Mission to atone: Former US servicemen move to Vietnam

IT’S not easy to find a turkey dinner in Hanoi, but a handful of Americans and their Vietnamese friends gathered on Thanksgiving over an imported bird cooked for them at a fancy restaurant in the capital’s old quarter, and they gave thanks.

One of them was Chuck Searcy, who was a US army intelligence analyst in Saigon 45 years ago. Another was Manus Campbell, who survived some of the war’s bloodiest fighting as a Marine draftee in Quang Tri Province. Both are nearly 70.

While hundreds of Vietnam vets have come back for brief, melancholy visits to the old battlefields to heal their psychological wounds, Searcy and Campbell are different: They and a handful of other former US servicemen have moved to Vietnam more or less permanently to help clean up the deadly mess left by American bombs and Agent Orange, the widely sprayed defoliant linked to birth defects and cancers.