Tag Archives: vietnam tours

9 Sep 2015

Vietnam, Cambodia, Covid-19 and America

Vietnam, Cambodia, Covid-19 and America

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We’re finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio

Fifty years ago, April 29th, President Richard Nixon launched the final large-scale American offensive of the Vietnam War, the incursion into Cambodia. The attack caught just about everyone by surprise: the Cambodians, North Vietnamese, and the American and world public. Tactically, it produced some positive effects and bought South Vietnam some time to prepare to defend itself as the US drawdown continued rapidly afterward. Strategically, it was a massive failure on both the world stage and within the US.

One effect was a resurgence of anti-war protests in US towns and cities and on college campuses. Most notoriously, US Army National Guard troops opened fire on protesters and innocent students alike, leaving four young people dead at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. The lyrics of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young evoke the turbulent mood of horror, outrage, and shock. Young watched coverage of the shooting, wrote the lyrics and the group recorded it on May 21st. The B side of Ohio was Stephen Stills’ ode to the war dead, Find the Cost of Freedom.

Find the cost of freedom

Buried in the ground

Mother Earth will swallow you

Lay your body down

The cost of freedom refers to the death of all those fighting for it, the anti-war students in Kent as well as the soldiers in Vietnam.

As she did fifty years ago, Mother Earth continues to make room for those dying in the current “war” against the Covid-19 virus — no matter the age, sex, race, or religion.

On April 29th, the numbers of Americans felled by Covid-19 surpassed all those American lives lost in Vietnam over a period of almost two decades. As I write this, we have lost 55,356 these past two months and more every day. In the entirety of the Vietnam War we lost 58,193.

In the war, most of the dead were young men. Some 40,000 were 22 or younger, and 3,121 were 18 or younger.

The youngest name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington DC is that of Dan Bullock of North Carolina by way of Brooklyn. He altered his birth certificate in 1968 to join the US Marines after watching the Tet Offensive on television. He survived Parris Island boot camp and went to Vietnam, where he was killed in 1969. The African-American private and Marine rifleman was 15 years old.

Today, most of those dying of Covid-19 in the US are older than the mean. Some 62 percent are 65 and older. Only 5 percent are under age 44. However, young people and even babies have died from it.

The oldest American to perish thus far is Philip Kahn, who served as a sergeant in the US Army Air Forces in WWII. He was 100 years old. His twin brother, Samuel, had passed from the Spanish Flu weeks after his birth a century ago.

The oldest American to die in Vietnam was 62. Only 125 of those killed were 50 or older. War is fought by the young. The battle against Covid-19 knows no such rules. All are vulnerable.

In Vietnam, eight American women gave their lives. In the Covid-19 fight, women make up 38 percent of the US deaths thus far.

In Vietnam, Philadelphia’s Thomas Edison High School lost 54 of its graduates. Philadelphia had suffered terribly in the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu epidemic and is, again today, struggling against Covid-19.

In fact, the states that suffered the most casualties in Vietnam are some of those with the highest rates of deaths today against Covid-19. New York trailed only California in the most deaths in the war. Other states in the top six included Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan along with Texas.

The most American deaths in a single day in Vietnam was 245 on January 31, 1968, in the first days of the Tet Offensive. With 2,415, May 1968 saw the most deaths in a month, during Tet’s second phase.

Meanwhile, the Covid-19 virus is taking American lives at a rate of over 2,000 per day.

While every death is a tragedy of some magnitude, some affect us more for various reasons. One is timing. On their first day of combat duty in Vietnam, 997 Americans lost their lives. And on what was supposed to be their final day after a year of combat duty, 1,448 gave the supreme sacrifice.

Today, we are seeing grandparents and parents unable to be seen or held in their last moments, spouses dying alone, babies succumbing soon after their lives had begun.

Fifty years ago, American society was struggling with a great many issues. Race, gender/women’s liberation, drugs, the environment, entitlements and more. President Lyndon Johnson had begun the focus of the Great Society programs after he visited poor whites in Appalachia in 1964. The appalling conditions he found there – lack of education, healthcare, employment, stable family structure and more – is what engendered his massive government response, a response that went well beyond Appalachia to the wider country in a war on poverty.

Today, once again, poor whites across America (especially in rural areas that have not garnered jobs from the revolution in global networking) are finding themselves in the situation LBJ saw in 1964. We are seeing what are called deaths of despair, as thousands of our brothers and sisters kill themselves with alcohol, heroin, meth, and opioids in an epidemic that yearly rivals the total deaths in Vietnam.

