25^th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War

Fini Bye Bye

By TAD BARTIMUS

Women hate to say goodbye.

They repeat instructions to their children – "eat all your vegetables, brush your teeth, don't lock the sitter in the closet." They lecture their men – "that's a terrible tie, why are you wearing that tie? shouldn't you change that tie?" Women especially don't like to let go of each other. So they interrogate.

"Say, how's your daughter?" I asked, stopping my friend as she turned toward the elevator for the third time. It was a ploy calculated to root her to that spot for another 15 minutes. Maybe even half an hour; I wasn't ready to give her up yet.

Good women friends are hard to come by; best women friends are as elusive as the Dead Sea scrolls. We've all got them -- the girl down the block when we were growing up, college roommates, the wife of the young couple next door to a first apartment.

I found most of my best women friends in the middle of the Vietnam war. We bonded for life in a dangerous place far away, but when we left Saigon a quarter-century ago we gave each other up to time and distance. Now, as we mark the 25^th anniversary of the end of that terrible war I got a brief reunion weekend with my old women friends. Seeing them, hugging them, I knew I wanted to keep them longer than I could.

When we were young and brave we'd been members of a very small band of females blasting through gender barriers to report the war. That trial by fire brought some of us closer than sisters. We competed hard but also sometimes got superstitious about being out in the field without one another. We felt safe together and shared everything but boyfriends.

Afterwards, back in "the world," as the GIs called America, we tried to stay in touch but new husbands and peacetime lifestyles pulled us apart. Our memories went into photo albums, which went into drawers, which stayed closed. Then a West Virginia University professor invited seven of us to tell students how we'd "changed journalism history."

"Who came up with that title?" scoffed my friend? "Makes me feel old."

Staring together into a mirror it was clear time hadn't stood still; we wore life's roadmap on our faces. But it was the spiritual rather than the physical that preoccupied us. Where had we gotten to? What had we learned?

Seated together at a table set with fine linen and pretty china, a stranger might have mistaken us for ladies who lunch, matrons who do good works and never chip their manicures. We wore smart suits, tasteful makeup, discreet jewelry. We used proper forks, didn't drink too much, knew just the right amount to tip. But had such a stranger come closer, this is what he would have heard:

"Remember that time in Cambodia when we dived for cover under a hotel bed to protect ourselves from incoming rocket fire and had to use a tampon as a ruler to try and figure out how close the enemy was?"

"I've shrunk two inches in the past 10 years. My doctor thought it was osteoporosis but I told him it was too many jumps out of a helicopter."

"Do I still have a scar? Of course I do, they couldn't get all of the shrapnel out."

When we left the war to return to "the world" our Vietnamese friends said, "Fini Bye Bye" -- so long, farewell, The End.

But for those of us who went to Vietnam there was no end, only departure. In middle age we now have other friends, loving relatives, meaningful work. But behind the faczade we share the same demons and angels and when we are together we are code talkers who share an emotional shorthand.

When it was time to part again, maybe forever, we held each other too tight, blinked back too many tears. It was harder to let go this time; we knew how empty we'd feel. So we stood in the hotel lobby, seven women friends unable to say goodbye, and we stalled. We were remembering the first lesson of war: there's safety in numbers.

Dear old friends, may ours never diminish.

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