Return to battleground brings closure to vets By Julie Schmit Gannett News Service HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam rice paddies, where a misstep could "Unbelievable," he said. - Lying in his own blood, Paul Critchlow knew fear. The U.S. Army private 1st class, 23 and fresh off the University of Nebraska football field, had been blown 10 feet by an anti-tank grenade that exploded in front of him. He couldn't move, not even to see if he still had legs. For five hours, he slipped in and out of consciousness as the battle raged. He decided death wouldn't be too bad. "What I really feared was having to watch: a North Vietnamese finish me off," said Critchlow, who was eventually rescued by helicopter. Last week, Critchlow, head of communications for Merrill Lynch, put the event in its rightful place: behind him. He stood on the ground where he had struggled between life and death 31 years ago during the Vietnam War. "This is it," he said, as he stepped onto the spot, surrounded by bomb craters. Then he fell crying into the arms of his weeping Vietnamese guide. The visit I healed a wound that, for Critchlow, only a return to Vietnam would heal. "I've been trying to reconstruct it for 30 years," he said. "I don't have to do that anymore." Critchlow was one of 24 U.S. veterans, organized under the umbrella of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, returned to Vietnam April 24 as the 25th anniversary of the end of the war neared. They came the first time as young men n to fight communism, test themselves and do what their country asked. They came the second time as business executives and scholars seeking to build bridges for their country as the war recedes and the global economy grows. The veterans talked with Vietnamese officials of trade, investment, urban planning and the networked economy. The veterans also came as men who, at some level, sought reconciliation either with themselves, their former enemy or their own country. As the days passed, feelings and memories surfaced much as shrapnel still bursts from time to time through Critchlow's skin. The men recalled lost friends, children caught in cross fire and the care they took navigating along dykes in trigger a mine. Conversations whipsawed from how developed the country looks to how upsetting it was to discover that a soldier killed in combat was a woman. For a few, talking about anything but Vietnam was preferable: the presidential race, their kids. Either way, it was unlike any other trip they'd made to Vietnam. The seasoned business travelers peered like first-time fliers from the window of the Vietnam Airlines aircraft as they descended into Hanoi, the former enemy capital. In some ways, Vietnam looked and felt the same. The heat, rice paddies, water buffalo and roadside shacks were familiar. Thunder reminded veterans of shelling. Beautiful young women still caught their eyes. Many veterans weren't ready to revisit the past. But Critchlow did. Using old Army maps, he found the spot where he was wounded. It had happened during a 10-day battle in which dozens of Americans and hundreds of North Vietnamese died. Critchlow's company had gone in to help other units under heavy fire. They expected resistance as they walked into the valley, but got none. It was only when they tried to pull back to recover a downed helicopter that they realized the North Vietnamese had let them go in. They were surrounded. Near midnight, Critchlow was lying on his back in the middle of a former plantation building beneath a blown- off roof. He was pointing a flashlight upward to help guide U.S. airmen in dropping bombs on North Vietnamese positions. But the North Vietnamese also were using his beam as a target. Critchlow saw the soldier with the grenade launcher point at him and fire. Almost 31 years later, Critchlow stops to rest and get permission from local officials to cross the fields and reach the spot. Seated in the yard of a Vietnamese family, he is again surrounded by Vietnamese. But this time, the children smile. A young man offers him water. An old man shows him the right footpath. At the site of the former plantation building, where he once lay near death, he finds a field sown with manioc, a plant like a sweet potato. The hill that took so much blood now grows food.