America also faced a crisis in 1970 as it looked toward its federal government. At the beginning of the conflict, the public and the media were initially supportive of the reasons for going to war. And, in general, they were also supportive of the tactics, operations and strategies employed by the military and civilian leadership in Saigon and DC.

However, when the public saw that lies had been and were being propagated to continue the war, the public rebelled. For instance, LBJ and his chief military commander in Vietnam, William Westmorland, led the public to believe the war was almost won in the last days of 1967. Then, when the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong launched a huge, nation-wide offensive across all of South Vietnam a month later, even entering the US Embassy compound, the American people lost faith with the program. North Vietnam’s Tet offensive, probably a tactical defeat, became, more importantly, a strategic success. LBJ lost heart and decided against running for a second term.

Richard Nixon took advantage of a divided Democratic party to become president in January 1969 with a promise to end the war with honor and bring American boys home. Thus, his offensive into Cambodia in April 1970 caught everyone by surprise. It seemed one more, great big lie had been foisted on the American people.

The drumbeat of falsehood, from the Gulf of Tonkin incident through Tet to Cambodia and then fully exposed with the publication of The Pentagon Papers in June 1971, led to a collapse of faith by the American people in its leaders.

The revelations of Nixon’s coverup of the Watergate break-in finally led to an almost complete break of trust after a decade-long lack of forthright federal leadership in the racial conflicts of 1965-69, and the prosecution of the Vietnam War. America — left-right, black-white, young-old, poor-wealthy – was fed-up and demoralized.

It was a long road back. And on the way back, much of the evils of those days were papered over and never fully resolved or realized. So that they remained, below the surface, ready to fester again.

Today, when the Covid-19 virus hit and the federal government began taking actions such as closing the borders and issuing initial guidance on aspects such as social distancing, the American public initially rallied around its leaders and was prepared to support the required actions deemed necessary.

However, amidst half-truths and outright lies, and mixed messages on everything from closing and reopening to treatments and equipment, the lack of a federally coordinated response resulted in a public unaware of who was calling the shots. And when it became apparent that this flawed federal response was incapable of meeting the immediate needs in many areas, the people and press began to question their leaders. Primed perhaps by the experiences of the Vietnam era, and exacerbated by the anti-government messaging of Ronald Reagan and others, the public has a much shorter leash on its tolerance for lies and ineptitude. A crisis of confidence is again ensuing.

Many of the issues facing America in 1970 – race, gender, entitlements, immigration, environment – are the same facing America today. We had reached a sort of nadir, a rock-bottom, after Vietnam and Watergate. But we gradually pulled together and set out once again to make America a better place.

That is where we are now. This is a trying time. It is, indeed, a war. The enemy is real, if difficult at times to grapple. It morphs and we must adapt to its changes. We can do this. We will do this.

Today the battle is not being waged halfway around the globe. It is in our towns and hospitals. It stalks our neighborhoods and businesses. It is in our densest cities and in our rural hamlets coast-to-coast. This is a fight on our home turf. Beyond the struggles for civil rights, we have not waged a battle of this magnitude on our shores since our Civil War 160 years ago. The country had not been set against itself as in that conflict till Vietnam. Today we are at an inflection point once more. Surely now is a time to gather together our communal strength when our hearts, in Abraham Lincoln’s words, are “again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Americans have met every challenge set before them for a quarter millennium.  We see opportunities in them. Opportunities to do better, to build stronger. America is a promise. Our Declaration sets out our ideals. Who we are and why we are here. All men are created equal. We have not yet fulfilled our promise, achieved our greatness. It is always somewhere up ahead. It is in the striving that we show our greatness. We do not give up. We overcome. And we shall overcome again.

Author: Dr. Brian DeToy

#covid19 #vietnam50 #cambodia50 #kentst50

9 Sep 2015

“Destination: History” as Published in Denver Life Magazine

Denver Life Magazine recently published an article on Essential History Expeditions. Read on here or click here for the piece in Denver Life

Sheryl Rankin Shafer and Dr. Brian DeToy are used to being in the classroom—but now those classrooms move around the world, from the beaches of Normandy to the jungles of Vietnam. The husband-and-wife educators founded the Denver company Essential History Expeditions in 2014 to provide clients with “you are there” trips that go straight to the places where history happened. “Instead of our classroom being four walls and a chalkboard or a PowerPoint, we’re on site,” DeToy says. “We’re looking at the Acropolis of Athens. We’re looking at Waterloo in Belgium. We’re walking the fields to the cliffs of Normandy in France. There is nothing to compare with learning like that. It’s in your head and heart forever.”

