Vietnam vet looks for new perspective on return trip

Monday, Jan. 26, 1998 | 10:52 a.m.

A great many Americans believed -- and still believe -- the Vietnam War involved the valiant United States defending South Vietnam from the godless Communist hordes of North Vietnam.

In the eyes of the North Vietnamese, however, it was a struggle to save the family unit, unite their country and preserve an ancient way of life that had been disrupted for four decades by a series of invaders.

"We never understood how important the family unit was to Vietnamese culture," said Las Vegan Andrew Gerrie, who in the late 1960s served in Vietnam as a captain in the U.S. Army.

"That war was brother-against-brother, as families were spread out, with some members in the south looking for work and others staying in the north to watch over ancestral lands. That's why we could never get a foothold there."

Gerrie said he respected the North Vietnamese and notes: "They would still be fighting today if we were there, just as I would never stop fighting if someone had invaded or conquered my country."

Gerrie was in Vietnam just outside of Saigon -- now Ho Chi Minh City -- during the Tet Offensive, the 30th anniversary of which will be observed Saturday. That battle marked the turning point in the only war in which the United States did not achieve its military objective.

Gerrie, 54, a human resources employee for Southwest Gas Corp., left last Saturday for Vietnam to visit the very battlefields on which his blood was spilled -- where he earned two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart.

Gerrie and five other members of the Third Squadron, Fourth U.S. Cavalry tank unit -- nicknamed the Three-Quarter Horse -- will participate in a documentary funded by the University of Ohio.

"I have a tremendous curiosity about what happened to that country," said Gerrie, who first served in Vietnam during 1967-68 and returned for a second tour of duty in 1970-71.

"On my first tour, I served with an American unit. On my second tour, I was with a Vietnamese unit. I wish that second tour had been first because I learned so much about the Vietnamese people and their culture."

Gerrie, who was in charge of units that killed hundreds of the enemy, admired the unrelenting will of his former foe.

"They long fought with lower-level quality equipment and they believed their cause was right," Gerrie said.

Among the sites Gerrie hopes to see are the Cuchi Tunnels, a series of underground passageways the Viet Cong used below the very site where the U.S. 25th Infantry Division was camped.

As a 180-pound fit soldier, Gerrie crawled into those tunnels to hunt for the enemy.

"I'm not 180 pounds any more, but I understand the tunnels have been modified (widened) somewhat to make them safe," Gerrie said. "I hope to get a different perspective looking through them without fear that I will run into the enemy."

And, he won't mind if the reports are true that Vietnam has become touristy.

"Everybody capitalizes on their history," Gerrie said. "We do it with Bunker Hill and Gettysburg. I certainly won't feel insulted if they did it with their battlefields."

Most of all, Gerrie says, he is making this trip because it will give him a chance to reunite with men he has not seen in 30 years. It was at the Tet Offensive where they were put to the test as soldiers.

"Before Tet it was non-conventional warfare -- jungle fighting, land mines, booby traps, sniper fire," Gerrie said. "Tet was the closest thing to conventional war that we saw in Vietnam."

Tet, which is the Vietnamese name of the Chinese lunar New Year that is celebrated throughout Southeast Asia between January and February, will forever in the minds of Americans be linked with the word "offensive."

It was the brainchild of North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, who planned the attack during the summer and fall of 1967. In effect, he blundered his way into history because, although Tet was a military failure, it planted the seeds for future success.

In violation of the lunar New Year truce, the Viet Cong launched their biggest offensive of the war, attacking nearly 100 cities from Saigon to the Mekong Delta.

It took nearly a month for American troops to rout the Communists, who had captured the citadel at Hue and seized part of the U.S. embassy in Saigon.

The Communists lost more than 10,000 troops, failed to secure any territory and did not achieve any of their objectives under Giap's "general offensive, general uprising" plan.

What Giap didn't know was what implications his attack would have back in the United States, as sentiment toward the war took a major turn.

Up until Tet, many Americans believed that the war would soon be won. But the sight of the Viet Cong holding the U.S. embassy on nightly television news broadcasts shattered the United States' confidence. It marked the beginning of the end of America's participation.

Americans from all walks of life began to question whether the involvement in Southeast Asia was worth the loss of young men's lives.

Ironically, Americans continued fighting in Vietnam for five more years. During that time, both sides lost more lives than in the years prior to the Tet Offensive.

After Vietnam, Gerrie, while still in the Army, earned a master's degree in business from Northwest Missouri State University. After leaving the service, he went first into banking, then into human resources. Today, Gerrie is the gas company's administrator of compensation.

Like many Vietnam veterans, Gerrie for many years refused to discuss his painful memories of the war.

"I didn't talk about it until the Wall (Vietnam War Memorial dedication in Washington, D.C.) in 1982," said Gerrie, who is married and is the father of three grown children. "At that time I realized I was not alone. There were many others like me.

"We always try to put things behind us -- the killing and the maiming. But, we didn't have support groups like they had for those who served in the Persian Gulf War. That is one lesson we learned from Vietnam."