Vetknees, gooks, dinks, & slopes

I have a special place for Vietnamese people. They taught me the meaning of Dickens' first sentence in Tale of Two Cities. The government of the U.S. had a hand in it too. More like a fist.
Fear and love. Fear came first. Even thought I didn't see their faces, I knew the guys motaring and firing at us at night were not smiling. Perhaps some of them were the same who did smile during the day, kowtowing to the barbarians.
Love came when I dealt directly with our indigenous workers. They were mostly women who did our laundry, cleaned up our hootches, and made our beds every day. New sheets every Saturday.
The men did more disgusting work, cleaning out the outhouse and burning our metabolic wastes in the cut down 50 gallon drums we shat in.
I was the guy who stood in the pay line getting $30 of Military Script from each soldier to convert to piasters to pay every one.
I find myself searching the faces in Vietnamese establishments looking for someone familiar, trying to account for the 40 years that have past since the last time I saw any of them. Most of those I see don't look old enough to have been born when I took part in that great deception and slaughter.
Perhaps I am searching for redemption from the sins of omission I committed. Perhaps I'm merely wallowing in my own misery to confirm my feelings of failure and guilt.
Perhaps.