Dear Diary From Vietnam : Peace: A Woodland Hills man and other veterans return to rebuild a medical clinic destroyed during the war. The visit is painful and memorable.

It has been good for me to see these beautiful people and this beautiful country at peace. All my memories of VN were of war, suffering and destruction. I sort of loved this country though they sent us here for war. Now that it’s free, I love it even more .

--from the diary of Charles Nixon,

Wednesday, Sept. 12, 1990.

War veteran Charles Nixon returned to Vietnam this fall chiefly for intellectual reasons--to travel in a Third World country and, as he put it, to witness firsthand the effects of U.S. foreign policy.

Maybe it’s because he was an ambulance driver during his 1966-67 Army stint in Saigon and, by his own account, was spared much of the war’s horrors. He came home to finish college, hold a steady job, marry a woman who’s become his soul mate, and start a successful contracting business--hardly the tormented postwar experiences of some others.

He was caught off guard, then, by his roller coaster emotions during the recent visit and by the inexplicable power that Vietnam and his long-dormant memories of it held over him.

“I expected to go back and visit a country at peace and learn more,” Nixon said recently in the den of his Woodland Hills home. “I didn’t expect to be so moved by the country. It was a tremendous emotional experience for me and caught me by surprise.

“The biggest thing for me was all I knew about Vietnam, all my images of Vietnam, were from the war, and I had nothing to replace them with,” said Nixon, 46, a tall, striking man who said he was brought up to fear Communists and feelings. “Now, I have a whole country, and people, and sunsets.”

Between Sept. 4 and Oct. 30, Nixon joined seven other veterans on a “peace and reconciliation mission” outside Hanoi, a six-week adventure during which they helped rebuild a medical clinic in the village of Yen Vien. According to the Veterans Vietnam Restoration Project (VVRP), the nonprofit group that organized the trip, the clinic had been out of use since it was destroyed by U.S. bombs 20 years ago.

Nixon and his colleagues lived in a guest house with dormitory-like quarters and worked side by side with their former enemies. All were in their 40s, five of the eight were unmarried. Several suffered post-traumatic stress as a result of fighting in the war. They took side trips organized by the local branch of the Communist Party, and followed the orders of Vietnamese construction managers.

One veteran flew home to Kentucky during the first week after acknowledging that he didn’t feel comfortable around the Vietnamese, couldn’t work with them and couldn’t control his paranoia. Others, such as Nixon’s roommate from Maine, grew so close to their foreign co-workers that they wept like children when they said goodby.

This country at peace is beautiful. Why did our government rain such awful destruction on these people? It seems that VN is a national sore spot. Guess Washington learned some lessons from the experience but were they the right ones? The American people still don’t understand the U.S. involvement.

--Nixon diary,

Wednesday, Sept. 12

It was the third such trip for the 2-year-old VVRP, which operates with a small staff and donated funds in Garberville, Calif. Although Vietnam Veterans of America has sponsored several tours in the past three years, VVRP is the only such group that provides humanitarian aid to Vietnam, organizing volunteers to help build medical facilities and donating medical supplies.

Fifteen years after the controversial war ended, organized American travel to Vietnam is still illegal because the U.S. government maintains a trade embargo with the country, refusing to restore normal diplomatic and commercial relations.

The trips sponsored by VVRP, however, are sanctioned under a 1987 agreement between the two countries that allows private groups to provide humanitarian aid.

“We are actually participating in the construction of facilities and the trips are just a side matter,” said Scott Rutherford, VVRP’s development coordinator, adding that another trip is planned next fall.

Nixon described the trip as a rewarding but extremely difficult experience, in which the group’s internal dynamics, difficult as they were, were compounded daily by the frustrations of working in a foreign culture. They had to cope with language and cultural barriers, the intense, Southeast Asian heat and claustrophobic humidity, “Ho Chi Minh’s Revenge” and a debilitating virus that struck the group.

The trip didn’t change his life, Nixon said, but affirmed his political convictions that nations have a right to self-determination and the U.S. should not interfere. It also furthered his long effort to show emotion more openly.

On most days, he would work on the construction site until the early afternoon or until he succumbed to the heat, hauling buckets of concrete and bricks by hand or shoveling debris. Even to Nixon, a contractor, it was back-breaking work.

He read a lot of Vietnamese history, and eventually felt relaxed enough to take long bike rides through Hanoi, an ancient city of parks and trees he said he prefers even to Paris.

He had been euphoric after a four-day orientation session in rural Sebastopol, where a pair of psychologists helped the travelers get to know each other and guided them through their tangle of feelings.

“The past four days have, as everyone admits, seemed more like four weeks. As a group we seemed to have come together, feel closer. The self-revelations and acceptance by others has increased feelings of trust and caring. Truly a unique experience, I felt like I had gone through a sort of emotional Basic Training.”

--Nixon’s diary on Tuesday,

Sept. 4, as the group prepared

to leave the United States.

For Nixon--who avoided war protests when he came home because he “wanted to get on with my life”--it was the first time he had been exposed directly to other veterans’ suffering.

