In Peace Time
August 2008. Neal St. Anthony, Twin Cities Business

Vietnam vet Bob Carlson (left) can trace his belief in servant leadership to his war experiences. Both he and emigre Paul Smallwood find renewed hope and opportunity in the country's healing economy and environmental initiatives. Photograph by Raoul Benavides

More than 30 years after they left Vietnam, two Minnesota Businessmen go back. It's not the past that draws them. It's the future.

Bob Carlson and Paul Smallwood are Vietnam veterans of a different stripes. Carlson, retired CEO of Vadnais Heights based Reell Precision Manufacturing, Inc., was an Army Captain in the Mekong Delta in 1967 and '68.

Smallwood, founder and head of FlowSense, LLC, in Maple Grove, was an impoverished kid growing up in Saigon, 25 miles away. Today, Vietnam is a prospering country that has moved two-third of its 85 million people out of poverty and, despite Communist rule, brims with entrepreneurial energy. Yet, neither man will forget the jungle war of 40 years ago or the refugee-packed streets of a sweltering Saigon.

Images that in America seared televisions sets, inspired music and marches, and made and destroyed political careers were in Vietnam actions that killed and wounded more than 3 million Americans and Vietnamese.

Carlson, now, 67, earned combat honors in Vietnam, but left there even more skeptical about U.S. and South Vietnamese leadership and purpose than when he'd arrived. He ended a planned Army career after just six years in 1969.and struggled with memories of the war for years afterward. Smallwood, 48, was born Nguyen Thai Ha in 1960. He lost his father to the war. His mother married a U.S. Army sergeant and immigrated with her son in 1974.

In 2007, I introduced the two engineers and businessmen to each other for the first time. I know them through separate assignments as a columnist for the Star Tribune. At Kieran's Irish Pub in July 1007, we broached the subject of
returning to Vietnam.

Smallwood's daughter, Marianne, a University of Minnesota business school graduate, had left a good job al General Mills in 2006 to work in Hanoi. He was anxious to visit her in the new Vietnam and explore business opportunities for FlowSense, which specializes in energy efficient refurbishment of buildings. Carlson, unsure about surfacing long-buried memories of death and war, was ambivalent at first when we talked of visiting. "I can get excited and also apprehensive when I think about Vietnam,"
he said. He concluded that he wanted to go back, though he was wary of being haunted by the old Vietnam.

Smallwood said it was a trip we would not regret. And he was right.

The North Vietnamese Army crashed Russian tanks through the gates of South Vietnam's opulent presidential palace - now the "Reunification Palace" - on April 30, 1975.

For more than a century, Vietnam had been occupied by China, France, Japan, and America. the Russian patrons who helped Vietnam's Communist victors install a failed command economy in the 1980s are also long gone now. A poor, isolated Vietnam opened itself to foreign investment in 1986. In 1995, President Bill Clinton sent envoys including U.S. Senators John McCain and John Kerry - both Vietnam vets - to open diplomatic and commercial ties there.

The streets of Saigon-officially Ho Chi Minh City-are bustling now with markets, restaurants, and Internet cafes. Luxury cars coast amid the more-typical buses, motor scooters, and bicycles. Office and condominium towers spiral above tidy parks and traditional, three-story structures that house merchants and residents.

"This country is open for business," Smallwood says. "Saigon and Hanoi and the people seem more prosperous each time I am here." He returned to Vietnam in 1994 for an employer and again for his own company in 2004 on a trade mission organized by the Minnesota Trade Office. Vietnam's economy produces about $61 billion in goods and services annually and is growing at about an 8 percent annual rate, according to the U.S. Department of State. It has surged past the Philippines and neighboring countries, with per capita annual income that has more than tripled to $726 since 1994. More than 94 percent of its people are literate, and English has become the most popular second language. Vietnam wrestles with inflation and years of environmental neglect, but it is investing in education, pollution control, and a modernized electrical system.

"It will take another generation for Vietnam to meet its goals for public health, education, and environmental sustainability," says Pham Sinh Huy, who lived for 30 years in Minnesota after fleeing Saigon in 1975, and has been director of the Hanoi affiliate of
global aid group Save the Children since 2006. "Government officials, the technocrats with whom we work are pragmatic and mindful of the challenges they face. The issue is balancing economic, social, and environmental development," Huy adds.

