TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

A Year in the Provinces
was full of powder smoke, the villages were
full of savage slaughters. The communists
didn’t refuse any inhumanities.
...But for your part, you wear war­clothes
and leave your lovely country to sacrifice
for freedom and peace. We are moved and
grateful. Words [alone] are not enough to
show your people, but what we can do is to
engrave it onto our heart.
...[W]e bow our heads to your heroes
who died for our country, and we wish we
will be close to your side for all time.
God Bless you and your
Family,
Capt. Nguyen Dinh­Suong
Que­Son District, 01/07/1967
***
There must be bags of musty documents in the library at
Quantico filled with Vietnam­era data to suggest an answer
to the Walt­Westy debates. Or, maybe you had to be there.
In this case the Vietnamese wrote the final stanza
themselves, only there were no Marines left to hear it sung.
DaNang had watched the Third Division leave; saw the Wing
load everything but the O­club waitresses in departing C­
130s and leave. Slowly, then, the 1st Division rolled down
the Tien Sha Peninsula to the deep­water piers, battalion by
battalion.
Not for the first time, not in the first place, people
protested against Marines. This time it differed. They
marched and protested against the Marines alright, but
against the Marines leaving. Not Americans, per se, because
the army’s Metrical Division had come to town; no, the issue
was Marines. They’d been more than protectors, they’d
been good neighbors. Most noticeably, in all the capitol
towns of I­Corps – DaNang, Hue, Quang Tri, etc. – the
Vietnamese were left to themselves. Youthful bantering by
passing young Marines was remarkably good­natured;
daughters could walk to work and not be presumed
prostitutes.
Along with the protests also came a blistering string
of insulting news editorials in the DaNang and Hue
newspapers that Americans never understood, but Saigon
sure did.
English first person plural pronouns (we, us, ours)
are inclusive. If the person to which you are speaking is not
included in, “We are leaving,” it is clear only in context. Not
so in Vietnamese. Chung­ta means us all; chung­toi means
we including me (toi) but not you. Ah, but the Vietnamese
also constructed a lovely third alternative, inclusive, but one
suggesting a special relationship. It includes the word for
heart (minh). So you would say to your wife in leaving with
her, Chung­minh di: Time to go, My Heart.
Lovely, yes? Saigon thought not. In all the blistering
missives that DaNang and Hue papers sent their way, they
referred to “our Marines” as Chung­minh T.Q.L.C. –
literally, the Marines of our hearts, our body. Ah, but South
Vietnam had a Marine Corps, a good one, but they weren’t –
Saigon was to expressly note – any part of DaNang’s heart.
The 1 st Marines weren’t over the horizon sailing east
before Saigon was stuffing their own Marines into C­130s
heading to I­Corps.
A‐33