Vietnam vet tells about return to country

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BY KENDRA WALTKE / Lincoln Journal Star

WEEPING WATER — Not all Vietnam veterans want to go “in country” again. Some have no interest in seeing the places that shaped and perhaps scarred their young lives more than three decades ago.

Don Ulrich of Weeping Water can understand that.

But he wants to share what he learned from his return to Vietnam, “one of the most wonderful experiences of my life,” he said.

In March, with two buddies from his platoon, Ulrich found lost air bases overrun with lush jungle and saw bright Vietnamese cities so different from what he recalled from hot days as a 20-year-old helicopter gunship pilot.

And what he found in the faces of Vietnamese people who remembered the war — that’s what surprised him the most.

“There was an outpouring of thanks,” Ulrich said. “They were friendly and forgiving and held no bitterness.”

He shared pictures of his trip Tuesday night as a fundraiser for his church, First Congregational United Church of Christ.

He began his slide show with black-and-white pictures of his buddies: John Vangrunsven, 59, of Oregon and Tom Clay, 58, of Pennsylvania, briefly one of the youngest soldiers in Vietnam when he arrived at age 18 and eight days.

“It (the March visit) was my third trip back to Vietnam and the only time my mother didn’t have to worry about me,” joked Ulrich, making his mother, Lucile Ulrich, in the audience smile.

Ulrich grew up near Steinauer and met the men on his first of two tours in Vietnam, 1967-1968.

He showed a photograph of their helicopter with a jagged bullet in its windshield, taken on a tragic day eight months after Ulrich arrived.

He, Clay and Vangrunsven were covering a medevac helicopter when they were attacked. Clay, the door gunner, was shot in three places, while the bullet through the windshield barely missed a co-pilot.

The Army would not allow Ulrich to photograph the seat where Clay got hit, but the physical signs remain: His shattered leg is now 3 inches shorter than the other.

Ulrich said he didn’t see his friend again until they were reunited at a military reunion in 2003.

But the old interdependence and trust among soldiers was still there, Ulrich said. And  when the trio arrived in Saigon, “I  felt a weird feeling that I didn’t need to feel vigilant anymore” about being safe, he said.

Communist messages in south Vietnam were hard to swallow.

Extensive tunnels built by the Viet Cong at Cu Chi have been transformed into a tourist attraction. Some call it Cong World for its theme-park atmosphere, he said.

There you can shoot machine guns for $1 or take a picture with mannequins of Viet Cong soldiers.

“Seeing that took tremendous emotional patience and restraint,” Ulrich said.

The three also hired a driver and traveled to remote areas to search for five old bases. They took “Thunder Road” — then a U.S. military arterial, today a four-lane expressway with tollbooths.

At most bases, only a barren airstrip and perhaps a bunker or shell debris remained. Some of the  old marketplaces nearby had grown into small towns, he said.

Ulrich found one memorable airstrip near Loc Ninh where he went through one of his worst battles and changed from a 21-year-old kid “thriving on the exhilaration of war” into a hardened soldier, he said.

They went on to Hanoi and saw the grim jail commonly called the Hanoi Hilton, where American prisoners of war were held. The museum for the Hoa Lo prison focuses instead on its history as a French colonial jail, Ulrich said.

The few displays of American  POWs showed pictures of soldiers receiving gifts, eating well, playing guitar and going to church, he said.

He shook his head in disbelief.

But those disheartening scenes were overwhelmed by others. A restaurant owner they met near the museum apologized for its omissions and thanked them profusely for the service, Ulrich said.

So he shed no tears on the trip, even when he and his friends came upon a group of one-time North Vietnamese soldiers touring  Hanoi’s Ho Chi Minh museum.

With their interpreter, they exchanged greetings and expressions of gladness that the war was over. They looked at one another with respect and understanding, he said.

“That was very powerful and emotional,” Ulrich said.

But Ulrich would not politicize, even when asked outright for his opinions by an audience member.

He would say this: When he came home, the media were depicting a war he didn’t recognize.

“What was being portrayed each night on TV  was nothing like what was actually going on there,” he said.

Larry Obrist served with a medical unit at Cu Chi and Tay Ninh and  also grew up around Steinauer.

“I don’t think you can draw many parallels between Vietnam and other wars,” Obrist said.

Much like what’s happening now in the Middle East, soldiers in Vietnam faced mixed messages for why they were there, he said. Also, sometimes American soldiers couldn’t tell their enemies from their allies.

That can make a return tour of Vietnam difficult, he said.

Obrist spent much of his life counseling soldiers and just retired from the Lincoln Vet Center.

“There are two extremes I’ve seen,” he said. “For some it’s like putting an old ghost behind them. They find it very healing and informative to see the war zones of death and destruction turned back to green rice paddies and friendly people.”

For others, Obrist said, “It’s the last thing they want to do.”

Ulrich’s presentation showed that healing is possible from seeing one-time enemies face to face, he said. Even when those people have shared the worst of pasts.

“And that’s always a good thing for people to know,” Ulrich said.

Reach Kendra Waltke at (402) 473-7303 or kwaltke@journalstar.com.