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Christmas on the Mekong | |||
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by John Krauskopf (Iran 196567) |
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I HADNT PLANNED to go to Viet Nam. I was only trying to meet up with my former college
![]() When I arrived several days late for our rendezvous in Bangkok, I was handed a note at the hotel saying Tom had flown back to Viet Nam that morning, unable to wait any longer. But Tom did say we could still get together if I just flew into Saigon. He told me to pick up a seven-day tourist visa at Ton Son Nhut Airport and give him a call when I arrived. He would then drive the 60 miles or so from My Tho, where he lived, and meet me at the Saigon airport. We could spend Christmas together, he suggested, on the banks of the Mekong River. The absurdity of these propositions was so appealing I went immediately to the Pan Am office and had my ticket rerouted, leaving myself a day to tour Bangkok. I then contacted Lee St. Laurence, a friend from my Peace Corps Iran days, who was working on a UN-backed development project in South East Asia. Lee made a call to the Peace Corps country office and arranged an invitation for me to a reception for some Bangkok area Volunteers that night. The guest of honor was a Peace Corps Advisory Board member, Neil Armstrong, who talked about his recent trip to the Moon, but nothing that he told us over dinner was as strange as my trip down the Rabbit Hole of Vietnam. ARRIVING IN SAIGON at Tan Son Nhut airport revealed my first surprise. The civilian airport was only a tiny corner of a mammoth U.S. army air base. By the end of 1969, the U.S. had begun to withdraw forces and push for a Viet Namization of the war effort, but our military still had close to 500,000 troops in the country, and our troops still were doing much of the fighting. WHEN TOM WENT to work, I walked to the local outdoor market crowded with fish vendors, produce sellers and handcraft dealers. I noticed a number of artisans who had big inventories of hammered metal vases and trays. Looking closely at one vase, I saw that it had been crafted out of a 155mm howitzer shell casing, an esthetic example of the swords to ploughshares idea. |
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