Healing and new view of Vietnam for veterans on reconciliation tours

Healing and new view of Vietnam for veterans on reconciliation tours

(EXCERPT) By Melissa Mansfield The Associated Press

The first time Ivan Van Laningham was in Vietnam, the mountain of Cu
Chi was a combat zone.

Thirty-two years after serving in the Vietnam War, Van Laningham
returned and found a resort area where rubber-tired trains cart
tourists around and rabbit-shaped trash baskets dot paved trails.

"It was incongruous to visit the mountain that had once been the
target of so much firepower and see such cutesy trash containers,"
said the 56-year-old Salt Lake City man.

Van Laningham went back to Vietnam as part of a "learning and
reconciliation" tour aimed at helping Vietnam veterans come to terms
with the war and its aftermath.

New York state residents, psychotherapist Edward Tick and history
professor Steven Leibo, have led three such tours with some 70
veterans, historians, teachers and students from across the nation.
Veterans pay for the trips.

"Part of the philosophy of healing is returning to the scene of the
crime in safety," said Tick, who has worked with survivors of severe
tra...

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Otis Willie
Associate Librarian
The American War Library
http://www.americanwarlibrary.com