Museum of the Forgotten Warriors

Museum of the Forgotten Warriors

By Linda Nguyen

(Published in Vietnamese in VietBao Daily News)

Previously if I was asked what made me move to Marysville, I would say for three reasons. First, I was applying for a teaching job which an “old teacher” like me was hardly to find else where. Next, I liked this oldest, little city because it’s quiet with a population of just about twelve thousand. Lastly, I was attracted by the rice fields on Highway 99 and 70 along the way to Maysville. But now, I would like to add that Marysville also has a special place which makes my heart soften anytime I visit: The Vietnam War Museum, a big museum, but the founder was a little boy when he started.

I had to take the driver’s job on the first time coming to Marysville because my husband’s eyes weren’t in good condition. Not driving, but he was the driver’s lead, sitting at the passenger’s seat, holding a GPS, and telling me how to go. Actually, I’m not a skill driver. Anytime I drive on the highway, I always concentrate on the steering wheel and the road and never have a change to look at that complicated GPS. Without him, I would not dare to drive on highway.

On that day, following my husband’s lead, from I-5 I took the exit at Highway 99 and joined into Highway 70. I was touched to see the ripe golden rice fields on both sides of the highway. In seconds, I thought as if I was driving, passing the rice fields of my hometown in Vietnam. Suddenly feeling homesick, I pulled over aside of the highway, opening the car-door, and stepping out.

My husband didn’t say a word but he also got out of the car, following behind me. He could have the same feeling as me. “Wow, look!” he exclaimed. In front of us was the immense field of rice starting from the highway expanding far away to the jungle. It was almost noon now. The sun was spreading its hot, bright fingers all over the field, but the atmosphere was coolly attracted by the pleasant scent of the ripe rice crops, a sweet scent. The fine wind was getting through, caressing on the golden heads of rice making them swing repeatedly as though they were laughing, enjoying their ripeness. After the wind left, those rice heads yielded under their weight, nodding at us like greeting the uninvited guests, the guests that came from countryside of a nation on the other side of the earth. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, taking in the scent of ripe rice. And in moments, I thought I was standing on the land of my old country.

I pictured myself in my childhood, at the time my country was in peace. A little girl with a purple top, black pants, was carrying a basket of cooked-sweet rice and a jar of peanut butter on her head, running barefooted behind her mom. My mom was yoking a huge kettle of the “Dui de” plant used as hot tea and a large pot of sweet-bitter soup to the rice field to serve break-time snack for the farmers. They were harvesting rice for my grandma. Standing on the road, I enjoyed watching people with sickles on their hands cutting very fast from handful to handful the golden heads of rice and sheafing them into bunches, while talking and laughing to each other. After cutting off all of the rice heads, the farmers beat them on a large box to remove the seeds from stems.

I also imagined the way my grandma paid for her workers. Season to season, she had

done the same thing. Dividing the total amount of rice each farmer had harvested into four heaps, with one heap bigger than the others, and had them pick whichever heap they like. Of course, they had always selected the biggest one my grandma intended to leave for them. At the end of the harvesting season, the rice in my grandma’s storage was full up to the ceiling. If she had needed some rice bringing to husk at the mill, she had put a chair in front of the storage for me to climb inside, scooping out for her.

I then recalled the time the War destroyed my country Vietnam. In front of my eyes was the scene of my grandma crying, painfully looking back the last time at her red-bricked house she and my grandpa had worked very hard for their whole life to build it, and tearfully staring at the storage full of rice, before grasping only my grandpa’s Family Annals Box, the record of the family’s history, and escaping away from my village. My village was already occupied by the Vietnamese Communists and my grandpa and the whole family had already run away before that. After passing through a family’s rice field, she had to cross a deep pond with strong current. On her half way crossing, she got rolled away along with the flowing current. Her life was pretty much in danger, but she struggled trying to swim only one hand and the other hand she held the box on the top of her head so it wouldn’t get wet. Luckily, there was a farmer walking by seeing her and he ran to help, so she finally could bring the Annals Box to the city for my grandpa.

