For Wartime Allies, an Uneasy Peace

Because it is a product of war, it’s complicated. But the divide goes something like this:

Some American veterans say their former allies were weak soldiers who fled at the first sign of danger, leaving U.S. troops to fight for their lives alone.

And some South Vietnamese veterans say Americans lured them into a vicious and destructive

civil war, then abandoned them at the worst possible moment--yanking military might and funding just as Communist troops began marching south toward Saigon.

Now, in Orange County, veterans of the two armies are neighbors. An estimated 110,000 Vietnam-era U.S. veterans live in Orange County, including 37,000 who served in the embattled country. And there are, by some estimates, 40,000 veterans of the former Army of the Republic of Vietnam. They are trying to forge a peace--with mixed results.

Many U.S. veterans--even while they concede their feelings are not always rational--say they cannot shake a fundamental distrust of the Vietnamese.

“We’re always going to carry the scars of what we did and what we saw,” said Randell Widner, who served in 1966 with the 1st Battalion of the 9th Marines about 15 miles south of Da Nang.

“Most of us don’t want anything to do with them socially, and I find it real hard to be involved with them,” said Widner, now disabled, primarily from post-traumatic stress disorder, and retired in Huntington Beach. “Theoretically, we were fighting for their freedom. But we didn’t trust any of them. . . . I’m not sure which side they were on.”

Widner’s resentment is common.

“Them coming to the U.S. didn’t bother me as much as [their] reason for wanting to come,” said Bill Chafey, a former paratrooper with the 187th Airborne Battalion of the 101st Airborne Division who now is a Santa Ana police officer. “I can’t understand giving up your country to a Communist government without putting up a good fight.”

Vietnamese Americans in Little Saigon--probably as vocal about their anti-Communist feelings as anyone in the country--might find that sentiment hard to accept. And many have hard feelings of their own.

“There are some Vietnamese veterans who don’t like [U.S. vets] because they feel like the United States betrayed them. They think it was an American war and not a Vietnamese war,” said Uc Nguyen, 61, a helicopter pilot in the South Vietnamese air force during the war, now an engineering manager at a rubber manufacturer in Orange.

“But most of us have lived in this country long enough now. We know they were just following orders and doing what they had to do.”

John Lynch, an intelligence officer during the war and now president of the Orange County chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, said widespread resentment of South Vietnamese veterans is starting to ebb as former American soldiers realize the United States cannot march into a Third World country and expect to find military equals.

“You are looking at a First World power that came into a Third World country to expand a war effort. We often forget that,” Lynch said. “It was the U.S. government that gave everybody a ticket to Vietnam. People should spend more time reflecting on the fact that we were allies.”

Several efforts to ease the tension are underway in Orange County.

One is a move by the Orange County veterans chapter to offer associate membership to South Vietnamese veterans. It is believed to be the first chapter in the country to make the offer. South Vietnamese veterans will not enjoy the full benefits of membership but will share the name recognition and lobbying strength of the VVA, said George Duggins, a spokesman for the VVA in Washington.

In a further gesture toward their allies, the veterans group plans to honor some highly decorated South Vietnamese veterans at a Camp Pendleton ceremony Sunday marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, Lynch said.

Another effort at reconciliation is unfolding in Westminster, where officials hope to unveil a Vietnam War memorial this fall. The 10-foot statue would portray an American soldier and a South Vietnamese soldier--and would be the first memorial to celebrate the two armies, said Mayor Frank Fry Jr. An estimated 300,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and 58,000 Americans died in the war.

“Originally, I wanted to have a memorial to the Vietnam veterans, and I was thinking, primarily, American veterans,” Fry said. “Then I looked around. And I thought: ‘Why not both?’ ”