Divisive war still haunts America

By Matt Frei BBC News, Washington

Thirty years later the images are still vivid: a US army helicopter scrambling to evacuate diplomats from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon, the mass protests against the war; napalmed children fleeing American bombs, their skin in shreds

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VIETNAM WAR: HISTORY

Introduction
BACK NEXT
Build-up
Escalating war
Turning point
US withdrawal
Fall of Saigon
Introduction

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Veterans still feel Vietnam scars
By Matthew Davis BBC News, Washington

Vietnam is a 30-year nightmare, from which Jim Doyle is still trying to wake.

Every week he sees a psychiatrist, but no-one can free him from the demons of war.
The smallest things - like the smell of diesel - bring the memories flooding back.

But it is the big things that worry him most.

"Nobody who has ever been to war wants to see anybody else go there," he said.
"So Iraq has been a very difficult time.

"War is hell," he adds. "It has an impact on the people who take part that never heals."

'I felt alive'

Jim was 18 when he went into battle - just a year out of high school

But he was quickly on the front line, engaging the enemy in an area known as the Iron Triangle.
"We'd ambush them, we would be ambushed. You never knew from one day to the next whether you would live or die.

"All I wanted to do was get out of there, but I had never felt so alive."

He survived a year, despite being injured by a bomb. But it was back home where his problems really began.

Many Americans, disillusioned with the war, turned their scorn on the soldiers who returned. It is a fact that still leaves many bitter to this day. >>continued">>>>continued

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US Vietnam vets mark anniversary
Sunday, 1 May, 2005, 00:45 GMT 01:45 UK

Vietnam War veterans have held a commemoration in Washington DC to mark the 30th anniversary of fall of Saigon and the end of the war.

Decked in military regalia, they took part in an official wreath-laying ceremony at the Vietnam War Memorial.

Former soldiers and their families listened to patriotic songs and placed mementos on the rain-swept monument.

They paid tribute to their comrades who died before the North Vietnamese communists entered Saigon in 1975.

'Communist stigma'

The event, organised by the Assembly of Veterans of the former southern Republic of Vietnam, was colourful despite the rain, say correspondents.

The veterans were joined by officials from the US department of veterans affairs and members of Congress.

An estimated one million Vietnamese Americans took part in events across the US marking the fall of Saigon, under the slogan "Remembering the past, shaping the future".

Despite years of living in the US, some say they still nurture a desire to see families left behind but are weary their return could be seen as an endorsement of the communist government.

"The worst thing for anybody, even after 30 years, is to be called a pro-communist," local community leader Hung Nguyen, from Falls Church, Virginia, told news agency Reuters.

On April 30, 1975, communist tanks entered Saigon, now called Ho Minh City, signalling the end of the southern Republic of Vietnam.

The city's fall also marked the official end of the war, which claimed some 58,000 American lives and an estimated three million Vietnamese.

On Saturday parades were held in Ho Chi Minh City to mark the end of the war on what is known in Vietnam as Liberation Day.

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