Some things stick with you longer than needed...

Recently, I found myself wondering why I am filled with a deep dread whenever I think of a "Round trip Ticket". 

 The reason finally dawned on me the other day when I was discussing prices for round trip packages with a friend.

 In other posts, I have told the world what a normal day was for a flight crew in the RVN.  We started our days before daylight with pre-flight, our mission, or missions, fairly set before takeoff. On many days, our mission would change as the day went on, by changing courses, or schedules, as needed to support, or lift, troops and supplies.

This is an example of one of those days ...

 It was a simple day. We were taking off from our revetment with a "Clear Left, Clear Right" from the Gunner, and Crew Chief, hovering to the main strip, calling for clearance, and quickly going into transitional lift, then climbing to 1500'. 

Our day was set:  lift an LLRP team into an area near Nui Ba Ra, then fly some resupply to various units in the field. So we flew into Lai Khe to pickup the LRRP's and dropped them without problems. We then went back to Lai Khe, and loaded C's and water for the first resupply run.

 After a couple of sorties, we got a call for an emergency Medivac.  We were in the area, so we turned around, turned on the speed, contacted the unit, and realized it was the LRRP's we had dropped earlier. 

We came in high and they popped smoke, then dropped down to the tree tops and came in hot to the small clearing.  We picked up a few tracers as we cleared the trees, but nothing heavy.

Carrying an Injured LRRP The LRRP's had two wounded.  One was serious, with a sucking chest wound.  Another had schrapnel in his leg.

I helped load them up and gave the pilots a green light to DiDiMoa!  

We cleared the LZ and climbed quickly to 1500', heading at top speed to the Lai Khe Medivac pad. 

 My gunner and I swung around and checked our passengers. Both were fairly stable and it looked like they would make it home. 

 We landed shortly, and the medics came out to the pad to help evac our passengers. I was most worried about the guy with the chest wound as his pulse was not very stable.

 I then told the pilots I wanted to check the ship out, before we started back to the resupply pad, so they hovered off the pad and set down on the ready pad nearby.

 After going over the ship, I found no holes, and we took off to finish our missions for the day. 

The rest of the day went smooth, except for a short message from our headquarters, saying we had night On Call, so we came in.  I finished my daily inspection, and we settled into a night in our hammocks on the ship. 

It was about midnight when the pilots woke us up. We had a Black Cross mission, Black Cross from Lai Khe to Bein Hoa.  Black Cross meant transporting our dead, and it was done at night.

 We landed on the Black Cross pad in Lai Khe and helped the guys load up the body bags. I could see the tags under the marker lights of the ship. One of them was the LRRP we had Medivac'd earlier that day...

 As I sat down in the gun well, my Gunner said, "He has gotten a round trip ticket today, God Damn It!"  It is the simple statements that stick with people sometimes ... 

 We can watch a politician spout paragraphs of hyperbole, and maybe one sentence will hit us as meaningful. Or as my old gunner would say, "They don't pay us enough to give a shit, but many a shit has been given!"

The team determined that even now—40 years after the war ended—about 271,000 Vietnam vets have full war-zone-related PTSD plus war-zone PTSD that meets some diagnostic criteria. More than a third of the veterans who have current war-zone PTSD also have major depressive disorder.

Men who served in the Vietnam war had a war-zone-related PTSD prevalence of 4.5%; when factoring in vets who met some of the criteria, that number climbed to almost 11%. For women veterans, those prevalences were about 6% and 9%, respectively.

“An important minority of Vietnam veterans are symptomatic after four decades, with more than twice as many deteriorating as improving,” the study authors write. “Policy implications include the need for greater access to evidence-based mental health services; the importance of integrating mental health treatment into primary care in light of the nearly 20 percent mortality; attention to the stresses of aging, including retirement, chronic illness, declining social support and cognitive changes that create difficulties with the management of unwanted memories; and anticipating challenges that lie ahead for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.” - Mandy Oaklander   7/22/15

Vietnam was on people’s radar, of course, but not as a constant, alarming blip. Military families were learning first-hand (before everyone else, as they always do) that this was no “police action; but for millions of Americans, Vietnam was a mystery, a riddle that no doubt would be resolved and forgotten in time: a little place far away where inscrutable strangers were fighting over . . . something.

