This just came to my attention today . . .
Dana and crew made it into my heart in their 1988 TV series, "China Beach." When the series was announced, it put me in a state of semi-shock, as I both feared to view it, but was irresistiblydrawn to it like a moth to a flame in the night.
I was there. Tet, 1968; China Beach. It was my station during my entire year in Vietnam.
I can never forget the sights, smells, sounds, people, devastation, Death, fears, confusions, hostilities, raw animosities, deceptions, political plays, deadly "friendly" fire, friendly foreign country soldiers and supporting civilians from Australia to Korea, deadly tracer bullets blazing past inches from my face behind a fragile wall of sand-filled oil drums, a child who used a razor blade to cut my back pocket attempting to take my wallet as I was finally leaving for home . . .
The long list of memories goes on and on . . .
Now, after my last day in DaNang, in the late Fall of 1968, here again I am brought face-to-face with its memories, its passions, my newly-married loneliness, memories of sweet, kind-hearted Vietnamese peasants, most of whom I knew as orphans, widows, or refugees, living in soda-pop cardboard shipping boxes, in crowded, dirt-path camps, and on the China Beach - to- Monkey Mountain Beach on the DaNang River peninsula ocean-side.
People I later learned had been photographed where they were murdered by hoards of North Viet Cong who swept over DaNang, driving thousands onto China Beach, and when bullets ran out, brutally beat and bayoneted these innocent people for their support of U.S. Forces during our silly political play-war actions.
That's the "China Beach I held close in my heart, during every TV episode I watched. It is the same "China Beach" I hold in my heart when I watch this DVD. It will always be this "China Beach."
I lost my family due largely to the moral dilemma that Vietnam played on my youthful conscience. Honoring a government that so callously used it political might to play with a nation's common peoples' lives, and so carelessly abandoned its duty to defend to the Death it had brought to this very shore made my young father's heart into a confused and helpless pit of irresponsibilities. I still sense the loss of moral certainty that my family finally rejected me for lack of. It, this inability to stand on unwavering moral ethic, mirrors the wish-washy lack of moral ethic that I felt in my Vietnam experience.
Today, as over 300, 000, 000 Americans can potentially view this DVD, it will have very little life-changing impact on our nation. It is too far in the past to be relevant, too few viewers have the intensity of memory of this place and the events it contained during the time of this movie, and it will be a mere curiosity for those interested enough to spend a few moments to view it.
Too Bad. History in our time, is engineered to numb the dumb, hide the ride, and scare the rest from the nest. We have an "education" system that is solely focused on training our children politically-doctored "history," and a political fantasy that changes with every whim of the social engineers that drive public opinion from the media platforms that are controlled by the same financial engines that control all our political "leaders."
"China Beach" is like an echo of this same demented political engine, only its voice is carried to us from over 40 years ago!
America, it's too late for you. Your "China Beach" Massacre is just beyond the next bend in the political immoral mire that you threw on China Beach nearly 50 years ago!
Somehow, I feel no pain, now, as I watch from my vantage point of experiencing overwhelming pain as I helplessly watched the terrible, wanton mayhem unfolding on China Beach, 43 years ago.
I wish I could feel pain, again.
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