I follow the stories of the kidnappings of unarmed civilians in Iraq by Muslim fanatics. I follow the stories of those who are beheaded, or shot, as if I know from personal experience something, a little, of what they have gone through. The kidnapping of the truck drivers particularly catch my attention. I have a feeling for how it is with them when they are on the road, when they are stopped, and when they are taken.
When I got to Vietnam in February, 1968 I had letters from the editors of Atlantic Monthly and the Los Angeles Free Press stating they were interested in receiving reports from me from Vietnam for publication. Normally that would have been sufficient for me to get press credentials from the U.S. Army. With U.S. press credentials I would be able to go where I wanted, with whomever I wanted.
I waited in Saigon several weeks, but could not get U.S. press credentials. For awhile I was okay with that. There was plenty to do. The Chinese Cholon district and the 8th district were invested with Viet Cong, there were attacks in and around the city, and there were many interesting things to see and people to talk to and many ways for me to get in trouble and write about it.
The problem with my getting U.S. press credentials was that, technically, my passport was not quite right. I had worked my way to Thailand as a seaman on an old Victory. We were supposed to have off-loaded in Saigon, and I expected to jump ship there. But while we were still in the South China Sea, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese kicked off their “Tet” offensive and Saigon itself was under siege.
So our ship was rerouted to Sattaheeb, Thailand, and I jumped off her there. I had no visa, so once in, I couldn’t get out. I then had to find a way to get to Laos, where I understood anyone could get a visa for anywhere. It came about that my understanding was correct, which is a very interesting and comic story, and with a Laotian visa I was able to re-enter Thailand legally, then catch a flight from Bangkok to Saigon.
So I was in Vietnam legally but there was a glitch with the passport. The U.S. military wouldn’t challenge it, but they wouldn’t accept it. After six very interesting weeks in Saigon I went to the South Vietnamese with my letters from Atlantic Monthly and the Los Angeles Free Press. In about half an hour I had South Vietnamese press credentials.
I did not go to Vietnam to report on the war, that is, to do journalism, but to work on a literary manuscript. For reasons I do not entirely understand, I had chosen autobiography as my form, a form for which there was, and is, no market. A few guys have used the form successfully, but by and large there is no market for it. Particularly if you are no one in particular, and you have no “revolutionary” agenda. Nevertheless, there I was.
There was also something about Korea that I had not quite gotten out of the way. I wasn’t certain what it was, but I was aware that it was there. I had been in the infantry in Korea in 1950 and ’51. One February morning, in a rice paddy, a Chinese machine gunner had shot me in the head, a sleight, glancing hit to the left temple. While the hit wasn’t serious, it caught my attention in a way that remained vivid for a long while. It led directly to my deciding to become a writer.
And then in July, in the trees on a mountainside, I was hit by fragmentation from a Chinese hand grenade. I saw the fellow who almost killed me. He stood up from his fox hole directly in front of me with a smoking “potato masher” in his right hand. It was very unprofessional of him to stand up like that, but at the moment I was doing something very unprofessional myself, so we were both just there. I can still see him. A tall, thin young man with a good face, an aquiline nose. While he almost killed me, I was left with a good impression of his face, which remains with me to this day.
A month later, back in Japan, urinating in a trough in the men’s room in a club in Osaka, the man urinating next to me said suddenly: “Jesus Christ. Is your name Smith?”
“Yeah?
“Were you in Fox troop, 7th Cav?”
“Yeah.”
“I was there the day you got hit.”
“Yeah?”
“Is that your hand?”
“Yeah. I didn’t lose it. Whose hand do you think it is?”
“I was there that morning.”
“I don’t remember you.”
“We killed that Chink.”
“You killed him?
“Yeah”
“Why did you do that?”
“Why did we do that? Are you kidding me??
“Yeah.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Nah. Are you?”
“You’re goddamned right I’m drunk. Why would I come to a place like this and not get drunk?”
“How did you remember me?”
“Are you kidding? You were almost blown off the mountainside. I saw you. I had only been there four or five days. You had blood all over you. I thought you were hit bad.”
“Just the hand.”
“Is that the hand?”
“You mean this one? The one with the bandage on it?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. That’s the one. The one without the bandage is okay.”
“One good hand. That let’s you piss without help. You’re a lucky man.”
“But you killed the Chinese guy who got me with the grenade?”
“Not me. Some other guys. I didn’t even see him. We were busy. I was told later. They shot him in the hole where he was hiding. You want a beer?”
“They have curfew at the hospital. I have to get back to the ward.”
