by Ed Cobleigh
I learn that Nick was a war protestor himself in his younger days. In the early 1930s, Nick saw the dark clouds of war gathering once again over his native Hungary. He missed the first European War of the Century, WWI, and he was unenthusiastic about his personal participation in any new conflict, righteous or not.
Nick cashed in his chips in Budapest and protested with his feet, leaving Europe to burn once again with the fires of conflict. He selected a spot on the globe which seemed to offer an exotic, languid lifestyle and was as far away from the Hitler war as he could get.
Young Nick arrived in Bangkok about a year prior to the successful Japanese invasion of what was then called the country of Siam. Despite his protesting flight to avoid it, World War II came to Nick. Leon Trotsky was right, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
Somehow, he lived through the awful Japanese occupation of Siam/Thailand, and after Liberation Day opened his restaurant to serve the legions of westerners flocking in to help reconstruct the country. His business prospered, but not to the extent of being able to afford building maintenance. His patrons got into the habit of covering bits of the flaking walls with their business cards and the unconventional decoration scheme caught on. Now the cards are four deep in some places. At our rough-hewn wooden table, we read down through the layers of cards stuck on the nearby wall. It is like peeling back layers of recent history, each layer of cards reaching further back into the past .
Nick's verbal saga (isn't that redundant, aren't all sagas verbal?) starts us four pilots discussing our favorite obsession, the current war. OK, make that our second-favorite obsession, after girls.
One of the Thud drivers tells the rest of us there is a senior USAF sergeant at Korat who joined the US Army Air Corps as a lad and was stationed in Hanoi, then part of French Indochina. His unit flew bombing raids on Japanese forces stationed at Korat, in the Kingdom of Siam. Now his present unit flies missions from Korat, Thailand, to bomb Hanoi, North Vietnam while. U.S. bases in Japan support the war effort. You can't tell the current geopolitical players without a scorecard.
I wonder if any of the peaceniks marching back home have any appreciation at all for the political complexity of this war. Probably not; all they know is that war is icky and dangerous and not in their personal plans, thus, it must be wrong and unjust.
Over our aperitifs, we agree that once the earnest members of the antiwar left decided the current chapter of the continuing war in Southeast Asia was wrong, they had to dream up a moral rationalization for its wrongness beyond the potential for their own personal inconvenience. I guess being unwinnable, as it is being fought, wasn't enough justification to oppose it. What I can't fathom is why the guys who are fighting it and who know it to be a lost cause aren't opposed to it as much as the folks who only have a mathematical lottery chance of participating. Maybe it has to do with concepts like duty, honor, and courage. On this, the Thud drivers and I agree.
Thud drivers aren't known for their sophisticated thinking. In fact, most of them have one eyebrow that goes all the way across at the base of their cranial ridge. But these three guys are smarter than most. We wonder aloud how our country could have gotten into such a quagmire, given Gen. Douglas MacArthur's public warning not to get involved in a major land war on the continent of Asia. How did we get led astray? What herd mentality in Washington took over? Who couldn't see the waiting, sucking quagmire?
The server comes to take our dinner orders. He is male, much to our mutual disappointment. One of us could still get lucky tonight if a comely Thai girl delivers our drinks.
The Thud jocks all order steaks of various types. I want to try one of Nick's Hungarian specialties, like goulash, but I go along with the crowd and decide on a steak as well. The menu lists in English, "Steak Tartare." That sounds interesting; I enjoy tangy tartar sauce on fried fish. But, I've never had tartar sauce on beefsteak, so I order it. The Thai waiter looks at me in surprise, as if to say, "Why are you doing that?" but I ignore his expression of doubt, the second time today I have failed to read the culinary warning signs. Strangely, he asked the other three guys how they wanted their steaks prepared, but not me. I guess Steak Tartare only comes one way.
