can bet my life for freedom."

In fact, his whole family made a bet on freedom. One night in 1981, he loaded his wife, their 3-year-old daughter and 3-month-old baby into a boat. They gathered more than 20 others at prearranged locations along waterways leading to the Mekong River.

Three times they had to pass police stations on the banks of the water. Once, Pham went up to a police station to check in. They let him go, without coming out to see that his boat was filled this time with terrified passengers, not tamarinds and coconuts.

After three nights and four days, they met another group, boarded another boat and emerged into the South China Sea, and headed to an oil derrick. Eventually, a Malaysian ship picked them up. By 1982, he and his family arrived in the United States.

At first, he worked in Chili's and Bonanza restaurants in Lincoln, Neb., but the cold did not agree with them. So they moved to a place with a climate like Vietnam's: St. Petersburg, Fla.

Four years ago, Pham bought the Saigon Market on M.L. King (Ninth) Street, where all sorts of Asian foods are sold.

"I love my country," he said, standing next to large bags of rice and stacks of dishes in his store. But he is not ready to return, because of what happened. "I love the United States, too."

Asked about the fall of Saigon, Pham said it was hard to understand. He still felt strong enough to fight, even when the official announcement was made to lay down arms.

"We never lost in the war," he said one day last week. He made a motion with his hand, meant to look like someone opening and closing his mouth. "We lost by talking or something."

-- Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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