The Cover of War
Page 26
* * *
General Weyand sat behind his desk, lifted the telephone receiver, sucked in a deep breath, and dialed General Westmoreland's number.
He knew Westmoreland would not see this his way.
Westmoreland answered cheerily.
'Sir,' Weyand said. 'I believe we have a major problem on our hands.'
'What's on ya mind, Fred?'
'I'm predicting a nationwide, go-for-broke attack by the enemy. I want to pull forces back from the boarders into The Saigon Circle.'
'You're wrong.' Westmoreland barked. 'Khe Sanh is the target. All Intel points to it. Giap thinks it'll be my Dien Bien Phu.'
'All the same,' Weyand said. 'My job is to guarantee Saigon's protection.'
'Jesus. H. Christ . . . What're you basing this on?'
'My gut.'
Westmoreland went quiet and Weyand could hear a high-pitched ringing sound through the receiver.
Say something goddamn it, Weyand thought.
He held his breath.
Westmoreland's voice broke the quiet like howitzer. 'Your gut's good enough for me, General. How many units do you need to move?'
'At least fifteen maneuver battalions,' Weyand said, feeling elated. 'Starting immediately.'
70
January 31, 0246am
Saigon
10°46'49"N 106°42'11"E
Danny couldn't sleep.
Amai lay on her back beside him, her hot breath caressing his shoulder. His eyes moved over her bare chest to her face. Her lips puckered slightly in her sleep. He loved her like this - he was glad she was safe.
Looking at her he felt a surge of hope. The pain of Chaske's death would never heal, but with Amai at his side, he could get through it. Everything was going to be okay.
For years of his life he had hidden from meaningful relationships and emotional bonds. Perhaps it was fear of rejection? Perhaps it was self-loathing? He didn't know; denial had blinded him for so long. This, he understood, was why he had become a foreign correspondent: to hide.
With Amai he would hide no longer. He felt close to a success that he had never thought he would find - love.
An explosion shattered the quiet.
Amai jolted upright. 'Tet!' She said.
More explosions followed. They did not stop. The building - a four story hotel - shook on its foundations.
Danny thought that the hotel would collapse. 'Let's get out of here.'
They threw on clothes and ran down the stairs. The foyer was filling with dazed and panicked faces. People didn't know what to do, so they just stood around.
Danny led Amai into the street. Gunfire echoed between the buildings. Threads of panic spread down Danny's back. 'Back inside,' he yelled. 'Find the back exit.'
They ran back into the hotel, weaved through the crowd to the rear, and exited into a narrow lane.
'What do we do?' Amai said.
'Get to the Embassy.' Danny led the way.
He looked back. A line of jeeps, crammed with GIs sped past their hotel.
Danny led Amai through Saigon. He didn't know what to expect - he just wanted to get Amai to the embassy.
They ran into Mac Dinh Chi Street. The sky around the six-story Embassy was dark with smoke.
We made it, he thought.
Gunfire crackled from inside the Embassy grounds. Smoke drifted over the eight-foot wall and into Thong Nhut Boulevard. Several heavy bangs rocked the street. Danny saw a gaping hole in the Embassy's concrete barrier. They had walked into a battleground.
Through the hole in the wall he could see the wriggling bodies of Viet Cong soldiers. One lay in a dark pool of blood. Others fired from behind the Embassy's flower pots toward the chancery.
Christ, he thought. They're going to take the Embassy.
From an adjacent building, green flashes of Viet Cong tracer-fire arced into the Embassy's masonry and glass. Ricochets and return fire laced the street with red and green.
'What do we do?' Amai said.
Danny un-holstered his camera, brought it to his eye, and started taking pictures.
71
The dawn revealed to Triet the evidence of his failure; a failure he could not accept.
Everywhere he turned in Saigon's frantic streets, lay dead Viet Cong. He knew none personally, but they were his men. He had sent them to their deaths.
Reports from his lieutenants on the ground had confirmed that all Viet Cong attacks had been repulsed, except in Cholon, where they would soon capitulate.
Tet was a failure; his life's goal destroyed. Amai was to blame.
'Traitor,' he screamed. 'Traitor. Traitor. Traitor!'
