Back during high school days, I would watch and listen to Walter Cronkite bringing to our dinner table the daily on Vietnam. In college I was all set to enlist in the Navy and its flight school, but a high lottery number set me on a different course. 

I remember my good friend and childhood fishing buddy, Norman Couns, becoming a fighter pilot and flying an F-4 Phantom jet over Vietnam, evading flack and machine gun fire and surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).  Norman was a brave soul.....I hope he is still around.

F-4 Phantom Jet over Vietnam

My Favorite Sports Bar (from my 2006 notes)

One warm, sticky evening, I was at a small open-air eatery down the side streets of Hanoi off the main road leading up to the 4-Star Sheraton where young Brits and Germans, Americans and other expats gathered to watch the Germany-Argentina World Cup match on a big screen set up in my hotel's lovely garden of lotus and jasmine, coconut palms and banana trees.

But even though the crowd at the Sheraton, decked out in new Polo shirts and pressed slacks and black linen dresses with sparkling gold jewelry, was warm and inviting, I felt the urge to get away, to take a stroll down into the neighborhoods to get a truer fix on the game -- to watch the knock-out match with the locals, the working class of Hanoi.

So there I was, sitting among scattered plastic chairs with a small plastic table at my side, and perched on it a tall brown bottle of Bia Ha Noi along with a short whiskey glass. Seated and standing around me were young Vietnamese men and women buzzing with excitement and intently focused on a small TV resting on an old white and rusted fridge, watching their favorite Germany beating the Argentines in dramatic fashion. A midfield seat at Olympic Stadium in Berlin for me would not have been a better setting.

When Germany finally won, there was a wild celebration in the restaurant.  More than a few Vietnamese dong were won that night, and a happy proprietor offered everyone, including me, shot glasses of a clear liquid from a five-gallon jar. The rice hooch (Hanoi moonshine) was very strong and imbued with essence of cobra venom, and through glazed eyes I looked at the strangely coiled-up pickled snake tucked snuggly inside the whiskey jar.

As the night came to an end, I wiped the beads of sweat off my brow and looked out across a small still lake in back of the busy eatery. Something in the water caught my eye, so I walked out onto a connecting wooden dock and squinted towards a large grey object that jutted out from the misty surface several meters away.  An older Vietnamese man came up to my side and put his hand on my shoulder and pointed towards the object. 'B-52,' he said, as we looked together at the giant bomber's protruding landing gear with black tires and twisted metal assembly.  There was a strained smile on his aged face as he spoke. "Kill my family, kill my dog, my cat, destroy my house--kill everything I love. But we can be friends now, but it is hard, it is hard for me."

Tonight, I will be in  Pattaya in a crowded barroom where weary American B-52 pilots and crew members, between bombing missions during the Vietnamese War, often rested and relaxed in the Thai resort town. On a wide-screen TV I will watch the Blues of Italy take on the French for the World Cup Championship and be among some 3 billion people around the planet tuned in on the sport's grand finale. 

Football (soccer) is an important ambassador to the nations of the world, a helpful common ground and a link to a more gentle outlook--often found in contented moments, like sipping on Bia Ha Noi while seated in a plastic chair on a steamy summer night among young men and women whose parents now gaze out over calm waters to when the surface was broken with waves of fury, the lost souls of their youth muted in the deaths of their loved ones. 

Hot and sweaty, I found my way back to the Sheraton, rode the elevator up to  my spacious air-conditioned room, showered, then crawled onto my luxurious king-size bed and tried to put my thoughts to rest. But sleep that night was a desultory mix, for my cobra-spirit-fed dreams were of lovely Vietnamese ladies in white linen serving tea, old men and women squatting in rice paddies, young girls and boys running supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the orange spray of napalm, American GI's meeting their untimely fate along trails of trip lines and Bouncing Betty's, my new friend coming home from the war to find his family and house gone......And a deadly reminder, its US Air Force serial numbers still visible above the sleek surface of the quiet lake alongside where he now resides.

Tsunamis come in many flavors...

From Hanoi....

 

Vietnam POWs on their way home.....

 

 

 

Dan(ny)