Vietnam's government maintains controlling ownership in its Vietnam Airlines, utilities, and other flagship companies, but the country still boasts an entrepreneurial culture. It tax very lightly the thousands of tiny peddlers, farmers, and mechanics who have worked their way out of poverty.

"It sure is a better place than it was in 1968," Carlson says. In his mind's eye, he sees a country bombed out, corruption at the the highest levels of the South Vietnamese Army and government, war refugees and destitution. New images are replacing those. Carlson is buoyed by his two weeks in and around Saigon and Hanoi in March 2008. "I found myself constantly marveling at their spirit, energy, and charm of the Vietnamese people, considering what they have been through," he says.

The son of a Texaco and Firestone distributor in Detroit lakes, Carlson was a 26-year-old Army captain when he arrived in Vietnam in late 1967 to fight near Tan An in Long An Province. The West Point graduate commanded 110 men in the Ninth Division's 1st Battalion, 84th artillery, headquartered at Dong Tam, south of Saigon. They had firing mission in support of infantry clashes. Carlson's battery was fired on regularly by Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops that surged into the Mekong Delta.

A poorly led South Vietnamese Army was commanded by political appointees who profited from black marketeering in American supplies. The country's political leaders were corrupt and no more democratic than the hard-edged Communists of the north.
"Corruption was a major reason for South Vietnam's downfall, because [its rulers and commanders] squandered scarce resources and did so mostly at the expense of the peasants," Carlson says. "That gave people reason to align with the VC. We used to joke that every division commander in the South Vietnamese Army was a millionaire - in dollars, not [local currency] dong."

Carlson commanded mostly draftees who had no interest in a civil war waged in Vietnam's sweltering, snake-infested swamps. " I told the men that my job was to make sure that they got home," he says. " They worked hard and we worked well together."

By January 1968, amid increased NVA infiltration into the South, Carlson was working feverishly to improve gunnery and shrink and tighten the perimeter of his base. "We rebuilt bunkers thick enough so they couldn't be penetrated by rocket-propelled grenades or direct hit from a mortar."

On February 10, 1968, at about 1A.M., One of Carlson's lieutenants awakened the young captain in his bunker. They were about to be attacked. Carlson leapt from his cot, donned a steel-lined flak jacket, boots, helmet, and M-16 rifle. He forgot his pants in the rush. But he wasn't going to get cold. The Tet Offensive was underway throughout South Vietnam.

"We were attacked by 500 or 600 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong," Carlson recalls. "We could see them coming for a couple hundred yards with our night-vision scopes. They were on the receiving end howitzer fire, 100 round-per-second miniguns from helicopter gunships, raking fire from 50-caliber and M-60 machine guns, and small-arm fires. That battalion came right through a rice paddy - no cover.

"We lost two men and 20 wounded. We killed about 130. I say that with no sense of triumph," he adds. "When I walked the battlefield afterward, most of the dead enemy looked like boys. The shame goes to the politicians that send the young into battle."

He had considered a military career, but he left Vietnam in late 1968 and the Army in 1969. "I guess I disagreed with the war," Carlson says. "And I honestly thought that if I had gone back for another tour of Vietnam, I would have been killed."

"The North Vietnamese had a compelling vision, and their execution was amazing, despite horrific losses," he says. "None of that could be said for our most senior political and military leaders. By 1968, nobody talked much about winning. People talked about getting out alive."

Carlson went to work as an IBM salesman, and earned an MBA in the prestigious Wharton School of Economics at the University of
Pennsylvania. He tried to put Vietnam out of his mind. He had nightmares for years.

He married and he and his wife, Joan, had two children and moved to the Twin Cities. Carlson spent 30-plus years as a marketing executive at Tennant Company and Advance Machine, and as a marketing consultant. He finished his career as co-CEO of Reell Manufacturing, which makes torque and motion-control devices for office-equipment, automotive, medical, and other markets, beginning there in 1998 and retiring in 2005. During his tenure, Reell was honored by Minnesota and national business-ethics organizations. Carlson and other owners and managers took pay cuts during lean times and declined to layoff workers during the
2001-02 recession. Most of their competition was in low-wage China.

"There were senior officers in Vietnam who put their own troops purposely in harm's way to make a name or simply for convenience," he recalls. "It happened to me. A Colonel wanted me in his office every morning at 8:30. I had to drive five miles to get there from the South Vietnamese 7th Division. The VC loved to kill officers who drove the same road at the same time every day. "And I've met too many executives who don't give a rip about anybody but themselves. Did Vietnam change me? I don't know," Carlson says. "I am intolerant of bullshit, putting energy into things that don't matter, and the lust for power versus leadership that serves people and the common good."

