Any answers?

"on-site participant conflict memory" suggest itself . . .

ie, "post-conflict on-site participant conflict memory-exercise," perhaps? Of course, we may need to distinguish between "unit-activated" and "individually-activated" post-conflict on-site participant conflict memory-exercises . . .

I think Joshua Chamberlain wrote somewhere about re-visiting the Gettysburg battlefield many decades later. I wonder if he has a term for it in there somewhere.
Best,
Tom

I'll look for the potential Chamberlain cite. In news content and advertising, I've seen references to "memorial tours," "peace tours," "personal history tours," even "old soldiers' tours." Some of those terms, however, seem potentially charged with politics of one sort or another.

I've also seen veterans' travel to current conflict zones derided as "war tourism." That's hard to argue with, sometimes..

The practice may not necessarily be tied to geography. I know one Vietnam veteran, for example, who embedded as media with his former platoon guidon, which was then deployed to Iraq. "It made my PTSD worse," he said later.

It seems that there should be a unique term for this, an activity that seems to be a mix of pilgrimage, terrain-walk, and "a road-march down memory lane."

Of course, I may have watched George C. Scott play Patton once too many times, too. ("Two thousand years ago. I was here!")

I would call it *not* nostalgia, but military self-archaeology.

Everyone, it seems, does an archaeology of one's life when approaching the seventh and eighth decades. Maybe it's existential anxiety; maybe it's just trying to make sense of what seems to have just happened---life. Military people have that early life more vividly imprinted than others do.

From what I can tell from my military relatives who suited up for the big one--father, uncles, and one aunt--they all started doing this in their early to mid seventies.

Beside tracking down his own ships and shipmates, my father also traced and excavated the war odyssey of one his elder brothers who was not alive to do it for himself, an infantryman from whom we had a parcel full of V-mails. In fact, it was my Dad's last project before he died, to write a history of his brother's long service in North Africa and Europe, never coming home until the end.

My Dad also served in the occupation of Japan for two or three years, and we traced his journeys through that country several times when he was in his sixties.

The bell does not ring backward.

The conversation has moved on, I know, but, for the record, I thought I'd take this opportunity to thank those who offered their thoughts on what to call an old soldier's revisitation of war.

Here's where I ended up:
http://www.redbullrising.com/2012/03/ruck-march-down-memory-lane.html

I think it also incorporates some "what deployment means" conversations in which I participated on Best Defense a few months ago.

Thanks, Tom, for creating the exchange of ideas and information.

do I lament about " We could have skipped the whole war thing...." How many instances can we show where enemies become friends, moreso then just economic partners. Can not the aspect of just letting people's destinies transverse time and history while we wait for the better opportune time to declare proferred trading partnership?

Alas, too much to ask. Most likely too nieve to expect. But Switzerland and Portugal seemed to have pulled it off.

Kunino, there were many mistakes made during our Iraq invasion. I served there for a few months as the public affairs advisor to the director of the Infrastructure Reconstruction program. Tom Ricks hits the ball squarely with his book Fiasco. The most flagrant thing I found was our failure to inform the Iraqis why we invaded their country, displaced their government and established an occupation authority. Please re-read what I just wrote, because this is hugely important.

The fault was that for the first year we only broadcast our messages on a terrestial TV system inherited from Saddam, although many/most Iraqis went to satillite reception as soon as Saddam lost control. They got their news from Al Jazzera. The message from AJ was that we invaded to steal their oil, demonstrate contempt for Islam, etc. The gist is that for a year we never really told the Iraqis why were there or what we were doing.

Other major errors included lack of planning to capture all the ammo and munitions sites, esentially by-passing them. This allowed terrorists to help themselves, and you know how that story ends. Some effort was made later to seal the sites, but much later.

Kunino, there were many mistakes made during our Iraq invasion. I served there for a few months as the public affairs advisor to the director of the Infrastructure Reconstruction program. Tom Ricks hits the ball squarely with his book Fiasco. The most flagrant thing I found was our failure to inform the Iraqis why we invaded their country, displaced their government and established an occupation authority. Please re-read what I just wrote, because this is hugely important.

