A Happy Encounter

Ken Sandall, right, of San Jose, embraces Nguyen Hong. Nguyen was a 10-year-old boy when he befriended Sandall 30 years ago in Vietnam. (By Frank Johnston – The Washington Post)

Friendly crowds of people – including squads of children – gather cheerfully around the big American visitors at every stop. They'd often done the same during the war – though you could never be sure, then, whose side they were really on.

"The Vietnamese like us!" Esslinger, the Washington lawyer, says with a delighted grin. "As I look back now, I have no animosity toward them," adds Anthony R. Shaw Jr., a New Jersey phone company executive who'd fought at Khe Sanh.

Sandall, 52, a large, bald man with a sweet smile, holds the picture of the Vietnamese boy in his hand as the buses stop along a busy two-lane road running through Phu Loc.

"He was just a good little kid," he recalls fondly. "We'd come here for a month, we'd go out on ambushes and stuff. We were right on the other side of the bridge there, living with the people."

With the help of an interpreter, he questions the villagers. "He'd be about 40 years old now, because he was about 10 then," Sandall says. "He had a tattoo, 'Ca,' on his left forearm."

"Ah, Ca!" exclaims a man. He trots off and returns with a thin middle-aged man who seems slightly embarrassed by all the attention.

"Maybe it was you?" Sandall asks as Rob looks on. "You used to come and play with the Marines? You remember Ken?"

Nguyen Hong seems to remember, though his tattoo says "Ha."

"I'm Ken!" Sandall says, sweeping Hong into a bear hug.

"Oh, my God!" Hong exclaims.

They're both laughing.

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