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DESCRIPTION:Suel Jones is the president of the Viet Nam Chapter of Veterans For Peace. 
 His new book is titled, "Meeting The Enemy: A Marine Goes Home." The first 
 part is about his war experience, the second about returning to the US 
 confused, damaged and wondering what had just happened and why. The last 
 part is about returning to VN to live and work for more than 10 years while 
 "meeting the enemy." \n\nSuel speaks Viet Namese and has a rare perspective 
 – about the VN War, America, Americans living and volunteering abroad and 
 our present wars.\n\nPlus he’s a great character and entertaining 
 raconteur.\n\nTrying to Undo - Veterans of Conscience in Viet Nam\n\n 
 \n\nBy Nadya Williams\n\n \n\n    Unbeknownst to most Americans, even on 
 the Left, there are a significant number of US-Viet Nam War veterans who 
 have returned to live full or part-time to the country in which they had 
 fought, to devote themselves to undoing some of the war's devastation … 
 in Viet Nam,* and in them selves.  These men began their resistance to the 
 war at widely varying times, some while in the military, others immediately 
 afterwards, while still others years later.  Membership in veterans’ 
 organizations like VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War), participating 
 in anti-war actions, and testifying at the 1972 Winter Soldier hearings, 
 helped tens thousands to come to grips with their painful experiences.  
 Many describe protracted struggles with the VA (Veterans’ Administration) 
 for benefits and treatment for physical and psychological ailments stemming 
 from the war.  The great majority of these vets remain living in the United 
 States, but scores have returned to South East Asia to volunteer.  Today, 
 with a list of contact information and some luck, one can meet with and 
 talk to these men, to learn their stories, motivations and actions to live 
 out their collective consciences.  The following are just eight of such men 
 who were encountered during a three-month visit to Viet Nam in early 
 2008.\n\n    Suel Jones can be found most every morning around 8:30 in his 
 favorite café on Nha Tho Street, in the quiet part of Ha Noi's Old 
 Quarter, just west of Hoan Kiem Lake.  For the last 10 years the former 
 Marine from East Texas has lived in Viet Nam's capital and aided, both with 
 his own money and with countless volunteer hours, the tragic young victims 
 of America's chemical weapon – the infamous defoliant Agent Orange.  
 Suel's friendly, straight-forward manner and his charming Southern drawl 
 make him a favorite interviewee of the likes of BBC News and Agence France 
 Press, though few Americans will have heard of him and his fellow vets who 
 live and volunteer in the land of  'the enemy.'\n\n    Suel says he's "one 
 of the lucky ones," because he fought only against other combatants: the 
 NVA (North Vietnamese Army) and the VC (Viet Cong of the south).  He has 
 not known the particular kind of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) 
 suffered by other GIs who had to destroy villages and kill women and 
 children.  He 'only' saw his buddies die, like a blond, downy-cheeked, 
 sweet-faced young man – "just a kid" - blown to pieces by a landmine the 
 second he stepped to catch a cigarette Suel had tossed to him.  Called "The 
 Old Man" by his Marine buddies (he was 24, much older than the others whose 
 average age was 19), Suel's luck struck a second time, laying him up with 
 malaria when many of his squad were killed on a jungle patrol.\n\n    Suel 
 has just finished writing a book, "Meeting the Enemy," about his year in 
 combat, his return home (hiding his military service and never joining 
 anti-war protests), his personal rage and struggles, and his return to Viet 
 Nam to volunteer at the Friendship Village, an internationally-funded 
 center founded by another American war vet for Agent Orange (AO) victims.  
