Edited 2/18: We’ve just launched a permanent veterans affairs blog, “At Ease!” Click here to visit it.

I wanted to wrap up this blog with one last slideshow, more or less summarizing our father-daughter, veteran-journalist return to Vietnam last month.

I’d like to keep covering military and veterans issues, so keep an eye on LoHud.com next year for a permanent blog. In the meantime, Return to Vietnam will remain online, so you can keep posting comments or sending in suggestions for future coverage. Readers can also revisit The Journal News editorial and six stories about our journey by clicking on the headlines listed under the Links menu on the right-hand side of this screen as you scroll down through the previous entries.

Thanks for following along.

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“These kids will steal your heart. It is easy to get attached to the healthy newborns, but spending time with some of the more disabled and sick children makes you realize just how wonderful they are and how much they love getting individual attention. Attention is something that many American children take for granted, but over here having time to play with other people is the highlight of each child’s day.

I found that the three things most of these children need most are health care, education and individual attention. Actually, because the orphanage is home to so many very sick children, I think it would benefit a lot from a connection with either a medical school or a doctor’s group in Saigon that could send well trained (probably volunteer) doctors to the orphanage to check up on the children regularly (as a long term thing, not just short term). The kids right now are receiving medical care that is sufficient to keep them going, but better care that emphasized preventing fatal and chronic conditions would greatly increase their QUALITY of life. At the moment, Go Vap just doesn’t have enough staff to provide that kind of care because every time a child goes to the hospital, one of the caretakers has to go with him or her and stay there with the child. That takes a person away from the children still at the orphanage. So they could use a group of doctors that are willing to come and check up on the children regularly…

Kim was right that the best things to give are equipment and time (and I will add one to that – skills. While we were there, there were people training staff on how to deal with certain disabilities or volunteering their time as a physical therapists or psychologists, and that was infinitely helpful). Money is not the best thing to give because like all in counties, there are good people and there are corrupt people in Vietnam. Time and equipment, unlike money, are very likely to get to the intended recipients.

Overall, though, the experience was both touching and eye-opening, and I hope to go back again in a year or two to visit the children that are still there.”

Anyway, he considered himself lucky.

It’s now been a month since my father’s second return from Vietnam.

For him, this experience brought some closure on his war memories, but also gave him new memories – of a country at peace. And, instead of losing friends, this time, he came home with new friends, too. (And a few left behind, but in a good way.)

Click on the audio link below to hear my father’s thoughts on his first and second returns from Vietnam.

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Check back Dec. 28 for the final slideshow version of our story.

Happy Holidays – and especially – Peace on Earth.

So, I shouldn’t have been surprised when my father said that the only correspondence she sent him in Vietnam was a newspaper clipping, upon which she had scribbled this William Blake poem:

My mother groaned, my father wept

Into the dangerous world I leapt

Helpless, naked, piping loud

Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

My father hadn’t told his mother when he would be arriving home in March 1968 – he didn’t want anyone to worry about his travel arrangements, and he also wanted it to be a pleasant surprise. Click on the audio link below to hear his story.

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Check back tomorrow morning for the final entry in this blog – for now, anyway.

As if the huge Louis Vuitton store across the street from our hotel in Ho Chi Minh City wasn’t enough evidence that capitalism has come to Vietnam after all, this former battlefield is now being turned into some kind of water park.

We boarded cable cars (with advertisements on them!) to get to the pagoda at the top, and the construction workers waved up at us as we took the 15-minute ride up to the peak.

Click on the audio link to hear my father explain a little bit about this mountain – he had to talk quickly, in between blasts of Disney-esque music coming from the speakers!

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Once we got to the top, however, we were transported back to the Vietnam War – we could barely make out a few of the caves where the VC guerrillas once hid and even had a makeshift hospital. And then, I spotted a sign of the past meeting the future: someone – another returning veteran, no doubt – had carved what appears to be an Army serial number into an old tree.

The scars of war, indeed.

While we were Christmas shopping at the West Point PX last week, my father found the gift he didn’t know he wanted: another P-38 can opener, right there in the sporting goods aisle.

“It’s like finding a long lost friend!” he exclaimed, while I looked at him like he was, um, crazy.

He took it home and made a nice display of the can opener, his dog tags, and his old 25th Infantry Division hat. On an Army blanket, of course! Hey, it’s green – and we’ve got that Red Cross 1967 gift bag as the red…

C-rations were phased out in favor of MREs (meals, ready-to-eat) almost 20 years ago, so the troops in Aghanistan and Iraq probably don’t carry can openers. “Now the P-38 belongs to the ages,” my father said.

“The Red Cross ladies and volunteers came around and handed out to soldiers small red cloth bags that contained some toiletries and candy and other items,” he recalled.

It seemed appropriate to put the bag on our Christmas tree, or maybe we’ll start using it as a stocking…

The American Red Cross has a long history of helping the troops and their families, whether through care packages or other assistance. To find out more about the organization’s current efforts for soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, click here.

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Well, it turns out that Quattrone isn’t only a dentist and a humanitarian: she’s also a songwriter! Click on the video link below to watch Howard Goldin, my father and the other reunited members of our group take a stab at the anthem she wrote about the trip. Better yet, read the words first by clicking on the “Read More” tab at the bottom of this post – you’ll need them!

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Sister Joseph Mary was invited by Rotarian Voncile Oliver, who had wanted the Dominican nuns to meet. Oliver and the other members of our humanitarian tour of Vietnam had met Sister Therese on Veterans Day, at their dedication of The Rose School, a construction project partly funded by the Spring Valley Rotary Club’s Schools to End Poverty (STEP) program.

Sister Therese is on a two-month fundraising visit to America, meeting with groups of Rotarians, veterans and Vietnamese Catholics to raise money for The Rose School and her order’s other educational and philanthropic efforts in Vietnam. Sister Joseph Mary said she may be able to get her other sources of support in the Lower Hudson Valley, too.

Click on the audio link below to hear Sister Joseph Mary’s remarks at the holiday party, after talking with Sister Therese.

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At the Viet Cong war cemetery near the Cu Chi tunnels, we walked along a huge sculptured wall depicting the Vietnamese struggle in the “American War.” In contrast to the discomfort we felt at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City and the Cu Chi booby trap painting, we found this display kind of funny, given that the Viet Cong guerrillas are shown as quite buff and heroic, and the American soldiers as pretty weak and mean.

(Click on the photo to view a larger image.)

After all these examples of Vietnam/American War art, the one that probably struck the balance between amusing and unpleasant was this poignant mural, part of several walls illustrating the history of Vietnam. Look at the expression on the American soldier’s face – to us, it seemed confused and shocked by the horrors around him, rather than callous, imperialistic or bloodthirsty.

(Click on the photo to view a larger photo.)