All the more remarkable that in January of 1963, LIFE magazine published the powerful cover article, “We Wade Deeper Into Jungle War,” and illustrated it with not one or two photos but with a dozen pictures — most of them in color — by the great photojournalist, Larry Burrows.

Burrows, seen at left in Vietnam in 1963, worked steadily — although not exclusively — in Southeast Asia from 1962 until his death in 1971. His work is often cited as the most searing and the most consistently excellent photography from the war, and several of his pictures (“Reaching Out,” for example, featuring a wounded Marine desperately trying to comfort a stricken comrade after a fierce 1966 firefight) and photo essays (like 1965’s harrowing “One Ride With Yankee Papa 13”) both encompassed and defined the long, polarizing catastrophe in Vietnam.

He and three fellow photojournalists died when their helicopter was shot down during operations in Laos. Burrows was 44.

The pictures here, meanwhile, are striking not only for the clarity with which they document a scary, widening conflict, but for how graphic they are. To American eyes, long accustomed to having their news sanitized by the major media, the notion that these and similarly gruesome pictures routinely ran in a popular weekly magazine five decades ago will likely come as something of a shock. Today, a photograph of blood stains and broken glass on a street after a car bombing is about the extent of what most Americans will ever see on the nightly news, on bale shows or in their newspapers. (Raggedly severed limbs, torched corpses and viscera-covered walls evidently being deemed too upsetting to the fragile American sensibility.)

But it’s worth recalling — or reminding those who weren’t alive at the time — that, starting even before the January 25, 1963, issue in which the photos in this gallery appeared, and throughout the war in Vietnam, LIFE and other major, mainstream American news outlets, in print and on TV, regularly published and broadcast what today would be considered graphic, unsettling content.

That LIFE considered this a significant, indeed a groundbreaking article is evidenced by the highly unusual treatment it received on the magazine’s cover. The first slide in this gallery illustrates this perfectly: rather than the customary horizontal, one-sheet image found on literally thousands of other LIFE covers, the January 25, 1963, issue featured an exceedingly rare fold-out, giving full play to Burrows’ powerful portrait.

For the U.S., it was an ignominious end to a bitter, ill-starred war.

 After a decade of dissension that nearly tore the country apart, of nearly 57,000 lives lost and 150 billion dollars spent, the last Americans fled from Saigon in disarray – just one step ahead of victorious Communist troops.

The dramatic contrast was there for all the world to see: America's first defeat in war, set against the formation of yet another Communist government in Asia.

 People everywhere witnessed in near disbelief the disturbing spectacle of Americans scrambling frantically into helicopters designed to fly U.S. fighting men into battle – not meant to evacuate Americans under cover of darkness.

 From Tokyo to London, from Moscow to Buenos Aires, serious questions were raised about the impact the humiliation would have on American morale and on U.S. steadfastness in the face of future challenges elsewhere in the world. 

 Major capitals also kept a wary eye on any moves that the two Communist powers – Russia and China – might make to exploit the Communist victories in Indo-China.

 President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made it evident that the dangers - both at home and overseas – were much on their minds.

 Mr. Kissinger – who won a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating with North Vietnam the 1973 cease-fire agreement that supposedly ended the Vietnam War – warned at a news conference in Washington of trouble yet to come.

 "There is no question," he said, "that the outcome in Indo-China will have consequences not only in Asia, but in many other parts of the world."

 Knowledgeable U.S. officials feared that American prestige had been badly tarnished in Asia, where there are burgeoning doubts over reliability of American promises. As they see it:

 The closer a nation is to Vietnam, the more urgent the doubts become. Thailand, immediately under the Communist gun, is ordering U.S. forces out of the country and cozying up to China and North Vietnam. The Philippines is re-examining its security treaties with the U.S. Even Japan suspects the permanence of the American nuclear "umbrella" protecting that nation.