“One vet told about the first time he shot someone in combat,” Nixon said. “He was ambushed by three North Vietnamese and shot one in the chest. The guy cried out in pain. Twenty years later, he still remembers it and feels guilty about it.”

Another, a Medal of Honor recipient, revealed a scar on his torso that “looks like a road map” Nixon said. Another was homeless. Another had lost several friends from the blue-collar town in New England where they grew up and were drafted.

But group members drifted apart. One of Nixon’s biggest disappointments was that once in Vietnam “people retreated into their own shells and acted like they did during the war,” he said.

The group held a few, loosely organized “rap” sessions, but the meetings weren’t held regularly. And Nixon’s efforts to record his colleagues’ lives before, during and after the war were rejected in a few cases, increasing his loneliness and feelings of isolation.

Nixon said he thinks future trips should include a psychologist or counselor as an escort, a suggestion Rutherford said VVRP was seriously considering.

I keep thinking all feelings are not so pleasant but they all are better than feeling dead or numb. I’ve opened myself up to a lot of pain etc . , but it feels like the right thing to do. Reaching out to those people at the restaurant was the right thing to do even if it hurt a lot.

--Nixon diary, Monday, Oct. 15

A human rights activist who has traveled in Cuba and Central America with his wife, Louise, Nixon was anxious to meet and talk with Vietnamese and learn how the Communist society worked. Sometimes he succeeded, and on his last night in Hanoi enjoyed dinner with a couple of government information agents he had talked to all afternoon.

But Nixon said he also had a few frustrating encounters with Vietnamese--possibly because of the language barrier, but also, he thinks, because of lingering bitterness from the war. One evening, he had struck up a conversation with a restaurant manager and she ordered a pot of tea--in Vietnam, a gesture of friendship.

The woman’s husband joined them and after a while, Nixon invited the couple and their 6-year-old daughter to see a movie the following night. They made a date, and the husband even offered to pick up Nixon at his guest house.

But the new bond came apart when Nixon got his dinner bill. He realized the woman had charged him for the “friendship” tea, and for a hot steamed towel he hadn’t ordered but used to be polite.

Nixon says he paid the higher amount, although it was clear he was upset. At that point, he recalled, the woman’s husband began a pantomime of a soldier with a machine gun and, looking directly at Nixon, repeated “B-52 pilot, B-52 pilot”--shorthand for the ultimate enemy to the North Vietnamese.

“I was really hurt and felt betrayed,” Nixon later wrote in his diary. “I felt like I opened up and made a friendly gesture and got kicked you-know-where.”

Yet, on the last day of work Nixon’s group held a banquet for their Vietnamese co-workers and many of the Vietnamese and Americans cried, Nixon included.

“I had seen Ted and Truy sitting together before dinner, Ted 6 feet 2 inches, 240 pounds, carpenter-veteran; Truy 5 feet 4 inches 130 pounds,” Nixon wrote about his roommate and the man’s Vietnamese friend.

“Truy was leaning against Ted with his head on Ted’s shoulder. Truy, the NVA soldier who could have killed some of the friends that Ted lost in the war, was like a puppy about to be separated from his mother. So was Ted. So was I.

“We were all deeply moved. This was the hardest parting I’ve ever experienced. I’ve cried at partings a little in the past, but never like this.”

EXCERPTS FROM YEN VIEN DIARY Sept. 9

We went for walk to Hanoi. Left 10 a.m., warm and humid. Traffic crazy, people friendly, smiles and greetings by many. Do they know we are U.S. or not?

Sept. 10

One lady refused us service in her shop. Why? Because we were U.S.? Could she have lost family to U.S. bombs or the war? Who knows? Maybe I should go back with a note from my translator and ask tomorrow? Sept. 11

This is our 2nd day on the job site. The rare combination of heat, humidity and hard work has humbled even the most proud of us. No one wants to impress the Vietnamese now. We are all hoping to be able to survive a full day. Sept. 15

I am looking at the faces of these bright, healthy, beautiful children. I’m reminded of the thousands and thousands of children we must have killed with bombs and napalm during the war. Sept. 19

Feel nervous walking in crowds at the marketplace. So many people and anyone could do something. Heard an Australian tourist was stabbed to death in the street in Hanoi a few weeks ago. Sept. 21

Everybody here seems to be really stressed out. The work is boring and we don’t know what to do. Illness, lack of familiar things. The noise from the traffic, horns honking, etc. is horrendous. We are planning on American movies and dinner tomorrow to relieve the stress. Help. I’m homesick. Oct. 6

It has been good for me to see these beautiful people and this beautiful country at peace. All my memories of VN were of war, suffering and destruction. I sort of loved this country though they sent us here for war. Now that it’s free, I love it even more. Oct. 7

The VN know how to build and we are learning from them, NOT the other way around. Last time the US came here and tried to control the VN and get them to do things the American way. Oct. 10

The people’s committee took us to a variety show in Hanoi tonight. It was interesting. Singers, comedians, even some acrobats. Even did the lambada within one mile of Communist Party Headquarters. Decadent!