It didn’t occur to me at the time to ask my comrade from Fox troop why he had been rotated out of line so quickly. He looked okay. I never saw him again. At the same time, I have never stopped seeing the rather elegant face of the young man who blew me out of Korea and thinking that maybe we did kill him. That’s what happens when, in a moment of wakefulness, you see an individual face clearly. You remember it, and sometimes you think about it.
Now it was 1968. I was thirty-eight years old. Seventeen years had passed. But there was something from Korea in there, inside me, that wasn’t quite finished. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t know how to take care of it. But now I had press credentials and I could go where I wanted and do what I needed to do.
One morning in May I was hitchhiking on Highway 4 in the Mekong Delta between Long Xuyen and Sadec. I expected to be in Sadec by early afternoon. I couple Vietnamese truck drivers hauling onions had picked me up and I was in the back with my overnight bag and my typewriter. About noon the truck turned off Highway 4 and began to head south. I let out a yell. I was ready to throw my gear over the side and jump for it. But the truckers stopped and I jumped out and thanked them.
I was at the turn off to Rach Gia. I had understood they were going all the way to Sadec, but I had misunderstood their Vietnamese. At the turnoff there were half a dozen little unpainted wooden cafes, or truck stops, three or four little houses, and a gas station. That’s all there was. From the intersection on south toward Rach Gia it was all rice paddies, forest, and Viet Cong. To the north it was the same.
I walked across the two-lane road and set the overnight bag and typewriter in the dirt alongside the pavement and began my wait for a military vehicle. I preferred American, but a South Vietnamese army vehicle would be fine, if they would have me. I was rather in the middle of nowhere. The sky was dark and low. The air felt like rain. I didn’t try to flag down any more truckers. A bus stopped at the intersection on its way to Sadec, but I had had a bad experience in a Vietnamese bus a couple weeks earlier. I let it go.
By early afternoon I was getting restless. It was good policy to be off the roads by four o’clock, five at the very latest. There were a lot of truckers on the highway headed for Sadec and back toward Can Tho, but I didn’t want to take a chance with another Vietnamese trucker. It was too late.
There weren’t any American military vehicles. I tried to flag down a couple Vietnamese military vehicles but they wouldn’t stop. The men driving them wouldn’t look at me. The truckers who stopped at the gas station on their way toward Rach Gia eyed me openly. A few kilometers south there were already villages where Viet Cong cadre knew about the lone American at the intersection of Highway 4. I had to get moving, or get out of sight.
I picked up the suitcase and the typewriter and walked over to the first café. Inside it was dark and empty. I walked to the next one and it was dark and empty. In the third it was dark, but there was a lone ARVN officer drinking beer. He looked okay. I continued down the line looking in the rest of the truck stops. There were a couple more ARVN military and some truckers. I went back to the third café, set my stuff down at the entrance, went inside, and addressed the ARVIN.
“Excuse me. Do you speak English?”
“Yes.” He smiled pleasantly. “Do you want speak English to me?”
“Yes, I do. I want to ask you to help me.”
“Oh, I will help. Will you drink beer with me?”
“Yes I will.”
He stood up.
“I am Lieutenant Duong. I am South Vietnamese officer. I would like very much help you.”
We shook hands. He was tall and slender and had a good, intelligent face. He didn’t try to impress me with his grip.
“I am Bradley Smith. I am a writer.”
“Ahh,” he said. He ordered two beers.
“I am a writer too. I work radio station before army. I love be a writer.”
Thunder began to roll and the rain hit suddenly on the corrugated tin roof. Lieutenant Duong ordered something from the kitchen and the woman brought pork liver sliced very thin with fish sauce. We dipped the pork in the sauce and drank the beer and the rain fell heavily on the roof and outside the doorway. We asked the questions it is necessary to ask when a Vietnamese and an American first meet. It is very important for the other to know how old you are. Lieutenant Duong was twenty eight.
We chatted about how dangerous the roads were. He said, “You very crazy travel that way. Excuse me.”
“A little crazy.”
“Very crazy. Excuse me. Very dangerous. Very very crazy.”
“Okay. Very crazy.” It made me laugh. Lieutenant Duong laughed.
“Oh, yes. Very, very crazy. Please excuse me.”
We were laughing. I hadn’t eaten anything that morning and the beer was good. A couple wet truckers came into the darkness and ordered beer. They watched how Lieutenant Duong and I were laughing. When the waitress brought the two truckers their beer, they raised their bottles and toasted me, smiling. Lieutenant Duong and I toasted them with our bottles.
