Vietnam: An Outside Perspective

My first glimpse of the war came before I had even set foot in Vietnam. As our Pan Am jet passed over the province east of Saigon an army officer next to me pointed out some Air Force jets in an airstrike. All I could see were the wings swooping down beneath some hills to reappear seconds later. Any explosions were hidden from sight by the hills. I saw plenty of old bomb craters filled with rain water. You could practically follow the craters right into the approaches to Saigon's Ton San Nhut airport. So there really is a war going, I thought. Such are first impressions.

When the plan had taxied, everybody simply got up and walked into the 90-degree heat and headed for the military or civilian arrival areas. Waiting for baggage and immigration clearance took an hour in a plain little room bearing a welcome sign posted by Rotary International (luncheon meetings every third Tuesday, 12:30, at the Saigon Hotel, coat and tie.)

I spent a week in Saigon getting USAID identification cards, a px ration card, a Vietnamese driver's license, seeing Saigon and getting used to the look and feel of siege. At night I sampled the restaurants, favoring the old French Colonist haunts. The best of a good lot was a purely Vietnamese place, the My Canh, a floating restaurant tied up on the Saigon riverfront. It made news last year when a VC satchel charge ripped it and several patrons apart. As much as I enjoyed eating there, there was an indecent feeling about consuming sweet and sour pork, Carling's Black Label and fruit and nuts while listening to artillery across the river and watching the illumination flares slowly parachute down onto the countryside. It was like watching Twelfth Street riot fires from the roof of the Detroit Free Press last summer.

Lawrence A. Walsh is a former reporter for the Detroit Free Press who is in Vietnam with the International Voluntary Services.

Several afternoons I talked my way into the briefings at the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office in downtown Saigon. Here the press corps is given a daily rundown on U.S. air, ground, and sea action by an information officer from the appropriate service. All these men really do is call attention to 'typos' in the mimeographed dope sheets given to the reporters at the door. If there are no questions from the floor (they are raised only after important battles or rumors) the briefings (called the 4:45 follies since the credibility gap days) last only 15 or 20 minutes.

I was let down by the newsmen I met--cigars, paunches--a surly bunch. They sneered, guffawed, and went back to crank out their stories with information they didn't take seriously anyway. One of the accredited freelancers I met was from the Dartmouth student paper. Complete with work shift, a bit of a beard and steel-rimmed glasses, he seemed decidedly unmilitary and way out of his element. But he had considerable success in selling enough material to support himself in Saigon. He first broke even with the sale of a story and pictures to Parade Magazine about the mortaring incident at the Thieu-Ky inauguration. He and his camera were close to the spot where Vice President Humphrey, Ambassador Bunker and General Westmoreland were to be, had not rain forced the ceremonies inside. VC mortar landed square on the spot and the Dartmouth man was in luck.

Meanwhile I was getting used to sleeping under mosquito nets while educating my ears to the booms produced by different kinds of American ordnance used on the outskirts of Saigon at night. The noise of shelling competed with the constant drone of helicopters and jets taking off and landing at Ton San Nhut, only a ten-minute walk from the International Voluntary Services house. During the day I tried to get to know Saigon and imagine what it might look like without its oppressive cocoon of sandbags, barricades, rolls of concertina wire and black exhaust soot (military traffic has created so much air pollution that I wonder why the VC don't wrap their weapons in oil cloth and sit tight for two or three years while emphysema kills off all the city people in Vietnam--a new aspect of the war of attrition theory). Concertina wire surrounds every building or monument of size. The children here are as familiar with it as To mSawyer was with white picket fences.

Despite the necessary ugliness, there is a great deal worth seeing in Saigon. The markets (black and legitimate) are never dull. Of course there are the perpetually delicate, self-possessed Vietnamese women floating by in their silken ao dais. And for sagging American spirits there are always the px's which can meet almost any need.

The most foolish thing I did that week in Saigon was venturing out on a bicycle. If I meet a more harrowing experience in Vietnam between now and the day I leave I'll be very surprised. I found myself competing with American, Korean and ARVN army trucks; with motorscooters and motorcycles, jeeps, cabs, pedicabs, horsecarts, pedestrians, and other cyclists. The trip I took to the market was one long test of nerves and pedal-power as I continually coughed, wheezed and tried to keep fumes and soot out of my eyes.