Why did you start the company?
“I spent 28 years in the military, 14 of them as a college professor, either at West Point or at the University of Kansas, where I ran the ROTC program,” DeToy says. “I was deployed in infantry battalions around the world throughout my career, and while doing that I developed a skillset of taking people on tours of specific battlefields, like Gettysburg, Antietam, the Little Big Horn, D-Day and sites of Israeli-Arab conflicts. After I retired and moved to Colorado, some friends asked us to put together a trip to Normandy for the 70th anniversary of the invasion, in 2014. Then some other friends asked us to lead another trip. Sheryl, whose background is also in education, and I realized that instead of teaching in a brick-and-mortar setting, we could teach in a more experiential way.”

What is a typical day like on one of your trips?
“We are a small company. Brian is our historian guide for every trip, and I provide support at a personalized level,” Shafer says. “We typically start our trip days around 9 a.m., and the days are full, going to 4 or 5 p.m., with downtime followed by a social hour and then dinner. On our public trips, most meals are included, but on private ones, we do whatever the group wants. We want people to feel like they are getting what they came for. If somebody is looking for a vacation where they sit on the beach, that is not what we do. We try to limit the number of people on trips to 15 to 20, and the cost varies, but an average multi-day trip would be $3,500 per person, plus airfare. That covers lodging, transportation during the trip—really everything, once we are at our location.”

prague-essential-history-expeditions

Prague, Czech Republic. Courtesy Essential History Expeditions

Describe your average customer.
“I’d say the typical guest is between 40 and 75; they are educated, often with advanced degrees, and they are interested in history and culture,” Shafer says. “We get quite a number of couples, but we also get families traveling with high school or college-age kids.” Adds DeToy: “In terms of knowledge, they can run the gamut, from people who have done all of the background reading we suggest, in books and articles, to some who do none of that. But by the end of any trip, everyone has learned and experienced and been changed.”

Do your trips tend to focus on military history?
“Not all of them,” DeToy says. “I have a Ph.D. in European history, and I have a deep and abiding interest across many levels of Western civilization. So even on a D-Day trip, we’ll go to London and talk about the city from Roman times to the present, and we’ll talk about Shakespeare, and in Normandy, we’ll visit the Bayeux Tapestry. We cover a lot.” Adds Shafer: “He truly has encyclopedic knowledge, from artwork to literature to the military.”

Why do your clients like your trips so much?
“No. 1, I think, is our detailed planning. We do numerous reconnaissance trips beforehand, so we’ve been to each location several times already, and the two of us lead every single trip,” Shafer says. “We know every single restaurant, hotel and route. Also, it’s a very hands-on, immersive experience, so everyone is engaged. People on the trips might portray historical figures—like on the D-Day trip, someone might portray Eisenhower. It’s not required, but the fact is, everyone is a participant in his or her own engaged learning. That sets us apart.”

What trips are coming up?
“We have a few standards that we do every year: Normandy, Cuba, Vietnam, a Civil War trip to Gettysburg,” De Toy says. “But we’re always looking for new places to explore, so next year we are taking a group to South Africa and to the Aegean, and in 2020 we are adding Greece and Turkey.”

ESSENTIAL HISTORY EXPEDITIONS
Denver-based guided historic and educational group tour company offering trips to Vietnam, France, Gettysburg, South Africa and more.

 

9 Sep 2015

Vietnam & the Free World Military Forces

On December 12, 1969, a 1,350-man Civic Action Group from the Army of the Philippines, departs South Vietnam. They were part of the Free World Military Forces, an effort by President Johnson to enlist allies for the war. By securing support, Johnson hoped to build an international consensus behind his Vietnam policies.

The Philippine unit entered Vietnam in September 1966, operating in the Tay Ninh Province northwest of Saigon. The force included engineers, medical and rural community development teams, field artillery, and a logistics and headquarters element.

Ultimately, Johnson’s FWMF program failed as only 5 nations responded. South Korea sent over 300,000 men (50,000 in country at one time), while the Philippines sent 11,000, Australia 7,500, New Zealand 550 and Spain 30.

