From Heroes Hall to Hanoi — SoCal veteran returns war relics to fallen soldier’s family
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For more than 57 years the objects never saw the light of day.
Shut up inside an old box bound with tape, they remained out of sight but never really out of mind for Adolph Novello, the former U.S. Marine who placed them there, alongside a prayer book and a string of rosary beads, at age 20 following a 13-month stint in Vietnam.
Some identification papers, old coins, a lighter and a homemade wallet, containing a tiny black and white photo of an unnamed North Vietnamese soldier in his teens, who died in combat in 1967.
The artifacts didn’t amount to much — they could be held in two cupped hands — but their weight was immeasurable for Novello, who carried them with him from Vietnam to his hometown of Chicago and eventually to California, locked up tight inside that box, and in his heart, for half a century.
Today, the 76-year-old Murrieta resident recalls acquiring the objects after some skirmish or other in North Vietnam, where servicemen were ordered to scour the field for still-living soldiers to take into custody and to search the bodies of the fallen for intel or maps that might reveal enemy war plans.
“I had an empty C-rations box and I put everything in there, whatever it was I’d acquired, and before I left [Vietnam], I sent it home,” Novello said of the now-relics. “I really hadn’t touched it, because I kind of knew what was in there, and I think I didn’t want to remember what was in there.”
It wasn’t until this March, while attending a speaker series hosted by the Heroes Hall veterans museum on the Orange County fairgrounds, that Novello was inspired to open up that box.
The March 1 event featured three Montford Point Marines, the first Black recruits to serve in the Marine Corps, including one who was awarded a Purple Heart by Maj. Gen. Bruno Hochmuth, the same commander who’d bestowed Novello himself with a Purple Heart.
After the talk, Novello went into the garage to search through his own memorabilia for photos of the award ceremony and was confronted by the C-rations box gathering dust on a high shelf. It took about 10 times for him to muster up the courage, but thinking it might be of use at Heroes Hall, he eventually forged forth.
That simple act kicked off a journey that would take the septuagenarian and Heroes Hall historian Brenton Ogden across the globe, retracing the former Marine’s steps through Vietnam just as the nation prepared to celebrate the 50th commemoration of the fall of Saigon.
Ogden recalled Friday how Novello brought the box of artifacts to him, thinking they might be of interest to the museum, which had recently debuted “ Echoes of Conflict: Remembering Vietnam,” an immersive exhibit including personal items from Southern California veterans.
“He brought in objects and ephemera he had from his service in Vietnam that were from a North Vietnamese soldier,” the historian said Friday. “And Adolph nonchalantly mentioned he wanted to see if his family could be located to give the artifacts back.”
Working with his own personal and professional connections, including historians who advised the markers of Vietnam-era video games on points of historical accuracy, Ogden located the identity of the soldier in the photo — Kha Van Viet — who hailed from a Thai ethnic family living in the central highlands of Vietnam.
On April 23, the pair undertook the long journey, from LAX to Ho Chi Minh City, then on to Hanoi. They met with Kha’s nephew and cousin, who officially received the objects in a ceremony last Sunday, attended by numerous national dignitaries and televised by Vietnam’s state-owned VTV-4.
Novello was interviewed multiple times by journalists eager to hear the details of his story, but recounting events long suppressed wasn’t easy. The veteran choked up during the broadcast when talking about some of what he experienced.
“You figure if you just stayed tight-lipped about it and didn’t say anything to anybody, it would be OK,” he said. “But, truthfully, it really wasn’t. It was terrible and still is.”
Ogden and Novello did not participate in the televised ceremony, choosing to stay out of the limelight during what was still, 50 years later, a highly emotional and politicized occasion. But, in addition to the artifacts, the Vietnamese soldier’s family received a portrait of the youth, enlarged from the tiny photo that had lived half a century inside a C-rations box.
That gesture is vitally important to Kha’s family, Ogden said, as Vietnamese religious tradition places a high importance on praying before an altar holding the physical belongings of someone who has passed as a way to tie their spirit to their ancestral home.
“It’s extremely important to have any kind of [personal] effect from that individual to have that connection, so not having anything was kind of allowing his soul to be lost,” he said. “And this was bringing that back.”
And, perhaps, the same could be said of Novello. Although his return to Vietnam was difficult, he believes it was the right thing to do. The old box has been emptied, and maybe that clearance will make room for more in his life.
“I did sleep pretty good last night, for a change,” he acknowledged Friday, one day after returning stateside. “Hopefully, with all the different interviews and talking to people there I can talk to my kids and my wife about it.
“I think it will clear some stuff up — I think it will change everything.”
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