In a massive and unmatched movement of troops, US units had been pulled back inside the Saigon circle. The move had undone months of deception work, and had ensured the city's survival. Tanks that Triet's commandos had planned to take over had been moved. Breeches had been removed from vital artillery that they had planned to seize and turn on Saigon.
Amai did this, Triet thought. She informed the Americans. I will hunt her down - and I will kill her.
Triet walked through Saigon. His skin burned with rage.
The chancery should be under our control, he thought, seething. The radio station should be broadcasting our messages of revolution.
But they were not.
Then he saw something. He looked again and his hatred flared.
He was sure it was Amai - standing on the sidewalk.
Is it her, he thought?
He looked harder.
It is.
She was talking with several other women.
Triet took his handgun from its armpit holster and closed in. A few yards away he started firing. He hit all three women and they all went down.
When he stood over the body, he knew it wasn't Amai.
He cursed himself and inserted a fresh magazine into the pistol. It was his last one. People rushed to the fallen women. He turned and walked away. He wondered how he could've made such a mistake. He wondered how he would find Amai.
* * *
Triet saw Amai on Dong Khoi. This time he didn't trust his eyes. He walked toward the woman and he saw Danny beside her. Danny was talking to General Loan.
Shock hit him. It is her.
The gun was still in his hand. He picked up his pace. Amai looked beautiful; her hair flicked about her face as she talked and smiled.
You bitch.
Her face filled his vision.
No one else existed.
He raised the gun.
Die you stinking bitch!
He pulled the trigger.
* * *
Amai heard the thump as the bullets hit flesh.
Someone near her dropped.
It was Cam.
Amai shrieked.
Amai dropped beside Cam and took her head in her hands. Amai looked back through the marines' legs and saw Triet. He had a gun.
'It's him.' She pointed and yelled: 'Triet.'
In slow-motion she saw Golota charge Triet; Triet fire the gun; bullets hit Golota in the legs and chest with no effect.
Golota smashed into Triet and they went to ground.
A pack of marines surrounded them.
Triet was hauled to his feet. Someone dragged Golota away by his armpits, his blood smearing the pavement.
General Loan moved toward Triet, taking slow, deliberate steps. Amai saw a smile spread across Loan's face. She heard him say: 'So you're the man. I never thought I'd be this lucky.'
Loan's skinny, bare arms dangled from the cuffs of his flak-vest. He stalked around Triet like a feral cat circling a mouse.
Amai held Cam in her arms; she had turned gray. Amai screamed for help. An Army medic came.
Involuntarily, Amai looked back at General Loan, and when she did, she couldn't look away. The energy in the street surged, like the seconds before a lightening strike.
Loan raised a stubby pistol to Triet's temple.
At the last second, Amai closed her
eyes, and the report of the shot echoed inside her head.
Epilogue
On the 31st of January 1968, the Viet Cong launched a massive nationwide attack, known forever after as the Tet-Offensive.
Militarily, Tet was a Viet Cong failure.
On the 10th of January, American Commander, Lieutenant General Fred. C. Weyand, pulled his troops (including fifteen maneuver battalions) back from the Cambodian boarder to Saigon. The unprecedented move saved the city.
Tet however, triggered a series of deadly political aftershocks.
After the bloodshed President Johnson replaced Defense Secretary McNamara, suspended the bombing of North Vietnam, replaced General Westmoreland as Commander, opened peace talks with Hanoi, and did not seek re-election. It was the beginning of the end for American Forces in Vietnam; and the end of the beginning for oil exploration.
John Golota died of his injuries in Dong Khoi Street, Saigon, and was buried with full Military honors.
General Nguyen Ngoc Loan was crippled by gunfire. He lost a leg, and spent his remaining years in Burke Virginia, USA, where he endured a continued public backlash for his execution of the Viet Cong officer - whose identity remains obscure even today.
Only Amai knows who that mysterious man really was.
Cam survived and adopted four Vietnamese orphans, two boys and two girls. She raised them proudly in Ho Chi Minh City.
For helping plan Tet, the Spy Pham Xuan An received the communist Medal-of-Honor (after a brutal period of interrogation by communist leaders). Years later, his green Renault sedan was displayed in Hanoi's War museum.