 "Gooks" become "Vietnamese" in his autobiographical tale of fighting, dying 
 and transformation – Suel meeting his own internal "enemies" along the 
 way.  He frequently cites his strong traditional East Texas family as a 
 source of his mental and emotional survival.  Proud, working-class Southern 
 Baptists, his parents gave him a rock-solid foundation, even though they 
 later could not comprehend nor support his dissent.\n\n    One story in 
 Suel's book stands out.  On a trip to Hue in central VN, he ran into a 
 group of American veterans – "you can spot 'em a mile away" - on their 
 first trip back.  Since Suel spoke the language and was an old hand, he 
 showed them around.  During the night one of the men suffered a heart 
 attack and died in his hotel bed.  His friends were distraught, so Suel 
 helped out, particularly because he also knew that the hotel staff would 
 not want to return until a Buddhist priest came to perform a ceremony for 
 the departed soul.  This Asian religious ceremony had a profoundly calming 
 effect on the group of American war veterans - they then took their friend 
 back home.  The vet who died had often spoken of his survivor's guilt, and 
 of his buddies who were killed as he fought along side them there in Hue 
 against the 1968 Tet Offensive.  Perhaps he found peace in coming back to 
 'rejoin' them decades later at their battle site.  Who can say.\n\n    A 
 similar story comes from the Viet Namese veterans Suel got to know at the 
 Friendship Village project.  Because nearly half of the residents of the 
 Village are AO-sickened former NVA and VC, Suel was able to participate in 
 many exchanges and workshops with them.  They told him that sometimes 
 before a major battle or campaign their commander would show them the 
 coffins that were prepared to take casualties.  This was extremely 
 reassuring to these soldiers – knowing that if they were killed in 
 battle, their bodies and souls would be properly cared for in the Buddhist 
 tradition.  Suel was astonished to learn this, and to see, at the end of 
 one writing workshop, the Viet Namese veterans perform songs and read 
 poetry that they'd composed for their farewell meeting.  \n\n    Suel 
 Jones' kind but direct personality extends to all he meets, as when he 
 confronted Viet Namese veterans who initially told him, "We cannot forget, 
 but we can forgive American soldiers.  We are not angry with you."  
 "Bullshit," Suel replied.  "We raped your mothers, killed your babies, made 
 your sisters into whores and destroyed your country."  "Yes, you are 
 right." conceded one Viet Namese vet.  "It was like being occupied by Nazi 
 Germany."  Suel plans, after publication of "Meeting the Enemy," a second 
 book - about his friendships with these men and women.  Perhaps he'll call 
 it "Voices of the Enemy."\n\n    Chuck Searcy, a vet from Georgia, is the 
 consummate Southern Gentleman.  Tall and soft-spoken, he receives many 
 international delegations in his Project Renew office in Ha Noi, a de-land 
 mining program funded by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (the 
 organization that built The Wall monument in Washington, DC).  Many years 
 of perseverance, along with a dedicated Viet Namese staff, has spread the 
 project's meager budget to two districts of Quang Tri Province, along the 
 17th parallel's DMZ (De-Militarized Zone).  The province's eight remaining 
 districts are also in desperate need of clearance of both landmines and 
 unexploded ordinance in this most heavily bombed area of this most heavily 
 bombed country.  The explosive power of 450 Hiroshimas was dropped on tiny 
 Viet Nam in the form of conventional bombs.  \n\n    Chuck has many stories 
 to tell as well, not so much about combat, but about his return home to 
 Georgia.  He remembers attending a party with his former-high school 
 friends, and speaking to a young woman there.  "I just got a new car," she 
 said, "hey, where have you been for so long??"  "In the war in Vietnam," he 
 answered.  "Oh," she said.  "Did I tell you about my new car and how much I 
 love it?"  After his 'turning against the war,' Chuck's own father told him 
 he feared he was being "duped by the Communists."  \n\n    Since Chuck's 
 de-land mining program is funded by the Washington, DC-based Vietnam 
 Veterans Memorial Fund, he has many contacts in our nation's capital.  
 Living in Chuck's neighborhood was the man who pulled Senator John McCain 
 out of a Ha Noi lake in 1967, saving McCain's  life, first from drowning 
 and secondly from a mob intent on killing the stricken US bomber pilot.  