I did get a chance to get out into the countryside visiting Long Ai, about 40 kilometers south of Saigon. This trip would be out of the question at night because Long Ai is the heartland of Vietcong insurgency. The VC must drink lots of coffee with their schedule of killing by day, killing by night.

We were in the country, all right, but traffic hadn't improved. The roads out of Saigon are long extended sheets of olive-drab and camouflaged steel armaments--tanks, truck convoys, rifles, soldiers, fortified bridges, occasional burnt-out vehicles. Everything and everybody had an edgy dug-in look. In any direction you looked you could find a column of smoke or a helicopter hovering over a fixed spot.

The first thing of consequence I did before leaving Saigon for Da Lat, the central highlands, and language training was stop at the USO. GI's coming straight in from an 'operation' could check weapons and get showers, hamburgers, real milk and listen to rock'n'roll there. Huge galvanized buckets of anonymously addressed letters in geographical arrangement stand around for anyone to go through (nobody does). The letters come from school children and little old ladies usually and aren't the type soldiers are eager for. There are stacks of old magazines, junky concession stands, and a "boutique' selling ao-dais 'for your girl back home.' Though the place was full, there was a depressing silence once the jukebox and pingpong noise was eliminated. People stared blankly, watched old football games on Armed Forces TV or browsed through Life Magazines.

I was about to quit the place when I met a soldier from Seattle, a helicopter gunner from the 162nd Assault Copter Co. in Phu Binh. He had been in Vietnam for 17 months but had never seen Saigon--and he was only in town this time to take a flight physical for helicopter pilot school in Alabama. He thought he had passed the physical and so became quite expansive, telling me about himself and his work "up north." He was a high school drop-out before enlisting and had failed at a few endeavors before the army. He had won a bronze star and had seen many of the headline battles fought with the North Vietnamese along the Cambodian border. Describing the helicopter he'd be trained to fly, the Cobra, as a "pile of guns attached to a couple of rotary blades," he said with very honest pride that his helicopter experience had been the only successful part of his life and except for his mother, there was nobody and nothing at home to care about so a long war was fine with him. He was making a lot of money, having a lot of excitement and was taken good care of.

When I told him I was with an organization known as International Voluntary Services he noticeably winced, said I was crazy and that I should go home right away. But he warmed up to a description of the kind of work I'd probably be doing with refugees and came out to the IVS house with me for dinner that night. Later I drove him to the field hospital at Ton San Nhut, said good-bye and good luck, never expecting to see Mike again.

The next morning, a few hours before taking a C-47 cargo plane to Da Lat, I found Mike waiting outside the IVS compound with a green duffle bag of things for me--insect repellent, army-issue boots, socks, shorts, and--hold on--an M-3 45 cal. machine gun and 2 clips of ammunition, something that looks like an auto mechanic's grease gun and, in fact, is called a grease gun. I declined everything except the repellent but I was genuinely touched by his concern for my safety. We exchanged APO addresses and agreed to take an R&R together sometime.

Da Lat, the resort spot built by the French and still appreciated by the

There is a well-known and true story of Robert McNamara's difficulty with the Vietnamese language. He likes to make a small pleasantry to his audience--usually "Vietnam for 1000 years." Unfortunately, to the Vietnamese it came out sounding quite different--"The duck wants to lie down." The Viets would always howl at this and Mac thought he had really scored. Vietnamese, is their answer to Sun Valley, Palm Beach and White Sulphur Springs. Both sides regard it as one of the trophies in this war and consequently it sees little of the fighting. Saigon politicos and generals use it for their R & R and there are serious reports that VC higher-ups vacation here too. The unnatural quiet of this place almost becomes repugnant--all you have to do is read the Saigon Post or listen to the radio to know that Da Lat is leading a charmed life. IVS hired an excellent old gentleman to tutor us for six and a half hours a day, a Mr. Thanh, Paris-educated and clothed in a French suit, beret and scarf.

