Yesterday morning when Carol and I entered St. Paul's Church in Paterson for the annual Pentecost service we were greeted by what sounded very much like music from the classic Simon & Garfunkel (above left) song - "The Sounds of Silence." The reason that it sounded so much like "The Sounds of Silence" was it was "The Sounds of Silence." The music was used as a setting for a sung version of the Lord's Prayer which was haunting and in my case, at least, brought back a lot of memories.
For someone who spent the late 60's and early 70's in college, graduate school and the army, the music of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel captured certain feeling and events in very effective ways that were hard to explain. One thing in particular that came to mind yesterday were four words from a song called "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" - the words are "Sail along silver bird."
I have not idea what their intent was behind those words, but for me they capture perfectly a picture of my time in Cam Ranh Bay Vietnam. During the Vietnam War most of us got there and came back by airplane - a 20 hour flight from between Seattle, Washington and either Saigon or Cam Ran Bay. The U.S government contracted those flights out to commercial carriers so I went to war on either Pan American or American Airlines - I am not sure which. Of course, in the army, we had our names for everything, I don't remember if there was a name for the planes that took you to Vietnam (if there was it was probably unprintable), but the planes that brought you home were called "freedom birds."
In Cam Ranh Bay where I spent my entire tour of duty without leaving the peninsula once, except for R&R in Australia, there wasn't much in the way of scenery. It was basically sand, sand and more sand set off by some scrub vegetation. On top of that the buildings weren't much to look at, for the most part think basic Quonset hut. I distinctly remember one sunny Sunday morning coming out of the officers mess hall very early and seeing a "freedom bird" leaving Cam Ranh airbase on the way to Tokoyo and then back to the United States. Immediately those four words from that Simon & Garfunkel song came into my mind and have stayed their ever since. Seeing a "freedom bird" was a big deal, we would sometimes leave our office just to watch one - obviously we wished we were on it, but it at the very least it gave us a sense of hope that our time would come.
I am also reminded by this of one thing about the flight to Vietnam, as I say on either Pan Am or American Airlines. Throughout the flight we got the typical messages from the stewardesses and the cockpit that happen on every commercial flight. As we got into the last leg of the flight passing over the Vietnam countryside on the way to Saigon, I kept hoping there would be some acknowledgement of where we were going and/or what we were doing. But I hoped in vain, it ended the with typical commercial hoping we would fly their air line again.
I suppose in some ways that was a metaphor for the entire Vietnam experience, if you weren't part of it, the rest of society just went on with their lives. When I came back from Vietnam in January of 1972, I set about finding a job, of course in each interview there were questions about what I had just been doing. Almost without exception when I said, I was just back from Vietnam, the unspoken body language was pretty much - "how come you were so stupid that you couldn't find a way out." The bitter veteran can almost be a cliche and I am not trying to be like that, but that reaction was clearly there. Of course since then there have been a lot of efforts to try to appropriately recognize Vietnam veterans, but it was fairly ironic last year when at three different major league baseball games all veterans were asked to stand. Ironic because that was three more times than I had been honored in the previous 36 years - as I have come to learn irony is not as enjoyable when you are recipient!
No comments:
Post a Comment