Reflections on Yet Another Last Stand

The wire service photographs of the Afghan “rebels” are haunting, even more so than the generally workmanlike dispatches that accompany them. There is a weariness in those foreign faces, a weariness that 1 came to know well nearly a dozen years ago, and had all but forgotten. Even the places where I saw those grim, dark eyes Bien Hoa, Saigon, Lai Khe, Quan Loi, Loc Ninh—have faded in my recollection to the level of well-remembered tales told me by someone else, rather than places where I lived and, a time or two, nearly died.

Americans, even those who endured the worst in Vietnam, rarely looked that way; the “thousand-yard stare” is largely an invention of hyperactive journalistic imaginations. We knew that all we had to do was stay alive for one year— the “big three six five”—and we were out. That was good for morale, though it was bad for attempts to persuade our troops and the folks back home that they had any real stake in the outcome.

JA

About the Author

Joseph A. Rehyansky

The wire service photographs of the Afghan “rebels” are haunting, even more so than the generally workmanlike dispatches that accompany them. There is a weariness in those foreign faces, a weariness that 1 came to know well nearly a dozen years ago, and had all but forgotten. Even the places where I saw those grim, dark eyes Bien Hoa, Saigon, Lai Khe, Quan Loi, Loc Ninh—have faded in my recollection to the level of well-remembered tales told me by someone else, rather than places where I lived and, a time or two, nearly died.

Americans, even those who endured the worst in Vietnam, rarely looked that way; the “thousand-yard stare” is largely an invention of hyperactive journalistic imaginations. We knew that all we had to do was stay alive for one year— the “big three six five”—and we were out. That was good for morale, though it was bad for attempts to persuade our troops and the folks back home that they had any real stake in the outcome.