 Mr. Mai Van On was able to meet McCain in 1995 thanks to arrangements made 
 by Chuck, but as he tells it, "Mr. On was never contacted again by McCain 
 on the senator's many return trips back to Ha Noi.  Neither was a letter of 
 condolence ever sent to his family when Mr. On died in 2006."\n\n    Chuck 
 Searcy is waging a valiant fight to deactivate just a fraction of the 
 deadly explosives that hide in Viet Namese soil.  With only $200,000 a 
 year, Project Renew is up against more bombs than were dropped in the First 
 and Second World Wars combined (including the explosive power of Hiroshima 
 and Nagasaki).   Education of farmers and their families is key to 
 preventing more deaths and injuries.  Providing artificial limbs and some 
 modest clinics for amputees are all part of Chuck's dedication.   \n\n    
 Lewis Puller, who lost both legs and most of both hands to a land mine, 
 founded the Vietnam Children's Fund - a non-profit that has so far built 
 more than 50 schools since its founding in 1995.  "In the year before his 
 death," reads the Fund's brochure, "Lew Puller returned to Vietnam seeking 
 ideas for the living memorial he and several friends had decided to build 
 to honor the Vietnamese men, women and children who died in that country's 
 long war."  The Children's Fund's goal is to have 58,000 Viet Namese kids  
 in new schools, one child for every American killed whose name is on The 
 Wall.  \n\n    Sam Russell now heads up the in-country program of the Fund 
 and works pro bono.  His small, sunny office overlooking Ha Noi's lovely 
 West Lake is mostly supported by modest donations from state-side vets, 
 their families and friends.  It neither solicits nor accepts funding from 
 any government.  Sam is not a veteran, but was touched deeply by the war, 
 as were many following generations of Americans.  Likewise, the 
 organization's brochure does not soften any truths:  "300,000 Vietnamese 
 children suffered from war accidents or were orphaned," it reads, 
 "1,000,000 were disabled and 50,000 still live on the streets."   But the 
 most damning statistic of all from the Children's Fund is perhaps this one: 
  "300,000 children are still MIA (Missing In Action)."  With the number of 
 US soldiers missing no higher than 3,000, can anyone ever look at that 
 American "MIA/POW" flag again in the same way after reading this??\n\n    
 Tom Leckinger was one of the first veterans to return to Viet Nam and 
 Cambodia in the early 1980s, where he was appalled by the devastation and 
 human misery he witnessed, and deeply troubled by the fact that the US 
 embargo was the primary cause.  Some political analysts are even of the 
 opinion that the 20-year American embargo against Viet Nam (from the end of 
 the war in 1975 until the Clinton administration's  lifting in 1995) was as 
 destructive as the war itself!  Certainly tens, perhaps hundreds, of 
 thousands continued to die as a result.  On Tom's  second mission back to 
 bring medical supplies, he  learned that the death at birth of his first 
 son in 1976 was likely related to his exposure to Agent Orange during his 
 time in the infantry, as the symptoms being seen by Viet Namese doctors 
 were identical to those suffered by his infant son.  He became a relentless 
 and outspoken advocate for reconciliation, a very unpopular stance in those 
 early days.  \n\n    After many visits over the decades, Tom finally made 
 it back to South East Asia full time, spending two years running a 
 prosthetics clinic for landmine victims in Cambodia, and then to Viet Nam 
 in 2006, when he was selected to head up the Vietnam Veterans of America 
 Foundation's efforts to assist some of the hundreds of thousands of 
 disabled - many with illnesses with direct linkages to Agent Orange 
 contamination - with a series of medical and social programs. Used to kill 
 surrounding jungle cover, the AO herbicide contained dioxin – the most 
 toxic substance known to science, and a source of birth defects and 
 numerous illnesses. Millions of gallons of AO were sprayed from 1961 to 
 1971, 70% of it on southern Viet Nam.  But dioxin has a half life of 10 
