Anyway, my current plans are still to do whatever’s right, according to my own judgement at the time, and at the moment that means I’ll be leaving here on Saturday if the current calm holds and you can ram Subic Bay far up into the nether reaches of your lower intestine. I have all the material we agreed I should have on quote the last days of the American presence in Saigon unquote and now I’m going somewhere to write it. The only round-eyes left to evacuate from Saigon now are the several hundred press people who are now trying to arrange for their own evacuation after the U.S. embassy pulls out with the last of the fixed-wing fleet and leaves the press here on their own. Needless to say, if that scenario develops it will involve a very high personal risk factor.
… and also big green on the barrel-head for anyone who stays, and unless the 130s [U.S. military C-130 transport planes] start hitting Saigon before Saturday that is the outlook. If you wonder why I can’t explain this situation any further right now—well, you’ll just have to wonder, because I can’t. You could check with Klein at Newsweek and see what Loren [Jenkins] says about his own situation and cash needs, and maybe that will tell you something about my repeat my situation. Cash will definitely be a factor, and since I realize your feelings about the high cost of a telephone call to me here at the hotel in Saigon, I am not optimistic about the prospects of getting any more expense money … unless I get a call or a cable from Lynn repeat from Lynn, confirming some up-dated money arrangement she might possibly have made with you. Our original agreement, as you know, did not include a press-evacuation coverage or six unpaid months of house-arrest when Saigon finally falls. [Tim] Crouse said he might like to handle that aspect of the story; I hope you forwarded my wire to him yesterday.
As for me, I have a piece to write and I figure that sooner or later you’ll find some cost-cutting method for communicating the deadline-day to me c/o Newsweek in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, unless you can arrange on your end some way for me to buy into the post-embassy evac plot, my options are so limited that at the moment I have no choice but to leave Saturday and ponder my next move from wherever I can get a flight to. In closing I want to thank you for all the help and direction you’ve given me in these savage hours, and about the only thing I can add to that is that I genuinely wish you were here. Cazart. Hunter.
MEMO ON SAIGON
Thompson kept a journal throughout his stay in Southeast Asia. This unfinished entry describes his experiences during the U.S. evacuation of Saigon the day before the South Vietnamese government officially surrendered to North Vietnam’s forces.
April, 1975
Balls. If I wanted to go to Subic Bay, I’d join the goddamn navy. That dime-sucking fool has already seen my copy & my description of the hopeless madness of the Embassy’s evacuation plan—21 Hueys,9 holding 7–8 people each, are now available to lift us off the rooftops & out to the 3 main pickup points where the Jolly Green Giants can land—and, as Alan Carter at USSS pointed out yesterday in his office—with Jerry Ford’s picture off the wall & ready to be flown out—“all they have to do is shoot down one chopper” & that will end that phase of the plan—leaving anybody still in downtown Saigon to get out on his own.
So I am off to Laos on Saturday—while I still have enough cash to function—& then back to Hong Kong & Bali—where Sandy will supposedly meet me.
Even lame strangers & non-journalists who can help out with red tape, etc. are getting $50 a day in green out here, plus expenses—and as far as I know I’m not getting anything at all.
Sitting in Brinks Up Town Club for breakfast again—for the past two hours I have been the only person in the dining room, but now a few journalists are beginning to drift in—but the building is virtually empty.
Outside the air-conditioned restaurant, the outdoor theatre where they used to show American movies at night is deserted & stripped of equipment—there is no more toilet paper in the bathrooms—either Ladies or Gents—but the wooden rollers are still locked in place with solid brass locks & nobody knows or cares where the keys are.
