#CHINA BEACH VIETNAM WAR TV#

Artifacts from the time include a surfboard fashioned from the parts used to repair swift boats.īruce Blandy was in the Navy in 1969, stationed near the border with North Vietnam. The exhibit at the California Surf Museum includes a recreation of the surf shack at China Beach. It's not like we were treated as heroes.' 'When we came back we weren't very well accepted. 'Nobody wanted to know about my experience,' Sandy said. They worked together for 40 years, but they did not talk very much about their experience in Vietnam. The two of them met in 1972 back in California. He found out Sandy had been at China Beach during one of his two tours in the Navy. The day he was surfing with Lux at Del Mar, Lischer ran into one of his former co-workers, Eric Sandy. The exhibit has been a chance for vets to open up about the wider experience of a war that many of them barely talked about after they came home. 'That's partially because I avoided going to any Vietnam movies for decades and decades.'īruce Blandy made his own surfboard while serving in the Navy in Vietnam.

'I only learned recently through the California Surf Museum that there was a China Beach at all,' Lischer said.

#CHINA BEACH VIETNAM WAR TV#

It was featured in 'Apocalypse Now' and later the acclaimed but short-lived 1980's TV show 'China Beach.' But those references are lost on veterans like Lischer. Surfing is part of the mystique of the Vietnam War. The exhibit 'China Beach: Surfers, the Vietnam War, and the Healing Power of Wave-riding' opened in May. Over the past two years, the California Surf Museum in Oceanside has been collecting the stories of vets who surfed in Vietnam and those who continue to use surfing as a release. 'That took my mind off the war zone instantly.' 'I took the personal challenge to see how large of a wave I could ride.' he said. Lischer said he used the massive Hawaiian waves to wash away the stress of living in a combat zone. 'That was right downtown, a block from the beach at Waikiki.' 'We all went under a car… instantly went for cover,' Lischer said. They were walking to the beach when a car backfired. But just after his tour of duty there, he hit the beach in Hawaii, along with two friends who also had just gotten off the plane from Vietnam. A retired lifeguard and lifelong surfer, Lischer does not recall even seeing the ocean when he served in Vietnam. They were hungry for any taste of life back home. Many of them were Californians drafted into the conflict. Often, they were isolated surfers who found boards or built their own out of spare parts. Troops actually surfed all along Vietnam’s coast. You can survive it, but that's all you can do,' he said. He said he does not talk often about his time in Vietnam. He would not surf again until he got back to California. Lux was at the beach for less than three hours before his unit was sent back to the jungle. 'I had a few buddies that were from the Midwest, and they wanted me to help them try to surf it. 'I know I got to stand up and ride two, three waves,' Lux said. Troops hang out at the China Beach snack bar, an R&R station near a military hospital in Da Nang, Vietnam.

It was a rest and relaxation station, next to a large military hospital. China Beach was actually My Khe beach in the city of Da Nang. He thinks he was at what the Americans called 'China Beach,' the most famous surf spot of the Vietnam War. I got out there and the surf was mushy, you know, two foot, but they had a stack of boards there. 'They took us to the beach in helicopters,' Lux recalled. And for Lux, who grew up surfing in Encinitas, Cal., it's the one day he likes to remember from an experience he’s often tried to forget. As an infantryman, he rarely knew exactly where he was fighting.īut one day, about halfway through his tour, his commander told him to set down his rifle for a day of R&R. Like a lot of American soldiers in Vietnam, Bobbie Lux spent most of his time in the jungle. Since the 1960s, surfing has helped them open up about their experience in Vietnam. Vietnam veterans James Lischer, left, and Bobby Lux get ready to surf at Del Mar.

China beach vietnam war