Triet, also-know-as Nguyen Tan Dat, as well as several other names, received no recognition in the annals of history.
During the Embassy assault, a Viet Cong commando forced entry to Colonel Jacobsen's villa. After being fired upon, Jacobsen, who was on the second floor with his local girlfriend, shot and killed the intruder, saving his own life.
Colonel Hitchcock of Military Intelligence retired with full pension in March 1968. Despite missing every sign pointing to the Tet attacks, he refused to admit fault.
Corporal Mancini changed units and was promoted to Sergeant.
Corporal Albertez went home to Austin Texas, where he married his young fiancée. Albertez never talked about the war.
After Tet, Danny and Amai returned to America, married, and settled in Colorado Springs.
Danny never won a Pulitzer for his journalistic efforts, and despite suffering post traumatic stress disorder, entered politics, and campaigned against America's 'preemptive wars of aggression'. His career included a two year term in the House of Representatives. Danny devoted much of his time to investigating oil company corruption, and fearing for his life, moved with Amai and their three adopted Vietnamese daughters to Christchurch, New Zealand. Amai's parents also resettled there. Danny died in November 2008, aged seventy.
Amai lived in their Port Hills home, where she and Danny had raised their three daughters, until it was destroyed in the Christchurch earthquake on February 22nd, 2011. But Amai is used to adversity, and is now an adoring grandmother.
Incense always burns in her new home; the kind Cam used to burn. Photographs of Danny and the children line the walls, posing, playing, and hugging. On the mantle sits a threadbare one-eyed doll - her only childhood toy - returned by her niece, Nhu An, a few years after the war.
Once a year, without fail, Amai is visited by a portly red-headed Australian. When they talk about the war her eyes flash as she relives the frightening escapes and gun battles. They reflect on 1968, pondering the fact that a gallon of gasoline cost thirty-eight cents back then, and the war cost Americans' five-hundred-billion dollars: spent on millions of tons of bombs, landmines, napalm, and Agent Orange. The result: over three million Vietnamese, and almost fifty nine thousand American deaths; hundreds-of-thousands of birth defects, cancers, MIA's, veteran suicides, and refugees.
'For what?' Amai tells me on a heavily overcast day, staring at the Pacific Ocean from New Brighton pier. 'Back then, most Vietnamese couldn't even define Communism. It was all a scam. The whole thing.'
In 1991, after the Soviet Union fell, Vietnam divided its seabed into lots and sold exploration rights to foreign oil companies.
Only American companies struck oil.
Amai believes they had prior knowledge and knew precisely which lots to bid on, due to a secretive survey, carried out under the cover of the war.
End Note
Senator Robert F. Kennedy
State of New York
United States of America
10 February 1968
Danny Thorn
6 Fir Lane
Colorado Springs
RE: VIETNAM: PEACE SELLS BUT WHO'S BUYING
Dear Senator.
From the 1st of November, 1967, until present, I have served as a foreign correspondent in Saigon, Vietnam. I am the author of the aforementioned article, (VIETNAM: PEACE SELLS BUT WHO'S BUYING).
During my time in Saigon I learned several shocking pieces of information; information concerning corruption between elements in the U.S Government; The U.S Military; and the civilian companies which form our Military Industrial Alliance.
High level officials in the United States Military have confided in me the following:
1. The gulf of Tonkin incident was a contrived lie, designed to win Congressional support for a full scale Military invasion of Vietnam.
2. U.S Military Generals were hamstrung by elements within the U.S Government, in order to prolong the conflict.
3. Safe areas in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam were purposefully created by elements within the U.S Government, to provide sanctuary to enemy forces - in order to prolong the conflict.
4. All operational and tactical plans required approval by the United Nations Security Council (headed by Soviet General, Alexel Nesternko) - in order to prolong the conflict.
5. The conflict's protraction served to allow the completion of a marine geological study of Indochinese undersea oil stocks. The war activities serving to mask these surveys (which require continual underwater explosions by surface ships fitted with sonar) from Chinese, Vietnamese, French, and American knowledge.
6. I refer you to President Hoover's 1920 oil survey, estimating large potential for undersea oil off French Indochina.
What is happening here Senator? The people want answers.
Whose side are you on?
Yours Truly
Danny Thorn