On the street below, two dozen tiny Vietnamese construction-workers are still working steadily on a 6-story apartment that is half-finished—heavy steel-reinforced concrete, faced with orange tile bricks. Only a direct hit will have much effect on that building, & the new Chinese (Hong Kong) owner was apparently willing to gamble on that, because he’s still paying his crew—although in brutally inflated piastres. (The official rate remains 750p = $1.00 US, but the Bank of India is giving 2800—$1.00 today, up 500p since I changed $200 for the Rolex on Tuesday, while ordering my tailor-made TV costumes at 20Kp each. I am the only person in the press who still has his clothes & equipment lying un-packed around his hotel room—& still ordering clothes from the tailor. All the others have sent everything out, except what they can carry in one “running bag.”)
My second arrival at the Continental was a strange sight—bringing in so much luggage that I needed three bearers to get it into the hotel—and one leather red chinese suitcase that was so heavy I had to carry it in myself—a morale-building move, I thought—but it was widely interpreted as the act of a doom-seeking lunatic—especially the idea of bringing in a new 240V electric typewriter that wouldn’t work at all in the hotel’s 110V sockets—until Mr. Dang, Time’s fixer, managed to wire it into the air conditioner with a crude 6-inch “extension cord” made of stripped lamp-wire & scotch-tape.
Dang now has every credential I own—my passport, my press card, my RS air travel card…. How many out-going tickets will he charge on it? And what will I say if he tells me it got lost?
Nothing—or at least no more than I’d say if the white-pajama hall-boys began looting my room, with bayonets in their teeth. Right. Just help yourselves, boys; don’t mind me. Can I help you with that packing?
Yesterday morning I saw a drunk ARVN soldier10 wandering around the halls of the Continental for the first time. Not armed—or at least not with an M-16—although he might have had a knife or a pistol … and who would I have turned him in to … after a fight … And he would definitely be back—with some friends, to wreak vengeance on the Global Affairs suite.
Yes—the fuse is burning down here; the air is almost electric with fear & blind anticipation of something awful that could start happening at any moment … although this nervous waiting for the end could last for months, or at least a few more weeks. The fate of Saigon is now entirely in the hands of the VC/NVA (PRG)11 top command—and they now have 16 divisions massed in a ring around Saigon to underline their bargaining position—while the ARVN is destroyed & even a quickly-formed emergency coalition government in Saigon would have little or no leverage at the bargaining table. Maybe a “third force” govt. here could offer Hanoi a peaceful & gradual transfer of power without destroying Saigon in the process. Sort of a new version of the old American axiom: “We had to destroy Saigon in order to save it.”
TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:
April, 1975
Global Affairs Desk,
Suite 37
Hotel Continental Palace
Lam Son Square
Saigon
Jann don’t pay any attention to any of the bullshit you see in the newspapers or the newsmagazines, or on TV about how savage and ugly things are out here. I was roaming all over downtown Saigon about three hours after curfew tonight with a drunk South Vietnamese teenager carrying a funky old M-1 carbine and all we saw worth shooting was a gaggle of huge rats around the base of the gigantic and insanely ugly statue of two drug-crazed marines pointing a bazooka at the National Assembly building, where the bats used to live. I also made three new friends today, Jann. Isn’t that wonderful? I also bought a forty-five with two full clips but it was stolen before I could seize it and then a gin-crazed Flying Tiger pilot ran amok with a loaded thirty-eight in the Caravelle bar and got into an argument with a gang of pinko limeys about the relative merits of British versus American colonialism. The Flying Tiger then stomped the limey three times on the bar-rail and as the
English pig went down for the third time he shouted: “At least we left them railroads!”
That was about the extent of this week’s violence in Saigon—except for several bombs that went off yesterday and killed three people in a public market about a five-minute walk from the Continental and the explosion of a nearby ammo dump that rattled my windows and caused nausea & vomiting at Doctor Chang’s final opium party in the Continental basement.