 "North Korea must also be watched carefully," one top authority cautioned. "Kim II Sung is not very sophisticated. He may decide that the time has come to launch another invasion of South Korea." The U.S. still has about 40,000 troops in South Korea.

 To Asians, the lesson seemed clear. Forces of the U.S., strongest and richest nation on earth, had been driven away by an impoverished country that in its 30-year existence has barely moved into the industrialized twentieth century in anything but military capability. The memory of U.S.-South Vietnamese shortcomings still was strong:

 Less than three hours after completion of the American evacuation on April 30, the Saigon Government surrendered unconditionally. Communist soldiers marched triumphantly into the city behind Russian-made tanks and captured U.S.-made jeeps. Scattered pockets of resistance by a few diehard South Vietnamese defenders were quickly wiped out.

 One of the conquerors' first acts: Their "revolutionaries" are to call Saigon "Ho Chi Minh City" in honor of the North Vietnamese leader who died in 1969 without achieving his lifelong goal of bringing all Indo-China under Communist domination.

 U.S. experts predicted that North Vietnam, after masterminding victories in Cambodia and South Vietnam, now will retreat temporarily into its shell to pull things together.

 "Most likely there will be a deep freeze for a while," said an American with long experience in Indo-China. "The area will stay out of the world while the Communists consolidate their control."

 At the same time, American officials, smarting under accusations by some Asians that the U.S. had abandoned Saigon, were deeply worried over what will happen when the Viet Cong - with behind-the-scenes direction from Hanoi - establish a working government in the South.

 Of particular concern was the fate of thousands of South Vietnamese who may be on a Communist "death list" because of their past association with Americans or anti-Communist activities.

 Many of these Vietnamese – called "high risks" by the U.S. and "social negatives" by the Communists – were among more than 100,000 who escaped by aircraft, helicopter and ship. But tens of thousands remained behind. Communist diplomats in other countries expected the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese to put up to 100,000 South Vietnamese on trial as "war criminals."

 Before Saigon's capture, reports trickling into the capital from the northern two thirds of the country then held by North Vietnam indicated that the Communists had not yet initiated the "blood bath" that had long been predicted by American and South Vietnamese officials. But some authorities argued that the Communists were only delaying – not abandoning – the wholesale execution of "social negatives."

 In the first days of the Saigon occupation, there were few signs of bloodletting. Viet Cong soldiers, many of them teen-aged men and women, treated civilians politely, while other Communist troops cleaned out South Vietnamese pockets of resistance in the Mekong Delta. Communist leaders warned their troops against touching "even a needle or a thread of the people." 
Still, there were disturbing omens of a crackdown to come. The new regime took over all industrial, agricultural and commercial firms and issued a series of 20 decrees warning of "severe punishment" for anyone disobeying orders. Among forbidden pursuits: "acting like Americans or participation in American-style activities."

 Top Viet Cong leaders delayed their entrance into Saigon, but deputies moved rapidly to put the Communist stamp on the country. On May 2, they abolished the national employees’ association, formed a "revolutionary labor federation" and ordered workers to return to factories to resume production.

 The Communists also organized a "young people's self-defense force" composed of men and women from 15 to 38 in age. Their assigned duties: to "explain" policies of the new Saigon Government to the people.

 The relatively quiet Communist seizure of Saigon was anti-climactic in contrast with the confusion and disorder that marked the final American pullout from South Vietnam, starting at midday April 29 and ending about 8 a.m. April 30.

 With Communist troops already in the outskirts of the capital, Saigon was a city of panic. Thousands of South Vietnamese jammed the runways at Tan Son Nhut Airport, preventing use of large C-130 transport planes. Realizing the end was only hours away, President Ford in Washington ordered "Option Four" put into operation – the helicopter rescue of all Americans and as many "high risk" South Vietnamese as could be carried.

