Prologue: Otherwise Known As…

Call me Chuck, short for Charlie, informal for Charles, short for Victor Charles, which is military phonectics for Viet Cong, which in turn is short for Viet Cong San, Vietnamese for Vietnamese Communist, whose bright shining light was Ho Chi Minh who in turn went by a number of different names himself; but that’s a story for another day. Also happens to be my full name too, by the way. No relation.

As can be imagined, I’ve been asked about the nature of my name a number of times in this short span that some people call a lifetime. But I’ve grown used to it. Of course, the passage of time has affected a number of details so embellishments rule the order of the day the more I recount it:

Whilst a young man growing up in sunny, tropical post war-Vietnam, the ass-end of the American war, Reunification and during the reducation period of the Socialist Republic, dad was informed (he never really remembered where from, it must’ve made for some interesting dinnertime conversation) that it was forbidden to name one's kids after Big Uncle. That fact raised his eyebrows, as most like things would do to a curious young lad in turbulent times, and the rest is history.

So fast forward about 10 or so years later to America, where my dad is in a rush to figure out what to name his newborn son in the mad rush of the maternity ward of the hospital out in the middle of Kansas where I was born. Already sharing the same last name as ‘Uncle’, and by the grace of being born on US soil, where you can name your spawn just about damned near anything you wanted (just don’t expect universal adoration), he went and named me Ho Chi Minh. Just to spite Charlie about 6,000 miles away back in the Vietnam which dad just spent about 2 years as a boat person to get the hell away from. Dad moved in mysterious ways, still does.

That being said, just because that was my name didn’t mean that it was used around the house. After he recovered from the adrenalin rush of the fact that he was a father and realized what he named his son (about the first week coming home from the hospital), he almost had a coronary. But by then the paper was set in stone and he was too cheap to get a name change, so the name stuck. Around the house though, I just went by Cung. Then my dad remembered that was Uncle Ho’s real name.

So after another near-coronary, my dad consulted a complete list of all the bastard’s names and decided to call me Long.

When it came to the end of high school, I felt like I had to do my part in the grand scheme of things. Maybe it came from being named after a man of magnitude, maybe it was the dress blues. So I did what many a red-blooded American did when they were my age and confused, I joined the Marine Corps. I think it was the closest to sainthood I ever got, if you didn't listen to the cadences (you’d think I had every STD known to man, and woman) and ignored the liberty calls (I had a bad habit of being multilingual when drunk, not in a good way though). I, along with anyone ever in a conversation with a US Marine, learned to never underestimate the institutional humor of the Corps. I got assigned to the 1st Marine Division, which had the distinction of fighting Charlie in Hue during the Tet Offensive. Rather than being chastised for my dad's choice of names, I became the company mascot of sorts. It wasn't everyday that the US had Ho Chi Minh on its side. So besides my freedom, I think the greatest gift this country's ever bestowed upon me is its acute sense of irony.

But despite the name, despite being the son of my parents, even despite the Corps, nothing really prepared me for my first visit to Vietnam.