From: Marc Yablonski
Dated: April 12, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Right. That's a newer book of his. If I'm not mistaken, he wrote that within the last few years. The guys felt really betrayed by their own government when they came back. They were not allowed to join Canadian veterans organizations or march in their Victoria Day parades. One guy told me that he didn't even tell his new bride that he'd been in Vietnam until three years after they were married! Another felt that the notion that Canada did not participate in the Vietnam war was a fallacy since, said he, 90% of the herbicide Agent Orange was manufactured at the DuPont plant in Elmira, Ontario.
Marc Phillip Yablonka
From: Steve Pennington
Dated: April 12, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Also, "Cross Border Warriors: Canadians in American Forces, Americans in Canadian Forces, From the Civil War to the Gulf," by Fred Gaffen.
SLP
From: Rick Fredericksen
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Correct. ding ding ding. Dawson spells it Mai Lan.
Rick Fredericksen
From: Rick Fredericksen
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Here's another question from Vietnam War Trivia Book---one closer to home: "This pert Vietnamese girl gave Vietnamese lessons on the radio every morning and, for a while, on television. Who was she?"
Rick Fredericksen
From: Nancy Smoyer
Dated: April 14, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Rick,
I enjoyed reading the full version of you GMV story. I loved the movie, but wrote about it this way in my book. ('m pretty sure I've sent this before.)
I went to see Good Morning, Vietnam with a DD friend and a civilian friend of hers. During the scene where the actor playing Adrian Cronauer was caught in a traffic jam and started kidding with the guys in a nearby truck--where are you from, how long you been in Vietnam, etc.-- the whole atmosphere changed from growing frustration to one of lightness and laughter. I whispered to my friend, "He was a Donut Dollie, too."
Then when we came out of the movie, after the ending in which Louis Armstrong sang “What a wonderful world” to scenes of destruction in Vietnam, I said to her, "I feel like bawling." She responded something like, “That was so depressing.” The civilian woman said, "What? I thought it was funny!"
Nancy
From: Marc Yablonski
Dated: April 12, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
I'll track down a copy. Thanks!
Marc Phillip Yablonski
From: Rick Fredericksen
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Alan is in Bangkok and heavily quoted in my recent 30th anniversary story on Good Morning, Vietnam. We were in both Saigon and Bangkok together.
Rick Fredericksen
From: Rick Fredericksen
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Dawson also wrote a fun paperback in 1987: "The official Vietnam War trivia book."
"How many Viet Cong were killed inside the US Embassy in Saigon during the 1968 Tet?"
Rick Fredericksen
Please see a related conversation on foreigners in the US Military.
From: Rick Fredericksen
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
He's also been involved with movies during his time in Thailand. Here's a link (Click Here) to my Good Morning Vietnam story if you've not seen it.
From: Marc Yablonski
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
I've certainly seen his byline a time or two in AP stories about Southeast Asia.
Marc Phillip Yablonka
From: Dick Ellis
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
I served with one Canadian in the US Army....Alan Dawson. Alan is now an AP correspondent/ reporter/writer in Thailand or somewhere around Vietnam...
Dickie
From: Rick Fredericksen
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Here's Dawson's answer (to a trick question): "None. The Viet Cong entered the compound, but never the Embassy building itself."
Rick Fredericksen
From: Dick Ellis
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Damn, Dawson spent a lot of time in my room visiting and drinking my scotch and didn’t even mention me in the book!
Dickie
Friendship Across the Borders
Canadians who Volunteered to Fight in Vietnam
April 2018
From: Marc Yablonka
Dated: April 12, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
FYI: There is an earlier book about Canadians who served in American uniforms in Vietnam called "Unknown Warriors: Canadians In the Vietnam War" by Fred Gaffen, former curator at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. It's just under 30 years old though, so not sure if it's still available. Gaffen once wrote me that estimates range between 10 to 40,000 Canadians served in the war (though 40K seems high!), either because they were studying in American colleges and universities and their draft deferments ran out, or because they felt the cause was right. A couple of guys I interviewed for a story I wrote about them harkened back to a time when, before the US entered WWII, American pilots came north to join the RCAF, and that fact was their inspiration, so they enlisted in the US Army and Marines. One of them told me that his recruiter falsified an American address so that he could join up.
Marc Phillip Yablonka Military Journalist & Author "Tears Across the Mekong"
Available through: www.amazon.com or www.marcpyablonka.com or marc.yablonka@sbcglobal.net
(818) 554-0756
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From: Dick Ellis
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
18-killed and one captured....JoeC was there taking films when the sun came up. I have photos taken the next day of the RPG holes in the gate and the little black car on the street out front.
Dickie
From: Jim Anderson
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Until at least a few years ago Dawson was writing a column for the Bangkok Post under the pseudonym of Wanda Sloan.
From: Dick Ellis
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Alan was working for a newspaper in Seattle I think it was....(the memory sure goes after 50-years!) and was drafted because he lived and worked in the US. He wrote a book about the end of the war because he came back as a civilian after serving in the US Army and stayed until they finally threw him out. He had a passage about General Tom who was the Ambassador to Thailand at that time....smuggling a suitcase full of gold out of Vietnam and heading for the US. I met the Ambassador/General at his home in Florida for dinner several years later and he said it wasn't true, he came to America with practically nothing to settle in Florida and open a small catering company. His wife was working in a 7-11 store.
Dickie
From: Rick Fredericksen
Dated: April 14, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Yes, I remember your reaction to the movie---just as meaningful the second time around Nancy. Thanks.
Rick Fredericksen
From: Dick Ellis
Dated: April 13, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Maybe I shouldn’t answer these questions. Mai Lon.....(sp?). Did an English show on the Vietnamese radio station down the street and a show on our TV station called. “Let’s speak Vietnamese”: I feel like I am cheating....I wrote, produced and co-hosted the show. I tried to contact her when I lived in DC in the 80’s through the extensive Vietnamese network there. She married an American and lived at that time in Baltimore. She sent the message back that she was afraid to communicate because he was very jealous.
Dickie
From: David Pinto
Dated: April 12, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
[The Suburban is a weekly newspaper which circulates in west-end Montreal.]
Tracy Ariel has written about Vietnam. She has, notably, written / Volunteered: Canadian Vietnam Vets Remember, a book about Canadians who volunteered to serve during the Vietnam War.]
I Volunteered: Canadian Vietnam Vets Remember
ISBN: 1896239145
Paperback, 175pp
Here is a link to an article she wrote about Canadians who served with the US military in Vietnam:
Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
From: Steve Pennington
Dated: April 12, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Marc, you remember the story well. The book was written in 1995 and published in Canada. Great first person accounts.
SLP
From: L. F. Rogers
Dated: April 15, 2018
Subject: Friendship across the border: NDG Vietnam vet remembers buddy 50 years later
Group, Could this simple mind get a simplified explanation for me to relate to my Canadian relative? Too many divergent mails for me to decipher. I didn’t know foreign students in USA were subject to the military draft. Basic question: Were Canadians who served in the US forces in Vietnam refused entry to Canadian-Vietnam Vets groups and occasions? Any other info re this subject. Thanks, Frank
NOTE:
Not being an American Citizen was not protection from being drafted. But, if the foreign citizen was going to college, he was differed just as an American Citizen going to college was differed. Tado Urazaki, who was assigned to the Engineering Section at AFVN in 1970 and 1971 was a Japanese National who had been drafted into the Army. Jim White