The Life of Graham Greene (1939-1955)

by Norman Sherry

  De Lattre was not as optimistic about the region remaining peaceful. Dean Acheson, the American Secretary of State, discovered that de Lattre was disillusioned with the Catholics in Phat Diem because he believed they had withheld information about the major Vietminh attack. If the French had received notice twenty-four hours earlier much bloodshed might have been saved. General Cogny said that while the French followed Vietminh troop movements and had expected an attack in the area, they had to depend largely on villagers for news of actual attack preparations. The Vietminh, on the other hand, seemed amply informed about French movements. The French were angry because French troops and French blood kept the Vietminh menace away from Phat Diem, yet the local people continued to be indifferent and sometimes hostile towards the French.

  De Lattre’s bitterness was due primarily to the loss of his only son, Bernard. Young Bernard de Lattre commanded a company which was sent to relieve a naval commando unit in the area. The French High Command (and de Lattre) were extremely irate because villagers had spotted the Vietminh assembling for attack, but had made no effort to warn the French garrison. There were a reported 10,000 Vietminh in the area. De Lattre suffered from the bitterness of a soldier accustomed to having people either for or against him – he couldn’t stand deceit. He felt personally hurt by the ambivalence of Vietnamese and Catholics, whose champion he considered himself to be. He was suspicious of the Catholics in the area, particularly Bishop Le Huu Tu, who had made a vociferously anti-French speech. The British consul in Hanoi, Trevor Wilson, witnessed the speech and afterwards became implicated in it in de Lattre’s mind.

  Though Greene was not to arrive until four months after this particular attack on Phat Diem, nevertheless he was extremely well informed. He saw that Phat Diem illustrated the bizarre nature of the conflict: ‘a medieval episcopal principality … [which] only … collapsed [after the 19 June attack and had to be] saved by French parachutists … The present Bishop is Monsignor Le Huu Tu, a former Trappist. He is an austere man with the face of a sad, meditative monkey … a dusty skull contemplates him from the other side of his desk.’16

  Greene knew his bishop:

  He is a nationalist and his number-one enemy is the French, after which come the Communists. Even with a foreigner, he makes no mystery of this order of preference. He knows the French (they took his army from him).17

  By the time Greene returned to Phat Diem on 16 December, the war was intensifying. Just before dawn on 10 December Phat Diem came under attack from a large Vietminh force.

  The French were secretive about the Vietminh attack on Phat Diem and two accounts (given to the US legation by spies in the field) were found to be incorrect. Not until 16 December could Wendell Blancke send a corrected account of the raid to Washington:

  Sunday Dec 9. first day of two-day religious festival VM troops quietly entered town at midnight in considerable strength took up positions and systematically set up communications equipment. Many townsmen aware their presence but none alerted military authorities [emphasis added]. At 4.45 a.m. Dec 10 two big explosions gave signal and small arms fire broke out as all posts in town [eight posts comprising Vietnamese] were attacked simultaneously. Most of these fell in matter of minutes; only one resisted as long as quarter hour and was finished by VM bomb. [In The Quiet American, Greene is again spot-on as to the nature of communist infiltration: he speaks of the religious festivals, the long line of the religious procession and ‘Nobody noticed the Vietminh agents who joined the procession too and that night … the advance agents struck.’18] Six Fr-controlled posts across river held out and were not taken. At dawn VM invited populace into streets to look VM troops over and witness they had harmed no (rep no) one nor pillaged civilian property.

  VM did not immed retire as first reported but continued firing on Fr-held posts till paratroops arrived about 1500 hours Dec 10, source estimated a battalion of latter dropped nearby from 21 planes. VM then blew bridge on Vac-Gianj River, isolating Fr-held posts from town. At 2100 hours VM left Phat-Diem withdrew to positions unknown to townspeople but not far off. Fr laid down heavy artillery and other fire on Phat-Diem outskirts all night. Townspeople were terrified but next day saw no shelling damage … Only casualty was large central market of thatch which took fire. Next day Franco-Viet forces from posts across river moved into town without resistance and reinstalled Vietnamese troops in abandoned posts.

