a coffee enterprise<\/a>\u00a0that his son,\u00a0F\u00e9lix<\/b>, later managed, employing dozens of local people known as Montagnards.<\/p>\n\u201cWe had all we wanted there,\u201d Fran\u00e7oise said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, it was like paradise,\u201d Jean-Marie said.<\/p>\n
The plantation became something of an Eden for the Americans, too, if an incongruous one.\u00a0Ted Showalter<\/b>, 79, a West Point graduate who arrived in Khe Sanh in 1964 with the Green Berets, remembered thinking: \u201cHow in the world can these people survive out here …?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Poilanes gave the Americans fruit from their orchard and invited officers to sip Pernod at their dining room table. When all the bridges on Highway 9 were blown up, the troops offered space on cargo planes so that bulging burlap sacks full of coffee beans could be sent to markets on the coast.<\/p>\n
But war was coming \u2014 had long been there, in fact. In 1964, Eug\u00e8ne died in an ambush… And in January 1968, the Marines finally forced the Poilanes to evacuate. The family went first to Danang, and then to Hue, where Fran\u00e7oise and Jean-Marie had been born.<\/p>\n
The siege was broken in April 1968 at a cost of 274 American lives and those of nearly as many South Vietnamese soldiers. The estimate of North Vietnamese casualties runs into the thousands.<\/p>\n
F\u00e9lix begged to return to check on his ripening coffee. On the day before Easter, he boarded a military plane for the quick hop. The plane came under enemy fire as it landed, sliding off the runway and crashing. F\u00e9lix was the only person killed. His widow,\u00a0Madeline<\/b>, and the children \u2014 along with two of their aunts, Eug\u00e8ne\u2019s half-Vietnamese daughters with his second wife \u2014 had no choice but to leave for France.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very difficult for my mother,\u201d Fran\u00e7oise said.<\/p>\n
In 2014, Mannion asked a friend in Paris if she could help track down a family he had known briefly in Vietnam. She was able to. Mannion then persuaded the leadership of the Khe Sanh veterans group to bring Fran\u00e7oise, Jean-Marie and their spouses to Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy biggest joy is seeing other veterans talk to them, talk to them about their parents, talk to them about seeing their house,\u201d Mannion said.<\/p>\n
At the Hyatt, graying Marines peered at a set of photos set up on easels. Here was Jean-Marie in his mother\u2019s arms. Here was Fran\u00e7oise in a red dress, sitting outside the Khe Sanh house and watching as U.S. troops single-filed past.<\/p>\n
The siblings spent their week in Washington sightseeing, including visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. France has no equivalent to the Wall, they said. The Vietnam War is not something that\u2019s discussed there.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why this trip had been so important to them. It was a chance to be with some of the only people who understood what it was like to be at that place, at that time.<\/p>\n
There was another photo of the Poilane villa, taken by\u00a0Robert Shippen<\/b>, 71, a Special Forces medic from Watsonville, Calif. It\u2019s from after the siege. The house is blackened and splintered, destroyed by a bomb from a B-52.<\/p>\n
Shippen said he wasn\u2019t sure he should show it to Fran\u00e7oise.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe teared up,\u201d he said. \u201cBut she was appreciative of seeing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
By\u00a0John Kelly<\/p>\n
Full article:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nU.S. veterans of Khe Sanh had some special guests at their reunion<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/us-veterans-of-khe-sanh-had-some-special-guests-at-their-reunion\/2018\/08\/20\/6ea38e2c-a490-11e8-97ce-cc9042272f07_story.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. Marines would often see the girl as they emerged from the jungle, tense from their patrols, aching from their loads, sweaty and bug-bitten. She was a vision, like something from a dream: an 8-year-old blond girl sitting on the steps of a French-style villa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions\/174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khesanhcoffee.com\/poilane-eugene\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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