A Father-Son Journey Back to Vietnam
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 12.01.04 | 5:51 PM ET
The December issue of Harper’s features a thoughtful, touching story by Tom Bissell about his travels in Vietnam with his father, a veteran of the war. In explaining the impetus for the trip, Bissell evokes an old photo of his father taken during his Marine training days. “He looks like a young Harrison Ford and is smiling, holding his rifle, his eyes unaccountably soft,” Bissell writes. “I believed I could find him in Vietnam, where he had been made and unmade, killed and resurrected. When over the phone I told my father I had tickets, we could leave in a few months, he was quiet, as quiet as I had ever heard him. ‘Gosh,’ he said.” So begins their journey, which takes them to the Son My Memorial, not far from My Lai, and Qui Nhon, where his father came ashore in 1965 with thousands of other Marines. Bissell wrote War Zones for Idiots, which appeared on World Hum in October 2002. The Harper’s story is not available online.
Email to friend
Twitter
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! Buzz
Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
