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New York Times
30-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
At Vietnam War Memorial, Familiar Names, Old Grief and a Kind of Peace
They began to arrive when the late-morning sun had risen above the trees, just as the black paving stones at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial had started to get hot. They were teenagers on school trips, and tourists out for a stroll, and veterans of several American wars dressed in matching red T-shirts and red vests to identify them as members of a tour group from California. As the path grew crowded with hundreds of people, Dan Creed positioned himself at the center of the memorial, a pair of black granite walls inscribed with the names of the dead, across from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He is a volunteer with the National Park Service. He is also a veteran of the Vietnam War. His infantry unit in the 101st Airborne lost no soldiers to injury or death during his time as the unit's leader, a notable achievement in a war that killed 58,220 American soldiers and left many thousands more injured and disabled. After the war, Mr. Creed got married, had six children and built a successful career as a military contractor. On Wednesday, the 50th anniversary of the war's end, Mr. Creed found that his thoughts about the war — especially the primary place it once held in his mind — had changed. 'I always thought that was my proudest thing, that nobody got wounded or killed' under his command, said Mr. Creed, 76, who lives in Fairfax, Va. Then his children became happy and successful adults. 'And that's the thing I'm proudest of now,' he said. For decades, the conflict in Vietnam lay at the heart of America's discussion about itself, about what it meant for the world's wealthiest nation to fight and lose a war in which the purpose was never clear, and that viscerally divided a generation. On Wednesday, 50 years after the last U.S. soldiers and embassy staff evacuated Saigon, it seemed the war's central role in American culture had faded. Few people, it seemed, came to the memorial to mark the anniversary. Many did not even realize it was an anniversary, arriving on long-planned vacations to find a lovely day in the capital, with fresh green leaves on the trees and azaleas in full bloom. In the crowd, many came to look back on Vietnam and the loved ones they had lost through the eyes of the older people they are: still sad, less angry and happier now to talk about the grief they buried half a century ago. 'I had so much anger and frustration that for years I couldn't talk about it,' said Dan Moore, 80, a Vietnam veteran who lives in McLean, Va. 'A lot of the stuff that tormented me for so long, it has passed.' When Tim O'Brien wrote 'The Things They Carried,' the iconic semi-autobiographical novel based on his time as an infantry soldier in Vietnam, he created a character named 'Tim O'Brien' who tussled with the same question as the real one: Should he dodge the draft, flee to Canada and live in exile, possibly forever? In the novel as in real life, Mr. O'Brien reached the same conclusion: No. He would go to Vietnam. The book was published in 1990, to great critical acclaim. In the 35 years since, Mr. O'Brien has come to believe more strongly that he made the wrong decision. 'I shouldn't have gone,' Mr. O'Brien, 78, said in an interview this week. 'I knew that when I was younger. But now it's really clear.' Tran Van Ly never questioned his role in the war. Among the T-shirts, gym shorts and sleeveless leather jackets worn by tourists and veterans to the Vietnam memorial on Wednesday, Mr. Ly stood out for his formal dress: a tan military uniform, bedecked with bronze medals and red epaulets and topped by a black beret cocked to the right. Little has changed for Mr. Ly, a former officer in the South Vietnamese Army who lives in Virginia. He still hates communism, he said. He has never returned to Vietnam after escaping the country in a small boat in 1991, and he never will. Recently his feelings have softened, however, if only a little. His family members back home are enjoying more prosperity, he said, and more opportunity to speak their minds. 'I thought it would never change,' he said of Vietnam's government. 'Now my country, it has changed for the better. I feel more hope now.' Carolyn Watson's father was killed in Vietnam on Aug. 7, 1969. Ms. Watson was 10. Fifty-six years later, Ms. Watson visited the memorial for the first time. She pressed her fingers to her father's name, Milford Marvin Tognazzi, inscribed in stone. Her cheeks grew wet with tears. After her father died, money from the federal government helped to support her mother, who died two years ago of natural causes. Ms. Watson's sadness is an old sadness. Her gratitude is new. 'The sad side is I lost my daddy,' said Ms. Watson, who lives in Creston, Calif. 'If there's any good in it, it's that my mom was taken care of her whole life.' The first group of high school students left. Another arrived. In front of the walls of names, the stone path grew crowded. Standing in the crowd, Mr. Moore knew the exact location of at least one name, Kenneth E. Stetson. In the middle of January 1968, Lieutenant Moore relinquished command of his artillery unit to Lance Corporal Stetson, his friend and assistant, and was assigned as an artillery liaison officer with the Second Battalion, Fifth Marines. Two weeks later, North Vietnamese forces began the Tet offensive, a surprise attack that marked a major escalation in the war. Mr. Moore remembers the date he next saw his assistant: Feb. 17, 1968. He noticed an injured soldier laying in front of a bombed-out building in the city of Hue. He walked over and recognized the wounded man as his friend. He had been shot in the upper abdomen. 