#vietnam war
About once a month I run into an older American gentleman who tells me stories about his life and his time in Vietnam. He regularly reads my blog and recently told me that he has one of his own and that there were several posts I (and anyone who reads my blog) may be interested in so I thought I’d share one here!
.
(Do not read this too close to mealtime.)
.
This incident took place in northwestern Pennsylvania USA in April, May or June sometime in the mid-1990s, in the first really consistently hot days of the year. This is the time of the year when the remains of animals that had been road-killed by cars during winter and left along the roads smell most rank. My many walks along highways and back-roads have always confirmed this.
.
I was living at Wilderness Park high up on the Allegheny Plateau and hiking often out on the back trails in the Allegheny National Forest, which was just out my back door. One section of my favorite trail paralleled a back-road for a brief while at a distance of several hundred yards across a quite wild forested area, but if the wind was right you could occasionally hear motor vehicles on the road across that stretch of woods.
.
On this one particularly hot day as I was hiking this trail, the wind was blowing from the direction of this back-road, and I caught a couple of different whiffs of road-kill from that direction. One of the smells was extra strong, and I was sure that it must be a very big animal such as a deer or even a bear.
.
Immediately after this time I started to have very vivid, extremely violent and disturbing nightmares that involved stark images and memories of the Vietnam War. They went on for a week or two. I had not had nightmares like this for a long time, so I could not account for it.
.
I have had other war-related nightmares that could be easily explained, before and after this episode. Back in 1986 after seeing the very authentic movie “Platoon” in the theater, I immediately had nightmares and disturbed sleep for a two week period.
.
Also, a number of years later – long after this incident at Wilderness Park that I am presently describing had occurred – I again had disturbed sleep for a period, and I am sure that this latter episode was because at that time I was teaching US Military History for two semesters. As a brand-new course preparation for me, I was reading about and thinking of war all of the time, and I was especially thinking of it last of all before sleep-time. (I gladly handed over this course to a teacher both well-qualified and very eager to teach it, because it pleased him very much and contributed to his morale as a history teacher on our team, it strengthened our history department’s program, and it got the nightmares out of my head.) But these two episodes, the one before and the one after the Wilderness Park one, were not as disturbing as the one I now describe in the mid-1990s.
.
I could not explain why I was having these vivid nightmares at this particular time, so I just assumed it was the hot humid weather triggering memories of tropical Vietnam. I turned up the a/c at night but still had the horrific nightmares.
.
Then I belatedly got the community gossip. It was not road-kill that I had smelled after all. Two neighborhood boys on their bicycles had discovered a woman dead in her car on an obscure turn-off dead-end lane off from that back-road that paralleled my hiking trail. She had committed suicide in her car with the windows down earlier on one of those fine days of spring, and she was not discovered until a while after the fact, and this along with the extreme hot weather put her into a bad state of decomposition. The location of her body was exactly upwind of the place on my hiking trail where I had smelled on that day what I thought was a big animal road-kill, and the timeframe was an exact match – i.e., I had smelled the scent before her discovery. It had never occurred to my conscious mind that it was not the smell of a regular road-kill of a forest animal.
.
Dead mammals have a particular smell, but dead humans have a unique one. The best descriptions will usually tell you that a human’s decomposition smell is a sickeningly “sweet” smell. The only time I smelled this smell intensely was in Vietnam. In the tropical heat, decomposition worked fast. Our own dead were zipped into body bags and brought out as quickly as possible, but sometimes not quick enough. Enemy dead were often neglected, especially in more remote areas, and you were reminded of them by the smell whenever you went back through that area. It was a smell that you wished at the time that you could somehow flush and cleanse out of your nostrils, sinuses and skull, but it stayed with you. By the 1990s I had completely forgotten about all of this through the years, especially the fact of the uniqueness of the smell of human decomposition.
.
So now I became convinced that, 25 years after being in Vietnam, the ripe death-smell of this unfortunate woman near Wilderness Park triggered memories of the war somewhere inside my subconscious and completely without my conscious knowledge, thus producing unexplained nightmares. It made me a believer that memories can reside in the mind closely linked to the sense of smell.
.