In any case, I think I am leaving for Laos today, which is Saturday, despite the consensus betting that our Ambassador will pull the plug today and send all the press to Guam, where I definitely do not want to go because I almost got in a fight with the ex-governor of Guam on my flight coming out here. On the other hand, I might have to visit the new CIA concentration camp in Bali, where the hard core political mavericks are being taken for terminal interrogation behind a shroud of silence. I learned about this today from a pilot I met in the ruins of Saigon American Legion Post No. 34, which is now officially in exile along with the Shanghai Am/Legion Post No. One, which has been officially in exile since 1949. And I, for one, am extremely bitter about this…. So bitter, in fact, that I am leaving immediately for Laos and then Bali, on the track of a story that will blow your goddamn gizzard right out of your body when you realize the implications.
Meanwhile, I am leaving the Global Affairs Suite here in the hands of Laura Palmer. She is extremely weird and flakey, but what the hell? After six months in a tent city on Guam she might not be quite so uppity and abusive vis-à-vis the expense account. She maintains about four huge rooms here in the Continental, so you might have to ring around a bit if you want to reach her by phone.
I will of course be on the road for the next few weeks, but you can reach me, as it were, through the Hong Kong Newsweek office. My personal contact there is Mr. Hay-Chung, who handles my affairs.
And if possible I’ll file something fairly short for the current issue, but I need to know the deadline … and so does Laura, just in case she has to file from Guam in a few days. My own dateline for next time will be either the Lane Xang hotel or the White Rose orgy & opium den in Vientiane. Ok for now; Send more money ASAP. Expenses are awful out here in the East.
Cazart,
Hunter …
TO TIM CROUSE C/O PAUL SCANLON, ROLLING STONE:
Crouse was slated to take over Rolling Stone’s post–Vietnam War coverage after Thompson left Southeast Asia.
April 23, 1975
Saigon
Paul please pass this on verbatim to Tim ASAP. Message: Tim, the time has come to start packing for the long trip to Saigon. If you can get here by Saturday, April 26/twenty-six, you can take over the Global Affairs Desk here in Suite 37. We’ll have a formal changing of the guard ceremony down in the garden on Friday night after curfew—just before I leave for Laos, Hong Kong, Bali, and Colorado. As usual, I’ve had to play the icebreaker role and establish our credit, credentials, style, contacts, etc. out here and I had a powerful sense of déjà vu all the while I was doing it … but the situation is stabilized now and I see no point in staying on to watch that part of the action that you said you were interested in; mainly because it is going to take too much time and I have other business that needs tending immediately. The fear and loathing orgasm came yesterday, in the 12/twelve wild hours before Thieu12 resigned …and now the boil seems to be lanced. I’d like to stay here for the victory parade down Tu Do street, but I’m afraid that might be too long a wait … and by “too long” I mean even one more week, mainly because I can’t get any reply out of the home office, as it were, with regard to the nature of my assignment or how much I can expect to be paid for whatever I’m doing. These are things you should get absolutely straight before you come out here, because once you arrive in this fine little madhouse of a city you’re fucked in terms of any communications with the outside world. I still have no idea, for instance, if the four-thousand words I managed to file by telex yesterday reached San Francisco before the deadline. Jann is off skiing somewhere in Utah with Gordon Strachan,13 and nobody in SF seems to understand that a telex works in both directions … or maybe it’s another budget-cutting move, but in any case I don’t feel like staying out here in the bunker any longer on pure, paranoid spec. So I’m getting out soon and you’re welcome to my suite in the Continental—which is, by the way, one of the world’s very special hotels. I will actually feel very sad to leave it. When it comes to adrenaline in the proper atmosphere, this place makes the Wayfarer seem like a nursing home in Queens. And that’s it for now … except that you must repeat must call Sandy and read this whole message to her because I haven’t been able to get through by phone for three days and I know she’s worried. So please do that and also tell her to see if she can change her plane ticket for a round-trip to Bali, where I can meet her for a week or so of beach time on my way back to the U.S. She can leave word inre: Bali with Loren Jenkins’ wife or the Newsweek office in Hong Kong. Okay and cazart … Hunter
TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:
As the situation in Saigon rapidly deteriorated, Thompson suggested to Wenner from Hong Kong that Rolling Stone print evacuation accounts as soon as possible.
