The Things We Carried from Macalester

For Americans who came of age during the Vietnam War, the past is full of flashbacks, even as the Vietnamese move on from the 'American War'

by Gabrielle Lawrence '73, Alumni Director

I am of the generation where going to Vietnam was not an opportunity we sought, so my old Mac friends did a double take when I told them I would be traveling through Vietnam for two weeks earlier this year.

For many of us, Vietnam represents the lost innocence, the inter-generational polarization and the unresolved conflicts and strong passions of our most formative years. The Vietnam War had a profound impact on how we viewed the political process and our perceived ability to change the world. For us, "Vietnam" is an icon of our coming of age, and for us, that happened at Macalester.

For Macalester students in the late '60s and early '70s, the war in Vietnam was intensely personal. It was a looming presence in our lives, regardless of whether we supported our government's actions. Men could be drafted and this possibility governed decisions about graduate school, discouraged any notion of "taking some time off from school" and led to some creative resistance strategies. Our friends considered Canada, and subjected themselves to some extreme alterations to confound their draft physicals. More than 140 Macalester men signed a statement that was printed in the Mac Weekly, vowing that they would "not serve in the armed forces of the U.S. while it continues its present policies." The war prompted students and faculty to question the relevance of academia, and the discussions were heated. On the evening news we watched body bags being loaded into helicopters, and heard the daily body count recitation.

I remember anti-war rallies when the gym was packed with students to hear such speakers as Walter Mondale and Julian Bond. There were anti-war marches down Summit Avenue to the Capitol, and busloads of Macalester students went to Washington for the Moratorium against the War in the fall of 1969. After the invasion of Cambodia and the killing of four students at Kent State in the spring of 1970, rows of white crosses appeared on the lawn in front of Kagin and Macalester joined other schools across the country in a national strike to protest the policies of the Nixon Administration.

Vietnam is personal for us because it is so deeply embedded in that transformational time when we were still young, yet moving toward something else. Traveling there in 2005 was an opportunity to experience today's Vietnam and explore what might still bind us to that distant, image-laden land of our dreams and nightmares.

Vietnam today is crowded. It has 84 million people, and as one member of our group remarked, "I think I've seen almost every one of them." There are people everywhere and at all hours: eating soup while sitting on the six-inch-tall, red-molded plastic stools which function as seats for the agile and beautiful Vietnamese people; maneuvering small, shallow boats on a river farmers' market with hundreds of other boats full of polished vegetables displayed like jewels; whole families on a motorbike, carrying the traditional New Year's peach blossoms. It's rare to see any open space which doesn't have a human dimension--a carefully marked rice plot, somebody leading a water buffalo, a cluster of narrow and colorful concrete houses. The Vietnamese do not like to be alone.

There is constant noise. Incessant honking has replaced turn signals for all motorbikes, buses and trucks, producing a complex cacophony which is even more difficult to interpret than the lilting language. (Mostly the honking means, "Watch out, I'm coming into your lane!") The boats were the noisiest--maybe 10 feet long, very shallow, propelled by a four-cylinder motor that sounded like a combination of news helicopter and your neighbor's weed whacker.

There are endless indoor markets that resemble the Merchandise Mart at the Minnesota State Fair, only without the kind of limitations our public health departments might impose (refrigerating fresh meat, for example). The oldest section of Hanoi is a maze of narrow, twisting streets thick with motorbikes, pedicabs and vendors jostling for position. Tiny women carrying long poles across their shoulders with baskets hanging from each end, weave swiftly through the traffic, matching their bouncing gait to the vibration of their burdens. There are many lovely and ruined remnants of an older time: the ghostly Imperial Citadel in Hue, the silent, majestic tombs of the Emperors, the peaceful temples and pagodas of the rebellious monks in the bend of the Perfume River, sheltered by whispering pines.

Ruins within the Imperial Citadel, Hue. Photo by Gabrielle Lawrence '73

Vietnam is beautiful and ancient. The Vietnamese have repelled invasions of the Mongols, Chinese, French and Americans, and they are fiercely proud of their independent status. The motto "Don't tread on me" would not be out of place on the country's brilliant red flag with the gold star in the middle.

In the documentary The Fog of War, Robert McNamara, defense secretary for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, describes a 1995 meeting organized to bring together "former enemies"--top officials of the U.S. and North Vietnam governments--to discuss what might have been. McNamara was sure that everyone's objectives could have been achieved without the terrible loss of life on both sides (over 3 million Vietnamese dead, 58,000 Americans). He was taken aback when the former foreign minister told him, "No! You were totally wrong! We were fighting for our independence. You were fighting to enslave us. McNamara, you must never have read a history book! If you had, you'd know we weren't pawns of the Chinese or the Russians. We'd been fighting for our independence for 1,000 years, we'd fight to the last man, and we were determined to do so."

The Vietnamese don't hate us but I don't think they have forgiven us. Perhaps that will come later, when we forgive ourselves. Our guide tells us that while the Americans were bombing Hanoi, children were reading the words of Ho Chi Minh in bomb shelters: "It is not the American people who are bombing us, it is the American Imperialists. We must learn to love the Americans because they will return after the war." Our group accepted the blanket absolution with relief. After all, we are not imperialists, we are Macalester alumni.

The American War is remembered less benevolently in the south. The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City is dedicated to the "preservation of the memory of the terrible wrong doings" and there are rooms of gruesome but familiar photographs, replicas of tiger cages, many different kinds of bombs and other terrible weapons. The Cui Chi tunnels are an extensive system of tunnels which contained sleeping quarters, kitchens, hospital operating rooms and command headquarters from which the Vietnamese would stage ingenious guerrilla attacks on the nearby American bases. A wide variety of cruel and effective boobytraps were displayed there, evil contraptions of sharpened steel spikes and springs, designed to maim and capture American soldiers. There was a propaganda film from 1967 being shown, lauding the "American Killer Heroes" in the village. That was an honor reserved for those who killed more than six American soldiers. I might have known some of those soldiers.

Vietnam has survived the Americans, and Americans have relegated Vietnam to the latest tourist novelty. Our guide assures us that the people of Vietnam have moved on and are more interested in the future than in the past. Macalester alumni who were so shaped by Vietnam the icon have transformed the passion and energy that fueled the activities of the '60s and '70s into lives of commitment to community action and social justice that are so typical of Mac people. Even so, the world is less personal to us these days.

"Those were the days when all of us were young, very pure and very sincere," writes North Vietnamese author Bao Ninh, in the eloquent novel The Sorrow of War. "But we also shared a common sorrow, the immense sorrow of war. "

Mr. Ninh was referring to his comrades in the army of North Vietnam, but could have been talking about all of us. It is just this shared sorrow, and shared hope for forgiveness of our generation, that will continue to bind us to the country of Vietnam.

Gabrielle Lawrence '73 can be reached at: lawrence@macalester.edu or 651-696-6315.