I began writing this document when I read (on 18 September 2008) the following article in Science Daily online. The linked article is named, “Emotion and Scent Create Lasting Memories – Even in a Sleeping Brain,” and describes experiments on the brain chemistry of mice at the Duke University Medical Center and is published in The Journal of Neuroscience. Implications for other mammals such as humans are clear.
.
It all falls into place and makes perfect sense to me.
.
[Sources: news of a new study, reported in Science Daily online, Sniffing Out Danger: Fearful Memories Can Trigger Heightened Sense of Smell. The original journal article was published in Science and titled, “Fear Learning Enhances Neural Responses to Threat-Predictive Sensory Stimuli.”]
In 1973, the last US combat troops left South Vietnam, and the American government never again inserted itself into a complicated conflict that no one cared to understand.
God damn it. Is it too early for whiskey?
Sắp 8/3, daddy có thể tặng em ít cum được không?
Fl ins mới của e là : @hahuetruc_
, facebook: Hạ Huệ Trúc Nguyễn
, Twitter: hahuetrucn : để xem ảnh full ạ.
Chúc các tình yêu ăn ngon miệng ❤
Em ước chúng ta có những chuyến đi thật xa nơi phồn hoa đô thị này. Đến những nơi chỉ có 2 ta ♥♥♥
Fl instagram : @hahuetruc để xem ảnh đẹp
Instagram :hahuetrucn
“ Daddy phạt hư bae bằng dây trói
Bae giết daddy bằng những cơn tê! ” ♥♥♥
Manificient in BDSM
Bộ ảnh cho Noel năm nay đã hoàn thành
Fotos by Quang Toàn Lê
MUA by Misd Thùy
Model : Hạ Huệ Trúc Nguyễn
Do bị rip instagram nên mình tạo instagram mới. Mong mọi người có thể kéo fl lại giúp mình chứ instagram buôn bán…. Chắc đói quá!
Halloween bé vẫn chưa có kẹooooo
“Anh ơi, em chưa đủ 18, vậy anh có muốn chờ em lên 18 để phá zin em không?” ♥♥♥
Sài gòn tôi mưa
Bé nhận làm mẫu ảnh nhé mọi người ♥
@stevebunge asked about the anniversary and about how things are here in Kent, Ohio. Thanks for the question - I’m glad for the reason to share these incredible resources with you all.
Kent State University and the city planned an extensive observance of the 50th Anniversary (that a lot of people feel is a watered-down version of what could and should have been produced.) We were able to have the opening live event on March 8th - a concert at the UCC “We March On! Music of Social Justice” featuring the Cleveland Chamber Choir and my daughter’s Kent Roosevelt High School Choir ChoralWorks.
All of the music was by women composers. One of the pieces had five parts, each a unique composition with lyrics that were the final words of unarmed black men and boys moments before they were killed.
Another, that doesn’t have lyrics, only sounds, was posted to YouTube yesterday. It’s one of the most moving pieces of choral music I’ve experienced live. I am so grateful I was there.
The next day I flew to Vegas and then everything fell apart. None of the other live events happened.
KSU compiled resources here, with a pretty good video below the fold on the home page. The video ends with an incredible performance of Ohio by David Crosby and the Sky Trails Band at the Kent Stage a few years ago. Goosebumps.
My friend David Hassler’s powerful play May 4 Voices was done as a radio play featuring Tina Fey. I can’t recommend listening to this enough - you can listen to it here.
My friend Kabir teaches Pan African Studies and is faculty adviser for Students for a Democratic Society. He and many of the students are featured in this article.
Our 33rd Annual Jawbone Poetry Festival that kicks off the actual May 4th weekend with 3 days and nights of poetry all around Kent was held as a 4 hour open reading that about 50 people tuned into on Zoom. It was strange and left a big gaping poetry shaped hole in our hearts to not be able to stand by the Cuyahoga where it bends by the railroad tracks and shout our poems against the clacking of the train and into the rolling water.
I do know that some people attended the ringing of the bell ceremony and visited Daffodil Hill (where 58,175 bulbs are planted - one for each American life lost in Vietnam). The blooms are something to behold and doubly surreal against the backdrop of the pandemic and the knowledge that more lives have been lost to COVID in only a few months.