  Source confirmed Vietnamese troops in captured posts were turned loose after arms taken … VM casualties unknown but one woman saw some 50 their corpses carted away near her river property.19

  The townspeople were amazed that those officials who had not fled were not rounded up or interrogated. Even known grafters were left in peace; perhaps, some conjectured, because they were Vietminh agents ‘who behaved badly in office to destroy confidence in governmental regime’.

  Greene entered Phat Diem on 16 December, so we are able, as it were, to parachute ourselves into the area at the same time, since Blancke’s account parallels in certain important respects Greene’s journal and the account he wrote in The Quiet American.

  Greene’s journal starts cryptically:

  Dec. 13. [1951] Thurs.

  Woke refreshed by pipes [opium] at 5.30. Taxi 6. Plane 7. Met by Bonneville [Sûreté]. Lunch Ballion. Think Phat Diem was momentarily in Vietminh hands … Wrote to [General] Salan asking permission to go to Nam Dinh [this was the only way to approach the war area] & received reply within an hour … that lot of P.D. had been blown up & had been in V.M. hands for 2 days … Drink before that with Salan’s a.d.c. who carefully separated from de Lattre’s attitude [de Lattre’s turning against Trevor Wilson and Greene].

  On 15 December Greene caught a plane to Nam Dinh, where he met Captain Mathei, who invited him to accompany him to Phat Diem, which was then under attack.

  December 16 Sunday.

  Mathei had to go by plane. A day of waiting for a marine boat … Finally got on board at 1 a.m. rather the worst for wear. Boat started at 3 a.m. & arrived at Marine H.Q. about 8 a.m.

  First sight of near Phat-Diem very shocking. One quarter opposite the officer’s house like a street in London during the blitz. The same sense of desertion, charred beams & plaster. The empty desert of streets. Night of Dec. 9–10 advance agents probably entered at the tail of Fatima procession.

  In The Quiet American, Greene wrote that the bishop had acquired a devotion to Our Lady of Fatima after a visit to Europe and celebrated her feast day each year with a procession. He also had a grotto built in her honour in the cathedral precincts.

  Greene’s journal went on to describe the attack on Phat Diem and its aftermath:

  Surprise attack 4 a.m. on three sides officers’ quarters etc. Radio wrecked & only communication by telephone to Marines. Col. woke by barking dogs. Captain Boissithis had his verandah collapse over his bed. His life saved by Vietnamese soldiers. The [French Foreign] Legion officers driven up to the top floor. Fight on staircase.

  Went out and saw parachutists who were sweeping between the canals. The canal thick with bodies. The mother & child dead in a ditch. Afterwards to find [Father] Willich at the Cathedral. The whole of Phat-Diem crowded into & around Cathedral with their furniture, cooking pots. Like a huge market day where everyone was sad. Watched by unsmiling faces. At top of bell tower Willich reading his breviary. Watched planes bombing & bringing supplies. The constant explosion of mortars like bombs in the blitz. Flames burning in Phat-Diem. The burning market, the flames becoming more brilliant as dark fell. Extraordinary that there were only 20 deaths – no officers.

  Woken from 2 onwards at intervals by mortar fire. (The silence of VM attack shoulder to shoulder, I’m told) The awful anonymity of the grey faces in the canal.

  December 17th Monday.

  A frustrating day … The note wrote relieving anybody of responsibility. Arrival of [Colonel] Sizaire with a suggested 24 hours with the Navy & then Phuly to get me out of Phat-Diem. Accompanied by another Col to Marine … long wait
for landing craft & found myself on way back to Nam Dinh … Slept at Sizaire’s. This was a genuine mistake. His order to the Navy had been misunderstood.

  The following day Greene waited all morning for Colonel Sizaire, only to find that the colonel had ‘forgotten’ him and gone back to Phat Diem alone. Later that day Greene left by plane for Hanoi. It is likely that the French feared their famous guest would be killed or, if not killed, would write an account unsympathetic to them – the Vietminh had after all won a victory in Phat Diem. That Greene was allowed into Phat Diem is itself surprising for a secret memorandum speaks of two newsmen trying to visit the town: ‘They received a gruff answer that roads and transport facilities were so taxed by campaign that it made a trip [to war zone] impossible.’20 Greene told me in interview he went where no newspaper man was allowed – rebels were all round within 600 yards, with flames, far too many corpses and constant mortar fire.