 A force of 800 Marines was airlifted in to protect the withdrawal. Then an armada of 81 helicopters from American aircraft carriers standing by off the coast swooped down to begin the evacuation from two landing zones at the airport and the U.S. Embassy in downtown Saigon. Carrier-based jet fighter-bombers provided air cover.

 Vietnamese of all ages, desperate to escape the Communists, massed in front of the Embassy, pleading to be flown to safety. Some crawled over the barbed wire that topped a 10-foot wall surrounding the Embassy compound. Marines and U.S. officials used rifle and pistol butts to smash the fingers of others trying to climb the Embassy gates.

 Soldiers, police, civilians and gangs of young toughs smashed cars abandoned by Americans. Mobs broke into deserted American offices, apartments and homes to loot them of furniture, refrigerators, air conditioners and other valuables. After the last American had left the Embassy, rampaging Vietnamese tore through the six-story building to steal and destroy. Ripped from the lobby wall was a bronze plaque honoring five U.S. servicemen who had died defending the Embassy during the Communists' Tet offensive of 1968.

 Despite fears that enraged South Vietnamese would turn on the departing allies, there were few serious incidents of anti-Americanism. Some Americans were pushed off airport-bound buses by fear-stricken Vietnamese, and a few airport guards fired at the buses shouting, "We want to go, too." Some of the helicopters also came under fire by either South Vietnamese or Communist troops.

 One French news correspondent said he was stopped by a jeepload of South Vietnamese paratroopers who demanded to know his nationality. When told he was French, a trooper replied: "That's okay. If you had been American, we would have killed you."

 South Vietnamese pilots mounted an air evacuation of their own, flying a ragtag fleet of fighter planes, transports and helicopters to Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan.

 Thousands more South Vietnamese took to sea in a motley group of boats, junks, rafts and sampans. U.S. officials said American vessels saved about 18,000 of these ocean-going refugees.

 By the time the last Marine guard was airlifted from the Embassy, more than 7,000 persons, including 1,373 Americans, had been flown to U.S. ships offshore. A few Americans – mainly news correspondents and missionaries – stayed behind.

 The operation cost the lives of four U.S. Marines. Two were killed during a pre-evacuation bombardment at the airport, and two pilots died when their helicopter crashed at sea.

 Final shots by Americans in the Vietnam War were believed to have come from two Navy jets. They attracted – and silenced – an antiaircraft gun which had fired on the planes.

 In taking over South Vietnam, the Communist inherited a tremendous military arsenal, which ranged from small arms to modern jet-fighter planes – all supplied to Saigon's forces by the U.S. at a cost estimated at about 5 billion dollars.

 According to London's authoritative International Institute of Strategic Studies, South Vietnam's military strength at the beginning of 1975 included: 600 tanks, 1,400 armored cars and personnel carriers, 1,675 artillery pieces, 509 combat planes, hundreds of other aircraft and helicopters and 70 frigates, mine-sweepers, patrol ships and gunboats.

 Also handed over to the Communists was a massive military complex of roads, bridges, airfields, ports, supply centers and other bases with a value that could reach 25 billion dollars.

 Private American investment - held down over the years by South Vietnam's uncertain future - was much lower. The U.S. State Department estimated that value of U.S. private property in the country totaled just 30 million dollars. Some companies, however, said their investments were much higher. For instance, Exxon Corporation alone put its losses at 25 million dollars.

 Also forfeited: about 100 million dollars that major U.S. and other foreign oil companies paid the South Vietnamese Government for offshore leases.

 In an ironic twist of warfare, the American imprint is likely to remain in Communist-ruled South Vietnam for years to come. In one example of this, Associated Press writer Daniel de Luce reported from Da Nang – captured by North Vietnam in late March – that the U.S.-built air base there had become a key transport center for the new Saigon Government. He wrote:

 "A half dozen American-made helicopters were visible in a maze of revetments near the air-passenger lounge.

