What happened after the US ran from Vietnam? n/t

[pinboy3niner]

86. I had other powerful experiences there, but this one was at the top

I don't remember there being any photos, but if there were, my ex-wife probably wound up with them.

My Vietnamese mother-in-law had a home in a beach resort city. After Saigon fell, her home was confiscated by the new authorities and given to an NVA Colonel and his wife who were among many Northerners sent South to take control.

My MIL decided to build a house adjoining the Colonel's, but with her porch extending out farther than theirs. That was a symbolic act of defiance that was meaningful to her, and I funded most of the construction cost and stayed in her new home for part of the time on all of my Vietnam visits.

On one occasion I was invited to tea by the NVA Colonel and his wife and we were in tears as they described the earth shaking violently and being sure they were going to die while cowering in tunnels during American B-52 bomber strikes where they lived in the North.

While traveling around the South I also met an elderly professor who came to have a chat when he found out I was an American vet. He was highly placed in the North's war efforts but was reluctant to be specific about what he did. Still, he was fascinated to talk to an American vet.

When I went to Dalat, in the mountains, I met a guy who had been an ARVN Special Forces Lieutenant. He had a souvenir stall directly across from the Emperor's summer palace, which is a big tourist attraction. Meeting him was another tearful encounter. I was amazed that he survived, because the ARVN SF, like ours, operated in small teams working with indigenous civilian forces in the provinces, and the ARVN SF frequently were overrun and had extremely high casualty rates. He had been wounded multiple times and after the fall was sent to a re-education camp and eventually was released. After several failed attempts to escape from Vietnam he was resigned to staying and running his tourist shop. We exchanged souvenirs and parted reluctantly.

On my visits I also stayed part of the time with poor in-laws in Cholon, the ethnic Chinese section of Saigon. Many of the people there are poor, but I also got to know a more well-off guy there who was a former ARVN Lt. Col. On one visit at Tet, I sponsored a performance of a dragon dance troupe at a Cholon temple for the holiday. All of the families turned out with their kids to greet the troupe when they crossed the bridge across the canal to enter the neighborhood and paraded behind them as they made their way to the temple. I'd hired one of the better troupes, and their dragons and gymnastics and martial arts displays blew everyone away. The residents were still talking about it years later, and this American vet was a hero in a community that had been largely VC during the war.

Our veterans' lunch, at a coffee plantatation in Ban Me Thuot, wasn't without its lighter moments. The others kept rererring to one member of our group as 'the monk,' smiling when they said it. He wasn't dressed like a monk, so I asked why they called him that. It turned out that in order to avoid being pressed into service by either side--the ARVNs or the Viet Cong--he had hid out at a Buddhist temple during the war, pretending to be a monk. So he was a draft dodger to both sides, but none of the vets there had any problem with that. They rather enjoyed the joke and seemed to consider him lucky.