American Notes VETERANS

A dozen Soviets landed in Washington last week, but they were not mere tourists. Veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, they came through an exchange that has also taken some 50 American Viet Nam veterans to the Soviet Union. The program has achieved profound communions between men who thought of themselves as enemies. In Moscow, after a Soviet vet ripped open his shirt to reveal a wound caused by a U.S. machine gun, a Viet Nam veteran displayed a leg wound inflicted by a Soviet-made mine. Suddenly, the strangers sensed, as American Larry Oswald put it, that they were "in many ways brothers." Said Soviet veteran Sasha Karpenko: "We feel ourselves part of those who died in Viet Nam. This is our mutual tragedy."

Last week Danny Reed took Igor Morozov, 23, to the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial. They found the name of Reed's friend Ivan Smith, killed in 1965. Morozov tenderly ran his fingers over the engraved name and left a carnation there. The two veterans embraced, then walked away.