'Stetson, what happened?' Mr. Moore said. 'Lieutenant, I've been shot,' Mr. Stetson replied. He was evacuated to a hospital, where he died. Mr. Moore continued fighting. After the military, he became an intelligence officer with the C.I.A. For decades, he focused on the work. He tried to read books about Vietnam, and to write a memoir. He failed. He found himself incapable of even thinking about the war. 'I was angry about how futile the whole thing was,' Mr. Moore said, 'and how so many people I knew died there.' After he retired, during the Covid pandemic, Mr. Moore sat down again to write. He addressed his final, brief interaction with Mr. Stetson. A new, happier narrative formed. 'It was providence,' Mr. Moore said. 'God allowed me to see him before he died, and I was able to give him some comfort.' Fifty-seven years, two months and eight days later, Mr. Moore finds he no longer dwells on the chaos or the sadness or the anger or the fear. 'I'm sort of at peace,' he said.
New York Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
How Photography From the Vietnam War Changed America
How Photography From the Vietnam War Changed America The images changed how the world saw Vietnam, but especially how Americans saw their country, soldiers and the war itself, which ended 50 years ago this month. There are so many ways to describe what photography from the Vietnam War captured and revealed, but maybe it boils down to what Tim O'Brien shared in 'The Things They Carried.' 'I survived,' he wrote in one of the book's stories, 'but it's not a happy ending.' The war, which formally concluded on April 30, 1975, still elicits grief for all that was burned into memory and reinforced on film. The most memorable photographs of that era, with its grisly, muddy, cruel jungle war, were shot by a brave global crew with a wide range of political views and backgrounds. Dickey Chapelle, the first female photojournalist to die in Vietnam, was a Midwesterner who could barely contain her anti-Communism. Tim Page was an irreverent dope-smoking Brit; Henri Huet was French and Vietnamese, and known for his humor and kindness. Together, their images and those of many others changed how the world saw Vietnam, but especially how Americans saw their country, soldiers and war itself.
Time of India
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
10 fiction, nonfiction books inspired by Vietnam War
Vietnam War-Anniversary-Books (AP) Washington: Vietnam has been called the first "television" war. But it has also inspired generations of writers who have explored its origins, its horrors, its aftermath and the innate flaws and miscalculations that drove the world's most powerful country, the US, into a long, gruesome and hopeless conflict. Fiction "The Quiet American," Graham Greene (1955) British author Graham Greene's novel has long held the stature of tragic prophecy. Alden Pyle is a naive CIA agent whose dreams of forging a better path for Vietnam - a "Third Force" between communism and colonialism that existed only in books - leads to senseless destruction. "The Quiet American" was released when US military involvement in Vietnam was just beginning, yet anticipated the Americans' prolonged and deadly failure to comprehend the country they claimed to be saving. "The Things They Carried," Tim O'Brien (1990) The Vietnam War was the last extended conflict waged while the US still had a military draft, and the last to inspire a wide range of notable, first-hand fiction, none more celebrated or popular than O'Brien's 1990 collection of interconnected stories. O'Brien served in an infantry unit in 1969-70, and the million-selling "The Things They Carried" has tales ranging from a soldier who wears his girlfriend's stockings around his neck, even in battle, to the author trying to conjure the life story of a Vietnamese soldier he killed. O'Brien's book has become standard reading about the war and inspired an exhibit at the National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago. "Matterhorn," Karl Marlantes (2009) Karl Marlantes, a Rhodes scholar and decorated Marine commander, fictionalised his experiences in his 600-plus page novel about a recent college graduate and his fellow members of Bravo Company as they seek to retake a base near the border with Laos. Like "The Quiet American," "Matterhorn" is, in part, the story of disillusionment, a young man's discovery that education and privilege are no shields against enemy fire. "No strategy was perfect," he realises. "All choices were bad in some way." "The Sympathizer," Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015) Viet Thanh Nguyen was just 4 when his family fled Vietnam in 1975, eventually settling in San Jose, California. "The Sympathizer," winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2016, is Nguyen's first book and high in the canon of Vietnamese American literature. The novel unfolds as the confessions of a onetime spy for North Vietnam who becomes a Hollywood consultant and later returns to Vietnam