 years - only when exposed to the sun.   No one knows how long it will 
 remain buried deep in the soil, water, and fatty tissue of humans and 
 animals. \n\n    "It will 'sear your soul' to see those Agent Orange kids," 
 said Tom, over lunch in Ha Noi.  A veritable encyclopedia of history about 
 the war and a hub for contacts in Viet Nam, Tom is the 'go to' person for 
 anyone wanting to learn about the country, the war's legacy and present 
 rebuilding programs.  He is now the president of the non-profit 
 organization, Vietnam Veterans in Vietnam, many of whose members are also 
 starting the first overseas chapter of Veterans for Peace.\n\n    Vet Ken 
 Herrmann lives part-time in central Viet Nam, in the city of Da Nang, and 
 works with the Quang Nam Fund.  A SUNY (State University of New York) 
 College at Brockport professor, he helps direct aid to local families with 
 disabled children.  Since a blood test to determine possible AO poisoning 
 costs $1,000, it's difficult to know with certainty which of the disabled 
 children have been specifically harmed by America's  chemical warfare – 
 either from the damaged DNA of their parents, or even grandparents, or from 
 simply living in an area that was literally saturated with dioxin.  What is 
 indisputable is that Da Nang, with its huge deserted American base, is 
 perhaps the most heavily dioxin-contaminated of the many "hot spots" all 
 over central and southern Viet Nam today.  \n\n    Ken's SUNY, Brockport 
 connection offers students from any academic major the chance to spend 
 several months in Da Nang volunteering with the Danang/Quang Nam Fund.  
 VAVA, the Viet Namese Association of Victims of Agent Orange, has two 
 day-centers in Da Nang that provide care and educational activities to 
 mentally and physically disabled children and teenagers who cannot attend 
 school, thus giving their parents a chance to work outside the home to 
 support their families.   The American students go out once a week to visit 
 families in the rural outskirts of Da Nang to give a modest amount of the 
 Fund's money to help with special needs kids, and then spend most 
 afternoons with the children in the urban centers.   \n\n    But nothing 
 can prepare one to actually enter a home and sit next to children with 
 severe birth defects from Agent Orange, whose twisted arms and legs do not 
 allow them to even sit up, let alone stand – ever.  The mother in one Da 
 Nang family says she has mental problems due to her situation.  Small 
 wonder, with a 17-year-old girl and a 15-year-old son, when she will never 
 be free to work outside the home to help her husband support the family, 
 never see her children grow up to run and learn, never see them married, 
 never have grandchildren, never have adult children to care for her when 
 she grows old.  Tom Leckinger's words "sear your soul" could not be more 
 apt.\n\n    Kathleen Huff and her veteran husband, who work closely with a 
 Christian-based organization called Partners in Compassion, left Alabama 
 years ago to raise their young children in Viet Nam.  Now married young 
 adults, the Huff children speak fluent Viet Namese and help their parents 
 to manage the family business in Da Nang, Pizza Plus Restaurant and Bread 
 of Life Bakery, whose staff are exclusively young deaf Viet Namese.  
 Profits are used to provide job skills education, a staff dormitory, and 
 other deaf training activities. \n\n    Veteran George Mizo died of 
 AO/dioxin exposure in 2002, but not before he started the Friendship 
 Village project, an internationally-funded residential care and employment 
 center outside Ha Noi for more than 100 AO victims – aging Viet Namese 
 war veterans and their young afflicted children and grandchildren.   A 
 unique collaboration of US vets with Viet Namese vets, Mizo actually worked 
 closely with the general who commanded an attack on his battalion during 
 the war.  It is in the Friendship Village where Suel Jones, and many other 
 American veterans, volunteered for so many years.\n\n    John Berlow never 
 fought in the war, but was kicked out of Harvard in 1969 for resisting it.  