Smallwood 's relatives fought on both sides during wars against the French and Americans led by Vietnam's late nationalist hero Ho Chi Minh. As a boy, Smallwood lived with his mother in a tiny Saigon apartment. He waved at U.S. soldiers who sometimes tossed candy bars back. He heard bombs and gunfire that rolled right up to the outskirts of the city by 1968.

"I was very young and my mom tried to keep me away from the war," Smallwood recalls. "I remember that my friend, Thuan, and I would wander around Saigon. What little money we had we spent on dry squid and tamarind candies."

It was an enterprising youth, "Thuan and I would climb trees to get mangos, which we hawked at the market." Using grasshoppers they'd caught in the rice paddies as bait, "we would fish at a creek with fishing poles that we made from bamboo, kite string, and safety pins."

Smallwood, who left Vietnam when he was 14, lived with his mother and adoptive father in Orlando, Florida, where he remembers being called "gook" and "chink" by high school classmates as he struggled to learn English and master his courses. He joined the United States Air Force upon graduation, serving as an electronics technician and rising to the rank of sergeant during a combined 10-year active-duty and reserve career.

At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the 1980s, he earned a degree in engineering, then worked for Honeywell, McQuay International, and what became Siemens-Westinghouse. Smallwood founded FlowSense in 2001 after being laid off by Honeywell. FlowSense provides "green" mechanical and general contracting, construction, maintenance, and other services to government and corporate clients.

Smallwood and his wife, Anita, have three children. Marianne, the oldest, works in the Hanoi office of Child Fund, a global alliance of development groups that focuses on the needs of children. At 26, she's been accepted to the Tufts University School of International Affairs in Boston and speaks fluent Vietnamese.

"She knows more about Vietnam than I do," her dad says. Maybe, but Smallwood has been a keen observer of the country's development. When he first returned there in 1994 on assignment for Siemens-Westinghouse, "Vietnam was an untapped market, but there was a lack of established laws and guidelines to protect outside investors," he says. Corruption was still rampant. By 2004, when the Minnesota Trade Office organized an environmental trade mission, Smallwood, participating on behalf of his
recently founded company, saw an improved business environment. His visit this year has convinced him that "now is the right time to explore and expand business in Vietnam if the right opportunity arises."

FlowSense will gross several million dollars in sales this year from its energy-saving overhauls of buildings and equipment. Smallwood sees opportunities to grow his sales in a greener, cleaner Vietnam, and he's collaborating with the Minnesota Trade Office on an energy-related visit to be made by interested Minnesota firms as early as this fall.

During our trip in March, Smallwood meets in Hanoi with Nguyen Trinh Huong, head of work-environment technology at the National Institute of Labor Protection. Vietnam, a coastal nation, is especially concerned with global warming and rising sea levels.

"Our country needs investment in 'green technology' and environmental protection," Huong says. Outside Saigon, Minneapolis-based Lemna is building Vietnam's first garbage-to-compost plant. The $50 million facility will consume 1,200 tons of waste daily when it opens this fall, and Vietnam will reduce its need to import expensive fertilizer. The country recycles all
wood, metal, glass, and cardboard for industrial use. Small solar wafers are appearing on roofs, and low-energy light bulbs are everywhere.

"There are U.S. companies that can help with water-purification and treatment facilities, and more efficient power generation and energy conservation technologies," Smallwood says. "There are great opportunities here. I plan to be part of this."

Between Smallwood's efforts to scout business, he and Carlson scout a few old battlegrounds. They converse with dozens of Vietnamese students, workers, and shop owners. They walk the now neat streets of Hanoi and Saigon together, the former soldier and the junior mango salesman.

Commerce and culture rule. The local police are unarmed. The only AK-47s we spot are held by Vietnamese Army guards outside embassies and government buildings.

"I'm glad I came back here 40 years later to see this," Carlson says. "I am encouraged by Vietnam and its friendly people."

''I'm sure that 'Uncle Ho' would be glad to know that Bob carne back,"Smallwood quips, toasting Carlson with a Vietnamese beer at an open-air cafe one night in Hanoi. "And pleased that he carne without weapons this time."

Neal St. Anthony is a reporter and the "On Business" columnist for the Star Tribune.

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