  Comparison of Greene’s journal accounts, the historical records and The Quiet American shows how much personal experience he used in the novel. Both Fowler and Greene arrived by landing craft, though Greene arrived at 8 a.m. and Fowler before dawn:

  I had come in before dawn in a landing-craft from Nam Dinh. We couldn’t land at the naval station because it was cut off by the enemy who completely surrounded the town at a range of six hundred yards, so the boat ran in beside the flaming market. We were an easy target in the light of the flames, but for some reason no one fired. Everything was quiet, except for the flop and crackle of the burning stalls …

  I had known Phat-Diem well in the days before the attack – the one long narrow street of wooden stalls, cut up every hundred yards by a canal, a church and a bridge … In its strange medieval way, under the shadow and protection of the Prince Bishop, it had been the most living town in all the country, and now when I landed and walked up to the officers’ quarters, it was the most dead. Rubble and broken glass and the smell of burnt paint and plaster, the long street empty as far as the sight could reach, it reminded me of a London thoroughfare in the early morning after an all-clear: one expected to see a placard, ‘Unexploded Bomb’.

  The front wall of the officers’ house had been blown out and the houses across the street were in ruins.

  Coming down the river from Nam Dinh I had learnt from Lieutenant Peraud [presumably Captain Mathei] what had happened …21

  It took four days, with the help of parachutists, to push the enemy back half a mile around the town. The parachutists often failed to net the army, according to American secret reports, because the supposedly trapped Vietminh filtered through their military encirclements by swimming under water in the canals using reed pipes to breathe. ‘This was a defeat: no journalists were allowed, no cables could be sent, for the papers must carry only victories.’

  What follows in the novel is absolutely true. Greene had first asked General Salan (a personal friend of Trevor Wilson’s) for permission to visit Nam Dinh, which was outside the war zone. Although he had encountered some resistance from Colonel Sizaire, this was a great deal less than if he had asked permission from Hanoi. General Salan would most certainly not have given Greene permission to visit Phat Diem: ‘The authorities would have stopped me in Hanoi if they had known of my purpose, but the further you get from headquarters, the looser becomes the control until, when you come within range of the enemy’s fire, you are a welcome guest – what has been a menace for the Etat Major in Hanoi, a worry for the full colonel in Nam Dinh [Colonel Sizaire], to the lieutenant in the field is a joke, a distraction, a mark of interest from the outer world.’22

  Having arrived at Phat Diem, Fowler, like Greene, accompanies a small group of legionnaires – Greene joined two actual sorties into one fictional account. Fowler crosses two canals and takes a turning which leads him to a church, where he finds a dozen men sitting on the ground in parachutists’ camouflage. He asks to accompany them (in this war a European face proves itself a passport in the field) and gets permission to go with the combatants.

  They go behind the church in single file and stop for a moment for the soldier with the walkie-talkie to contact the patrols on either flank. The patrol waits behind the church until it is thirty strong. The lieutenant explains to Fowler that they are headed for a village where 300 Vietminh have been reported, perhaps massing for an attack. They move on in silence:

  ‘All clear,’ the lieutenant whispered with a reassuring wave as we started. Forty yards on, another canal, with what was left of a bridge, a single plank without rails, ran across our front. The lieutenant motioned to us to deploy and we squatted down facing the unknown territory ahead, thirty feet off, across the plank. The men looked at the water and then, as though by a word of command, all together, they looked away. For a moment I didn’t see what they had seen …

  The canal was full of bodies: I am reminded now of an Irish stew containing too much meat. The bodies overlapped: one head, seal-grey, and anonymous as a convict with a shaven scalp, stuck up out of the water like a buoy. There was no blood: I suppose it had flowed away a long time ago. I have no idea how many there were: they must have been caught in a cross-fire, trying to get back.23

  In an article in Paris Match, Greene put it differently, suggesting that the bodies were Vietminh, but he could not know for sure: ‘It is hard to assess the losses of the Vietminh: here and there the canal was filled with a thick gruel, heads floating above the accumulation of bodies below.’24

