[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 187 (Wednesday, November 15, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7258-S7259]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL ARCHIVES EXHIBIT ``REMEMBERING VIETNAM''
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, long before his confirmation as the 10th
Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero proudly served our
Nation in a different capacity, as a Navy corpsman in Vietnam. Today,
with the help of Mr. Ferreiro's unique personal perspective and
professionally informed guidance, the Lawrence F. O'Brien Gallery at
the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC, is currently exhibiting
a new collection of remarkable documents that illustrate some of the
Vietnam war's biggest controversies.
Mr. Ferriero and his team are to be thanked for painstakingly
determining which of the countless relevant texts housed in the
National Archives best told this often misunderstood story. We can be
sure, however, that few if any archivists are better suited with
experience and vision for this task than Mr. Ferriero.
With this exhibit, Mr. Ferriero and his team honor the memory of
those who served in Vietnam, while also fulfilling a sacred obligation
to accurately preserve even our most contentious history so that we may
strive to avoid repeating past mistakes. Today I would like to pay
tribute to the Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, and his
team and ask unanimous consent that a Washington Post article titled,
``A Veteran's View of Vietnam,'' be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Nov. 8, 2017]
A Veteran's View of Vietnam
(By Michael E. Ruane)
At night, after Navy corpsman David Ferriero finished his
clerical duties aboard the hospital ship off Vietnam, he
would volunteer to help triage the wounded being helicoptered
from the battlefield.
Some had been shot. Others were missing limbs. Some needed
treatment right away. Others were dead when they arrived.
It was 1970, and Ferriero was a 25-yearold college dropout
from Beverly, Mass., who suffered from seasickness and was a
dedicated, if at times inexpert, corpsman.
Today he is the archivist of the United States and the
impetus behind the sweeping new exhibit, ``Remembering
Vietnam,'' that opens Friday in the Archives' flagship
building in the District.
The free exhibit, which runs through Jan. 6, includes some
of the most striking documents relating to the war:
[[Page S7259]]
A 1944 memo from President Franklin D. Roosevelt stating
that Vietnam, formerly ruled by France, should not be
returned to the French after World War II.
``France has milked it for one hundred years,'' Roosevelt
wrote. ``The people of Indo-China deserve something better
than that.''
A 1946 telegram from Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi
Minh to President Harry Truman begging for U.S. support on
Vietnamese independence and opposition to the reintroduction
of French control. (The CIA withheld it from Truman, Ferriero
said.)
The last page of President Lyndon B. Johnson's stunning
1968 speech announcing that, as a result of the war, he would
not run for reelection. ``Accordingly,'' the president
concluded, ``I shall not seek--and will not accept--the
nomination . . . for another term as your President.''
He had crossed out ``would'' and replaced it with ``will.''
The exhibit also includes three Vietnam-era helicopters
courtesy of the North Carolina Vietnam Helicopter Pilots
Association. The aircraft were installed Monday night on the
lawn outside the Archives on Constitution Avenue.
Ferriero, 71, said he wanted the institution to mount a
Vietnam exhibit in part because so many of the war's issues
remain sensitive and unresolved.
In a long career that took him to big jobs at major
universities and libraries, ``no one--no one--wanted to talk
about it,'' he said.
``No one asked me any questions,'' he said. ``No one
acknowledged it. . . . Never was it the topic of
conversation.''
Ferriero, in a recent interview in his office, said he also
knew that the Archives had ``incredible material in the
records--photographs and all of the military records, the
unit records. We have a lot of stuff.''
``And for me it was important to tell the story from both
sides,'' he said.
One fascinating document in the exhibit is a Viet Cong
propaganda poster that echoes, from the enemy's point of
view, the notorious U.S. obsession with numbers and body
counts.
The poster claims, among other things, that the Viet Cong
in 1962 and part of 1963 killed 28,108 South Vietnamese and
222 Americans--double the actual figures. ``So that inflated
body count was happening on both sides,'' said curator Alice
Kamps, who assembled ``Remembering Vietnam.''
The exhibit includes CIA models of what appear to be an
interrogation room and cell in the North Vietnamese prison
known as the Hanoi Hilton, which held many American POWs.
There are transcripts of once secret American helicopter
communications as Saigon, the chaotic capital of South
Vietnam, was evacuated by the Americans in 1975.
``Bring ur personnel up thru th building,'' reads one
communication. ``Do not let them (the South Viets) follow too
closely. Use mace if necessary but do not fire on them.''
Although the exhibit covers the war from Ho Chi Minh's
appearance at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to architect
Maya Lin's 1981 design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,
Ferriero's war had a single goal.
``We were all under the impression that the threat of
communism was the biggest challenge,'' he said. ``We were all
playing a part in protecting us against communism.''
Near the end of Ferriero's enlistment, he was shipped to
Vietnam as a corpsman in a psychiatric ward.
``There were a lot of what we called at that point
'character disorders'--kids who were having trouble with
authority,'' he said. ``Then there were other folks who had
more serious psychotic kinds of things . . . awaiting
transfer back to the States.''
Eventually, he was transferred to the 700-bed hospital ship
USS Sanctuary, only to find the ``psych'' ward had been
closed because too many patients had been jumping overboard.
But Ferriero could type, and he became an administrative
clerk. After hours, though, he would help sort and treat the
wounded who were transported from the battlefield to a kind
of emergency room on the ship.
The helicopters came and went. Sometimes one would crash
into the ocean. ``In my time, no lives were lost,'' he said.
The ship would spend the day in the harbor at Da Nang, then
cruise off the coast at night. Ferriero, who still has his
dog tag on his key chain, said the injured included Americans
and Vietnamese, soldiers, Marines and civilians. One case
stood out. He was trying to start an intravenous line in an
injured patient and couldn't find a good vein. Each time he
failed, he discarded the needle and got a fresh one.
``Kept throwing down these needles,'' he recalled. ``And at
one point he just screamed.'' ``I thought, 'Oh, Jesus, I'm
losing him,'' he said. ``This is it.''
``It turned out that I had thrown one of those needles down
on the gurney and he had rolled over on it,'' he said.
Ferriero was embarrassed. His patient ``wasn't in that
great distress,'' he said, ``but I never followed up to see
what had happened to him.''
One day earlier this week, as Ferriero checked the exhibit,
he joked that there was one thing missing: a Zippo cigarette
lighter like those carried by many an American serving in
Vietnam.
Later, in his office, he produced the one he kept for many
years. It was in pristine condition. ``USS Sanctuary'' was
etched in the side, and on the inside of its box was the
famous Zippo slogan:
``It works or we fix it free.''
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