fighting on the opposite side. "I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces," the narrator tells us. "Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds." "The Mountains Sing," Nguyen Phan Que Mai (2020) Nguyen Phan Que Mai was born in North Vietnam in 1973, two years before the US departure, and was reared on stories of her native country's haunted and heroic past. Her novel alternates narration between a grandmother born in 1920 and a granddaughter born 40 years later. Together, they take readers through much of 20th century Vietnam, from French colonialism and Japanese occupation to the rise of Communism and the growing and brutal American military campaign to fight it. Que Mai dedicates the novel to various ancestors, including an uncle whose "youth the Vietnam War consumed." NONFICTION "The Best and the Brightest," David Halberstam (1972) As a young reporter in Vietnam, David Halberstam had been among the first journalists to report candidly on the military's failures and the government's deceptions. The title of his bestseller became a catchphrase and the book itself a document of how the supposedly finest minds of the post-World War II generation - the elite set of advisers in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations - could so badly miscalculate the planning and execution of a war and so misunderstand the country they were fighting against. "Fire in the Lake," Frances FitzGerald (1972) Frances FitzGerald's celebrated book was published the same year and stands with "The Best and the Brightest" as an early and prescient take on the war's legacy. Fitzgerald had reported from South Vietnam for the Village Voice and The New Yorker, and she drew upon firsthand observations and deep research in contending that the US was fatally ignorant of Vietnamese history and culture. "Dispatches," Michael Herr (1977) Michael Herr, who would eventually help write "Apocalypse Now," was a Vietnam correspondent for Esquire who brought an off-hand, charged-up rock 'n' roll sensibility to his highly praised and influential book. In one "dispatch," he tells of a soldier who "took his pills by the fistful," uppers in one pocket and downers in another. "He told me they cooled out things just right for him," Herr wrote, "that he could see that old jungle at night like he was looking at it through a starlight scope." "Bloods," Wallace Terry (1984) A landmark, "Bloods" was among the first books to centre the experiences of Black veterans. Former Time magazine correspondent Wallace Terry compiled the oral histories of 20 Black veterans of varying backgrounds and ranks. One interviewee, Richard J Ford III, was wounded three times and remembered being visited at the hospital by generals and other officers: "They respected you and pat you on the back. They said, You brave and you courageous. You America's finest. America's best.' Back in the states, the same officers that pat me on the back wouldn't even speak to me." "A Bright Shining Lie," Neil Sheehan (1988) Halberstam's sources as a reporter included Lt Col John Paul Vann, a US adviser to South Vietnam who became a determined critic of American military leadership and eventually died in battle in 1972. Vann's story is told in full in "A Bright Shining Lie," by Neil Sheehan, the New York Times reporter known for breaking the story of the Pentagon Papers and how they revealed the US government's long history of deceiving the public about the war. Winner of the Pulitzer in 1989, "A Bright Shining Lie" was adapted into an HBO movie starring Bill Paxton as Vann.
The Star
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Ten fiction and non-fiction books inspired by the Vietnam War
Vietnam has been called the first "television' war. But it has also inspired generations of writers who have explored its origins, its horrors, its aftermath and the innate flaws and miscalculations that drove the world's most powerful country, the United States, into a long, gruesome and hopeless conflict. FICTION 'The Quiet American,' Graham Greene (1955) British author Graham Greene's novel has long held the stature of tragic prophecy. Alden Pyle is a naive CIA agent whose dreams of forging a better path for Vietnam - a "Third Force' between communism and colonialism that existed only in books - leads to senseless destruction. The Quiet American was released when US military involvement in Vietnam was just beginning, yet anticipated the Americans' prolonged and deadly failure to comprehend the country they claimed to be saving. 'The Things They Carried,' Tim O'Brien (1990) The Vietnam War was the last extended conflict waged while the US still had a military draft, and the last to inspire a wide range of notable, first-hand fiction - none more celebrated or popular than O'Brien's 1990 collection of interconnected stories. O'Brien served in an infantry unit in 1969-70, and the million-selling The Things They Carried has tales ranging from a soldier who wears his girlfriend's stockings around his neck, even in battle, to the author trying to conjure the life story of a Vietnamese soldier he killed. O'Brien's book has become standard reading about the war and inspired an exhibit at the National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago. 