“Fine. There’s a place a few hundred klicks up ahead called Bong Son where I served for a few months. Look for the Chamber of Commerce sign.”
“I’ll keep an eye on the map. Why don’t you tell me how you got your R&R in Nha Trang.”
“Tell you what. We’ll go to the A Shau Valley outside Hue, and I’ll tell it to you where it happened.”
“All right.” She massaged my temples and said, “I told you at the Rex that it’s good to talk about these things.”
“Tell me that after you hear this story.”
She stayed silent awhile, then said, “Maybe when you leave here this time, you’ll leave the war here, too.”
I didn’t reply, then said, “I think that’s why I’m here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
We continued north, up Highway One, through Vung Ro, a beach resort with a few guesthouses and a small hotel with an outdoor café. If Mr. Cam hadn’t been along, we’d have stopped for a coffee or a drink, which I needed.
After Vung Ro, the road swung away from the coast and became desolate again, a dark expanse of rice paddies and dikes, and an occasional peasant’s hut.
Mr. Cam was sitting silently. He’d realized, I guess, that if we were going to kill him, we’d have done so already. This realization makes some captives relax and go along peacefully; others get the idea that it might be safe to make a break.
I kept glancing in my rearview mirror, looking for headlights. Headlights meant trouble. I said to Susan, “There is not one single vehicle on the main national highway.”
“People really don’t travel in the countryside at night, except for the occasional bus. During the day, Highway One is so crowded, you barely make thirty miles an hour.” She added, “I’m told that the police stop patrolling the highways about an hour after dark.”
“That’s a break.”
“Not really. The army patrols the highways until dawn. The cops stay in the towns.” She added, “The army patrols will stop anyone on the highway.”
“What’s the next major town?”
She looked at the map and said, “A place called Qui Nhon. But Highway One passes to the west of it, so we don’t have to go through the town.”
I said, “That was a big American hospital town.”
“You remember it?”
“Yes. Qui Nhon got the cases that the hospital ships didn’t get. We also did a lot of Vietnamese military and civilian cases there. Plus, there was a big leper hospital outside town.”
“Oh . . . I’ve heard of that place. There’s still a leper hospital there.”
“We had a combat medic who got so burned out in the field, he volunteered to work in the leper hospital. We made a joke of it. You know? Whenever things got really bad, we’d all volunteer for the leper hospital at Qui Nhon.” Susan didn’t laugh. I said, “I guess you had to be there.” I asked her, “How far?”
“I think just up ahead a few kilometers.”
“Can you read a map, or are you faking it?”
“That’s a sexist remark.”
“Xin loi.”
She gave me a punch in the shoulder, which surprised Mr. Cam. I said, “Mr. Cam’s wife never punches him. I’m going to marry a Vietnamese woman.”
“They’re so docile, you’d be bored out of your mind.”
“Sounds good.”
She said, “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
I said to her, “I’m a little concerned about the truck driver.”
She thought about that, then said, “Well . . . the truck driver didn’t know we were foreigners. He assumed we were Vietnamese, who were being chased by the cops. He didn’t see a thing.”
“Good point.”
We passed the Qui Nhon road that intersected Highway One, and there were a scattering of buildings at the intersection, including a gas station, but it was closed. I asked Susan, “Do you think any gas stations are open?”
“Why would they be?”
“Right. I don’t think we’re going to make it to Hue on one tank of gas, even with the spare gas cans.”
“Turn off your headlights. Saves gas. Ask Mr. Cam.”
I looked at the gas gauge and did a little arithmetic in my head. I figured we could go another two hundred to two hundred and fifty kilometers, depending obviously on the size of the tank and our gas mileage. The extra ten liters in the cans would add maybe another fifty or sixty Ks to our range. I said to Susan, “Ask Mr. Cam where he would get gasoline at night.”
She asked him, he replied, and she said to me, “He doesn’t know. He’s never driven this far north, and rarely drives at night.”
I laughed. “Well, where was he going to refuel?”
Susan replied, “Obviously, he had no intention of driving us to Hue.”
“I know that. Tell him that.”
She told him, and Mr. Cam looked a little sheepish.
Susan said, “I remember some late night gas stations in Da Nang.”
“How far is Da Nang?”
She looked down at her map and said, “About three hundred kilometers.”
I looked at my fuel gauge again and said, “I hope it’s downhill, or we’re not going to make it. Maybe we should get chubby here out of the car.”
“We need him to pump gas. Paul? What were we thinking?”
“I thought we’d have a bigger gas tank or get better mileage. If worse comes to worse, we’ll pull over, wait until light, and get to an open gas station.”
I looked up ahead, and on the flat horizon, I could see the glow of lights. I asked Susan, “Is that Bong Son?”
“It should be.”
I began decelerating and looked around at the sparse landscape, which seemed familiar. I said, more to myself than to Susan, “This is where I saw the elephant.”
“What elephant?”
I didn’t reply for a few seconds, then I said, “It’s an expression. Men who have seen combat for the first time say, ‘I have seen the elephant.’ ” I looked at the road and the terrain on either side where I’d had my first firefight, on an early morning in November 1967, the day after Thanksgiving.
