By carolyn o’connell
Staff Writer
Michael Winnick receives his Bronze Star for heroism from Gen. R.R. Ploger in 1967 following his participation in a battle in Vietnam in March of that year. He was heading back to Vietnam, but this time Uncle Sam wasn’t sending him. More than 30 years ago Michael Winnick of Elberon was shipped to Vietnam with the First Infantry Division of the U.S. Army as a medic specialist 4 ranking officer.
While the war may be long over, Winnick, who first went to Vietnam in 1966, had some personal questions about that time and place, and in the last two years he has gone back twice seeking some closure.
His memory of the first time he landed as a soldier at Than Son Nhut airport in Saigon was the odor that filled the cabin of the plane during the descent. Still not knowing what it is today, Winnick describes it as the smell of diesel fuel burning away human waste or the smell of death which permeated the jewel of the orient.
What he saw on his return was much different than he remembered. The airport, which was the busiest airport in the world 30 years ago, according to Winnick, was still teeming but was brighter and more modern then he recalled. And, of course, today there were people from all walks of life entering and leaving the country, when 30 years ago it was almost all military.
During his first return visit, in 2002 accompanied by his wife, Gloria, he said they played the tourists, moving through the country’s museums.
"The museums were filled with anti-U.S. propaganda," he noted. "They were the victors and earned the right to write history."
In contrast to the official stance on America, Winnick said he was surprised to see how influenced by America everything had become. He noted large blue and white signs that read "American Home" and billboards advertising Coca-Cola, Nestle, Lipton Tea and Mobil and Esso gas stations.
New trade agreements with the United States have brought countless businessmen to the area, noted Winnick. "The country is still communist, but the people are inherently capitalists."
According to Winnick, Saigon’s population in the 1960s was 3.5 million; today it is over 7 million. He describes the population as young, with very few people over 30, enterprising and hungry.
On his second return trip, this time without Gloria, Winnick followed a somewhat different itinerary. Still unsure of how he would be received as an American, Winnick forced himself to venture out of the safety of the hotel and tourist sites to visit the countryside.
To get there, he had to brave the clogged streets of Saigon, which he said seem to have endless traffic lights, "and they keep adding more."
He said in Saigon the traffic rules are not quite the same as in the United States; there, the largest vehicle with the loudest horn seems to have the right of way.
And, the city is overrun with motorbikes. "They seem to run day and night," he said.
Winnick trudged out to the countryside on a Sunday when he observed that traffic was "light." He described it as the Garden State Parkway and the Long Island Expressway all merging onto Ocean Avenue and Joline Avenue at the same time.
Taking Highway 13 — a road he remembered as a pothole-filled laterite passage, and which today is a paved six-lane thoroughfare with medians filled with trimmed shrubs and multi-colored flowers — he made his way to Ben Suc, which in the 1960s was a small village on the west corner of the Iron Triangle.
According to Winnick, at the time of the war, the Iron Triangle was a stronghold of the Vietcong and North Vietnam Army. The military believed that it was the command center of the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese.
On the journey, there was one slightly unpleasant reminder of home.
The six-lane highway has tollbooths charging 50 cents every 10 kilometers. "Of all the things they could copy from us [Americans], they chose to copy the Garden State Parkway," he said.
During the war Winnick and his division were on an operation in the triangle to find the North Vietnamese and Vietcong main operational center.
"It was here that we first discovered how expansive the VC tunnel network was and what were later to be called Tunnel Rats," he said.
In that area, Winnick recalled rebuilding a bridge that crossed the Saigon River to Ben Suc after it had been blown up. The engineering battalion which Winnick was assigned to, rebuilt the crossing in a week. During the construction process, the engineers built a portable bridge mounted on treads to allow the U.S. military vehicles to continue bringing men and supplies into the area.
He remembered that the site had a six-inch rise that could not be made flush to the road.
Today, said Winnick, there is a metal bridge at the site that replaced a wooden that had been built at the crossing, but the gap between the road and the bridge still exists.
Through Ben Suc, Winnick drove toward the only mountain in the province called Nui Ba Dinh, which translates to the Black Virgin.
The mountain got its name because it resembles a woman lying down, according to Winnick, and is honeycombed with caves.
He said during the war the VC used it as an R&R (rest and recreation) center and a hospital.
Before getting to the foot of the mountain, Winnick said he suddenly had a sense of the familiar about the area. Though it had changed drastically, Winnick said, a very vivid picture came to mind.
With the help of his guide and a stranger they met along the way who told them of three battles that were fought in the area, Winnick knew he was on the right track.
What was flooding back into Winnick’s memory was what the area looked like more than 30 years ago. He recalled that approximately 30 kilometers from where he was standing, a South Vietnamese unit was overrun. Six kilometers west, an artillery unit was hit and then Winnick’s unit was the third to be attacked.
On his return visit, Winnick arrived at a paved parking lot at the foot of the mountain where he had to pay for parking. From there he took a tram to the other side to catch a cable car that would take him to the top of the mountain.
On his ride up, Winnick took notice that sections of rock had been cut out of the mountain, and tracks were being laid. But the tracks were not for a train but rather for a water flume for a water amusement park being built into the mountain.
Signs along the way on the journey to the peak gave glimpses into the history of the monastery that stood at the top. Among those signs were tales of how the Americans tried relentlessly to destroy it. That was untrue, said Winnick, the Americans did not try to do that.
Despite the words transcribed on the signs, Winnick said that the people tending to the park were gracious and smiling, offering water and soda.
Seeing the signs for the water park neutralized everything for me," said Winnick. "At that point in the trip, it became real for me that the war had ended and a relaxed feeling came over me."
The abrupt end to the war is the reason so many GIs struggled when they returned, according to Winnick. When the war was over, Winnick recalled that the soldiers had been sent back to the United States within 24 hours and had no time to make a transition back into the lives they left behind.
"The people who rallied against us when we returned were lying when they said they were against the war and not the soldiers," said Winnick. "They hated us."
"We had to suppress everything that had happened, and for most of us we did not get the resolution that we needed."
But Winnick finally did get his resolution 30 years later on the same mountain that was his navigation point during the war.