 He too has decided to devote his energies to undo.  Gathering donations 
 from his former classmates (he would have been in the class of 1971) and 
 using his own savings, he's started a tree-planting enterprise called Green 
 Vietnam.  Fast-growing fruit and timber trees, for reforestation and income 
 for the local people, are going into the soil on the hillsides of a remote 
 village 5 hours outside of Ha Noi.  John's goal is to plant one tree for 
 every Viet Namese killed in the war – that's 4 to 5 million trees, by 
 most estimates.\n\n    Of the many US vets who live in-country today, 
 working to undo, most live emotionally healthy, productive lives, but each 
 grapples still with his own demons from the war.  The men are highly 
 competent and functional, motivated to give back precisely because of their 
 deep humanity and painful war traumas, but some keep hidden scars which 
 surface in bouts of drinking, failed relationships and lonely dedication to 
 the Viet Namese people.  \n\n    "There is no such thing as a good war, nor 
 a bad peace," said Benjamin Franklin.  And many of the 3 million men and 
 women from our country who served during Viet Nam quickly found that this 
 war was not at all like World War II (the "Good War") of their fathers and 
 uncles.   A 1995 Viet Namese estimate of 5 million dead (1 million military 
 and 4 million civilians – 10% of the war-time population) is a lot of 
 anguish for veterans of conscience to bear.  Add to this the hundreds of 
 thousands of other South East Asians (Cambodians and Laotians) who died 
 from US bombing, then all the death and suffering after the end of the war 
 in 1975 from the embargo, the devastation, landmines/unexploded ordinance, 
 AO/dioxin, starvation, disease and destabilization.   Finally add the 
 nearly 60,000 American war dead (average age 21), plus the tens of 
 thousands of US vets who have died from service-related causes (illness, 
 suicides, substance abuse, etc.) since the war – then  the burden of 
 sorrow carried by these veterans is truly staggering.\n\n    Some vets have 
 found that the land of "the enemy" is the only place where they feel 
 comfortable and 'at home.'  For many their feelings about America were and 
 still are too conflicted:  they could not reintegrate into 'normal' 
 society, they were often not listened to or worse shunned, many had to 
 fight all over again to get care for their physical and emotional problems, 
 and still others just withdrew into anger and depression.   "Only" an 
 estimated 16% served in actual combat, and the repercussions from their 
 service vary greatly.  But for some, plotting targets safely behind the 
 battle lines for the carpet bombing of civilians can be as deeply 
 guilt-inducing as face to face killing.  Some vets who have returned have 
 happily married local women and have raised families.  Of course there are 
 other US war vets who live in Southeast Asia only for the beautiful women, 
 low prices and cheap beer.  However these men do not engender the people's 
 trust and respect shown to the veterans of conscience. \n\n    Unknown to 
 most Americans, more than 300,000 South Koreans fought in Viet Nam as 
 essentially colonial troops for the US.  In return, S. Korea benefitted 
 greatly from massive infusions of US aid and investment.  But Korean 
 soldiers also suffered the consequences of their participation, and have 
 likewise established non-profit projects, development programs and 
 businesses in Viet Nam.  A new hospital for Viet Namese AO patients will be 
 completed by S. Korea by the end of 2009.  Australia and New Zealand sent a 
 few thousand men to the war effort, as part of an earlier version of "the 
 coalition of the willing."  Citizens, veterans and even the governments of 
 these past war-time US allies feel their share of responsibility to Viet 
 Nam for "the American War."  The US government does not.  \n\n    The 
 lifting of the punishing 20-year embargo in 1995 was conditioned 
 specifically on Viet Nam's waiving of any demand for war reparations.  