Susan asked, “What’s it mean?”
“Don’t know. But I know it’s old—not ’Nam related. Maybe it goes back to Roman times when Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants.” I repeated, “I have seen the elephant.”
Susan remarked, “It sounds almost mystical.”
I nodded. “There is no one on this earth more mystical, superstitious, and ultimately religious than a combat soldier. I’ve seen men kiss their crucifix and make the sign of the cross before battle . . . then they’d put an AK-47 round in their helmet band, which represented the enemy bullet that had been meant for them. And they’d stick an ace of spades in their helmet because the Vietnamese regarded it as a symbol of death. And there were all sorts of other talismans, and rituals that men would go through before battle . . . bottom line, you pray.”
Susan stayed quiet awhile, then said, “And this is where you saw the elephant?”
“This is where I saw the elephant.”
She thought awhile, then said, “When we were being shot at back there . . . I think I caught a glimpse of the elephant.”
“Did you go ice cold with fear and feel your mouth go dry and your heart trying to burst through your chest?”
“I did.”
“Then you caught a glimpse of the elephant.”
Up ahead, I could see a bridge that I recalled, and which passed over the An Lao River, on the other side of which was the town of Bong Son.
Susan put on her sunglasses and asked, “Do I look like a co-dep?”
I looked at her in the rearview mirror. With her long, straight hair parted down the middle, and with the shades, she could pass for a Vietnamese woman in a dark moving car. I looked at Mr. Cam. He could pass for a Vietnamese, too, because he was Vietnamese. The problem was me.
I looked at Mr. Cam again, and I had the impression he was going to make a break for i
t when we hit the town.
I pulled onto the shoulder and said to Susan, “Get the shoelace from one of my docksiders in my suitcase.”
She got out of the car, opened the rear hatch, and took a few things out of the luggage. She called out to me, “It’s getting cold out here.”
I lowered my window, and it seemed to me that it was still warm, but I hadn’t lived here for three years. I remembered the smell of the wet night earth and the river.
Susan closed the hatch and got back into the car. She handed me a leather lace from one of my deck shoes. She also had one of her high-necked silk blouses, which she put on over her polo shirt.
I took the strip of leather and motioned for Mr. Cam to lean forward and put his hands behind his back. He seemed happier about being tied up than being strangled, and he cooperated fully.
I tied his thumbs together, then tied the loose ends of the leather lace to his belt.
Susan handed me my sunglasses and said, “Slicky boys wear these day and night. You won’t look too weird.”
I put the glasses on, but as far as I was concerned, I still looked like a six-foot Caucasian with wavy hair and a prominent nose.
I put the Nissan into gear, and we drove toward the bridge. I said to Susan, “See those concrete bunkers on the corners of the bridge? They were built by the French. American platoons took turns manning the bunkers. It was good duty—better than out in the boondocks. There used to be barbed wire all over and minefields. Every few weeks, Charlie would come around to see if we were awake. They really wanted to blow that bridge, but they never got past the barbed wire and the minefields. The minefields were laid by the French, and we didn’t have a map of the mines, so when Charles blew himself up out there, we couldn’t go in to retrieve the bodies. They’d lay out there and feed the buzzards and maggots for weeks. This place used to stink a lot. Smells okay now.” I raised my window.
Susan had no comment.
We drove onto the bridge across the An Lao, which flowed into the South China Sea. I put the Nissan into second gear and slid down in my seat.
We came off the bridge into the main street of the town of Bong Son. The town seemed to be as I remembered it. The stucco buildings were fairly nice, and there were palm trees planted here and there. Bong Son had apparently not been hit hard by the war.
There were a few restaurants on the street, and I remembered that a lot of ethnic Indians and Chinese once lived here, who owned most of the shops and restaurants, but I saw no evidence of them now. The GI bars, massage parlors, and whorehouses had been on a side street, away from the good citizens.
Back to the present, I saw that there were a lot of motor scooters and bicycles on the street, and more important, there were a few cars moving around, so we didn’t look too out of place.
I said, “Up ahead, at the end of town, used to be the headquarters of the National Police. They were mostly guys from well-connected families, and police service kept them out of the army. They were also sadistic. See that stone wall over on the right? And those big wrought iron gates?”
“Yes.”
“Inside the wall is a French colonial building. I think it was the town hall or something. One night, a bunch of VC infiltrated the town and attacked the building. The National Police killed and captured about a dozen of them. A few days later, I came into town with a bunch of guys in a Jeep to see what we could buy or barter on the black market. The National Police had hanged a dozen VC bodies from those gates. Most of them were full of holes, but some had been hanged alive, and not by the neck—but by their thumbs. The bodies were rotting in the sun.” I added, “The ARVN would just shoot captured VC in the head. The National Police were not so nice.”
I looked at Susan in the rearview mirror. She was not looking at the gates, but I looked at them as we passed by, and I could see those bodies hanging there. “I still remember the stench.”
She had no comment.
