Did You see What I Saw? - 2016

Quilcene, Washington:: Pied Typer Press,, 2016.. Edition of 13. 7.5 x 10" double-sided lightweight sheet with pocket containing 15 postcards (4 x 6"). Front designed to look like soldier's uniform pocket with magnet button closure and title on name bar. Back side image of "Commander's Monthly Review. Peter Newland, Preface: "During the [Vietnam] war our unit's job was to hand produce a cargo tracking tome called the Commander's Monthly Review and to prepare charts, overhead transparencies, and illustrations for the Colonel's briefings. The poster pictured on the front of this card was an attempt to interject some humor into mostly serious business. We make no claim to being prescient and frankly can't explain why now travel to Vietnam is all the rage. "It is unlikely that today's tour guides point out that there are 58,267 names on our Vietnam War Memorial. A wall for Vietnamese soldiers would need to be at least twice as long. Nearly two million civilians in North and South Vietnam lost their lives. We dropped more bombs during the Vietnam War than on all of Europe during World War II. When we retreated, we left behind a broken and traumatized country, strewn with our garbage and whose soil we deliberately poisoned. Nearly half a century later, the negative effects of our actions still trouble the citizens of a unified and independent Vietnam, a country that never was a threat to America. "Hopefully today's travelers won't gloss over what went on there just five decades ago. If they do, these Did You See What I Saw? postcards might jog their memory.