Nui Ba Den

Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Wall replica on display in Orange on June 16

For those Angelenos not able to travel to Washington D.C, a half-size replica of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Wall will be on display in Orange from Thursday June 16, through Sunday, June 19. The replica, termed “The Wall That Heals,” has traveled the nation for 15 years and serves as a poignant reminder of the more than 58,000 soldiers lost or killed in the Vietnam War. Several replicas are currently traveling throughout the US; however, this is the only one sponsored by the same fund that oversees the D.C. monument.  Local motorcyclists, including the Patriot Guard Riders and American Legion Riders, will escort the wall to Yorba Park on Wednesday arriving at 1 p.m. The wall will then be assembled for viewing. The site in Orange will be the wall's sole California stop this year. 

I personally visited the wall several years ago to pay my respects to a fallen comrade, Second Lieutenant Thomas Teague. He lost his life in a night attack on a signal base on top of Nui Ba Den (Black Virgin Mountain). I had some trouble locating his name on the wall until I noticed a directory book, located at one end of the memorial. I later asked our tour guide why she had not informed us of the directory. She replied, “If I told people about the directory about the wall, they’d just spend more time browsing.” Amazing! She obviously did not consider that one would waste much more time unproductively in a random search. 

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Glimpses...: Flying to Nui Ba Den

I began this blog in 2009 to replace the email travel reports I had started in 2007. Long before any of that, though, I had tentatively begun a very different kind of Glimpses , a collection of short fragments that I had written now and then over the years. Lacking the perseverance and focus necessary to be a Writer , I occasionally give in to the urge to put words to paper long enough to finish a page or two. I was never sure what to call them: verbal snapshots, essayettes, micro-short stories? I settled on calling them Glimpses and left it at that. It was near the beginning of the rainy season, when the cumulus clouds began dotting the sky around lunch time. The cloud bases were 2,000, maybe 2,500 feet, and it was almost a child’s game of hide-and-seek, setting up a steady climb in the UH-1H, weaving in and out, over and under, the inviting cottony whiteness almost palpable, until breaking through into clean air above the newly-formed clouds. It was a routine run to Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin mountain, 3,000 feet of jungle-covered rock dominating the countryside northwest of Saigon and east of Tay Ninh. We would land on the Huey pad, a small ridge that jutted out from and below the eastern side of the peak, drop off and pick up some passengers and their equipment, then fly down to Dau Tieng in time for lunch. Landing at Nui Ba Den could be tricky. Conditions at the top often and abruptly changed between clear skies and cloud cover, with powerful gusts of wind, updrafts colliding with downdrafts. Timing was everything. Descend smoothly, nothing abrupt, carefully watch the overcast and mist accumulate on the upwind side of the pad; the clouds would grow fitfully until rising up and over the pad, obscuring it completely before a gust of wind blew them away and all was clear again. There was a critical, unseen point at which one had to say either yes, I am landing no matter what, or no, I am breaking this approach off to try again. We began the descent. The clouds rose, the clouds dissipated, and I knew I was alone. The co-pilot and the crew chief and the gunner and the passengers were mere observers now; there was nothing they could do but watch and hope I outmaneuvered the mountain. Close in, just as I decided yes, we were landing, a cloud rolled in and covered the pad. The last few feet of descent were blind, and I banged it down a bit harder than I would have liked. But we were on the ground, undamaged.