I dropped a piece of pork from my chop sticks on the table top. Lieutenant Duong thought that was very funny. I tried to pick up the pork with the chop sticks but it kept sliding around the table top. The truckers laughed and raised their beers. I laughed. We were all laughing happily. In the back of my mind I was thinking about what time it was.
Lieutenant Duong reached over with his chop sticks, picked up the pork sliver I had dropped, and held it out for me. I opened my mouth and he put it on the top of my tongue. He laughed and ordered a couple more beers. I fumbled another piece of pork with the chop sticks and Duong picked it up. I opened my mouth and he put it on top of my tongue. The truckers laughed and raised their bottles. We were having a good time.
“What time is it?” I motioned toward Lieutenant Duong’s watch.
“Oh. It is four. I think we go. Yes. We must.”
“Where do we go?”
“You stay with me tonight.”
When we left the café Lieutenant Duong tried to carry my typewriter but I said no. Then he tried to carry my overnight bag but I grabbed it and said no. I followed him along the edge of the pavement until we came to a barricaded, wooden watchtower. Lieutenant Duong had a few words with a policemen there, then went out on the pavement and stopped the first truck that came along. Lieutenant Duong had a few words with the driver, then we got up in the front seat with him.
We drove about fifteen minutes through rice paddies with tree lines in the distance. We arrived at Ba Ton hamlet. The two-lane highway ran through the middle of the hamlet. There was a canal, an old concrete bridge, and to the south of the pavement a grassy square with a catholic church. The one-room church was constructed of wood and set up on poles. It was high enough so that a man could walk around underneath it.
We were in a Regional Forces camp. It was a circle of mud bunkers about fifty yards across, thatched lean-tos with the family wash draped around them, the muddy rifle pits, the rolls of concertina wire. The camp didn’t look comfortable, and it didn’t look defensible. I looked around to see what I might do if something happened. There was no where to go, nothing to do.
We took off our boots, put on our sandals, and took a stroll. The rain had stopped. The grass inside the circle of bunkers was thick and wet. Lieutenant Duong wanted to introduce me to each man in his company. I begged off. Wives and children were everywhere. One kid had poked wire through the ears of a rat and was walking it through the grass on a wire leash.
We met First Lieutenant Han who was the company commander. He stood six feet tall and had a skull-like face, and a winning smile. We went out through the concertina and strolled through small groves of mango trees, and wax jumbo trees. We chatted politely, Lieutenant Duong translating for us. The air grew heavy and sticky. Insects swarmed.
Strolling back toward the camp we came across a cage made from wood and barbed wire. It was about four feet square. My first thought was that it was to hold a Viet Cong prisoner.
“Oh, no,” Lieutenant Duong said. “Cage is give discipline my own soldiers.”
“Your own soldiers? From this camp?”
“Yes, yes.”
First Lieutenant Han looked at the cage thoughtfully.
“I have never used it,” Lieutenant Duong said. “I love my men too much. I love them each one.”
First Lieutenant Han spoke to Lieutenant Duong in Vietnamese.
Lieutenant Duong grinned. “First Lieutenant Han ask if you like try our cage?”
“Try what? No. No thank you.”
Lieutenant Duong spoke to First Lieutenant Han. Han looked at me happily, his death’s head grinning broadly.
The Regional Forces platoon of Ba Ton hamlet was drawn up in formation on the grass beside the church for their nightly inspection. Some of them had boots, some had thongs. Some had helmets, a couple had straw hats. Lieutenant Duong called them to attention, introduced them to the American writer, then went off into an extended oration on duty and country.
Some in the platoon appeared to be listening to him. Some picked their noses, others looked at the sky or scratched their asses. One of the boys was excessively cross-eyed and two others were so dopey looking I wouldn’t have trusted them with rifles. One boy wanted to look professional. He stood at attention with his chest blown out to the bursting point, but his steel helmet was on the grass at his feet, and all through Lieutenant Duong’s oration the boy stared at the helmet with grotesquely popped out eyes.
Supper was served on a long table in the shadowed light beneath the church. First Lieutenant Han, Lieutenant Duong, myself, and five enlisted men, all in their twenties. Only Lieutenant Duong spoke English. We ate shrimp, string beans, roast pork, bean shoots with green onions and scrambled eggs, a vegetable I was unacquainted with, rice and summer squash with plenty of black pepper. We washed it down with hot tea. There was a lot of talking and laughing. It was a wonderful supper. It was the best meal I had eaten since I left Los Angeles six months before. It may have been the best meal I have ever eaten.
Then there was the sound of singing. It came from inside the church. Down through the floorboards. Children were singing choral music in high pretty voices while below we ate and talked and laughed. There was something odd about the music. I realized then that the chorus was singing in Latin.
