Vietnam has been off the normal tourist route for quite some
time but Eddie Bowers visits almost every year. The Vietnam vet
made his fifth trip in six years in October, just after organizing,
yet again, Morgan Hill
’s annual Veterans Day ceremony.
Vietnam has been off the normal tourist route for quite some time but Eddie Bowers visits almost every year.
The Vietnam vet made his fifth trip in six years in October, just after organizing, yet again, Morgan Hill’s annual Veterans Day ceremony.
Normally he and a friend visit for three weeks, staying at the same hotel, checking out sights, old and new. This year was different.
This year they saw a U.S. Navy ship dock at Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) harbor and talked to the young sailors on board. The Vandegrift, a battlegroup escort ship providing carrier battlegroup protection and logistics support, was one of eight ships attached to the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk’s Carrier Battle Group (CVBG) during this year’s second Gulf War. It was in the area, Bowers said, as part of a sea games operation.
“Before we left on the trip we heard a U.S. ship would be coming into Ho Chi Minh City,” Bowers said. “It was quite a sight. As it got closer I got real emotional – too emotional,” he said.
Bowers said after the ship, the U.S.S. Vandegrift FFG48, docked, the Republic of Vietnam gave each sailor a special pin – with the (new) Vietnamese flag and the American flag together.
“We watched the ship dock but waited until after dark to go back – we wanted to see the Navy,” he said.
“Later we went to a bar called Apocalypse Now. It was usually very noisy – too noisy to hear or talk. So we went early before it got too crowded. There were lots of California guys.”
Bowers said he and his pals met a passel of sailors from the ship and found one who had lived in Gilroy and another whose father had been killed in the war. He apologized for not getting the sailors’ names, but he does have photos to remember them by.
In a graceful gesture, one sailor gave Bowers his Vietnamese pin.
“I think you deserve this more than I do,” the sailor told him.
Bowers said he would treasure the pin forever.
Seeing the American ship come in, talking to the sailors and having them react with so much support to a Vietnam vet, caused Bowers to cut the trip short.
“I was overwhelmed,” he said. “I felt like I was just on leave.” So he returned after two weeks instead of the usual three.
Bowers travels with his friend Barry E. Mullen, who works for the Morgan Hill School District. This time Frank Rael, also a MHSD employee, went along.
Mullen served in the Navy; Rael never served in the military but gained some perspective on the trip.
“He told me that he now has a better appreciation of what Vietnam vets went through,” Bowers said.
Eddie Bowers’ original Vietnamese tour was much different from a tourist’s, though it was entirely volunteer. He joined up in Oct. 1967 right after graduating from Live Oak High School.
“Oct. 9, 1967,” he said, remembering the exact date.
After training he shipped out to the Far East and was stationed mostly at Bin Hoa with the 145th Combat Aviation Battalion, 118th AHC (Attack Helicopter Company). Bowers was a door gunner on Huey gunships (armed helicopters). Door gunner exactly describes the job.
Bowers pointed out that his Hueys were gunships, not the troop carriers that were also flown in Vietnam. He described his job as “Just combat.”
“You never really were safe,” he said “but after you do your first year you don’t think about it.”
Amazingly enough, during three tours – Bowers re-upped two more times – he was only shot down once. Only he and a pilot survived of the four-man crew.
“Actually we weren’t shot down,” he said, “they blew off one side of the helicopter.”
Bowers said there was a good reason why he kept extending his tour for a total of three years (1968-70).
“I didn’t want to leave my friends,” he said. “I didn’t want to let them down. When my time was up I felt really sad.” He left the Army as an E-4 soldier.
At the time, the Army rotated soldiers in and out on an individual basis. Now soldiers are rotated by unit, keeping everyone together, as they do in Iraq. Bowers had a 30-day leave between each tour of duty.
Bowers’ tours of Vietnam weren’t all warfare.
“Four of us from the 118th AHC worked at an orphanage,” he said. “That felt really good because the place was a mess and we helped.” Bowers said the team built new shelves to store food that was usually all over; they cut down weeds, helping whenever they could.
“We tried to find it again when we went back but couldn’t. It was quite a ways off the road,” he said.
Bowers returned to the U.S. at the end of 1970, married his wife Elvira, had two children – Harley, 30, and Heidi, 27 – and followed a career as a barber from which he is now retired. But in 1998 he felt the need to return to the scene of so much trauma, both for Americans on the ground and for the Vietnamese themselves.
Vietnam has changed since that first trip in 1998. This time he saw big shopping areas and streets cleared of peddlers. Bowers said he doesn’t know if the cleared streets are because the U.S.S. Vandegrift coming into port and the sea games going on.
“It’s quite a tourist place now,” he said, “lots of people from France, Germany, Japan, Korea, though not a lot of Americans. People are nice to us.”
On this most recent trip, Bowers and his friends visited the Vietnam museum in Ho Chi Minh City.
“It’s all about war,” he said. “It shows lots of bodies. They didn’t show the good we did, which they would have if the South Vietnamese had done the museum.”
Bowers keeps his new Vietnam/American pin in the same case with an older pin – one with the South Vietnamese and American flags.
Does he plan to return next year?
“Oh yes,” Bowers said.