My grandma did successfully her dangerous escape to the city. But she was too scared and stress, and because she got wet for a long time, she got sick and passed away a month after that at the age of sixty. My grandma was gone, but the Family Annals Box of the Nguyen family still remains until now for us, the next generations, to know about our ancestors. From then on, whenever the Nguyen family has a reunion, my grandma, the Nguyen family’s daughter-in-law, is always remembered and honored by our family.

“The rice looks so good,” my husband suddenly spoke up, distracting my holy moments. “This field could yield good crops!” He commented.

Coming back to earth, I wiped away tears on my face and got back to the car with my husband. The traffic was now very busy. A current of cars continually passed by, one after another. I waited for a while but could not get back to the highway so I started driving slowly along the side. Suddenly, I heard sound of risen, and looking up to the mirror, I was dismayed to see a cop car with flashing light chasing behind my car. “Oh my God!” I scarily mumbled and stopped. I lowered the car-door window, waited for the officer, ready to sign for a ticket. But then I thought, there could be “light at the end of the tunnel,” so I tried to say something, begging the cop. I talked to him with an almost crying voice, that I was on my way to Marysville to apply for a job; that seeing the ripe rice field, I recalled the rice field of my old country and felt homesick and so I stopped to enjoy a little bit; that now the traffic was very heavy, I couldn’t get back to the highway.

I just tried my luck. Surprisingly, after listening to me, the officer nodded, showing he understood. He didn’t say a word, but got back to his police car, driving out to the right lane and stopped. All the traffic immediately charged to the left as he signaled me to go.

We were so happy. Who would say the cops have always had cold hearts? Meeting this

friendly officer would add one more good point for us to decide moving to the new area.

When the Taxes season came, I got on the internet, looking around and I found a group of the “AARP Foundation Tax-Aid” in Yuba City, which offered filing Taxes free for senior citizens over 60 years-old and low income people. The “AARP Foundation Tax-Aid” program is formed in every State in the US. I learned that all of the volunteers there are trained very well and they are as good as professional Income Tax workers. I was glad, so I called to make an appointment, preparing documents ready to go.

On the day of appointment, my husband and I went to Yuba Senior Center and we met Mary Webb, a volunteer helping to do Taxes. After looking through our document, she asked us:

“Are you Vietnamese?”

“Yes!” My husband said. “How do you know? Do you know any Vietnamese?”

“Oh yeah!” Mary smiled brightly. “My husband and I were in the Air Force and we served in Vietnam from 1970 to 1971.

“Oh! It’s interesting! My husband told her. “I also served in the Air Force, stationing at Tan Son Nhat Airport and Nha Trang Airport until1975.

“Really?” Mary shouted. She looked very excited as if she met an old friend. While working, she told us her story. Mary had stationed at Tan Son Nhat Airport and her husband, Austin Webb, was an adviser helping for the South Vietnam Air Force at Binh Thuy Airport. She said he didn’t have to go to Vietnam but because she was there, he volunteered to go so they would be close to each other. Mary also told us that when she was in Vietnam, she had a Vietnamese girlfriend, a best friend name Man or Susie now. After the War, they lost each other but then years later they met again in the US.

“We were happy, we hugged and cried and laughed.” Mary said. “Susie lives far away in Utah but she came here to see me once and we had a very good time!” She spoke in an emotional voice.

“Oh! The earth always turns around,” I said, congratulating to Mary and my country lady, a person I had not met yet but already felt like my friend. I admired the friendship and thought later I would try to contact Susie to make friend with her, and I did. From Mary, now we are friends and I can tell that Susie or Man, is a good friend who is worth for Mary to remember in many decades.

Talking about the Vietnamese friend, Mary suddenly remembered something. “Oh,” she

said, then grasped her purse and pulled out a green business card. “You guys just moved to Marysville recently, have you visited the Vietnam War Museum yet?” When I said no Mary handed the card to me. “You should go, this is a big museum but the founder was a ten years-old boy when he started. I’m also a Board member of the museum.”

