"Like I left them long ago and here I am again," said the 50-year-old American who spent 13 months fighting in the Vietnam War in 1972.

"This is a catharsis for me. This is unbelievable," said Stienheimer, among the two million American war veterans from Vietnam and now a public relations guru who lives and works from Romania.

He is also part of the first India-ASEAN car rally that entered Vietnam Wednesday night.

Stienheimer is a rally official for Spartamatrix, the company that's providing the global positioning system for the 60-car convoy travelling through eight ASEAN countries that began from India in an 8,000 km, 20-day journey ending at Batam, Indonesia, Dec 11.

But the three-day Vietnam stretch of 1,312 km is the most important bit of the expedition for Texas-born Stienheimer of German origin.

"This is the bit that makes my whole journey worthwhile," Stienheimer told IANS. "You see! I'm only ever complete in Vietnam.

"A bit of me is lying in the dust of Vietnam somewhere. I have an artificial knee, made of special nylon," he told IANS, pointing at thin blue lines on his left knee.

"My knee is lying in the dust of Vietnam. So I can only be 100 percent whole here. Everywhere else, I'm about 96 percent or maybe 97 percent," said Stienheimer, his blond, shoulder-length hair sweeping against the red Vietnam T-shirt and across the blond goatee.

Stienheimer said he hated the war in which countless Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans died and which cost the US over $150 billion.

"I realised it even as I was in it that we were doing something wrong, that the guy on the other side was right and I was wrong. We had been fed a pack of lies," his voice grew softer and yet harder.

"But there was no choice but to carry a gun," said the man who sued the US Army to get released from service in 1993 and quit the country in 1997.

"I hate America. I hate what's happening there. George W. Bush is feeding people lies and they've elected him again. Americans must be the most blinkered race in history.

"My parents left Germany in 1937 because they knew what was coming. I quit in 1997 because I knew that the American government was going to do what the Nazis tried to do. Invade and try to conquer.

"Get in there and get the oil, no matter what the cost, that seems to be our foreign policy," said Stienheimer, who strongly opposes the war in Iraq.

In Vietnam, he is hoping to heal some scars. As young boys and girls cheered and waved at the rallyists, Stienheimer gave away roses to them.

"Every time someone says, 'Thank you' to me here, my spirit really lifts. I want to make amends."

But there are some things he cannot forget, like when he sees a cow.

"I hate cows here. One day, during the war, my friend and I were walking down a field. Suddenly a cow just ran up, lifted my friend in air with its horns and gorged him to death.

"I emptied my entire M-16 magazine into it. I made holes this big into the animal," said Stienheimer cupping his palms. "But my friend still died on that field. They said it was a freak accident.

"Sometimes..." he grows silent, then pipes up after a minute: "I want to drink Vietnamese coffee again - the best coffee in the world."

--Indo-Asian News Service