The cocktail waiter who delivers our drinks also turns out to be of the male persuasion, so we return to our second-favorite interest, the war. We ask each other why, if we can't figure out how we got into the war, can we deduce why we can't get out of it? Once it became obvious to the political/military brain trust in Washington that the war is unwinnable under the present rules and with the current regime in South Vietnam, why didn't they change the game? Why not just cut our losses and leave? What makes a politician never admit an error? Why doesn't our military leadership strenuously object to pouring men's lives down a muddy jungle rat hole? What machismo forces are in play here? Why is it so hard to quit something that we are screwing up?
Our dinner arrives before we get drunk enough to come up with all the answers. The other three steaks look conventional and well prepared.
The nervous waiter sets my meal in front of me. I am looking down at a large wooden platter. In the center is what looks to be over a pound of raw, chopped beef. Not medium well, not medium rare, not plain rare, but totally raw. The fresh meat is piled into a red mound with a depression in the center, like a bloody bird's nest. In the center of the nest, the chef has thoughtfully cracked a raw egg. Across the top of the platter are helpings of condiments; raw chopped onions, capers, fresh parsley, and a bottle of dark Worcestershire sauce, also raw I assume. The waiter retires to the shadows, but doesn't leave; he wants to see what I will do with my Steak Tartare. The three Thud drivers' jaws drop as one.
One of my dinner buddies asks, "Did you know what that was when you ordered it?"
I reply, "Of course, I have this all the time. It's one of my favorites, but it's hard to find good Steak Tartare up-country in Ubon. "
After completely blowing my dinner order through gross ignorance, there is no way I am going to admit that I had no idea what I was getting. If I were alone, I might send this raw meat back, but not with three F-105 pilots watching and ready to laugh their asses off at my expense the rest of the evening. I am going to choke this stuff down if it is the last thing I ever do. Given the well-known Thai cavalier attitude toward food hygiene, consuming raw meat in the tropics isn't the wisest. But, I season the chopped pile of fresh flesh with a liberal dose of Worcestershire, sprinkle on some onions, add a few capers, along with salt and black pepper. I can't add anything else without giving away my attempt at covering up the fresh meat's flavor. The other three start to chow down on their (cooked) steaks, watching me out of the corners of their eyes. The Thai waiter peers from a darkened recess just outside the table's circle of light. Even Nick looks over from his nearby desk.
I lift a fork half full and with great trepidation, dump the load on my tongue. One gulp and it goes down without chewing. I don't gag and the bite stays down. The residual flavor in my mouth is of rare meat, onions, pickled capers, and sauce. I take another portion and risk a few quick chews this time before swallowing. To my great surprise, the sensation isn't yucky at all.
I chew my third bite properly and find the mixed flavor to be not bad, in fact, it's pretty good. By bite number four, I'm enjoying my Steak Tartare immensely. I finish my platter clean, raw egg and all. After a final sip of my Bourbon and water, I ask the amazed waiter to summon Nick. The old man quietly materializes into view by the light over the table and asks us how we liked our dinners.
I tell Nick and the waiter, "Nick, that is the best Steak Tartare I have ever had" which is certainly true.
My dinnertime friends pretend to take no notice and compliment Nick on their charred, blackened steaks as well.
Over coffee, we resume our discussion of the war. We rehash how our country got into it, unaware of the possible consequences. We ask again why our so-called leadership can't seem to back out. We finally admit that those of us fighting t
he war have learned to enjoy our mission enough not to complain about it. It is amazing what you can put up with, if you have to or want to. That's as far as we get; the overall situation remains a mystery, and we can't even get to an answer one bite at a time.
The F-105 jocks want to go back to the O Club and drink. They think there might be a few flight nurses or USAF female officers at the bar. I'm not up for that plan, as I can see a long, drunken, horny evening ahead for them.
I have heard of a Bangkok Dixieland jazz bar supposedly frequented by airline stewardesses, but I'm not about to tell my newfound friends that. Who needs the competition? We part company outside Nick's and I catch a waiting taxi to a joint named "The Balcony" across town.
The bouncer admits me to a jammed and smoky two-story club. The open main floor has a bar in the middle and a low stage at one end. Sure enough, a balcony outlined with wrought-iron lacework circles the room at the second-floor level. Cigarette smoke hovers near the ceiling like an indoor stratus cloud. It is enough to get me all misty for New Orleans, my birthplace.