I said: “Duong? Do you think the music is beautiful?”
Doung lowered his eyes and shook his head no. I didn’t ask him why. I should have.
After supper we all took soap and towels and walked through the wax jumbo grove to the river. There were stands of coconut palms and thatched roof houses with men and women loafing on the porches. Young kids were playing with a couple rats, while half a dozen women were washing clothes at the waters edge.
The river was sixty, seventy yards across. Ropes were tied to poles near the bank and trailed in the current. We stripped down to our under shorts and entered the water. The current was warm and very strong. I grabbed one of the trailing ropes and held it with one hand and while I scrubbed my body with the other. Across the river two teenage girls were looking at us, making jokes, and horsing around. They were looking at me. One of the girls pushed the other into the river fully dressed. They laughed like crazy and the Vietnamese I was with laughed and looked at me. I pretended to not see anything.
At dusk we left the river and dressed. People were lighting oil lamps inside their houses. Lieutenant Duong and I went to his bunker to leave the towels. He told me to get my typewriter. Then he took me across the pavement to a little brick house with a tile roof. Inside there were several people who, when we entered, retired to another room. An old, high-framed mahogany bed took up a good part of the room.
There was a small solid table to put the typewriter on, and a lit kerosene lamp.
Lieutenant Duong said: “Now you write.” And he left.
I wanted to sleep. The night before I’d been up all night with artillery, and I was tired. But there I was. I worked on the journal dutifully. I didn’t want to fail Lieutenant Duong. Insects were drawn to the lamp. A lizard appeared on the table top and ate some of the insects. He was wonderfully agile. After awhile I noticed that underneath the mahogany bed, gleaming in the lamp-light, there was the entrance to a heavily timbered bunker.
After a couple hours Lieutenant Duong reappeared.
“Ten,” he said. “We have Chinese supper.”
Outside there were flares drifting through the black sky and here and there in the distance I could hear small arms fire. I followed Duong across the paved road, through the concertina, across the grassy clearing and underneath the church. My supper companions were there at the table again, along with three civilians. A ten-watt light bulb hung from a post but there was trouble with the generator so a lighted candle was placed on each side of the table. There were small dishes of fried vegetables and meats and a bottle of whiskey.
Lieutenant Duong said: “These are our farmers. They very pleased meet with you.”
We drank the whiskey and Duong did most of the talking and made everybody laugh. When the whiskey was gone Duong said: “Our farmers want you have coffee with them in morning. They very pleased.”
First Lieutenant Han invited Lieutenant Duong, me, and his First Sergeant, to drink coffee in another part of the village. I was exhausted and half drunk. I thought of making a joke about how it was easier to be chased by Viet Cong than to be welcomed to Ba Ton hamlet by Lieutenant Duong and First Lieutenant Han. I thought better of it. I resigned myself to sitting under the church in the candlelight drinking coffee with people I could hardly converse with.
Lieutenant Duong said: “No. No here. Other place. No give V.C. time fix us.”
“How close are V.C.?”
“Eh?”
“V.C. far away?”
“Oh yes, very far. Half one mile. More. We very safe. We move here, move there. They not fix us. Very safe. We move now.”
“I see.”
“First Lieutenant Han very good soldier. V.C. like very much kill him. We move.”
“I see.”
We walked across the pavement into the hamlet. There was no moon, no stars. I could see a few feet ahead of me. We took a couple turns among the houses and I lost my direction. I felt myself come absolutely wide awake. We came to a tiny café with a kerosene lamp turned low. The proprietress was a good-looking middle-aged woman. The baked dirt floor had long open cracks in it. I heard the trill of an AK-47. Then another.
We drank coffee from tiny cups and ate little sweet breads. I needed the day to end. Lieutenant Duong was being charming to First Lieutenant Han. It was obvious he respected the man. Small arms fire sounded from one direction, then another. I seemed to be the only one who was aware of it. Finally it was time to call it a night.
I followed Duong back to his bunker, and inside, the lean-to. The entrance was so low I could hardly get in. The bunker was just a hole in the ground with a sod roof. The hole had a foot of water in the bottom of it. There were no firing slits. In the little lean-to, there was a cot and hammock side by side. Doung’s bodyguard and servant had left a candle burning for us on a piece of wood. A little pile of clean clothes was stacked neatly on the end of the cot.
“My man did that. He with me two years. I love my man very much.”
