Regarding my homecoming to South Boston, the neighborhood seemed different somehow, more so than the last time I’d returned. I realized my boyhood was over, and yes, you can’t go home again.
After my leave, I returned to Fort Hadley and Whispering Pines, and I discovered from a neighbor that Patty had lied about there not being anyone else — surprise! It turned out to be another soldier, and she’s probably on her fourth or fifth by now. There’s something about a man in uniform.
But things work out, and within a few months, I was back into a work routine on post and bought a nice yellow VW bug from a guy who was heading to ’Nam. The army doesn’t give you a lot of time to sulk or contemplate the meaning of life, and they don’t encourage you to talk about your personal problems. The army expression is “Got a personal problem? Go see the chaplain, and he’ll punch your tough-shit ticket.”
That was the old army, of course. The new army has trained counselors who’ll talk to you before punching your tough-shit ticket.
But it makes a man out of you, and you learn to keep shit to yourself. And that’s the way it should be if you’ve picked this life.
I was drawn back to the present by the sight of an open truck approaching the aircraft. This was our escort vehicle, a variation on the little truck with the revolving light that you see at most airports.
We followed the truck to the terminal, but we didn’t actually get right to a gate. We stopped on the apron, and the engines shut down. We had arrived.
It was still raining, and below I saw a line of young ladies holding umbrellas, which I guess is cheaper than a mobile jetway. I also saw a few soldiers standing under a corrugated steel canopy, carrying AK-47s. Two men rolled a stairway toward the aircraft.
As I stared out the window, my mind flashed back to Tan Son Nhat Airport, November 1967, my first tour.
We had landed just before dawn, and as I stepped out of the air-conditioned Braniff 707, a blast of hot, humid air hit me, which was surprising at that predawn hour in November, and I recalled thinking it was going to be a long year for a guy who liked autumn and winter in Boston.
A few hundred American soldiers had been standing on the tarmac behind a rope, wearing short-sleeve khakis, carrying overnight bags, and staring up at the aircraft. The Braniff 707 that had brought me to Vietnam would be quickly refueled, and without even changing the crew, the aircraft would take these guys home.
When I came down the stairway into the predawn light, I had to pass the guys behind the rope. I could clearly recall the looks on their faces; most appeared anxious, like this wasn’t going to come off like it should, but there were a few optimists who looked happy or excited.
A few of these homeward-bound men shouted out words of encouragement to the fresh meat, others shouted things like “You’re gonna be sorreee!” or “It’s a long year, suckers!”
As I looked closer at these guys, I noticed that some of them — who I realized later were the combat vets who’d seen too much — had this strange, faraway stare that I’d never seen before, but which I got familiar with later; this was my first clue that this place was worse than I’d imagined it from stories I’d heard, or from what I’d seen on the TV news.
My French companion brought me back to the present by saying, “What is so interesting out there?”
I turned away from the window and replied, “Nothing.” Then I said, “I was just recalling my first landing here.”
“Yes? This time should be more pleasant. No one is trying to kill you.”
I wasn’t completely sure of that, but I smiled.
A bell chimed, and everyone stood to deplane. I got my overnight bag from the overhead compartment, and within a few minutes I was on the aluminum staircase where the smiling young ladies held umbrellas over everyone’s heads. At the bottom of the staircase, I was handed an open umbrella, and I followed the line of passengers in front of me to the terminal, under the watchful eyes of the soldiers under the corrugated canopy.
My first sense of the place was the long forgotten smell of the rain, which did not smell like the rain in Virginia. A soft breeze carried the odor of burning charcoal, along with the rich and pungent smell of the surrounding rice paddies, a mixture of dung, mud, and rotting vegetation, a thousand layered years of cultivation.
I had returned to Southeast Asia, not in a dream or a nightmare, but in reality.
Inside the terminal, a lady took my umbrella, and motioned me to follow the others, as if I might have other plans.
I passed through a doorway into the International Arrival Terminal, a cavernous space that had the air of neglect and a sense of abandonment. The place was completely empty, except for my fellow passengers. Half the lights were out, and there was not one single electronic information screen, or any signs at all, for that matter. I was also struck by how quiet it was — no one speaking, and no PA system. Compared to the aircraft, the terminal was very humid, and I realized there was no air-conditioning, which wasn’t a problem in January, but must be interesting in August.
As it turned out, however, this primitive facility was going to be the least of my problems.
Directly in front of me was a line of Passport Control booths, and beyond the booths I could see a single luggage carousel, motionless and empty. There were no porters visible, no luggage carts, and strangely, no Customs stations. More strangely, no one was waiting for any of the arriving passengers, most of whom were Vietnamese and should have had people eagerly expecting their arrival. Then I noticed that there were soldiers at the glass exit doors, and beyond the doors were crowds of people peering through the glass. Apparently, no visitors were allowed in the Arrival Terminal, which was weird. In fact, this whole place was weird.
I walked up to one of the passport booths and handed the uniformed guy my passport and visa. I looked at him, but he never made eye contact with me. He seemed interested in my passport and visa.
I looked again into the cavernous terminal beyond the booths and saw, hanging from the ceiling at the far end of the terminal, a huge red flag with a yellow star in the center — the flag of the victorious North Vietnamese Communists. The full reality of the Communist victory struck me, a quarter century late, but with unmistakable clarity.
When I landed at Tan Son Nhat in ’67 and ’72, soldiers didn’t go through the civilian terminal, but I recalled that outside the terminal was the Stars and Stripes flying alongside the old red, green, and yellow South Vietnamese flag. No one had seen either of those flags around here in over two decades.
I had a creepy feeling, which was reinforced by the Passport Control guy, who kept staring at my passport and visa. I realized he was taking too long, and people in the other booths were passing through more quickly. At first, I just put this down to my usual bad luck of getting in a supermarket checkout line where the cashier was the village idiot.
But then the passport guy picked up a phone and began talking to someone. I could only remember a few words of Vietnamese, but I clearly heard him say the word My — American. This is not in and of itself a negative word, but you had to consider the context. I affected a look of bored impatience, which was lost on the passport guy.
Finally, another uniformed Vietnamese appeared, a short, stocky guy who took my passport and visa from the guy in the booth, and motioned me through. I picked up my overnight bag and followed him.