Vietnamese remember Christmas from hell
25 years ago, President Nixon ordered the biggest aerial blitz of the Vietnam War - a hailstorm of death that devastated Hanoi.
By Ian Stewart
Associated Press Writer
HANOI, Vietnam - Fixed in time, her eyes stare out from a grainy black and white portrait hanging in a memorial in central Hanoi. Her name is unknown, but her memory is linked with the bombing raid on the North Vietnamese capital 25 years ago.
She's one of 1,600 civilian dead remembered this week in Hanoi and throughout this country to mark the anniversary of the 1972 Christmas bombings - President Nixon's last kick at communist North Vietnam.
On Dec. 18, 1972, an armada of American B-52s flew in formation seven miles overhead and unleashed their payloads on Hanoi. The bombings continued for 11 more days.
Stooped low inside a one-person bomb shelter, Nguyen Van Tung listened nightly as explosion after explosion broke his world into a clutter of rubble. Today, he is a volunteer who maintains a small memorial for the victims.
"The United States and Vietnam and our children should look to the future, but let's not forget the past," Tung said.
It was "Operation Linebacker II" - an attack aimed at winning concessions from the communists at peace talks in Paris. The campaign, coming shortly after Nixon had won a landslide election to a second term, was the biggest aerial blitz of the war.
With the fighting long over, Washington and Hanoi have now moved into a new era of friendship. But their troubled past continues to haunt.
"For those who want to forget or who do not want to recall, the candles and incense still lit on thousands of graves and altars will remind us of those 12 days and nights," said Doan Khue, a Communist Party Politburo member and former defense minister.
In Hanoi and the northern port city of Haiphong, the bombing was staggering. More than 1,600 civilians died, 70 U.S. airmen were killed or captured and many Americans were left to wonder what price Nixon was willing to pay for "peace with honor".
For the Vietnamese, it was a hailstorm of death.
"If I could have talked to President Nixon, I would have said 'What were you thinking? How could you do this? You dropped bombs on our heads,'" said 76-year-old Phuong Thi Tiem, who recalls spending days trying to dig trapped survivors out of the rubble.
"All through it we could hear people screaming under collapsed walls and bricks,' she said. "We tried everything to get to them, but by the time we pulled them out they were dead."