Downtown Kent is sparse and quiet except on warm days when everyone is out walking. I avoid it and stick to my neighborhood sidewalks on the west side of town. A few restaurants have managed to stay open doing takeout and many are uncertain how to manage the dine-in experience that is set to begin on May 21. There seems to be a collective “I don’t fucking think so” in the air about reopening now.
KSU announced a $30M budget cut and adjuncts are scrambling to find work. The city is talking major cuts, too. Not sure how that will shake out yet. Nearby Akron University announced a $70M budget cut in the face of ongoing struggles pre-COVID and say they will eliminate 6 of its 11 colleges. I don’t even have words.
Meanwhile my grass is overgrown and my Dogwood and Redbud and tulips are in full glorious bloom. Garden plans are slowly coming together. I have potential work on the horizon. Kent, Ohio is a beautiful place to live but it will never be the same place it was again, just as it was never the same after the day the national guard killed four unarmed students and injured nine others, paralyzing one.
The struggle that caused May 4th continues and I am grateful for all of the people who are working so hard to help shape the new reality in a positive, healthy, equitable way in the face of so much ugliness.
Seizure of the SS Mayaguez
Shortly after the fall of Saigon, the merchant ship SS Mayaguez left Hong Kong on what was considered a routine voyage to Sattahip, Thailand. The ship was piloted by Captain Charles T. Miller, a veteran with more than 40 years experience, and a crew of 39 seamen.
The international shipping lane brought the Mayaguez within eight miles of Poulo Wai Island. Unknown to Captain Miller, the Cambodians had recently claimed these waters as theirs; according to them the Mayaguez was trespassing.
After 2 p.m. local time on May 12, 1975, the Mayaguez was approached by a small, fast gunboat. The boat fired across the bow of the Mayaguez. The sailors on the boat were young Cambodian men from the Khmer Rouge army - and they were armed with machine guns that they aimed at Captain Miller and his crew.
Captain Miller sent a mayday message: “Have been fired upon and boarded by Cambodian armed forces at 9 degrees/48 minutes north/102 degrees /53 minutes east. Ship is being towed to unknown Cambodian port.”
In Washington, DC, President Ford was alerted to the situation. During the first of an on-going series of National Security Council meetings over the next few days, President Ford and his advisers discussed if this was an act of piracy. “Yes” was the clear answer. They would continue to assess the situation and hammer out a decisive response.
Press Secretary Ron Nessen issued a statement regarding the ship’s seizure following the meeting, telling the press that the President “has instructed State Department to demand the immediate release of the ship. Failure to do so would have most serious consequences.”
President Ford convened the National Security Council in the evening of April 28, 1975, to discuss the final evacuation of Saigon, Vietnam.
Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Joint Chief of Staffs Chairman General George Brown, Director of Central Intelligence William Colby, and Deputy National Security Adviser Lt. General Brent Scowcroft reported on conditions around the city and the advance of North Vietnamese troops.
The meeting ended at 8:08 p.m. with the President and NSC having decided to continue the evacuation by fixed-wing aircraft at Tan Son Nhut airport for as long as possible. The helicopter lift would begin once the other planes could no longer get in.
President Ford continued to monitor developments in Saigon with Secretary Kissinger. Within a few hours North Vietnamese shelling of Tan Son Nhut airport and debris on the runways prevented military transport planes from landing there. Around 11:00 p.m. President Ford ordered the final evacuation.
Secretary Kissinger sent a telegram to Ambassador Graham Martin to inform him of the President’s decision regarding the evacuation. Over the course of sixteen hours, helicopters removed over 6,500 U.S. and South Vietnamese personnel from the city. Saigon fell under the control of North Vietnamese forces on April 30, 1975.
Images: President Gerald R. Ford Presiding Over a National Security Council Meeting Regarding the Situation in South Vietnam, 4/28/1975 (National Archives Identifier 23898449)
Telegram from Henry Kissinger to Ambassador Graham Martin Regarding President Gerald R. Ford’s Decision on the Evacuation of Saigon, South Vietnam, 4/29/1975 (National Archives Identifier 7367498)