The clientele consists of trendy young Thais of both genders, fresh-scrubbed American servicemen, and older male civilian westerners in faded leisure suits. The latter are sitting alone, observing with weary eyes which have seen it all and are nursing their drinks. These guys are probably "old China hands," businessmen who have been in the Orient too long. Or maybe they're CIA spooks undercover. Perhaps, they might be wartime hustlers. Maybe, they're all three at the same time.
The jazz is pure Dixieland and it is surprisingly good. The all-Thai band does their best imitation of the "Firehouse Five Plus Two" or "The Dukes of Dixieland" and they don't miss a hot lick. Their instrumentals are superb, but their verbal introductions in English to each number are not as successful. There isn't a Thai tongue in Bangkok that can wrap itself around the r's in the song titles "Muskrat Ramble" or "South Rampart Street Parade."
I am so homesick I order a mint julep, almost shouting over the din. It comes to me just right, in a frosty mug, sweet and strong. I'm not so lucky in my quest for female companionship. There are no single round-eyed women in sight and all the Thai girls have attentive escorts. Oh well, I have good jazz to listen to and a good libation to sip; two out of three isn't bad.
During the band's second set, an additional musician slips from out of the dark wings onto the stage and joins in the fun. The newcomer Thai jams expertly with the group on a tenor saxophone, weaving his riffs into the mix with considerable skill. I ordinarily wouldn't notice just another guy in the band, but this cat looks familiar. Racking my booze-sodden brain, I ask myself where I could have seen this late-arriving member of the band before tonight.
Suddenly, it hits me like a laser-guided bomb right between the eyes. Of course, I've seen this guy before; his picture is all over Thailand.
Today on my sightseeing rounds, I gawked at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. The eighteen-inch-tall Buddha isn't really an emerald, but something called "greenstone." Anyway, the temple is spectacular, all gold and white with bright red tile on a steeply pitched roof. As part of his religious duties, the King of Thailand changes the tiny garments clothing the emerald Buddha with each the change of the seasons in a solemn ceremony. Through pure dumb luck, I happened to be at the temple today for the show. It was magnificent, with suitable pomp and circumstance, Thai style.
I saw the King from afar as he entered the temple. He is an solemn-looking, slightly built man with large, black-rimmed glasses. As he is always pictured, today he had an earnest expression, indicative of him taking his role in Thai society very seriously. He is greatly revered throughout Thailand and well respected by every ethnic Thai I have ever met. Indeed, he is considered to be the human embodiment of Thai culture and history; he is the living symbol of Thailand.
Even from my distance and over the heads of the adoring crowd, I could see that the king looks just like his portraits that hang in every significant Thai building, whether governmental, public, or private. He also looks just like the sax player in the band on the dimly-lit stage at the Balcony.
I hail the Thai manager of the club, being careful to use the proper gesture: hand held horizontal, fingers dangling down and waving. In Thailand, an up-crooked finger is used only to call dogs.
I ask the manager, "Is that new sax player who I think he is? I can't believe it, if he is."
The manager looks at me as if I just fell off a turnip truck. Even his innate Thai courtesy can't prevent his face from showing considerable alarm.
He replies, "Sir, is this your first time at my place?"
I tell him that it is, and that I like it a lot.
That seems to mollify him some and he tells me. "You know who he is. We all know who he is. He knows who he is. So we don't make a fuss about it. No one loses face."
Now I get it. This is Asia. If no one acknowledges a fact, then it doesn't exist. Heavy-duty royal courtesies would be necessary if anyone lets on that they know what everyone else knows; then, the principle of maintaining face would have to be honored. This willful ignorance allows their beloved king to relax with the jazz band, without any of the required protocol getting in the way. The denizens of the Balcony are cool with this. They allow the King some well-deserved recreation by ignoring his royal presence and the band gets another jamming sideman with his wailing sax for free.
Despite me being all by my lonesome, this evening looks to be almost a winner, perfect mint juleps, superb Steak Tartare, and good Dixieland jazz, royally done.
