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Friday, April 28, 2000
By Reg Henry, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
HO CHI MINH CITY -- Twenty-five years ago, Reunification Palace was the scene of the last act in the drama of the Vietnam War.
Back then, it was the Presidential Palace, home of Nguyen Van Thieu, who fled before the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese entered Saigon in force. Gen. Duong Van Minh was left to greet the victors.
Last week, as they do most every week, Vietnamese and foreigners toured the palace, which is a symbol of both the old South Vietnamese government's pretensions to power and its final humiliation. They took in the splendor of the building, including the room where "Big Minh," as he was known, waited for the first communist soldiers to enter on April 30, 1975.
Among the tourists that day last week at the palace was a group of Vietnamese women.
They looked like a bunch of grandmothers on a church outing. All were dressed in their own styles, but they wore green bush hats and gray, tartan scarves as common identifying symbols. They smiled and chatted merrily among themselves like any others out having a wonderful time on a visit to the big city.
Who were these matronly figures?
A younger woman accompanying the group spoke English well and was happy to explain. "They are members of the women's long-haired army," she said.
That was her quaint way of saying that they were the Viet Cong.
To American soldiers, Viet Cong women held a fascinating but fearful place in their troubled dreams. Stanley Kubrick captured the essence of this in his classic film about Vietnam "Full Metal Jacket," which portrays a fanatical, cold-hearted, woman sniper shooting at U.S. Marines in Hue.
And this was they? This middle-aged to elderly group that looked like it might break out the knitting at any moment? Yes, it was they.
Some 300 women Viet Cong veterans from 32 provinces had come together for the first time as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations, their guide said. This morning they were touring the palace and later would go to meet with government officials.
An impromptu interview was arranged. Lam Phi Truc, 64, from Tra Vinh in the Mekong Delta, was wearing three medals and was not shy about telling her story.
With the young woman interpreting, she said that she had been a fighter from early on. She had been arrested in 1962 and was held for 2 1/2 years, and then resumed her efforts later.
She said she had been tortured while in detention by both the South Vietnamese and Americans. They immersed her in a vat of salt water up to the top of her head; they put electrodes under her nails. She was three months pregnant at the time and lost her baby.
There was no way to verify this, of course, but when she said she had been shot in the leg, she lifted up her trousers to reveal the scar of a wound still visible under her left knee.
She told the American visitors that this anniversary was "very meaningful" to her. She was in wonder that she was still alive to see it.
She believed in the leadership of her country and had faith in its young people.
The visitor asked if she bore any resentment. No, she said. That was war. "She is very happy to see you from a foreign country," the guide said.
Then the Viet Cong veteran spoke animatedly and looked directly at the visitors from America. The guide said, "She wants to tell you, 'My regards to your families. My best wishes for health and good luck.' "
After the women veterans had departed in a cavalcade with a siren-wailing police escort, these surprising words lingered in the mind.
The wonder of it was not that women had played such an important part in the war. This is a culture with a tradition of women warriors. The Trung sisters are revered for having led a revolt against the Chinese 2,000 years ago. The Viet Cong also had a famous woman general in the South.
The surprise was the lack of reproach. Was this typical?
Later, in Hanoi, Lady Borton, 57, an American with great experience in Vietnam and fluent in the language, offered an answer. She is the author of a book -- "After Sorrow: An American Among the Vietnamese" -- that draws on reminiscences of her friendship with women who had been in the Viet Cong.
Borton, field director for the American Friends Service Committee, spends much of her time in Hanoi, although she returns to her home in Athens, Ohio, a couple of times a year and also teaches a writing course at the University of Massachusetts in the summer. Following her humanitarian calling, she is one of the few Americans to have visited both North and South Vietnam during the war.
She said that the cordial encounter at the palace was typical of such women. "Everywhere you go, that's what you run into," she said. "It's the thing that Americans notice most."
This sense of forgiveness among the Vietnamese is real, she said. "It's so unusual to us because our society is so embittered and still resentful."
The origin of this different feeling comes from way back. The tactic that was used in Hanoi during the war was that the American people are good and progressive.
"But," she said, "the American government was the warmongers and the American people were victims of their own government."
Tomorrow: More reports from Vietnam from Reg Henry, the Post-Gazette's deputy editorial page editor, and staff photographer Annie O'Neill.
Kan Lich, second from right, and others from the "Long Haired Army" gather at Reunification Palace in Ho Chi Minh City. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)