'Matterhorn,' Karl Marlantes (2009) Karl Marlantes, a Rhodes scholar and decorated Marine commander, fictionalised his experiences in his 600-plus page novel about a recent college graduate and his fellow members of Bravo Company as they seek to retake a base near the border with Laos. Like The Quiet American, Matterhorn is, in part, the story of disillusionment, a young man's discovery that education and privilege are no shields against enemy fire. "No strategy was perfect,' he realises. "All choices were bad in some way.' 'The Sympathizer,' Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015) Viet Thanh Nguyen was just four when his family fled Vietnam in 1975, eventually settling in San Jose, California. The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2016, is Nguyen's first book and high in the canon of Vietnamese American literature. The novel unfolds as the confessions of a onetime spy for North Vietnam who becomes a Hollywood consultant and later returns to Vietnam fighting on the opposite side. "I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces,' the narrator tells us. "Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds.' 'The Mountains Sing,' Nguyen Phan Que Mai (2020) Nguyen Phan Que Mai was born in North Vietnam in 1973, two years before the US departure, and was reared on stories of her native country's haunted and heroic past. Her novel alternates narration between a grandmother born in 1920 and a granddaughter born 40 years later. Together, they take readers through much of 20th century Vietnam, from French colonialism and Japanese occupation to the rise of Communism and the growing and brutal American military campaign to fight it. Que Mai dedicates the novel to various ancestors, including an uncle whose "youth the Vietnam War consumed.' NON-FICTION 'The Best and the Brightest,' David Halberstam (1972) As a young reporter in Vietnam, David Halberstam had been among the first journalists to report candidly on the military's failures and the government's deceptions. The title of his bestseller became a catchphrase and the book itself a document of how the supposedly finest minds of the post-World War II generation - the elite set of advisers in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations - could so badly miscalculate the planning and execution of a war and so misunderstand the country they were fighting against. 'Fire In The Lake,' Frances FitzGerald (1972) Frances FitzGerald's celebrated book was published the same year and stands with The Best And The Brightest as an early and prescient take on the war's legacy. Fitzgerald had reported from South Vietnam for the Village Voice and The New Yorker, and she drew upon firsthand observations and deep research in contending that the US was fatally ignorant of Vietnamese history and culture. 'Dispatches,' Michael Herr (1977) Michael Herr, who would eventually help write Apocalypse Now, was a Vietnam correspondent for Esquire who brought an off-hand, charged-up rock 'n' roll sensibility to his highly praised and influential book. In one "dispatch,' he tells of a soldier who "took his pills by the fistful,' uppers in one pocket and downers in another. "He told me they cooled out things just right for him,' Herr wrote, "that he could see that old jungle at night like he was looking at it through a starlight scope.' 'Bloods,' Wallace Terry (1984) A landmark, Bloods was among the first books to centre the experiences of Black veterans. Former Time magazine correspondent Wallace Terry compiled the oral histories of 20 Black veterans of varying backgrounds and ranks. One interviewee, Richard J. Ford III, was wounded three times and remembered being visited at the hospital by generals and other officers: "They respected you and pat you on the back. They said, 'You brave and you courageous. You America's finest. America's best.' Back in the states, the same officers that pat me on the back wouldn't even speak to me.' 'A Bright Shining Lie,' Neil Sheehan (1988) Halberstam's sources as a reporter included Lt Col. John Paul Vann, a US adviser to South Vietnam who became a determined critic of American military leadership and eventually died in battle in 1972. Vann's story is told in full in A Bright Shining Lie, by Neil Sheehan, the New York Times reporter known for breaking the story of the Pentagon Papers and how they revealed the US government's long history of deceiving the public about the war. Winner of the Pulitzer in 1989, A Bright Shining Lie was adapted into an HBO movie starring Bill Paxton as Vann. – AP
The Independent
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
10 fiction and nonfiction books inspired by the Vietnam War
Vietnam has been called the first 'television' war. But it has also inspired generations of writers who have explored its origins, its horrors, its aftermath and the innate flaws and miscalculations that drove the world's most powerful country, the U.S., into a long, gruesome and hopeless conflict. FICTION 'The Quiet American,' Graham Greene (1955) British author Graham Greene's novel has long held the stature of tragic prophecy. Alden Pyle is a naive CIA agent whose dreams of forging a better path for Vietnam — a 'Third Force' between communism and colonialism that existed only in books — leads to senseless destruction. 'The Quiet American' was released when U.S. military involvement in Vietnam was just beginning, yet anticipated the Americans ' prolonged and deadly failure to comprehend the country they claimed to be saving. 