***
I'm sitting on the porch in front of Wing Headquarters back at my home base in Ubon. It is late, almost midnight, and I'm waiting for the USAF blue shuttle bus to take me to the BOQ area and my hooch. Ordinarily I would walk, but I'm hung over from a few too many mint juleps last night. The ride up from Bangkok in the back of a noisy C-130 didn't help my aching head any.
On the plane, I read in the latest Bangkok Post that the protest demonstrations have escalated even more back home. Now, the President of the United States of America rarely appears in public anymore. When he ventures out, violent, hairy, profanity-spewing protestors (if not crazed assassins) usually confront him. The leader of the free world is a prisoner in the White House. Maybe he should take up the saxophone.
After my hectic three days in chaotic Bangkok, I could really use some quality sack time. Sleep beckons to me as I wait on the bus and I start to drift off where I sit. Even now, I can't get the news of the antiwar movement out of my thoughts. As I doze slumped on the wooden bench waiting for the bus, I remember reading the rallying cry screamed by the members of the antiwar protestors back in the States is "Hell no, we won't go!"
The engine noise of the approaching shuttle, a converted school bus, rudely jolts me awake. I am startled to find I am now not alone on the dimly lit porch. Five or six heavily armed, silent men have materialized out of nowhere in the night. Three are on my right and two or three more are semi-hidden in the damp darkness on my left. The quiet group has spoken no words and no man has made a sound of any kind.
Glancing furtively left and right, I can see each of these night ghost soldiers is dressed in jungle camouflage from head to foot and each man is toting a black M-16 rifle. Long, crossed bandoliers of bullets decorate each skinny chest. I don't see how they can handle the weight of all that lead, as none of the mute troops is over five foot five and 130 pounds. Besides his personal weapon and ammo, each of the unspeaking men has a large green pack nearby almost as big as he is.
The five have managed to gain the porch, deposit their heavy packs, and squat down, ignoring the wooden benches, without making a noise loud enough to wake me, and I was barely dozing. These are men long practiced at not announcing their presence. They are either Hmong tribesmen or Laotians; it is too dark to tell the difference. The Laotians tend to be taller. I'm sure none of them are Americans. But, I know who they are, why they are there, and where they are going.
Waiting patiently, silently, on each side
of me are the members of a Laotian road watch team. Sometime later tonight, a helicopter without navigation lights and no national insignia will touch down without warning on the concrete ramp in front of this headquarters building. The blacked-out chopper will not have a flight plan on file and tonight's sortie will appear nowhere on the wing's official flying schedule. Americans will be flying the chopper. Americans without uniforms, with long hair, and with no name tags. The CIA covert air transport network, "Air America," at your service.
The road watch team will rapidly board the helo while its engines are running, piling all their gear and weapons inside with practiced haste. The helo will lift off without further ado and disappear into the warm night, headed northeast toward the border of Thailand and Laos. Just before dawn, the chopper will touch down briefly on a ridge top deep in the area of the Laotian panhandle controlled by the North Vietnamese. In a scant few seconds, the road watch team will jump off with their gear and disappear quickly like brown wraiths into the dense jungle. They will covertly monitor enemy truck traffic along the winding Ho Chi Minh Trail and radio what they see back to a CIA operations center in Thailand located on the west band of the Mekong River. The road watch team's mission will be to collect and transmit as much intelligence data as they can without being detected. Any slip, any noise, any wrong move at any time will reveal their presence. If the Bad Guys suspect the team is watching, even while hidden by the dense jungle, they will go all out to capture or kill my nighttime companions. If captured, immediate execution will be the best outcome. Torture for information and recreation is much more likely.
These unconventional native troops, volunteers all, lead a hard life. Each probably has a wife or two in a thatched log shelter near the Plain of Jars. A few naked kids and scrawny dogs will complete the family homestead. They get paid fifty dollars a month, maybe, when the agency gets around to it. Their only other possessions are in their backpacks. Their medical benefits consist of first aid administered by a buddy. There is no retirement plan.