 Likewise, the US chemical corporations who made the dioxin-laden Agent 
 Orange refuse all responsibility and are today fighting a class-action 
 lawsuit brought against them in 2004 by their victims: Viet Namese, Viet 
 Namese-Americans and US veterans.  There are an estimated 3 to 4 million AO 
 victims now living in Viet Nam; many of them are children.  Even the South 
 Korean courts have ruled that the major corporations – Dow and Monsanto - 
 who manufactured AO are responsible for compensating their victims, 
 including Korean soldiers.\n\n    Even foreign veterans who were involved 
 in combat before the US stepped into South East Asia in the mid-1950s are 
 committed to helping Viet Nam rebuild.  The Frenchmen who were enlisted 
 right after World War II to recapture their Indochina colonies from 
 Japanese occupation are also active in supporting the work of their fellow 
 vets to undo in Viet Nam.  Since all colonial wars are unjustifiable, even 
 some French veterans of the Algerian War (of the late '50s and early '60s) 
 live in-country to direct relief funds.  Some of these French veterans were 
 to be seen at the March, 2008 10th anniversary celebration of the 
 Friendship Village.  \n\n    There also seems to be a strange, but then 
 again not so strange, brotherhood of nations who were victims of war.   
 It's well known that the former Soviet Union was a critical ally of the 
 Viet Namese in their war of independence from foreign domination, aiding 
 them during the American War, and later from attacks by Cambodia and China 
 after 1975, then literally preventing mass starvation during the US 
 embargo.  The vanquished of WW II, Germany and Japan, are today major 
 funders of Viet Nam's rebuilding.  Both these defeated countries benefited 
 greatly from America’s Marshall Plan to rebuild them after 1945.  Not so 
 the "victorious" Viet Namese.\n\n       Much of American society remains 
 conflicted to this day about this war and its veterans.  To say it haunts 
 us is an understatement.  Some refuse to condemn the war as a crime, or at 
 the very least a mistake, and still vilify those who served for "losing."  
 (The first Persian Gulf War was supposed to have dispelled "The Vietnam 
 Syndrome" for any Americans who felt we'd been defeated in the '70s.)   
 Others feel some compassion for the past, but do not oppose new American 
 military invasions and occupations – assured that these are 
 “different.”  But for still other Americans, the Viet Nam War deeply 
 horrified and radicalized them for life, clarifying an understanding of 
 American Imperialism as no coup or proxy war ever could.  Obviously, the 
 way America views our largest war of the past 60 years, determines how it 
 views today’s military aggressions in the name of “Freedom.”  \n\n    
 For the men and women who participated directly in the Viet Nam War, only 
 they know their reality.  Some, apparently, can truly “put it behind 
 them” and forget, others are crushed by the burden of memory, and still 
 others have grown past guilt and anguish to turn their involvement to a 
 humanitarian healing.  For those who have decided to "give back" and "help" 
 their former enemies/victims, each would say that it is they who have 
 received so much more in 
 return.\n\n________________________________________________________________________\n\nWebsites 
 of related organizations:\n\nVeterans for Peace - www.veteransforpeace.org, 
 Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign - 
 www.vn-agentorange.org, The Friendship Village - www.friendshipvillage.org, 
 Project Renew - www.landmines.org.vn, The Vietnam Children's Fund - 
 www.vietnamchildren.org, Quang Nam Fund - www.danangquangnamfund.org and 
 www.agentorangechildren.org, Bread of Life Bakery - 
 www.partnersincompassion.org,  Green Vietnam - www.greenvietnam.org\n\n 
 \n\nNadya Williams visited Viet Nam for three months in early 2008.  She is 
 a former Asia study-tour coordinator for Global Exchange, a San 
 Francisco-based human rights non-profit.  She is an active associate member 
 of Veterans for Peace, San Francisco chapter, and an associate member of 
 Vietnam Veterans Against the War.  She is on the national board of the New 
 York-based Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign.  Her 
 first demonstration against the Viet Nam war was in 1963 at the University 
 of California at Berkeley.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/05/01/18646329.php
SUMMARY:"Meeting the Enemy: A Marine Goes Home" w Suel Jones who's written about living in Vietnam
LOCATION:The Beat Museum - North Beach, San Francisco\n540 Broadway @ Columbus 
 Avenue\n
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/05/01/18646329.php
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