'The Things They Carried,' Tim O'Brien (1990) The Vietnam War was the last extended conflict waged while the U.S. still had a military draft, and the last to inspire a wide range of notable, first-hand fiction — none more celebrated or popular than O'Brien's 1990 collection of interconnected stories. O'Brien served in an infantry unit in 1969-70, and the million-selling 'The Things They Carried' has tales ranging from a soldier who wears his girlfriend's stockings around his neck, even in battle, to the author trying to conjure the life story of a Vietnamese soldier he killed. O'Brien's book has become standard reading about the war and inspired an exhibit at the National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago. 'Matterhorn,' Karl Marlantes (2009) Karl Marlantes, a Rhodes scholar and decorated Marine commander, fictionalized his experiences in his 600-plus page novel about a recent college graduate and his fellow members of Bravo Company as they seek to retake a base near the border with Laos. Like 'The Quiet American,' 'Matterhorn' is, in part, the story of disillusionment, a young man's discovery that education and privilege are no shields against enemy fire. 'No strategy was perfect,' he realizes. 'All choices were bad in some way.' 'The Sympathizer,' Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015) Viet Thanh Nguyen was just 4 when his family fled Vietnam in 1975, eventually settling in San Jose, California. 'The Sympathizer,' winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2016, is Nguyen's first book and high in the canon of Vietnamese American literature. The novel unfolds as the confessions of a onetime spy for North Vietnam who becomes a Hollywood consultant and later returns to Vietnam fighting on the opposite side. 'I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces,' the narrator tells us. 'Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds.' 'The Mountains Sing,' Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (2020) Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai was born in North Vietnam in 1973, two years before the U.S. departure, and was reared on stories of her native country's haunted and heroic past. Her novel alternates narration between a grandmother born in 1920 and a granddaughter born 40 years later. Together, they take readers through much of 20th century Vietnam, from French colonialism and Japanese occupation to the rise of Communism and the growing and brutal American military campaign to fight it. Quế Mai dedicates the novel to various ancestors, including an uncle whose 'youth the Vietnam War consumed.' NONFICTION 'The Best and the Brightest,' David Halberstam (1972) As a young reporter in Vietnam, David Halberstam had been among the first journalists to report candidly on the military's failures and the government's deceptions. The title of his bestseller became a catchphrase and the book itself a document of how the supposedly finest minds of the post-World War II generation — the elite set of advisers in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations — could so badly miscalculate the planning and execution of a war and so misunderstand the country they were fighting against. 'Fire in the Lake,' Frances FitzGerald (1972) Frances FitzGerald's celebrated book was published the same year and stands with 'The Best and the Brightest' as an early and prescient take on the war's legacy. Fitzgerald had reported from South Vietnam for the Village Voice and The New Yorker, and she drew upon firsthand observations and deep research in contending that the U.S. was fatally ignorant of Vietnamese history and culture. 'Dispatches,' Michael Herr (1977) Michael Herr, who would eventually help write 'Apocalypse Now,' was a Vietnam correspondent for Esquire who brought an off-hand, charged-up rock 'n' roll sensibility to his highly praised and influential book. In one 'dispatch,' he tells of a soldier who 'took his pills by the fistful,' uppers in one pocket and downers in another. 'He told me they cooled out things just right for him,' Herr wrote, 'that he could see that old jungle at night like he was looking at it through a starlight scope.' 'Bloods,' Wallace Terry (1984) A landmark, 'Bloods' was among the first books to center the experiences of Black veterans. Former Time magazine correspondent Wallace Terry compiled the oral histories of 20 Black veterans of varying backgrounds and ranks. One interviewee, Richard J. Ford III, was wounded three times and remembered being visited at the hospital by generals and other officers: 'They respected you and pat you on the back. They said, 'You brave and you courageous. You America's finest. America's best.' Back in the states, the same officers that pat me on the back wouldn't even speak to me.' 'A Bright Shining Lie,' Neil Sheehan (1988) Halberstam's sources as a reporter included Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, a U.S. adviser to South Vietnam who became a determined critic of American military leadership and eventually died in battle in 1972. Vann's story is told in full in 'A Bright Shining Lie,' by Neil Sheehan, the New York Times reporter known for breaking the story of the Pentagon Papers and how they revealed the U.S. government's long history of deceiving the public about the war. Winner of the Pulitzer in 1989, 'A Bright Shining Lie' was adapted into an HBO movie starring Bill Paxton as Vann. ___ For more coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War's end, visit