  The carnage is a reminder of the finality and anonymity of death:

  I … didn’t want to be reminded of how little we counted, how quickly, simply and anonymously death came. Even though my reason wanted the state of death, I was afraid like a virgin of the act. I would have liked death to come with due warning, so that I could prepare myself …25

  Fowler is struck by the comradeliness of the patrol’s movements, ‘as though they were equals engaged on a task they had performed together times out of mind. Nobody waited to be told what to do.’ The patrol tries to cross the plank but finds that the weight they are carrying makes it impossible except a few inches at a time. When another man finds a punt, Fowler and five others pile in:

  Six of us got in and he began to pole towards the other bank, but we ran on a shoal of bodies and stuck. He pushed away with his pole, sinking it into this human clay, and one body was released and floated up all its length beside the boat like a bather lying in the sun. Then we were free again, and once on the other side we scrambled out, with no backward look … we were alive: death had withdrawn …fn2, 26

  The group of parachutists are crossing a farmyard when they hear two shots fired to their front. Long minutes afterwards one of the sentries reports and Fowler catches the phrase, ‘Deux civils’. They move on to find the two civilians: ‘Twenty yards beyond the farm buildings, in a narrow ditch, we came on what we sought: a woman and a small boy. They were very clearly dead: a small neat clot of blood on the woman’s forehead, and the child might have been sleeping. He was about six years old and he lay like an embryo in the womb with his little bony knees drawn up. “Mal chance,” the lieutenant said. He bent down and turned the child over. He was wearing a holy medal round his neck … There was a gnawed piece of loaf under his body. I thought, “I hate war.”’27 In his Paris Match article Greene wrote about the same incident: ‘the bodies of a woman and her small boy caught in a crossfire between the parachutists and the enemy. This mother and child suddenly lost their anonymity when I realized that their faith and mine were the same.’28

  Greene spent the night in the officers’ mess, but it brought only cold comfort as he wrote in Paris Match: ‘the Colonel was awakened at 4.30 in the morning by the explosion of a bazooka shell which blew out the façade of the house where the officers were billeted’.29 In The Quiet American he dealt with the experience more fully: ‘Dark had fallen by the time I reached the officers’ quarters, where I was spending the night. The temperature was only a degree above zero, and the sole warmth anywhere was in the blazing ma
rket. With one wall destroyed by a bazooka and the doors buckled, canvas curtains couldn’t shut out the draughts.’30 ‘One slept in one’s clothes,’ Greene told me, ‘in a half-wrecked mess with a revolver on the pillow.’ Afterwards he returned to Hanoi, as does Fowler, but not before graciously signing a note to exonerate the French of any responsibility for taking him on patrol.

  *

  The Vietminh had gained a great propaganda victory in Phat Diem. Reports came to the Americans that whilst the Vietminh were scrupulously ‘correct’ during their brief occupation of the town, the Franco-Vietnamese forces, when they returned, burned, looted and generally made themselves intolerable.31 So far as Phat Diem was concerned, the Vietminh had won their objective: the supply of arms. By their careful behaviour the Vietminh also did much to offset Catholic aversion to the communists. As for the bishop of Phat Diem, despite his recent assurances to de Lattre, he was soon fulminating against the French once more.32

  By 4 July 1951 the French army had lost 35,000 soldiers, of whom 800 were St Cyr graduates, the crème de la crème of their professional troops. No wonder that leading American diplomat David Bruce felt de Lattre had bitten off more than he could chew. Even de Lattre recognised that had it not been for American military aid the French could not have contained some of the Vietminh attacks in 1951. Inevitably Bruce and the Americans had doubts about de Lattre’s timetable. They felt that although de Lattre believed that he could clean the situation up in twelve to eighteen months if there was no invasion, by Chinese volunteers or regulars, this was whistling in the wind. Recruitment to the Vietminh had suffered because of the increase in French military activity, and the Vietminh knew themselves to be in a fierce firefight. However, an order of the day as found on a dead soldier was: ‘Whatever may be our losses and however large they may be, we must exterminate the enemy.’33