Learning Vietnamese is appropriately perplexing. With its six distinct tonal levels, it is as hard to master as the country's current politics and history. To sift through the grammar is easy enough but the tonal business is frustrating. One word may have two, three, or even four completely different meanings depending upon the pitch and stress you use. There is a well-known and true story of Robert McNamara's difficulty with the language on his frequent visits to Saigon. He likes to make a small pleasantry to his Vietnamese audience--usually "Vietnam for 1000 years." Unfortunately his aides never told him that the printed words for the phrase have to be pronounced quite precisely to convey the message. And every time Mac would wave his arms and give his little greeting, the audience would always hear something quite different: "the duck wants to lie down." The Viets would always howl at this time and Mac thought he had really scored. Maybe his French will get him by at the World Bank conferences.

My day usually starts with a couple of roosters ruining my sleep. Our cook brings in a nourishing, if unexciting, breakfast of hot Bulgar wheat with concentrated milk and sugar, coffee and/or Keen (Nestle's), a lemon-lime powder we use to give the filtered water some taste. The Bulgar is like Wheatina or pablum and comes out of a big sack with an American crest on it with the USAID handshake symbol over that, followed by the words, "given by the people of the United States of America"--this is as close to welfare living as I hope to get. USAID gives great quantities of the stuff to refugees but hasn't had much success in selling its tastiness. A lot of it ends up in hog troughs. So USAID people have printed little 'cookbooks' on 'good eating' with bulgar wheat. The refugees still don't like it and want their rice ration back.

My spirits really rise with the news from the Voice of America, which begins the day's transmissions with a two-minute beeping of "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean." A few bars of this serves as my daily patriotic pap and it elicits remarkable 'American' feelings and responses. At night we get a few laughs by listening to the English-language news reports from Peking--the announcers have a vocabulary range of about 35 words chief among them being 'lackey, stooge, reactionary, aggressor, imperialist, fascist, nazi, and Glorious Chairman."

In three weeks here I've gotten to know some worthwhile people. One is an ARVN officers who saw some of the early Dak To fighting. His family owns some hillside vegetable gardens and he took me through them. Pointing to an ancestor shrine (which looks like bird stations on post) standing in the middle of a field he told me how much he hoped he'd be somebody's ancestor.

I met several university (Dalat) students. Their own histories and views of life as lived in 25 years of war were an education for me. I think that the lack of commitment to a democratic Vietnam in these young people is understandable if still disappointing to me. They fail to see why they should make plans for their country or themselves as the people and things will indefinitely continue to be chewed up by war. I committed a major faux pas when I requested a forum/interview arrangement with some of the students, thinking the transcription might be of interest to an American newspaper. My suggestion was coldly ignored. Later I discovered that my interest in their views tagged me as a CIA man, not a popular American role in Vietnam.

A pretty young biology teacher from the French lycee (where I'm studying Vietnamese) took two of us to a Buddhist novitiates' encampment in a pine grove to meet some young monks at work on a new pagoda. The head man invited us in to his 'prayer house' for what turned into a proselytizing session. He gave me an autographed copy of an anthology of Buddhist wisdom which he had edited. I promised to read it once I knew enough Vietnamese.

His prayer house, about as big as one of those very large doll houses in an F.A.O. Schwartz catalogue was as bare as could be except for a mat, a teapot, a tooth brush, and, disconcertingly, a stack of American comic books. I haven't any idea what they were doing there nor did I ask.

Maybe I shouldn't let the pat statement "Dalat sees little of the war" stand without some qualifications. Every night there are 80 or 90 rounds-of 'H & I' (harassment and interdiction) artillery fired into a free strike zone outside of town. Our house is between the artillery mounting on a hill three miles from here and the free strike zones. It's not at all uncommon to hear shells whizzing high over the neighborhood. But if it weren't for the sake of a newsletter, I'd be completely oblivious to the noise (as, indeed, is everyone). H & I is fired mostly for psychological purposes. Free strike zones are areas the army is allowed to pummel day and night. Anything that moves in one of these zones--they are multiplying--is subject to all kinds of fire.

The war did come a little closer to Dalat last week when a dam and power station outside of town were sabotaged by the VC. The resulting flood wiped out a quarter mile of the Phan Rang/Nha Trang road (the coastal road). Gasoline and rice used to be brought into Dalat by this road. Speculation is that both commodities will be rationed until the road is repaired--and that could take months. That's too bad--just getting used to 'com' (rice) and the lack of buoyancy of landrovers, Vespas, and jeeps on the pot-holed and dirt roads