I'd never watched PRISONERS OF HOPE until this morning. I may like it more than Return with Honor, a more acclaimed documentary on the subject. I especially liked the old news and propaganda clips it featured. My father's in the video. I like the way he smiled as he related stories. I believe he smiled because he understood the amazing significance, the ironies, the texture of what they experienced.
After studying the American POWs in Vietnam, I feel I know these men. I could say I admire them, am in awe of them, love them, but it's more than that. I'm concerned not enough Americans understand the implications of what they went through, how and why they went through it, and how it relates to today - and tomorrow.
I enjoy the points at which Vietnamese, French, and American history intersect as they do in this article:
The article credits Frenchman Paul Doumer as contributing to the robust rat population in Hanoi. There was no shortage of rats in another French endowment, the Hoa Lo Prison. Just about every POW memoir I've read remarks, as Fred Cherry does in this video, "The rats were more plentiful than you can imagine. They were every place and they galloped through the cells like it was a rat farm." I assumed descriptions of them as reaching the size of cats or small dogs were exaggerated. Evidently not. Galloping rats that size could knock the wind out of a reclining man in stocks.
Later, Doumer was the president of France and was assassinated by a Russian émigré. After being convicted of Doumer's murder, he was guillotined. His last words were, "Russia, my country!"
As to the rats, some in the region have applied the adage, "if given lemons, make lemonade," sort of...
Comments