DA NANG, Vietnam -- A half-century ago, they were on opposite sides of a nation divided over a distant war.
Suel Jones fought with the Marines in the jungles near the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Vietnam. Later, he broke up an anti-war protest in Texas with his fists.
Mark Rudd was a Columbia University campus radical turned domestic militant with the Weathermen, battling those he called warmongers by any means necessary.
Then in March, they sat on adjacent bus seats in Da Nang traffic, having formed an unlikely but powerful bond. Jones spoke of rejecting his former self, forging a new path.
Rudd replied, "What you're describing is word for word my situation."
The men had joined a two-week tour of Vietnam sponsored by the anti-war nonprofit Veterans for Peace -- part of a group of a dozen veterans, protesters and others who were just curious about what the country looks like today. The group leaned left, but individually, the travelers approached Vietnam from strikingly different perspectives.
Jones, 73, who helped lead the tour, had a story a minute as the bus snaked through the mountains on the way to Khe Sanh Combat Base, the Marine outpost that was the site of a disastrous siege in 1968. The hilltop now has a museum, a coffee shop, a U.S. helicopter and a couple of tanks.
The native Texan never made it up to Khe Sanh when he was in uniform, but he fought the North Vietnamese army as an infantryman at Razorback Ridge and The Rockpile along Route 9 and was injured by mortar fire.
Jones returned home shaken but still loyal to Uncle Sam. A lot of drugs and booze later, he found himself living in seclusion in Alaska.
"It took me a long time to relearn the moral story of who I was as a human being," he told Rudd.
The journey carried him back to Vietnam in 1998, where he was shocked at the kind reception he received. He set out to try to reverse some of the damage he and his compatriots had left behind, mainly from Agent Orange and other herbicides that still cause health problems. He has lived in Vietnam off and on since 2000.
For Rudd, 68, the trip was his first to Vietnam. Having grown up in suburban Newark, N.J., he arrived at Columbia University in 1965 as the campus was convulsed with civil-rights crusades and anti-war activism. He ended up as one of the national leaders of Students for a Democratic Society and an admirer of revolutionaries like Argentina's Che Guevara and Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh.
Believing that more drastic and violent action was needed to end the war, Rudd and some friends split from the Students for a Democratic Society to start the Weathermen. In 1970, three of Rudd's comrades died when a bomb they were building -- meant for a military officers' dance -- exploded accidentally.
"I didn't plan it, but I knew about it," Rudd said. He was on the run from the law for seven years before finally surfacing in 1977 to face a variety of charges. He ended up serving only probation and moved to New Mexico to teach.
A round-faced and gregarious grandfather, Rudd looks back on those days with regret and wistfulness. He readily acknowledges the errors of his youth but still gets worked up talking about the heady rush of the era: how the Black Panthers seemed so cool, how he understands the warped thinking behind modern young Muslims' targeting of civilians.
"Everyone is the enemy, everything is justified," Rudd said.
He formed a quick bond with the wiry, blunt and salty Jones as the group made its way through war sites, met with families affected by Agent Orange and watched the demolition of some of the unexploded bombs that still litter the countryside.
Over long bus rides and beers in the sticky evenings, the two talked of speaking together someday in the United States about how they had both once committed themselves to killing -- and now reject it.
"I rebuilt my identity," Rudd told Jones of his post-Weather Underground years.
Jones replied: "We have more in common than you might think."
SundayMonday on 05/01/2016