When I lay down on the cot in my clothes and socks, the thatched roof of the lean-to was close against my face. I could barely turn over. The small arms fire was everywhere, but not too close. I was too exhausted to feel anything. The camp was not defensible, but I went to sleep anyhow. Once in the night I woke to find Lieutenant Duong in his hammock writing in a pad by the light of the candle. I heard the rain falling on the thatch above my face.
“I write something for you.” He said.
“Do you?”
“I want you have rememberings this time together.”
“Thank you.”
I watched the candle burn. I listened to the small arms fire. I listened to the rain fall on the thatch. I slept.
In the morning the sky was clear and the sun made the thatched roofs steam and the steam rose off the thick grass and the roof of the church. The whole camp was steaming. Military men and their wives and kids emerged from their bunkers and lean-tos and stretched and ran their hands through their hair. They brushed their teeth in little tin bowls.
I walked to a place I thought was private to urinate. The urine stream steamed in the chill air. I looked over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t being watched. I saw a young militia man elbow his wife and point toward me. His wife giggled and pushed her hands against his chest, looking at me all the while.
I followed Lieutenant Duong across the pavement to the café we’d been to the night before. I was fully dressed, including my boots. Duong was wearing his blue stripped pajamas and rubber thongs.
The café was about fifty feet from the highway. We ordered coffee and sweet breads. I felt completely at ease. Lieutenant Duong took out his long ivory cigarette holder, put a cigarette in it, and asked the proprietress light him up. We grinned at each other. Lieutenant Duong was content. I was content.
There was the sound of an explosion in the near distance, than another.
Lieutenant Duong said: “V.C.”
“It sounded like a mine. A land mine.”
“Oh yes. Mine. Every night V.C. mine highway.”
“So close?”
“Oh yes. Very close. I show you?”
“Oh, yes.”
Lieutenant Duong understood that I had made a joke. He laughed. “Oh yes. Very close.”
We finished the coffee and the sweet bread. Lieutenant Duong finished his cigarette. I followed him back across the highway. A couple hundred yards to the west I saw a little French bus on its side, half off the road. First Lieutenant Han’s platoon was forming up in the grassy place beside the church. Some of them looked like idiots. I followed Lieutenant Duong to his bunker. I supposed he was going to dress. A moment later he came out, still dressed in his blue striped pajamas and thongs, but now with a beautiful, slender, walnut-finished cane.
We followed the Ba Ton Regional Forces Platoon through the concertina and up the highway toward the bus. The platoon ambled along leisurely. Some of the men had put lavender flowers in the barrels of their rifles. Others had put flowers or ferns on their helmets. A hundred yards out we came to the narrow bridge. The river was about fifty yards wide there. Duong paused and we looked upstream. The platoon ambled on toward the bus, still a hundred yards or so down Highway 4.
Lieutenant Duong pointed his cane upriver. “Many V.C. there.”
There was the broad river, then the banks of trees on either side.
“How do you know?”
“Oh many time they shoot us here on bridge.”
“Here on this bridge?”
“Oh, Yes. Right here.” He looked at me and laughed. “We stand here enjoy beauty, they shoot us.”
“It is very beautiful here.”
“Oh, yes. Very beautiful. Every morning, I look at it.”
“The V.C. shoot you right here on the bridge?”
“Oh, yes.”
“That’s very interesting. Right on this spot?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very interesting.” I looked across the river to the trees.
“One month past they shoot First Lieutenant Han—his brother you know?
“Right on this spot?”
“They shoot him in throat. Ugghrr.”
“This very spot?” I pointed at the ground between us.
“Oh, yes.” Duong laughed a little. “Very sad.”
“Oh, yes.”
Lieutenant Duong said: “Machinegun. You know?”
“Oh, Yes. I know the machineguns.”
“He bled river. You know that song?”
“I think so.”
“First Lieutenant Han, his brother die here. Lose his blood.”
“I see.”
Lieutenant Duong gestured across the river with his elegant walnut walking cane.
“You see big tree? Over there? V.C. machinegun. Shoot us all time.”
“I see.”
It was a beautiful sunny morning. The blue sky. The cool fresh air. The paddies, the river, the trees on the far side of the river. It was all very beautiful.
And there was Lieutenant Duong in his blue stripped pajamas and rubber thongs. Up the road a bit was the little bus blown over on its side where the men of First Lieutenant Han’s platoon were pulling things, and pieces of things, out of it. In the trees along the other side of the river there was the big tree, and maybe or maybe not, the machinegun that had shot First Lieutenant Han’s brother through the throat. We were standing on the very spot where First Lieutenant Han’s brother had bled his river and died. And there I was.
I had a ride to catch.
End