When I visited Vietnam for Oxfam, the thing that really struck me was how the local farmers had to prepare to evacuate or climb to their mezzanines with their valuable family possessions.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I carry the memories of the ghosts of a place called Vietnam - the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers.
Vietnam helped me to look at the horror and terror in the hearts of people and realize how we can't aim guns and set booby traps for people we have never spoken a word to. That kind of impersonal violence mystifies me.
South Vietnam had to be built from scratch and, from the very beginning, depended far too much on the Western superpowers. As in the case of a person on public welfare, this dependency, which became greater with each day, was quite difficult to shake.
We moved to a town that's predominately Caucasian, some Hispanic and one or two black families, and they do shrimping for a living. Here come hundreds of Vietnamese doing the same occupation. So there was a lot of tension because people were saying we were taking money, shrimp, fish or whatever it is.
We moved in to help the Vietnamese defend their country and confront the Viet Cong.
When I was 5 years old, we had nothing in the village. One day, in front of my house, some soldiers in a big Cadillac started to do a picnic. I looked at them like they were coming from the moon. I remember they gave me a box of rice pudding - that, for me, was the American Dream.
I wasn't for Vietnam. When I told that to the hippie newspaper, all my people got nervous.
I returned to Vietnam in '94, and even then, all those decades later, walking around that place, I remained afraid. And, in some ways, rightly so.
Life was so cheap in Vietnam. That is where my sense of urgency comes from.
When I took command in Vietnam, I gave great emphasis to food and medical care - and to the mail.