Trump trip divides US war veterans

DANANG: When President Donald Trump lands in Danang, once a key United States wartime air base, he’ll receive a mixed welcome from American veterans who fought on Vietnamese soil but now call the coastal city home.

Trump fans among Danang’s community of war vets are keenly awaiting an “America First” clarion call by a man they are proud to have as president when he addresses the Apec summit of world leaders today.

Others are strikingly less enthusiastic. Former Marine David E. Clark, 68, is convinced “Trump the chump”, as he dubs him, will drive US into ruin.

Clark left Danang in 1969 an angry young man after 13 months as a combat engineer, vowing to never return to the country he once thought of as “the (expletive) of the world”.

Now, in a twist of history, he lives in the coastal city a stone’s throw from Marble Mountain, where he was posted, during a bloody, bitter war that ended in 1975.

Today, the recovering alcoholic is married to a Vietnamese woman and doing charity work with Vietnamese victims of the war.

Not all vets share Clark’s acerbic views on the president. He knows one fellow vet back in the US planning to travel to Danang, hoping to catch a glimpse of Trump.

Former Marine Chas Lehmann is equally happy to see Trump in Danang, a city he’s lived in since 2012.

“He’s got backbone, he’s not a