The fault was that for the first year we only broadcast our messages on a terrestial TV system inherited from Saddam, although many/most Iraqis went to satillite reception as soon as Saddam lost control. They got their news from Al Jazzera. The message from AJ was that we invaded to steal their oil, demonstrate contempt for Islam, etc. The gist is that for a year we never really told the Iraqis why were there or what we were doing.

Other major errors included lack of planning to capture all the ammo and munitions sites, esentially by-passing them. This allowed terrorists to help themselves, and you know how that story ends. Some effort was made later to seal the sites, but much later.

Mr Krohn initially criticized the cabin color treatment of the vehicle mainly responsible. In his follow-up remarks he now discusses the vehicle's hub caps and tool kit. The US Army invaded and took Iraq with a remarkably small butcher's bill. This is a lasting tribute to the army's war fighting capabilities, and also to the weakness of the Iraqi army -- usually an overlooked factor.

Lies and vanity provoked the Iraq adventure initially and staggering incompetence, blindness, in the US military and civilian leaderships following that initial military victory multiplied the invasion death toll of Americans by a factor of about 40. The augmented Krohn list of deficits does little to explain that. Similarly, the recent Krohn from-the-hip claim that the current government of Vietnam is better than the Obama administration does little to suggest that the writer has much of a sense of scale. Not really from the hip, I suppose. From a luxurious air conditioned hotel room in what used to be named Saigon; shallowly; and fueled in part, he boasted, by duty-free hooch.

It would be interesting to examine how many of our post-WWII conflicts took place in former English and French colonies. The way the British divided and conquered left the world with religiously and tribally divided nations. And in some cases, such as Iran, artificially constructed states. A related problem is that post WWII, we initially sided with the colonial masters. At least the Philippines were left unaltered.

Our "Black Air Force*" flew C-119s to resupply of Dien Bien Phu. They probably flew many other missions as well. When it was clear to the French that Dien Bien Phu was an impending disaster, the French asked Eisenhower to nuke the Viet Minh surrounding the complex. After some thought, Eisenhower said no.

*These were Air Force pilots who had been "sheep-dipped" to work for the CIA. The crews had been flying missions in the Far East for a very long time. I met a bunch of them living in a villa two doors down in Saigon. They invited us over for drinks so that they could check us out. That was the first time I saw and handled a Danish Madsen '53 which they prefered.

In re. to RVN SF VET: Iran isn't an artificial state. You might be thinking of Iraq. As for conflicts, since the most significant conflicts the U.S was involved in after colonialism were in Asia, the Middle East and South America it seems reasonable to suppose that the majority of them were former colonies of the U.K and France.

In re. to Dilbert Dogbert: I'm not sure of the exact quote but it (if the writers can be believed) certainly did warn that the last time the Chinese occupied Vietnam they were there for a thousand years (which is a bit of oversimplification).

Speaking of missed chances, are you aware of the OSS mission in 1945 to help Ho Chi Minh's guerilla group. Around 7 US soldiers parachuted into the forests north of Hanoi with the task of training and supporting the Viet Minh, the guerilla band led by Ho and Giap. The Americans worked right alongside the Viet Minh during the summer of 1945, and photos show them sitting with Ho, Giap, and others, all looking like a gang of pirates. During the frequent bull-sessions, they talked a lot with Ho, who spoke excellent English and who was very interested in learning about the American Revolution and American history. The OSS had sent reports back up the chain advisiing that while Ho was a communist, he seemed to be a nationalist first with the goal of gaining freedom from French rule.When WW2 ended, the OSS group marched with the Viet Minh into Hanoi, where Ho declared independence, only to see the French come back in force to try to crush the independence movement. Ho sent 2 or 3 letters to President Truman asking for American support, in line with Roosevelt's wartime speeches supporting freedom from colonial rule. Of course, the letters were never answered, and the US (seeing dominoes) instead started to support the French, as RVN SF VET describes below, and eventually picked up the Tar Baby from the French....and the rest is bitter history.

As Gilda Radner used to say, "Nevermind!" Thank you Grant.