Good Morning VIETNAM
FIFTY-one years ago I wasn’t keen to go, neither before nor after the letter arrived ordering me to report to the nearest army call-up centre. No, I was just a Kiwi visiting Australia avoiding registering for the ballot in my own country. I was only 18, a long-haired motorcycle-loving hippie who marched in protest like many of my generation, wanting no part in conflict yet ever ready to make love not war. Like, peace, man.
I returned to NZ, went in the last ballot there and my number never came up. It was only many years later I learned that my home country had sent no conscripts, only volunteers, to fight in Vietnam.
Fast forward to 2017 past 80 more motorbikes, all sorts of jobs and almost 40 years with the mother of our four kids when one day she, Julie, found what looked like a really cheap return-ticket deal to Vietnam. At first I said no way. We’d neither won the war nor stopped the spread of communism. But that was then. Julie booked the tickets.
Good Morning, Vietnam.
The airport in Ho Chi Minh City,