May 1, 1975
Repulse Bay Hotel No. 205
Hong Kong
HST/Endgame
FEAR & LOATHING IN HONG KONG
“AT LEAST WE LEFT THEM RAILROADS”
or
“BYE BYE MISS AMERICAN PIE”
and
“WELCOME TO HO CHI MINH CITY”
by Hunter S. Thompson
zip Jann I trust we can use at least one of the above heads, although I can’t say which one will fit until I see how the piece turns out. As we discussed on the phone it will be more in the form of a memo on what to expect in the “final & savage analysis” to come later; just a series of points, ideas & memories that it will take me some time to develop but which I think we should get into print ASAP, if only as a gaggle of vignettes. I also think we should get something personal from Laura Palmer on the close-up details of how she managed during the evacuation. I gave her 200 dollars for four days work and another 150 thousand piastres for expenses just before I left Saigon, with the understanding that she would pick up my photos and cover for me until I returned, so I assume she plans to write her own version of the final rout and that you’ll get at least a short piece from her to run along with this one. Meanwhile, I have tentatively arranged for a piece from one of those who stayed behind & also some photos, but I can’t confirm this yet because all wires out of Ho Chi Minh City were interdicted around noon today & we can’t be sure if any messages are getting in … but I’ll let you know on this ASAP. As for art, I would send Annie14 down to Camp Pendleton15 to look for gangs of hookers and ex-generals with belts made of gold-link bars…. Marshal Ky’s16 wife is presumably still in the Bay Area & she might be worth a shot or two on her own. As for wire & agency stuff, look for some of the helicopter evacuation stuff or wild mobs attacking the embassy or possibly a shot of the UPI staffers whose car got swarmed en route to the embassy because that was the one thing we all feared and they apparently got it full bore. OK for now; I’m just going to let it run and see what comes out—beginning with a verse from your favorite song, to wit: zip.
“So bye bye Miss American Pie; drove my Chevy to
the levee, but the levee was dry …
Them good ole boys were drinkin whiskey and rye,
singin this’ll be the day that I die …
This’ll be the day that I die …”17
I had never paid much attention to that song until I heard it on the muzak one Saturday afternoon in the roof-top restaurant of the new Palace Hotel, looking down on the orange-tile rooftops of the overcrowded volcano that used to be known as Saigon and discussing military strategy over gin and lime with London Sunday Times correspondent, Murray Sayle. We had just come back in a Harley-Davidson powered rickshaw from the Viet Cong’s weekly press conference in their barbed-wire enclosed compound at S
aigon’s Ton San Nhut airport, and Sayle had a big geophysical map of Indochina spread out on the table between us, using a red felt-tipped pen as a pointer to show me how and why the South Vietnamese government of then-president Nguyen Van Thieu had managed to lose half the country and a billion dollars worth of U.S. weaponry in less than three weeks.
I was trying to concentrate on his explanation—which made perfect sense, on the map—but the strange mix of realities on that afternoon of what would soon prove to be the next to last Saturday of the Vietnam War made concentration difficult. For one thing, I had never been west of San Francisco until I’d arrived in Saigon about ten days earlier—just after the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) had been routed on world-wide TV in the “battles” for Hué and Da Nang. This was a widely-advertised “massive Hanoi offensive” that had suddenly narrowed the whole war down to a nervous ring around Saigon, less than fifty miles in diameter … and during the past few days, as a million or more refugees filtered steadily into Saigon from the panic zones up north around Hué and Da Nang, it had become painfully and ominously clear to us all that Hanoi had never really launched any “massive offensive” at all, but that the flower of the finely U.S. trained and heavily U.S. equipped South Vietnamese Army had simply panicked and run amok. The films of whole ARVN divisions fleeing desperately through the streets of Da Nang had apparently shocked the NVA generals in Hanoi almost as badly as they jolted that bone-head ward-heeler that Nixon put in the White House in exchange for the pardon that kept him out of prison.
Fear and Loathing in America Page 83