Join us this coming April 16-29, 2018 as we explore the incredible country of Vietnam, from its history and culture to its beaches and cities and mountains!

9 Sep 2015

Vietnam Hero

50 years ago last week Father Angelo Litecky, priest of 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry, earned the Medal of Honor for his heroism in bringing 20 wounded men to safety in a very tough battle in Bien Hoa. The article in the link below tells the incredible story.

Join us next April 16-29, 2018 as we explore America and Vietnam at 50. This is an amazing country with great natural beauty and a vibrant culture filled with friendly people.

This would make a truly wonderful Christmas present for your self or those you love.

Check-out the link below for more information on the trip!

https://www.historyexp.com/events/vietnam/

Here is the link on Father Litecky’s story of the patrol with Alpha Company:

http://calitreview.com/1…/the-bloodiest-day-december-6-1967/

 

9 Sep 2015

Vietnam: Ghosts of Our Fathers

By Lt. Col.(ret) Brian M. DeToy, PhD & Sheryl Rankin Shafer

Photo Credit: Sheryl Rankin Shafer

Vietnam. The word itself conjured up so many images, so many memories for my wife and me. It was associated so deeply with our youth. I was born in 1962 on an Army camp on Okinawa and Sheryl a few years later on an air base in New Jersey. We came of age, of awareness, with the conflict in Vietnam on our televisions and in discussions in our homes, schools and communities.

Each of our fathers was career military. My father, Master Sgt. Robert DeToy, had joined as a seventeen-year old in 1951 and had served as an infantryman in the Korean War. Later, he transferred to the Signal Corps. Sheryl’s father, Lt. Col. James L. Rankin, had graduated from Texas A&M in 1958 and became both a pilot and weather officer. Eventually, they would each serve two tours of duty in Vietnam, both in 1962 and my father in 1968-69 and Sheryl’s father in 1969-70.

In the past few years, we have traveled extensively across the United States, Europe, the Caribbean basin and elsewhere. One place high on our list to visit was southeast Asia. The history, culture, natural beauty and ties to our fathers’ service were more than intriguing. They were a calling. And this past May we made them a reality.

As a retired Army officer and professor and an expert historian, I had extensive knowledge on the actions in Vietnam. Sheryl possessed probably an average knowledge of the Vietnam War for someone of our generation with a father who had served. We were both deeply moved by our time in Vietnam – moved not only by the beauty of the country and the warmth of the people but also by the privilege of better understanding our fathers’ experiences, of tracing our fathers’ footsteps.

We landed in Ho Chi Minh City, arriving at the vast Tan Son Nhut International Airport, which still maintains its SGN designator. In fact, most everyone still calls the city Saigon, except for official state business.

After checking in to our hotel, just two blocks away from Rue Catinat, we excitedly began our exploration. Over the next two nights and a day we walked the city’s central district and saw so many famous sites from the war – from the Presidential Palace (now a museum known as Reunification Palace), to the old CIA headquarters (where the well-known 1975 helicopter evacuation photo was taken), to journalists’ hotels like the Caravelle, the Continental (where Graham Greene wrote and set The Quiet American) and the Rex where the ‘Five O’Clock Follies’ press briefings were held.

We also saw gorgeous colonial architecture including the City Hall, Notre Dame Cathedral and the Central Post Office with its ornate maps. The Ben Thanh Market and War Remnants Museum were also on the docket. While walking the streets, quaint and busy, I imagined my father on his second tour as much of it was spent in Saigon. Sheryl’s father also served on the 7th Air Force staff out at Tan Son Nhut as the gunship tactics officer. It is truly wondrous to feel oneself in the same places, far across the ocean, as our fathers some fifty years previous.

While I toured the city and visited the tunnel system in the Iron Triangle’s Cu Chi district, Sheryl traveled out into the Mekong Delta and visited the Ap Bac battle site and took canoes and other small boats down the rivers and canals to exotic markets and riverside cafes. Sheryl returned from her day feeling the Mekong to be a very special and idiosyncratic part of the country.

Departing Saigon and heading north, we stopped for a quick visit at the gates of Bien Hoa airbase, which is now a Vietnamese military base. Sheryl’s father had also flown out of here. Next, we passed the sprawling American naval and air base at Camranh Bay, just south of Nha Trang, and observed a tremendous amount of building going on as many brand-name hotel conglomerates were taking up residence on this Vietnam Riviera.

