Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam By Morley Safer

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They are enemy until proven innocent I feel no remorse You can t do your job and feel pity for these people The worst reaction to the Cam Ne affair came from the White House President Johnson threatened to expose Safer s communist ties Even dismaying for me was the inclusion of Bill Moyers in all of this He is a man I admire I guess it just shows what the times were like The Cham people lived long ago The relics of the Champa Empire are stolen and sold on the black market One man hired Vietnamese infantry to foray deep into VC territory to pillage a Cham temple Even chaplains mugged for the cameras Safer saw one cover his face with mud when he saw cameras approaching Their goal was probably to convert soldiers and to make a mark for themselves later Some famous people got special treatment Like the novelist John Steinbeck who was thought to be favorable to the war The hawkish Joseph Alsop could be counted on to write favorable columns Walter Cronkite was a bit harder to win over LBJ was supposed to have said.

Flashbacks bar and grill

Looking back on it He wrote this poem There s an American soldier Who returns to northern Cu Chi He bends his back to the tunnels What does he see What does he think There s a Vietnamese hero Now a grandfather He asks the American to share wine Outside the tunnel Each man is silent As he looks into the other s eyes Something is rising like a deep pain The war was terrible All that time past The dead lost their bodies The living lost their homes How many American soldiers Died in this land How many Vietnamese Lie buried under trees and grass The pain still lingers Why should we remember it We are old.

