We walked away from the Vietnam Women’s Memorial and stopped at the three bronze male statues: two white guys and a black guy, who were supposed to represent a marine, an army guy, and a sailor, but they were all dressed in jungle fatigues, so it was hard to tell. They were staring at the Wall, as if they were contemplating the names of the dead, but in a creepy sort of way, these guys looked dead themselves.
Karl turned toward the wall and said, “At first, I didn’t like that Wall. I preferred these heroic bronze statues because the Wall, for all its abstractness and metaphorical nuances, was in reality just a massive tombstone, a common grave with everyone’s name on it. That’s what disturbed me. Then… then I accepted it. What do you think?”
“I think we have to accept it for what it is. A tombstone.”
“Do you ever feel survivor’s guilt?”
“I might have, if I hadn’t been there. Can we change the subject?”
“No. You once told me that you bear no ill will toward the men who didn’t serve. Is that true?”
“It’s still true. Why?”
“You said you were more angry at the men who did go to Vietnam, but who didn’t do their job — men who let the others down, men who engaged in dishonorable acts, such as rape and robbery. Men who carelessly killed civilians. Is that still true?”
“Finish the briefing.”
“Yes. So, we have this captain, who most likely murdered a junior officer. I want to know the name of this captain and the name of the murdered lieutenant.”
I noticed that the obvious question of why — the motive — hadn’t specifically come up. Maybe, as with most cases of murder in wartime, the motive was petty, illogical, and unimportant. But maybe it was the central reason for digging up a thirty-year-old crime. And if it was, and if Karl wasn’t mentioning it, then I wasn’t going to mention it. I stuck to the facts at hand and said, “All right, if you want some reality checks, consider that this captain — this alleged murderer — if he didn’t die in combat could be dead of natural causes by now. It’s been thirty years.”
“I’m alive. You’re alive. We have to find out if he’s alive.”
“Okay. How about the witness? Do we know if he’s alive?”
“No, we don’t. But if he’s not, we want to know that, too.”
“When is the last time this witness showed signs of life?”
“Eight February 1968. That’s the date on the letter.”
“I know the army post office is slow, but this is a record.”
“In fact, the witness was not an American soldier. He was a soldier in the North Vietnamese army, named Tran Van Vinh. He was wounded during the battle of Quang Tri City, and was in hiding among the ruins. He witnessed these two Americans arguing and witnessed the captain pulling his pistol and shooting the lieutenant. In his letter, which he wrote to his brother, he referred to the murderer as dai-uy — captain — and the murder victim as trung-uy — lieutenant.”
“There were some marines around Quang Tri at that time. Maybe this is not a case for the army.”
Hellmann replied, “Tran Van Vinh, in his letter, mentioned that these two men were ky-binh — cavalry. So obviously he saw their U.S. Army First Cavalry shoulder patches, which he knew.”
I pointed out, “The First Cavalry Division, of which I was a member, had over twenty thousand men in it.”
“That’s correct. But it does narrow it down.”
I thought about all this for a moment, then asked Karl, “And you have this letter?”
“Of course. That’s why we’re here.”
“Right. And the letter was addressed to this guy’s brother. How did you get it?”
“In a very interesting way. The brother was also a North Vietnamese soldier, named Tran Quan Lee. The letter was found on Tran Quan Lee’s body in the A Shau Valley in mid-May of the same year by an American soldier named Victor Ort, who took it as a souvenir. The letter was sent home by Ort and lay in this man’s steamer trunk full of other war memorabilia for almost thirty years. Very recently, Ort sent the letter to the Vietnam Veterans of America, based here in Washington. This organization asks its members to return found and captured enemy documents and artifacts, and to provide information that these veterans might have concerning enemy dead. This information is then turned over to the Vietnamese government in Hanoi to help the Vietnamese discover the fate of their missing soldiers.”
“Why?”
“They are no longer the enemy. They have McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken in Saigon. In any case, we want them to help us find our missing in action. We still have about two thousand MIAs unaccounted for. They have an astounding three hundred thousand missing.”
“I think they’re all in San Diego.”
“No, they’re all dead. Including Tran Quan Lee, killed in the A Shau Valley, possibly by Mr. Ort, though he was vague about that.” Hellmann continued, “So, this American veteran, Victor Ort, sent the letter he found on the body of Tran Quan Lee to the Vietnam Veterans of America, with a note saying how, where, and when he found the letter and the body. The VVA, as a courtesy to the men who are sending such letters, had the letter translated, and was about to send the translation to Mr. Ort, but someone at the VVA — a retired army officer — read the translation and realized that what he was reading was an eyewitness account to a murder. This man then contacted us. A civilian would have contacted the FBI.”
“It was our lucky day. And did anyone send the translation to Mr. Ort?”
“Mr. Ort was sent a translation of a love letter, and a note of thanks.”
“Right. And you have the original of this letter?”
“Yes, and we’ve had it authenticated regarding paper and ink, and we’ve had three different translators work on it. They all came up with nearly the same wording. There’s no mistaking that what Tran Van Vinh is describing to his brother, Tran Quan Lee, is a murder. It’s a very compelling and disturbing letter.” He added, “I’ll show you a translated copy of it, of course.”
“Do I need it?”
Hellmann replied, “There’s not much in the way of clues in the letter other than what I told you, but it might motivate you.”
“To do what?”
“To find the author of the letter. Tran Van Vinh.”
“And what are the chances of Tran Van Vinh being alive? I mean, really, Karl, that whole generation of Vietnamese was nearly wiped out.”
“Nearly is the operative word.”
“Not to mention a short natural life expectancy.”
“We have to try to find this witness, Sergeant Tran Van Vinh.” Hellmann added, “Unfortunately, there are only about three hundred family names in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese population is about eighty million.”
“So the phone book won’t be much help.”
“There are no phone books. But we’re lucky this man’s family name wasn’t Nguyen. Half the Vietnamese family names are Nguyen. Fortunately, the family name Tran is not as common, and the middle and first names of Van Vinh and Quan Lee narrow it down.”
“Do you have a hometown and date of birth?”
“No date of birth, but an approximate age, of course — our age group. The envelope was addressed to the brother via an army unit designation, and also on the envelope was Tran Van Vinh’s return army address. We know from these addresses that these two men were in the North Vietnamese army, not the local South Vietnamese Viet Cong, so they’re northerners. In fact, in the letter there is a mention of their village or hamlet, a place called Tam Ki, but we find no such village on any of our maps of Vietnam, North or South. This is not unusual, as you might remember — the locals often referred to their hamlets or villages by one name, and the official maps had another for the same place. But we’re working on that. The village of Tam Ki will be an important clue in finding this man, Tran Van Vinh.”