
{"id":12181,"date":"2010-08-26T10:26:57","date_gmt":"2010-08-26T18:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=12181"},"modified":"2010-08-26T10:48:55","modified_gmt":"2010-08-26T18:48:55","slug":"perry-deane-young%e2%80%99s-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/08\/26\/perry-deane-young%e2%80%99s-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Perry Deane Young\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Taylor Sisk<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>Staff Writer<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\nThe distance from Phnom Penh to Saigon has diminished. Actually, you no longer can go from Phnom Penh to Saigon, as there no longer is a Saigon. But the last time Perry Deane Young was in the region, in 1972, the distance from Phnom Penh to what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now called Ho Chi Minh City seemed considerable. War has that effect on distances.<\/p>\n<p>The drive these days takes some six hours, first past the throngs of desperately poor in the streets of Phnom Penh, over the Mekong River by ferry and across the flat delta dotted with the occasional tiny village. Then from nowhere, it seems, flush against the Vietnamese border appear a half dozen or so casinos. Ahead lies today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Vietnam, so dramatically different from the Vietnam of four decades ago. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Night and day,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young says, from both Cambodia and its own past.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Vietnam is booming,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young, a Chapel Hill resident, says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Everywhere you look now, four-lane highways with elaborate bridges \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 irrigations systems and canals.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Young arrived in Vietnam in 1968 as a correspondent for United Press International, and he returned to Southeast Asia in late April for two weeks \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one each in Cambodia and Vietnam \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to attend an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Old Hacks Reunion,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a reuniting of former Vietnam War correspondents. <\/p>\n<p>The impetus for the gathering was the illness and death in Hong Kong of Dutch photojournalist Hugh van Es, who took so many iconic photos of the war. Upon the news of van Es\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s illness, a Google group formed that according to Young now includes some 300 former war correspondents, colleagues and family members. <\/p>\n<p>Young\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book <em>Two of the Missing<\/em>, which was published in 1975 and re-released last year in paperback, tells the story of two of his friends, the photojournalists Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, who, in 1970, disappeared forever into the jungles along the Cambodia-Vietnam border. For Young, the April trip provided an opportunity to retrace his friends\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 last documented miles and to revisit what he calls \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the great moment of my life\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the events he witnessed and the people he met as a young correspondent amidst the horror of war in Vietnam.<\/p>\n<p>The group was given first-class accommodation by the Cambodian government; they traveled in air-conditioned buses with police escorts.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was bang, bang, bang, one thing after another,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young says. They took part in a Buddhist ceremony at the site where nine journalists were executed by the Khmer Rouge in 1970 and visited one of the Killing Fields, where perhaps 200,000 Cambodians were murdered. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You just look down and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just absolutely littered with bones,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pits with 200 bodies and no heads. Where are the heads? \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 To think of the horror of it all.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Along with the photographer Tim Page and actor George Hamilton, Young then hired a car to drive the route Flynn and Stone had taken out of Cambodia. Page, Young, Flynn and Stone were among a tight-knit, loosely bound cohort of young journalists who covered the war, and Page has dedicated his life to learning what he can about his missing friends\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 fate. Flynn (the son of actor Errol Flynn) and Hamilton were boyhood pals, and Hamilton remains deeply affected by his disappearance.<\/p>\n<p>The men stopped at the place where Flynn and Stone were last seen and at the spot on the road where they were reportedly captured, paying quiet homage, Young says, to their friends, then continuing on to Vietnam.<\/p>\n<p>In Ho Chi Minh City, the Vietnamese government was initially a bit wary about the arrival of the Old Hacks, but, Young says, soon warmed to their presence. <\/p>\n<p>Young shadowed past haunts: his old apartment building, which is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153now a 20-story Sheraton Hotel with a Gucci store on the ground floor,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and the Majestic Hotel, where he stayed his first night in 1968, rundown then, now \u00e2\u20ac\u0153incredibly restored \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 $300 or $400 a night.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Continental Hotel is still there,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but the famous terrace is gone, the one where the Graham Green character in <em>The Quiet American<\/em> would go every night. Lots of stories from that terrace, Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, everybody sat on that terrace. And we would go there every afternoon. For some reason, they closed it in; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an Italian restaurant now.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><strong>They did it<br \/>\n<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, yes; no question,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young says when asked if he was visited on the trip by the ghosts of Flynn and Stone and of that other time and place. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But we went looking for them. This wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t about closure. It was about bringing them back and celebrating them and living with them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Young had an epiphany in Vietnam while being interviewed by Hamilton for a documentary. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153For many years,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153people have speculated on the psychology of what led Flynn and Stone to deliberately go down that dangerous road where they had to know they might die. And I had pieced together little bits and pieces of dialogue people overheard.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>But it now dawned on him: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No, they did not think they were definitely headed toward death. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t purely a suicidal ride.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Flynn, Young reasoned, had convinced Stone that they really could come out of it alive, with their pictures and stories, and a rare perspective on war from the other side.<\/p>\n<p>It was, Young believes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the very real presence of their ghosts right there among us\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that gave rise to this insight. It was, he says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153one of those light bulb moments\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: The allure was too much, and off they went.<\/p>\n<p>Young says that he himself once asked permission at the North Vietnamese embassy in Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, to be allowed to cover the war from their side, but never received a response. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153As I say in the [first pages] of my book, we all thought about it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Flynn and Stone actually did it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Of course,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Young adds, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153there are questions Flynn himself could not have answered. Was he fulfilling a death wish? Was it one last suicidal run? <em>Or<\/em> was it the purely professional Flynn looking for the last segment in the epic war movie he was creating?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The ambiguity of the allure.<\/p>\n<p>During the Old Hacks\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 final banquet, held in an elegant old hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, a fireworks display erupted over the Saigon River as part of the celebration of the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and Young was taken back to his first night in the city many years ago, when fireworks over the river celebrated Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. Within two days, Young would find himself in the middle of the Tet Offensive. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153For me, it was coming all the way back around. And so I yelled, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIncoming,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and ran outside and watched the thing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153most amazing fireworks display I have ever seen,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he later wrote on his blog.<\/p>\n<p>Back inside the banquet hall, Young countered choruses of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll Meet Again\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Auld Lang Syne\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with The Animals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We Gotta Get Out of this Place,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the real anthem of Vietnam,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says.<\/p>\n<p><strong>An \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcextraordinary group\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<br \/>\n<\/strong>In retrospect, Young thinks about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just how lucky I am to have been a part of this extraordinary group \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 how lucky I am to have had this experience\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (and, he adds, how lucky he is to have the friends in Chapel Hill who helped him finance the trip).<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The love and support I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve felt here has re-charged my batteries in a way I simply could never have imagined,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he wrote in his blog from Vietnam. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And over it all, a sense of fun we shared then and we still share. F***ing Page, still crazy after all these years. Peter Arnett is 75 years old, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still as enthusiastic as a teenager about whatever he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s doing or talking about. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still the boy reporter, out front of every gathering, asking questions, taking pictures\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The fascinating thing is that our bond was so strong from \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcVietnam,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and all that word came to mean in our lives, we just picked up, as close as we had always been, even though we hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen each other in 30 and 40 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153As with my original Vietnam experience, I leave here a changed, a better person.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><em>Read<\/em> The Citizen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<em> profile of Perry Deane Young at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2009\/10\/24\/perry-deane-young-on-the\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpeculiar-obscenity\u00e2\u20ac\u2122-of-war\">carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2009\/10\/24\/perry-deane-young-on-the\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpeculiar-obscenity\u00e2\u20ac\u2122-of-war<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The distance from Phnom Penh to Saigon has diminished. Actually, you no longer can go from Phnom Penh to Saigon, as there no longer is a Saigon. But the last time Perry Deane Young was in the region, in 1972, the distance from Phnom Penh to what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now called Ho Chi Minh City seemed considerable. War has that effect on distances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-miscellany","category-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12181"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12228,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12181\/revisions\/12228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}