“We reported it to our company commander, and he passed it up the line. The National Police were pissed at us for interfering in their object lesson. Don’t get me wrong—we were no angels, either, but you have to draw the line somewhere. War is one thing, but this wasn’t war. On the other hand, the Vietnamese had been at it so long, and they’d lost so many friends and family, that they’d gone around the bend long before we got here.”
I continued, “The First Cavalry was moved out of Bong Son after the new year, and we went up to Quang Tri, which turned out to be a lot worse than this place.”
Again, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw that Susan was sitting very still. I said, “I was eighteen years old.”
The National Police headquarters came up on our left, and I saw a red flag with a yellow star hanging from the building. There were four yellow jeeps parked out front, and about six policemen, smoking and chatting. I turned my head away as we passed close by and kept going.
I said, “After the Communist victory, the big bloodbath that everyone had predicted turned out to be not too bad. The executions were selective, and most enemies of the state wound up in re-education camps. But the National Police, who were hated by just about everyone, were systematically hunted down and executed by the new National Police.” I added, “What you sow, you reap.”
Susan, I saw, had a pack of cigarettes in one hand, a lighter in the other, but she just sat there. Finally, she said, “I never understood any of this in Saigon.”
“It was a very dirty war in the countryside. But it’s history. Memories fade, and life goes on. The next generation might be okay.” I looked at Mr. Cam and wondered about his own history. Maybe I’d ask him later.
The town of Bong Son stretched on along Highway One for a hundred more meters, then we were out in the countryside again. I said, “The big American camp, called Landing Zone English, was a few kilometers from here to the left. There’s a valley there called An Lao, where the river starts in the hills. We cleared out all the population of the valley, and resettled the people in strategic hamlets so that they couldn’t aid the local VC or North Vietnamese army with food or labor. The An Lao Valley became a free-fire zone, and anything in the valley that moved was shot—including farm animals left behind and wildlife. We even went bird hunting with Browning automatic shotguns. We burned every structure, killed every fruit-bearing tree, oiled the rice paddies, and leveled the forest with these things called Rome Plows. Then we air-dropped cardboard barrels filled with crystals that produced noxious, choking gas. We renamed the An Lao Valley the Valley of Death.” I paused. “I wonder if anyone lives there now.”
Susan said nothing.
I got the Nissan up to a hundred KPH as we continued north.
Highway One swung east toward the sea again, and there were white sand beaches along the coast, and white sand hills to our left, covered with scrub brush. I said to Susan, “This is where I spent Christmas 1967. The white sands of Bong Son. We made believe it was snow.” I added, “There was a forty-eight-hour truce. We got a lot of Christmas packages from the Red Cross, and from private organizations and individuals. At that time, before Tet, people still supported the troops, if not the war itself.”
I recalled that Christmas was a particularly hot day, and the white sands had no shade trees. Christmas dinner had been delivered by helicopter, and we were sitting in the sand, eating turkey with all the trimmings, trying to keep the sand flies away, and the sand out of the food.
A kid from Brooklyn named Savino saw a long bamboo pole in the sand and decided to use it to make a shelter with his rubber poncho to keep the sun off him. He reached for the pole, someone shouted for him to stop, he pulled the pole, which was attached by a wire to a very large explosive device, and he blew himself back to Brooklyn in a body bag.
A bunch of other guys got hurt, half the platoon was deaf, and pieces of the kid were everywhere, including everyone’s mess tins and canteen cups. Merry Christmas.
I said, “A guy in my platoon was killed by a booby trap on Christmas day.”
“He . . . he wasn’t here long enough.” I added, “It was sort of a waste of time to make friends with the new guys. They had a bad survival rate, and they got people around them killed. If they were still alive after thirty days, then you’d shake their hand or something.”
We left my old area of operations, and I didn’t recognize this terrain.
Mr. Cam appeared to be getting uncomfortable with his arms behind his back. Susan noticed and asked me, “Should we untie him?”
“No.”
“He can’t get away when we’re moving this fast.”
“No.”
Susan finally lit her cigarette. I actually wanted a cigarette myself, probably because my head was still back in the Bong Son area of operations, where I used to do a pack a day. I said, “Let’s hear from Mr. Cam. Ask him if he remembers the war.”
She asked him, and he didn’t seem to want to answer. Finally, he spoke, and Susan translated. She said, “He was thirteen when the war ended. He lived in a village west of Nha Trang, and he remembers when the Communists arrived. He says that thousands of South Vietnamese troops had been passing through his village as they retreated from the highlands, and everyone knew the war was ending. Many people fled to Nha Trang, but he stayed in his village with his mother and his two sisters.”
“And what happened?”
She prodded him a little, he spoke in a quiet tone, and Susan translated. “He says everyone was very frightened, but when the North Vietnamese troops came, they behaved well. There were only women and children left in the village, and the women were not molested. But the Communists found a young army officer who had a leg amputated, and they took him away. Later, political cadres came and questioned everyone. They found two government officials disguised as peasants, and they were taken away. But no one was shot in the village.”
I nodded. “And his father? Brothers?”
Susan asked him, and he replied. She said to me, “His father had been killed in battle many years before. He had an older brother serving with the ARVN in the highlands, but he never returned home. He says his mother still waits for her son to return.”
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