In the In Times Past column, David W. Dunlap explores New York Times history through artifacts housed in the Museum at The Times.
Many memories were awakened this year, the 50th anniversary of America’s withdrawal from Vietnam. Ralph Blumenthal, who covered the Vietnam War for The New York Times from November 1968 to February 1971, had more than memories.
He brought home a brass bracelet from the Montagnard people of the Central Highlands, who sided with America and the non-Communist government of South Vietnam during their long, losing war with the Communist North. The bracelet symbolizes friendship and loyalty.
Montagnard fighters cooperated with the U.S. Army Special Forces (the Green Berets) and the Central Intelligence Agency. So did reporters.
“It was a different era,” Mr. Blumenthal told me when I interviewed him in 2020 as he donated the bracelet and other artifacts from his time in Vietnam to the Museum at The Times. “We were very cozy with the C.I.A. and the Special Forces.”
On a reporting trip to the Highlands in 1970, Mr. Blumenthal took part in a fraternal induction ceremony, during which he received the bracelet. “We’d drink a vaguely intoxicating, vomitous liquid out of a big vat and we’d put our naked foot on an ax blade lying flat on the ground,” he said.
As Mr. Blumenthal told it, his Green Beret escort had said to a tribe member: “This man here is from The New York Times. Do you know what that is?”
“And the guy said, so help me God: ‘No. I don’t know what that is, because I can’t read. But people who know how to read, they know.’”
David W. Dunlap, a retired Times reporter and columnist, is the curator of the Museum at The Times, which houses Times artifacts and historical documents.
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