We spent a wonderful night in Nha Trang, a large, lively city with miles of perfect beach and ocean water. We woke early to catch the morning light for pictures of fishing sampans and found, to our delight, thousands of locals out at 5 AM doing morning calisthenics, individually and in groups large and small. Throughout Vietnam we found the government provides plentiful exercise equipment in city parks, beach fronts, etc and the people make extensive use of them.

Driving further along the coast, we stopped in at Tuy Hoa. Sheryl’s father had flown AC-119s out of the American air base here in the autumn of 1969, providing close air support of ground operations along the central coast. A brand-new Vietnamese airport is there now, but the old American control tower still stands, near to the larger, modern one.

It took us several hours to drive up from the coast and into the Highlands. Along the way we went through many ethnic villages, Vietnam having over 80 official minorities. Each day we had lunch at ethnic cafes. Interestingly, while racism is rare, there is a certain amount of superiority felt by the majority Han Vietnamese for the minorities who are seen as less-educated, country or mountain-folk. In actuality, all the minorities can speak at least two languages, both their own and the national Vietnamese.

Over the next three days we explored much of the Central Highlands, near the Cambodian border. The experience of those days set the tone for the entire trip – we were so . . . enchanted is the word.

We were taken in with the surreal beauty of the changing landscapes as we traversed the country, from mountains to forests to river valleys to deltas to beaches. The people we met were warm, welcoming, inviting and ever so friendly. The food was rich and delicious and we were pleased to find that each region has its number of specialties. We took photos, hundreds and hundreds of photos. Of people, landscapes, modes of transportation, animals. And of battlefields and American bases (some abandoned and some now in use as Vietnamese civilian air and seaports).

In 1962, our fathers were in the Highlands, supporting the initial operations of the Special Forces and their montagnard and other highland allies. My dad helped put in much of the communications systems that would be expanded as the US presence grew in the out-years. Sheryl’s father operated out of Pleiku in that first tour. The modern airport at Pleiku sits directly atop the old American base and many buildings of the era survive, on the fringes and across the base on the high-ground that was the main compound throughout the 1960s.

From our base in Pleiku we visited the site of the first American battle of the war – LZ X-Ray out in the Ia Drang valley at the base of the Chu Pong Massif, a mountain astride the Vietnam-Cambodian border. I am a retired infantryman and this place, this fight always held a special interest for me. The stories of Hal Moore’s brave 7th Cavalry troopers in their challenging fight were later captured so well in Moore’s own book We Were Soldiers Once, And Young and the Mel Gibson movie of a similar name. It is a far, out-of-the-way, off-the-beaten-path place, a destination unto itself to reach. But so well worth the effort. It is beautiful and calm today, with little to remark that such a desperate battle took place there 52 years ago.

In the Highlands, we also visited Kontum and Dak To, sites of numerous fights throughout the war, but especially so, for the latter place, in the autumn of 1967 as the North Vietnamese drew our forces into the countryside and away from the cities so they could conduct their Tet Offensive in January. Today, all that remains of the American war is the airfield at Dak To which the local villagers, when we were there, were using to dry acres of rice on its hot pavement.

A number of monuments to the battles in 1972 and 1975, that resulted in the fall of South Vietnam, mark Dak To, Kontum, Pleiku and, further south, Buon Ma Thuot. In the latter city, we also visited the charming quasi-theme park Trung Nguyen coffee plantation and shops. Nguyen is the Starbucks of Vietnam and we always found its drinks superb, wherever we traveled in the country, especially the new Legende with its condensed milk adding a velvety, cocoa-like smoothness.

From Pleiku we took a flight to Danang and were amazed at the dynamism of this growing city, third largest in the country. The gleaming airport sits atop the old American Phu Cat base and many buildings survive from that era. We drove south about 20 kilometers, past China Beach, to the beautiful town of Hoi An.

If you imagine this — women in the traditional ao dai dresses, incense burning in quaint buddhist temples, streets so small they are really just pedestrian alleyways, lanterns lit at dusk that light both the town and its river, and a majestic white-sand beach – then you are imagining Hoi An. It is the Vietnam we picture. We shopped, visited ancient temples and wooden Chinese bridges, relaxed on the pristine beach, ate extremely well, and investigated every winding street and local pagoda. Magical.