 "In front of an intact hanger stood a large yellow mobile crane. Nearby was a red tank truck. Both were American-made. In the glass-walled control tower the equipment which Americans installed and the Saigon Government Air Force left behind now serves the new governmental power here."

 How could the massive U.S. effort in Indo-China end in military debacle?

 Adm. Noel Gayler, Commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific, summed up the American failure in South Vietnam this way in a comment at his Honolulu headquarters:

 "We really meant to help and to stabilize but went awry in a lot of ways."

These observations were strikingly similar to an earlier Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, which concluded that “the idea that destroying, or threatening to destroy, North Vietnam’s industry would pressure Hanoi into calling it quits seems, in retrospect, a colossal misjudgement.”

The first air strikes against North Vietnam were flown in the fall of 1964, in retaliation for two attacks on American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin (although the second reported attack has never been verified). Additional strikes, carried out under the name Operation Flaming Dart, were ordered in February 1965 in response to Viet Cong attacks on a U.S. Army barracks at Pleiku and a nearby helicopter base, which resulted in the deaths of nine Americans. When the Viet Cong attacked other U.S. facilities in South Vietnam, President Johnson initiated Operation Rolling Thunder in March 1965, an intensified air campaign against North Vietnam. He hoped that this campaign would relieve some of the pressure on South Vietnam, where the situation was rapidly deteriorating. Unfortunately, the bombing campaign did not have the desired results and Johnson had to commit U.S. ground troops to stabilize the situation.

Foreign investors flooded into Vietnam in the early 1990's, betting that the communist nation's "doi moi" economic reforms could make it the next Asian tiger economy. But by the late 1990's, the investors were pulling out almost as fast as they had come in. Doi moi, which means "renewal", was seen as too slow moving, and investors turned their attention to neighboring China.

Yet, in the past five years, Vietnam's cautious policy on reforms has quietly yielded results. Annual GDP growth has averaged nearly 7 percent a year. Poverty, which once plagued two-thirds of the population, has been cut in half. Average income for Vietnamese has doubled in the last 10 years.

Klaus Rohland, country representative for the World Bank, says those numbers are impressive by any standard. 

"Vietnam is a major success story. As of 1992 until now, they have grown on average, by more than 6 percent," he said. "Last year they grew by like 7.5, 7.8 percent. And that is way above average growth. And it's probably, with the exception of China, the best performing economy in the world.

For all its success, Vietnam remains a poor country. Average income may have doubled, but it is still only about $600 a year - far behind wealthier neighbors like Thailand and Malaysia. Still, the mood is optimistic.

In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the sound of construction has become almost constant. Property prices have jumped by more than half in the past three years, as just about everyone seems to be renovating houses and building new office buildings. Real estate experts say office space in Ho Chi Minh City now costs the same as in suburban Tokyo or Paris.

Much of Vietnam's newfound prosperity comes from commodities exports like oil and agricultural products. The International Monetary Fund says Vietnam is the world's largest pepper exporter, and the second-largest exporter of rice, coffee and cocoa. Tourist arrivals reached three million visitors last year. That is only about a quarter of the tourists that Thailand welcomes, but is still up 50 percent from just three years previously. Nguyen Thanh Huong runs a souvenir shop in Hanoi's busy Hang Gai Street.

"Around late winter and early spring, there are many tourists Vietnam. Business is very good and I have a lot of customers," he said.

Economists say Vietnam still has a long way to go before its economy can match its more developed neighbors. Its expected entry into the World Trade Organization later this year could help. But first the government must further reform its banking and investment sectors - which now lend most of their funds to money-losing state-owned companies instead of private entrepreneurs.

Still, even foreign investors are beginning to regain confidence in Vietnam. This year's foreign direct investment is up by 30 percent. As the Communist Party touts its 30-year-old victory in the Vietnam War this week, Vietnam's economy gives the country something else to celebrate.