The Best Guys To Go With

Left, our merry band on the Mekong. Right, just a few of the kids we met at a large elementary school in central Vietnam. Peace, everybody! compound, the group of five or six studied the photo gravely while passing it around amongst themselves and shaking their heads.

“No,” the non-com in charge said finally, handing it back to me with an air of deep police-state suspicion. “This is from the American war—we do not see this for long time.”

Ever the good guy to have along, Raycroft attempted to smooth things over with a little gallows humor. “Hey guys,” he said with a big grin, “We just thought we’d give it a shot, although that may not be the best word to use at this particular time.”

Flyfishing at Cam Lo Bridge The drive from Hue north to Dong Ha, in Quang Tri Province, was a long one, mostly due to the wild and crazy scooter traffic. And although, as I’ve already mentioned, none of the sampan rides we took in Quang Tri produced a PBR or even the rumor of one, the jaunt that took us up the Song Cam Lo to Cam Lo Bridge proved way more memorable than all the rest.

“Hey Bill,” said Raycroft, as we prepared to go. “There are no seats in this boat!”

I eyeballed our sampan du jour, a vessel approximately 30 feet long, 4 feet wide, and rough-hewn by any standard. Her bow was squished up on a slimey, muddy beach. At the stern, a little Chinese diesel went under a cloud of greasy black smoke and a young Vietnamese guy and his significant other (wrapped, in accordance with Vietnamese custom, so totally in sun-proof clothing that only her eyes were visible) huddled lovingly over a tiller. And yes, Raycroft was right. There were no seats, although I noted a few narrow thwarts a passenger could perch upon, vulture-fashion, and a comfy board or two in the bottom of the vessel.

I sniffed defensively. Raycroft was splitting hairs on creature comforts, it seemed to me. And what’s more, he was now putting the evil eye on the brand-new bag of Vietnamese hot dogs Phuoc, undoubtedly with Stilwagen’s blessing, was hauling aboard, along with more French bread and Laughing Cow. Would Raycroft soon be challenging our luncheon menu too? Wisely, I let the whole can of worms slide, as did Raycroft.

But, man, it was passing strange. The day’s journey took us up the

ca-chooga-chooka, ca-chooga-chooka very same river I’d traversed years before as a youngster in a PBR, yet nothing was recognizable. Instead of a brown channel, with lush, variegated, green jungle on both sides, there were fields with cows and water buffalo, cellphone towers, and roaring public works projects. And the traffic on the river was pretty intense too, consisting entirely of fishing and other commercial vessels. I managed to do a little thinking, however, despite all the mindboggling newness.

Some days before, at Stilwagen’s behest, we’d visited a large elementary school. And the kids there had been as plentiful as they were joyful. But what was so surprising and thought provoking was the way they’d literally swarmed over Raycroft and I when given the chance, yelling questions and comments about America, as if just about any American (and indeed America itself ) was fabulous, wonderful, and totally amazing. Tears had come to my eyes in the midst of the experience. And to Raycroft’s eyes as well. Why, I wondered, as the waters of the Song Cam Lo slid smoothly by, had we both reacted in precisely the same way?

The ravine just below Cam Lo Bridge was refreshingly cool when we got there. And because catching a few fish in the exact spot where, years earlier, I’d traveled onboard boats bristling with 50-caliber machine guns, seemed like a triumph of sorts, I uncapped the Sage 5-weight flyrod I’d brought all the way from home for just such an occasion, and jointed it up.

But get this. Even after our skipper had silenced the little Chinese diesel, which allowed our sampan to drift ever so invitingly over the cool, colorless water, I simply could not tie the improved clinch knot most everybody uses to join tippet and fly, although I’d tied the darn knot thousands of times before. “Shoot,” I said finally. “I can’t tie a fly on.” “Think about where you are right now,” Stilwagen advised, gesturing towards the thick green foliage ashore, with blue mountains beyond, “Your brain is subconsciously telling you to load a magazine with cartridges, and keep your head down. It’s saying fly fishing’s frivolous, even dangerous here—it won’t let you do it.”

So What About Those Tears, Jim? Maybe they were just being nice to us, but there were a few people we talked with in Quang Tri who told us we’d probably find an

old PBR in the south, either on the busy Mekong River or on one of its many tributaries. A former South Vietnamese soldier who’d somehow escaped the wrath of the communists in 1975 even went so far as to promise we’d get lucky. “They were strong machines,” he said, “You will see one, for sure.” It was no dice, though. After taking a short flight on Vietnam Airlines from Hue down to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), we drove south to the town of My Tho, a jumping off point for boat trips into the Mekong Delta region. And there, as we boarded our final sampan, some 8 days after we’d jumped aboard our first, I showed my dog-eared PBR photo to a salty-looking 41-year-old skipper named Vo Tan Dat. He recognized the boat immediately, but then shook his head.

“He says he knows about them—but they have all disappeared,” Phuoc translated, “They were sold to the Thai military in 1975 and 1976 when the communists took over and they were also used to escape from Vietnam at that time. They are gone. They are no more.”

At this juncture, I’d begun to suspect as much myself. Vietnam’s progress since I’d last seen the country was stunning. Modern cities had arisen from flat, dusty military camps. Airfields had been replaced with giant modern industrial parks and hospitals. Dirt roads had been paved over with super highways with traffic lights and tollbooths. Bomb craters had been filled in. The war was a memory, it seemed, and so were the implements of destruction that had hallmarked it.

We pressed on with our boat ride anyway, however, and, after a long, windy tour of the Mekong, pulled in for lunch at Thoi Son Island where Raycroft and I sat by ourselves in an open-air restaurant for a bit, while Stilwagen did some souvenir shopping nearby. The place was crowded with Vietnamese families enjoying a holiday weekend.

“Jim,” I said, after a while, “why do you figure we both cried at that school the other day? Why did we both react in precisely the same way?”

“Well,” Raycroft replied, after a thoughtful silence, “guys like you and me, Bill—Vietnam veterans—have been living with the Vietnam war for years and years now. Both consciously and subconsciously. Maybe what we were feeling at that school was a giant exhale, a sense of relief, a sense of forgiveness. I mean, a helluva lot of people died on both sides. There was incredible suffering. Again, on both sides. But, for some reason, I don’t think there are any hard feelings here now. The war’s over for these people. They’ve moved on.”

“Huh,” I said, after indulging in a little thoughtful silence of my own, “Then maybe not finding that PBR is okay.”

“Yup,” concluded Raycroft, “I think we found something better.”

❒ Vietnam Battlefield Tours (VBT) is a nonprofit tour company consisting of highly experienced tour guides who are expert in leading veterans and their family members, active-duty military, historians, educators, students, and documentary-film crews to the battlefields of Southeast Asia. VBT’s combat-veteran founders created the all-volunteer organization as a way to help people return to places that are very important to them via reasonably priced, high-quality, professionally staffed experiences. All tours are customized to the individual client’s needs.

Vietnam Battlefield Tours, 877-231-9277; www.vietnambattlefieldtours.com “I mean, a helluva lot of people died on both sides.”

— Jim Raycroft