Mary told us that the museum was now having a plan to spread bigger and they were still

accepting more donations of War memorable, items from any War that the US military has involved, to keep the museum to be more profuse.

On the way home my husband told me, “We should take some time to visit the Museum and bring in the Pedi-cap to donate. That little thing needs to be displayed at the museum for people to see better than keep it at our house.”

“The Pedi-cap?” I remembered the model Pedi-cap that my husband respectfully displayed inside a glass shelf in our living room. That Pedi-cap was a gift from a client, Mrs. Helen, when we owned a little nail shop in other town years ago.

Mrs. Helen was our very close customer. She had shared with us a lot of her stories. Every year on Thanksgiving’s Day, I made her egg-rolls, and Helen often brought us homemade lemon bread which she made with fresh lemon in her backyard. She had often talked about her son Alan, the only son who went to fight in Vietnam during the War then returned home with an embittered heart of disappointment. She said that not only Alan and his friends coming home weren’t greeted at Heroes, but were looked at if they were criminals, and she hated what she called the ballyhoo of “no tails no heads” from the news, the messed up news from the press making things worse. After coming home, Alan’s life was so closed. He was not going out nor contacting others. He had lived alone and become an alcoholic until one day he got a car accident and died.

I remember once Mrs. Helen said, “During the Vietnam War, I hated those stupid people and the media that ‘made a mountain out of a molehill’ here while my son was in the front line, fighting to help for others’ freedom. When coming home, Alan told me that those damn jerks having good lives in this country didn’t know a shit. If they dared to come to Vietnam, lived with the people there, and fought together along with the South Republic of Vietnam Army, they would understand what that War meant to the Vietnamese. ‘It was a horrible War, the War that we weren’t allowed to fight until the end to win, mom!’ Alan said that!”

Alan was right. I have heard a lot of Vietnam Veterans saying that too. The end of 2009, Mrs. Helen was very old and she also had kidney problems that needed a surgery. Before entering Kaiser Hospital for the operation, she had her nurse bring her to my shop on a wheelchair. She looked so weak, breathing hardly on her oxygen. Looking at her hands, my heart was soften to see a little Pedi-cap with two National flags, an American Flag and a South Republic of Vietnam flag, the deep-yellow flag with three red stripes, attaching to both sides of the Pedi-cap. The two flags were very old, fade, and wrinkle. The yellow flag had a tear at the left corner but was covered by a piece of clear tape.

“I’m gonna have a kidney surgery and I don’t know what it will be.” She talked

difficultly, the veins on her neck were moving back and forth, as if they wanted to jump

out of her pale skin. She then handed the object to me. “This Pedi-cap was a souvenir my son left for me. He used to love it and kept it very carefully until he passed away. I’m afraid if I can’t make it after my surgery, then it will be put in an “Estate sale” with my stuff and this little thing will be drifted off somewhere.” She stopped to breath for a while and then spoke again. “At first, I didn’t know what to do with it, but then, I remembered you guys and thought that you are the people I could pass this gift to. Please keep it for me!”

In front of the Museum with heavy weapons from the Vietnam War (picture: Museum website)

I took the little cyclo from Helen and then stood there, touching the worn out yellow flag which once belonged to my South Vietnam free country. I wondered what memory from this model Pedi-cap that could make Alan the Vietnam Vet loved it to the last minutes of his life. Lost in my thought, I didn’t try to ask Helen but she seemed understanding my surprise and she started telling me its story.

“This was a gift from a Vietnamese friend of Alan. He came to the US through the Humanitarian Offensive (HO) program. They were lucky to find each other years ago. He brought this Pedi-cap from Vietnam along with him to the US and gave it to Alan when they met. But that guy was very ill because the Communists jailed him in the jungle for a long time and he died a few years after coming to this country.”