I spent the past two days while the ship was docked in Vietnam feeling uncomfortable. Grumpy, heavy-hearted, guilty, unsettled. I didn't leave the ship except for a brief stroll on the dock at Nha Trang. It took almost that whole time for me to realize that I was reacting to being where the war happened decades ago. I thought I was succumbing to a spate of melodrama until I talked with other passengers.
Everyone -- especially men of my age, whether they had fought here or not -- reported the same feelings. The tours went to places we all knew and dreaded the memory of. One guide claimed to show the very last helicopter that took the last Americans off the hotel roof. Seems unlikely, but that didn't lessen the impact of the memory. It doesn't seem to matter whether one was for or against the war, now and here it is a heavy burden, recalling the photo of the Vietnamese official shooting a suspected Viet Cong in the head, another of a Vietnamese child running from tear gas or maybe Agent Orange, and the name "My Lai" resurfaces with deep shame and horror, perhaps primed by the recent slaughter of Afghani citizens by an American soldier reportedly on his fourth tour of combat duty.
We're now sailing slowly (only 11 knots when our typical speeds across the Pacific were more like 20) toward Singapore. We have another sea day tomorrow to finish being in Vietnam. No one seems to have found an effective exorcism for what that meant. I sent email to my priest asking for prayers.
My prayers are with you, in whatever realm you may be. I can well imagine the ghostly images there, and how sad for people like you, who are so empathic.
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