After two nights in Hoi An we drove north along the coast, back past Danang and on to Hue. It is a stupendous drive with incredible vistas; as is, by the way, most of the coastal route Highway 1 in the south. There are tremendous views around almost every corner.

We spent two nights in Hue and on the first day visited The Citadel. Home to Vietnam’s monarchy in the 19th and early 20th centuries, this was also the scene of some of the toughest fighting in the war – the urban combat of Tet 1968. One really gets a feel for the desperate combat as many parts of The Citadel remain shattered. The contrast between the majesty and power of the untouched portions of The Citadel to the destruction of the jagged walls, with stones still strewn nearby, was sobering.

The next day we headed up the coast toward the old Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a 30-mile wide border area that stretched from the sea to the Laotian border and ostensibly was a no-contact area. In fact, it was hotly contested throughout the war. We drove up to Dong Ha, scene of the famed Marine Captain John Ripley’s exploits in the Easter Offensive of 1972, and then headed west passed the Marine outpost known as The Rockpile to the mountaintop of Khe Sanh, where surrounded US Marines held out against weeks of intense North Vietnamese attacks. As a memorial to the relentless struggle during Tet at Khe Sanh, the Vietnamese have established a rather single-perspective museum and artifacts (US helicopters, vehicles, weapons). While reminded of the struggle of the past, the views on the hilltop today are simply magnificent. While in the DMZ region, we also visited the nearly 2,000-meter long tunnel system at Vinh Moc. Much more extensive than those at Cu Chi (and more accessible to walk through and examine), these bear testament to the determination of the Vietnamese to survive and win against great odds.

We explored a Vietnamese military cemetery enroute back to Hue. It was surprising, although it should not have been, to find that all the burials were of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers. The defeated South Vietnamese are buried in family plots or local cemeteries but are not commemorated in the national cemeteries. Ever thus is a civil war, I reflected.

In the morning, we flew from Hue’s airport, formerly the American Phu Bai base and soon landed in Hanoi and drove east to Halong Bay.

It is difficult to do justice to the ethereal beauty that is Halong Bay. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and rightly so. Its dramatic, jagged karst islands, by the thousands, rise out of the emerald water like so many twists of the dragon’s back. We took a chartered boat out onto the water and sailed past hundreds of the little islands, eventually halting at one and touring through a beautiful limestone cave. Back on the boat we continued our sail and eventually returned to dock. Some boats stay out for a night or two on the waters. Next time we will do that, as well. The word serene fits Halong perfectly.

Back in Hanoi the next day we checked into our hotel just a few short blocks south of the French and Old Quarters. This was a perfect location from which to explore the city on foot, and we did just that over the next two days. We visited art and literary museums, governmental buildings from French colonial days, the site where Lieutenant Commander John McCain was captured and the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison complex where he and so many other Americans were held. We were somewhat surprised to find it was located right in the very heart of the city. We also walked the beautiful boulevards of the French Quarter with its imposing St Joseph’s cathedral, and the tight, energetic streets of the Old Quarter and its famed market. Hanoi is a beautiful city of parks and markets and tree-lined streets, and stands in contrast to the brash young consumerism of Saigon. Both cities have amazing energy and a focus on the future while preserving the past.

Finally, our Vietnam expedition had come to an end and we made our way back home with comfortable flights to Taipei and Los Angeles and on to Denver. It had been an amazing two-week journey, filled with emotions and excitement. It is not every time that a place meets or exceeds the very high hopes one has for it. Vietnam most certainly exceeded our fondest hopes and expectations. The natural beauty of the land and sea, the incredibly warm and gracious people, and the historical sites of the centuries – all of these made our trip so very worthwhile.

Traveling this land, this place that so filled our lives and those of our families, was an incredible privilege. Vietnam had been wracked by near constant warfare from 1945-75, with millions of lives lost and a landscape transformed. Yet, the Vietnamese today are focused on the future and do not dwell upon the past. They are genuinely happy to see and share their country with Americans. To see with our eyes this amazing land, this spirit of reconciliation, accompanied throughout by the ghosts of our fathers, is what made this a trip of a lifetime.

We encourage veterans like our fathers and children of veterans, like us, to travel this beautiful country, to witness firsthand the reconciliation of the past, and to glimpse that past – and our fathers’ footsteps – through the lens of peace.

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join our mailing list to receive the latest news & updates about Essential History Expeditions

You have Successfully Subscribed!