4 - Relics and Remnants

Summary

Chapter 4 examines how veterans responded to the presence and absence of war remnants in Việt Nam. Returning veterans often engaged in battlefield pilgrimage as a way to reflect on the past, encountering or visiting war remnants in the form of battle locations or military bases. However, for the Vietnamese, the remnants of war were not limited to battlefields and military architecture. This chapter takes a broad view of relics and remnants, considering alongside military battlefields and bases the ecological, social, and individual effects of war on those who lived through it and those born in its aftermath. These more subtle remnants were obvious to some returnees, but to others, they were invisible. Exploring veterans’ reactions to the presence or absence of war remnants in these forms illuminates further remnants of war: the biases and other lingering effects of wartime ideologies of the Australians and Americans who returned.