US-Vietnam: From enemies to friends

Many Americans, including war veterans, are visiting Vietnam as tourists and they may well find themselves talking to their former enemies, the Viet Cong (VC), who successfully infiltrated every corner of South Vietnamese life, including the armed services.

One of those Viet Cong is Nguyen Thanh Trung. When Trung was a boy, his father, a Viet Cong guerrilla, was shot and killed and his body mutilated by the South Vietnamese army. Trung came to terms with his father's death but never with the desecration. For 12 years he planned his revenge. In 1969 he enlisted in South Vietnam's air force. The day before, he had secretly joined the Viet Cong. He was sent to the United States and trained as a fighter pilot. A few weeks before Saigon fell to Communist forces in April 1975, Trung made off with his F-5 aircraft and dropped two bombs through the roof of the Presidential Palace. His revenge was complete. But by that time, he says, it no longer mattered. The most important thing was to put an end to the fighting.

Now he is working hard to improve relations with the US and he is in a very good position to do just that. Trung is now chief pilot and a vice president of Vietnam Airlines and he proudly told me that next year it starts direct flights to the US. It is, he says, not only commercially important, but it marks an important milestone in improving US/Vietnam relations.

Adapted from BBC World Service news, July 2006

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