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Forty years after leaving the country, Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett knew he had to return to Vietnam, where he had led young men in combat.
"It had been bugging me for some time," said Leggett in an interview at his office last week.
In 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam as a 22-year-old Army lieutenant, and he left after he completed his tour of duty in 1969 as a captain. He had commanded U.S. and South Vietnamese troops in combat in the field.
His two-week stay in Vietnam as a tourist, which concluded with his return July 2 to Montgomery County, included occasionally emotional stops in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, and Da Nang, regions where he had served.
"I'd felt this was something I had to do," Leggett said.
The county executive seldom speaks of the Vietnam War, where he earned a Bronze Star, Vietnam Service and Vietnam Campaign medals, and still finds it difficult to address his service there.
In a 2004 interview with The Gazette, Leggett said, "Underneath, what we experienced in Vietnam … you find war is dirty and nasty and people literally die in a great deal of pain and suffering, and no matter how victorious you may be, there is complete, complete devastation.
"When the entire country is open to a war zone, death is all around you. You don't recognize that in every fight there are civilian casualties, and war is not a pretty sight. War is a nasty, destructive environment to be in, and that is something I took away."
His wife, Catherine, needed convincing that Vietnam was a good place for a vacation, but Leggett said she understood how important it was to him and agreed to go.
Historically, veterans have felt compelled to return to the battlefields of their youth, said Jan Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran and founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which raised the funds for the war monument in Washington, D.C.
"If you go up to the Gettysburg battlefield, you see these great pictures of these veterans who'd go back," Scruggs said. "There's opportunity there to come to grips with the traumatic events of their lives."
Scruggs, a former corporal who returned to Vietnam for the first time in 1999, has led several groups of veterans back to the country.
"They exorcise some ghosts from their spirit," Scruggs said. "War spiritually throws you out of balance. Psychologically, it throws you out of balance. It's not an easy thing to recover from."
Returning to Vietnam can be cathartic for veterans, he said.
"Those of us who went there had to bear many scars, including the emotional scars of seeing people die," Scruggs said. "These are the kind of scars that stay with you."
Leggett said he had some emotional moments during the trip.
The Vietnamese government has turned a tunnel complex west of Saigon into a tourist destination, where returning veterans and others can see how the war was fought by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.
North Vietnamese Army veterans and Viet Cong irregulars who fought the guerrilla war in South Vietnam demonstrate the weapons they used on a firing range and also show how they rigged booby traps, including planting hand grenades to go off when tripped by American soldiers.
Leggett's Southern University roommate, Quillard Lyons, was killed by a similar booby trap in Vietnam.
"Just listening to the technical details really brought me back," Leggett said.
In his sophomore year, Leggett was class president, and Lyons was vice president. But after Lyons' mother became ill and later died, Lyons, who had dropped out of college for a semester because of financial difficulties related to her illness, lost his college deferment and was drafted.
As he listened to how the Vietnamese set the booby traps, Leggett said he found himself thinking of Lyons.
"I couldn't watch," Leggett said, choking up at the memory. "I had to look away."
But, the people of Vietnam were friendly throughout the trip.
The United States had gone to war to prevent a communist takeover. Now the U.S. dollar is accepted currency throughout the country, and top hotels and restaurants are established in cities for tourists from around the globe.
"Everywhere I'd go, people loved Americans and were happy to see us," Leggett said. "They'd call me ‘Barack Obama man' since I'm black."