CBS reporter Morley Safer brought Vietnam into our living rooms Twenty five years later Safer returns to Vietnam for a compelling look back at the war and the legacy it left in that fateful land Vivid and powerfully written Flashbacks is Morley Safer s unique exploration of Vietnam past and present It is a seasoned newsman s moving portrait of a time and place none of us can forget Flashbacks On Returning to VietnamMorley Safer was a reporter and correspondent for CBS News Safer was a correspondent for the news program 60 Minutes from 1970 2016. Flashbacks bar and grill Dry but informative I don t think I am the intended audience as there s no real backstory for any of Safer s experiences I have a rudimentary understanding of Vietnam but for those who know this book would probably be enjoyable He writes like a journalist not a novelist It was a very interesting read and look into the complicated web of Vietnam 15 years after the Americans left Hardcover Safer wrote this book back in 1989 when he visited Vietnam 14 years after the fall of Saigon As he says Not until I returned to Vietnam did I really begin to understand the grip the place had maintained on me I second that statement Interview with Bui Tin Colonel of the People s Army retired Kissinger believed if Americans weren t winning they were losing The NVA believed if they weren t losing they were winning Soldiers would march on the Ho Chi Minh trail for 12 hours at a time then dig in for 2 hours A man could lose 200 grams of blood a day from leeches Many men bled to death They once shot an elephant and ate meat for 5 days Men drowned fell off cliffs died of malaria and snakebite He was puzzled by the one year tour of duty for American soldiers Six months for learning three for fighting and the last three trying to stay alive and make it home Such a policy made no sense to him It was actually Westland s idea By spreading out the duty he seemed unaware that he was exposing Americans to disenchantment and a sense of uselessness And fragging had begun At the other extreme was General Giap s mercilessness about sending his troops to their deaths He thought the B 52 raids were the worst thing he had to deal with The worst part of the War was the time after the 1968 Tet offensive It was a huge price but worth it for the change it caused in America For me that s just a lack of sensitivity to what actually happened When Safer talks about all the NVA wounded he sees Bui Tin brags about independence Such bullshit He has actually visited the War Memorial Wall in Washington He thinks it is important to remember Westland believed Asians had a different attitude towards death They don t think about death the way we do They accept it very fatalistically Pardon me while I vomit I have heard those types of beliefs many times during the War Once again however we must mention that the other side wasn t much better They treated ARVN soldiers like they were only puppets Safer remembers Long Binh and all the amenities such as swimming pools the soldiers had there He tells the story of how once an old Vietnamese farmer was shot with a grenade launcher by a nervous guard It did not explode but was stuck in him He walked 15 miles to Saigon for help A team of American doctors protected by sandbags removed the missile He then hopped off the cot and walked back home Dr Hoa was a pediatrician who was a spy for the VC In 1979 she left the party disillusioned She feels no bitterness that ARVN soldiers killed her brother In the context of war she finds it logical Smart woman She feels the leaders now cannot function in peace All they know is war and indoctrination They have become corrupt with their new power And ARVN soldiers have endured four years of reeducation camps Those poor guys were always treated like the bottom rung of a ladder Many veterans abuse their wives and children They have no jobs no money They feel abandoned She feels nobody won this war One of her workers is a former ARVN officer She was the only one willing to help him He spent four years in reeducation camps It was slave labor Only enough food to barely stay alive Safer attends a group meeting of former NVA soldiers and American veterans The Communist host rattles on about defeating imperialism and other such nonsense Finally Safer breaks the rule of interference and urges the man politely to shut the fuck up Which he does Then the soldiers finally talk about their experiences in the War Colonel Hoa describes finding a woman whose legs had been cut off by shrapnel Beyond pain she knew she was going to die She asks the Colonel to kiss her before she dies He does just that I can never forgive Monsanto and Dow for Agent Orange and napalm The area around Quang Tri is a poisoned land In August 1965 Safer reported on the burning of the hamlet of Cam Ne by marines Following the broadcast Safer carried a weapon for the first time fearing for his life The story was broadcast over and over again around the world Marines had taken fire from there every time they went by This causes a rage that seeks revenge The hootches are being set on fire There are voices in one Terrified people and a baby crying A lieutenant orders a private to torch it A Vietnamese reporter asks them to wait He talks a woman and her baby to come out After the report on CBS the marines felt they were stabbed in the back Officials lied about what happened In fact Cam Ne was part of the fortified hamlet program that the US had urged the Diem government to start It turns out the operation was requested by the province chief for nonpayment of taxes A reported 150 houses were destroyed Four prisoners were old men five wounded were women No guns no captured soldiers CBS was called the Communist Broadcast System One marine said If we ve lost Cronkite we ve lost the war after the 1968 Tet Offensive Hundreds of homeless people in Ho Chi Minh City Some are ex ARVN soldiers They desperately pass notes trying to reach long gone Americans who might be able to help them Interview with Pham Van Thuong who used to be in the Mike forces They were mainly Cambodian Montagnard and Nung tribesmen Commanded by 12 man teams of US special forces Mike means Mobile Strike Forces Among the best trained and most reliable soldiers Were well fed well led and well paid Also among the most cruel Some Nung mercenaries filled mason jars with ears they cut off from dead enemy soldiers Ethnic minorities hated the Vietnamese Once the Nung and the Vietnamese started to fight each other Cutting off ears may have started with the VC but nobody knows for sure Thoung was sought after when Saigon fell The VC smashed out his teeth He went to reeducation camp for ten years ARVN officers went for about 5 or 6 Thuong wants Safer to meet his wife Pham Xuan An was a correspondent for Time magazine but he was also a spy for the North Vietnamese Even he was sent to reeducation camp because he was corrupted by being with the westerners Van Le describes killing an American Now it starts to bother him our era past Our mistakes belong to bygone days Now the wineglass joins friends in peace The old men lift their glasses Tears run down their cheeks Safer is approached by two men Duong The Tu and Tran Duc Suu They worked for CBS and now 14 years later are looking for 3000 apiece that is owed them because they are desperately poor Safer promises to relay their message He takes their pictures to prove who they are A year later they will be sent the money They tell Safer they will work for CBS again in the future if needed Boat People suffered horrible indignities trying to leave the country Under pressure from world nations Vietnam set up Orderly Departure Plan But it is corrupt and slow Perhaps half the nation lives with bags packed hoping to leave Hardcover One of the most influential and trustworthy correspondents covering Vietnam for a national network Morley Safer returned to Vietnam before the normalization of diplomatic relations with the US and provide a clear sense of how the Vietnamese were processing the war The most important chapters though concern Safer s reflections on the pressures good journalists came under as they tried their damndest to tell the truth in a situation enveloped in lies Hardcover This is an account of Morley Safer s return to Vietnam the scene of his career making and acclaimed reporting for CBS NEWS during the war twenty years later I happened upon it in a used bookshop and having enjoyed his iconoclastic reports on 60 Minutes I picked it up It s a short book and very idiosyncratic He manages to convey a lot of his sharp insights and asides throughout including a sarcastic comment about Trump many years before the White House I think this is a curiosity and would only be interesting if you knew who Morley was and enjoyed his voice Hardcover In general it s safe to assume that authors write books to convince readers of their opinions But with Flashbacks On Returning to Vietnam I get the feeling that Morley Safer isn t trying to persuade us of anything It began just as notes turned into a letter to his daughter and only then became a book Indeed chapter 12 begins with the comment Why am I keeping these notes Flashbacks is just a ramble through Vietnam as much as it simply a ramble through Safer s memories and it s an informative and entertaining ramble While The young people regard the war merely as history for Morley Safer as it is for many of those he meets it s an inescapable part of their souls For those readers familiar with journalistic coverage of the American war the chapter on the in famous Phan Xuan An is worth the price of the book alone An s comment To me in a certain way loyalty is a totally American idea is particularly striking So even if Morley Safer isn t trying to convince us of his opinions there is still much wisdom in this book and this view of life But then again perhaps Safer is just clever and I have been convinced Hardcover The only thing I recall 25 years after reading this is Safer s scathing description of meeting fellow CBS correspondent Dan Rather in a Saigon bar I can t imagine Rather ever forgiving him for that depiction Safer obviously had no f s to give in 1990 or a score to settle with Rather Who knows now Hardcover