A hero of Vietnam finds victory in defeat

A hero of Vietnam finds victory in defeat
By Eugene Patterson, Times Editor Emeritus
In Print: Monday, September 20, 2010
MAYPORT — If one healer can splint the American fracture left by the Vietnam War, a Vietnamese named Harry looked the part in a ceremony over the weekend at this U.S. Navy base.

"We won the war," said the former South Vietnamese army colonel, five times wounded and 13 years imprisoned by North Vietnam. "The Hanoi government knows China is going to attack Vietnam. So it must democratize and unify the country and be friends with America because the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

His name is Tran Ngoc Hue. U.S. Marines nicknamed him Harry nearly a half-century ago. It stuck to this day when he was honored aboard the Navy warship USS Hue City in a memorial of the 1968 Tet battle for Hue.

Harry was a hero there. But he was no victor in the war. As a South Vietnamese, he lost along with his departing American allies. Like Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, though, his transcendent gallantry in a lost cause offered both sides in a polarized America a unifying symbol of their kinship in courage.
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A hero of Vietnam finds victory in defeat