... "three final nights in vibrant Saigon"

The slickly produced brochure, shared last week by a friend, begins by inviting University of Wisconsin Alumni Association members to, "encounter Vietnam’s breathtaking natural beauty, abiding traditions, and profoundly hospitable people" on a "comprehensive 15-day journey" during January-February, 2024 (starting price, $3,495).

Among highlights --- "the beautiful, remote Mekong Delta" and the "French-accented capital, Hanoi," a "relaxing three-night interlude" at a beachfront hotel in Da Nang, a journey to Hue and cruise on the Perfume River. Then "thee final nights in vibrant Saigon."

I remember Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) as vibrant, too --- more than 50 years on, of course; headquartered there for a year.

But I also think quite often, more than scenery, of the 58,220 U.S. troops who died in Vietnam (average age 23), the 75,000 severely disabled, those I am profoundly honored to have served with in a deadly war that had no purpose.

So the juxtaposition seems a little odd to me --- although I've certainly no objection to Vietnamese tourism efforts nor to those who wish to visit what undoubtedly is a beautiful and interesting place. 

 

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U.S. Army Captain Michael Davis O'Donnell (left, above), just 24, a helicopter pilot assigned to the 170th Aviation Company, 52nd Aviation Battalion, 17th Aviation Group, 1st Aviation Brigade, shared this poem first on 2 January 1970 --- the day after he wrote it --- in a letter, datelined Pleiku, to his best friend, Marcus Sullivan, a combat engineer in Vietnam himself during 1967-68, who had made it safely home to Milwaukee.

If you are able

save a place for them

inside of you ...

and save one backward glance

when you are leaving

for the places they can

no longer go ...

Be not ashamed to say
you loved them,
though you may
or may not have always ...

Take what they have left
and what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own ...

And in that time
when men decide and feel safe
to call this war insane,
take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes

you left behind ...

Less than 3 months later, on March 24, 1970, O'Donnell was killed some 14 miles inside Cambodia while attempting the rescue of a Special Forces long-range reconnaissance patrol team. Three crew members and eight patrol members died with him, blown out of the sky by a missile while lifting off.

More than two decades after Michael's death, human remains were recovered from the crash site in Cambodia and, in 1995, repatriated.

Vietnam journeys of other sorts.

I've written more extensively about O'Donnell and his poetry in an earlier Lucas Countyan post, located here: "Michael O'Donnell: A poet, a poem and Vietnam."