What?
Nothing much.
I didn't have milk for my coffee, so I've come out to Bob's Java Hut this morning before work.
I love this high-harvest season and its perfect-for-sitting-outside weather:
a low-humidity 67ยบ at 9 a.m.
I've been watching the Burns/Novick docuseries The Vietnam War––five of the ten 1 hour-50 min. episodes, so far.
For years I've read memoirs of the war–– Tim O'Brien, Philip Caputo, Tracy Kidder––so I have some personal feel of it.
After I recently finished Michael Herr's Dispatches, I decided to try to learn some of the where and when, about which I knew almost nothing.
I did know about Tet, but––an example of my ignorance––while I knew that Dien Bien Phu was a big bad battle, I didn't know it was between the Vietnamese and the French in 1954! and not the Americans...
Sheesh.
To a large extent, my ignorance of the geography and chronology of the war hasn't made any difference.
But yesterday a former coworker, Gregg, from the art library came to visit me at work.
Gregg is a Vietnam vet.
He and I were friends---good friends, in a way––when we worked together, but we never met outside of work, and haven't since. We run into each other around town, and he'd recommended the series to me when I ran into him last year.
I knew Gregg was in the hairy armpit of the war, and he's told me some stories. But I never knew where he was, or when.
So I finally asked.
"Cu Chi," he said, "where all the tunnels were. We didn't know it at the time though. I arrived in 1968––after Tet, but believe me, it was still going on. One night a couple helicopters blew up inside the base. We didn't know, How did that happen?"
And then it did make a difference--I mean, his answer slotted into the picture I've finally pieced together.
The experience of that war was so surreal, as Gregg and others describe it, it's still mostly unimaginable––even watching footage, it's like, HOW COULD THAT EXIST?–– but now I understand a little better what this person I've known off and on for thirty years went through.
Nothing much.
I didn't have milk for my coffee, so I've come out to Bob's Java Hut this morning before work.
I love this high-harvest season and its perfect-for-sitting-outside weather:
a low-humidity 67ยบ at 9 a.m.
I've been watching the Burns/Novick docuseries The Vietnam War––five of the ten 1 hour-50 min. episodes, so far.
For years I've read memoirs of the war–– Tim O'Brien, Philip Caputo, Tracy Kidder––so I have some personal feel of it.
After I recently finished Michael Herr's Dispatches, I decided to try to learn some of the where and when, about which I knew almost nothing.
I did know about Tet, but––an example of my ignorance––while I knew that Dien Bien Phu was a big bad battle, I didn't know it was between the Vietnamese and the French in 1954! and not the Americans...
Sheesh.
To a large extent, my ignorance of the geography and chronology of the war hasn't made any difference.
But yesterday a former coworker, Gregg, from the art library came to visit me at work.
Gregg is a Vietnam vet.
He and I were friends---good friends, in a way––when we worked together, but we never met outside of work, and haven't since. We run into each other around town, and he'd recommended the series to me when I ran into him last year.
I knew Gregg was in the hairy armpit of the war, and he's told me some stories. But I never knew where he was, or when.
So I finally asked.
"Cu Chi," he said, "where all the tunnels were. We didn't know it at the time though. I arrived in 1968––after Tet, but believe me, it was still going on. One night a couple helicopters blew up inside the base. We didn't know, How did that happen?"
And then it did make a difference--I mean, his answer slotted into the picture I've finally pieced together.
The experience of that war was so surreal, as Gregg and others describe it, it's still mostly unimaginable––even watching footage, it's like, HOW COULD THAT EXIST?–– but now I understand a little better what this person I've known off and on for thirty years went through.
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