by Jon Swain
Firebase Tango Four was a most depressing place to be that night. It rained in driving sheets. Thunder rolled round the hills and there was something very eerie about the outpost under the sinister light of the illumination flares. It was shiveringly cold. Everyone was wet, especially Private Nu, who lay unconscious on his bed under a flimsy canvas roof, watched over by the faithful doctor.
Early the next morning we departed on the same helicopter, Nu and I. He, wrapped in a neatly labelled plastic body bag, was bound for the morgue; I was returning to the many delights of Saigon. The nasty little ambush that had cut short his life was not mentioned in any military communiqués. But it would not be forgotten by any of us who had shared his dreadful final night.
The American peace had not even bought a breathing space; the war was still killing boys like Nu every day. It was the loneliest of deaths and on the helicopter ride through the silver mists of that Central Highlands morning, I sat next to Nu’s pitiful, zippered-up remains and my sadness gave place to bitterness and gall. By such events, one knew that there was still a war in Vietnam, whatever the rest of the world wanted to believe.
Each of us
is a can of tomato paste
and though we may all
not have the same label
as we spin through the air
when we land too hard
or get torn,
from the outside or within,
we spill out
and stain the hands of everyone
who knew us . . .
River Ambush
It was 1974. Four hard years of war had passed in Cambodia. Virtually all that was left now of Lon Nol’s regime was the city of Phnom Penh and a few enclaves. Any hope of his exhausted army ever winning back the two-thirds of the countryside now in Khmer Rouge hands was out of the question.
There was a terminal smell about the city, a mood of disenchantment, of never-ending siege. The feeling first declared itself on arrival at Pochentong airport. The hot tarmac was thick with planes. Even as the Air Cambodia Caravelle taxied to a halt, tiny propeller-driven T28s of the Cambodian air force, bombs tucked under their wings, roared down the runway on another bombing mission. Warming up behind them were the DC3s and DC4s of Cambodia’s many private airlines which thrived on flying food into the city because the main supply roads had been cut.
The five-mile drive into the centre was made a hazard by huge ammunition lorries hurtling through the confused streams of traffic. Every off-duty soldier seemed to carry a gun, and a couple of grenades slung on his belt for good measure.
The city was wrapped in barbed wire. Foreign embassies were walled with sandbags and wire-mesh screens to protect them from the rockets which fell from time to time. American diplomats drove around in bullet-proof limousines. There was a 9p.m. curfew and all but a few restaurants closed two days a week because of a meat shortage.
Only at the Hôtel Le Phnom was there still something of the lazy charm of the pre-war days. But with a difference: most of the French community had deserted the city after the Khmer Rouge shelled it with artillery, hitting the Lycée Descartes.
Albert Spaccessi, the portly patron of the Café de Paris, was one of the few old Indo-China hands who refused to leave. He had spent nearly forty of his sixty-one years in Indo-China. His daughter was a pupil at the school. Sipping cognac, the price of which had increased eight times in four years, he said: ‘It used to be said Frenchmen were a courageous lot. That’s not true any more. One rocket. Et pouf! Everyone is leaving. It is ridiculous.’
And while the wretched Cambodian soldiers squatted in their foxholes, fighting to keep the Khmer Rouge out of the capital, some of Lon Nol’s top brass could be seen banqueting beside the hotel pool.
One day, I drove down every one of the seven main roads radiating out of Phnom Penh to look at the front lines. It had always been a sprawling city, but the first few miles reflected the disintegration of people’s lives. Miserable shanty towns had sprung up on its edges like giant fungi. As much as one-third of Cambodia’s population of seven million was now living within the city’s boundaries, imposing a severe strain on resources.
Scars of war flashed past; palm trees shrivelled black by napalm, wooden houses burnt to cinders. The further I went, the starker the desolation became. Heaps of rubble and mounds of ashes marked where towns and villages with pretty names once stood. Only twelve miles down one road, and fourteen down another, I came face-to-face with the war: grinning boy soldiers clad in jungle greens and sandals, standing at the side of the road.
A mortar was popping in the background and there were occasional bursts of fire. Girl soldiers in floppy hats twittered shyly from behind an armoured personnel carrier. The colonel was asleep in a hammock. But the fields around were black with death.
A twenty-one-year-old Australian adventurer, Jeff Niven Neyland, was busy cleaning his M16 rifle between firefights. Cambodia was a far cry from Great Yarmouth, where he claimed he once worked as a skindiver. He said he enjoyed soldiering too. Some people thought the Cambodians liked to have their unpaid mercenary around because his white face drew all the fire.
I felt a terrible hopelessness coming over the city each time I visited it from Saigon during 1974. Soon, all overland routes were cut. The airport was under rocket attack; for re-supply the city depended almost entirely on the convoys which sailed from Saigon up the Mekong. Each had to run a gauntlet of heavy communist fire from both banks before it arrived. Over the past six months, several ships had been sunk and about a dozen seamen killed.
It had long been an ambition of mine to travel on one of these convoys up the river to Phnom Penh. There was no noble reason for risking my neck, but what was happening on the river was too important to ignore. The very survival of the city depended on the ammunition, rice and fuel getting through.
All my approaches to shipping companies in Saigon were rebuffed. The risks were too great to take a journalist, they said. Then, one evening, in the upstairs bar of the Miramar Hotel on Tu Do street, I met Johnny Khoo, the manager of a Singapore-based shipping company. Coherent talk was just possible above the din of the jukebox. A cheery, tubby American was dancing with a prostitute in a tight skirt whose zip had almost surrendered under the pressure of her bottom. Her hair rose like a magnificent black soufflé and she wore too much make-up. The last GIs had left Vietnam with the signing of the peace agreement over a year before but, as in Phnom Penh, there was no shortage of Americans in Saigon making a fast buck out of the war.
Khoo watched from the bar as this bizarre couple rolled around the dance floor. He was tall, thin and had a cognac in his hand; his Singapore voice was curiously refined. I gathered that his company had a freighter on the river run and I could tell that, with a bit more drink, he might be persuaded to let me ride on it. The freighter was a rusty old tub called Bonanza Three, built in Osaka in 1957, and now fit only for the scrap-yard. That was the very reason why she had been chosen; she was expendable.
Khoo said it cost £165,000 to insure the boat for each voyage. The insurance rates were the steepest in the world, but he made a profit fluctuating around £17,000 per trip. The US government, still deeply committed to Phnom Penh’s survival, made it worth his while to gamble with his ship and the lives of his crew. ‘The risks are high but, generally, so are the profits,’ he said.
A few mornings later, I found myself joining Bonanza Three, moored in the oily waters of the Saigon River.
The first glimmer of light was announcing another day as I kissed Jacqueline goodbye and slipped out of my little Saigon apartment opposite the Hôpital Grall for the world’s most hazardous river journey up the Mekong to Phnom Penh. Softly, I called to the hunched form of the sleeping nightwatchman beneath his mosquito net to open the door. As he drew back the shutters of the iron grille, I gave him a French cigarette for his trouble. He accepted it gratefully. The yellow light of tiny kerosene lamps pricked the darkness, and for a moment I stood on the steps breathing in the night air
. A gecko chirped eight times; a good omen.
In a short while, the military convoys, the motor cycles and bicycles would start choking the streets; the beggars and stray children would reappear. But in this precious hour before dawn, Saigon was asleep. For those of us who loved the city this was the best time, when cool breezes rustled the flame trees lining the boulevards and the big 155mm guns of the perimeter bases fell silent. Carrying my rucksack and typewriter, I headed across town for the Saigon river, passing from empty street to empty street. Dim figures were moving on the deck as I was ferried across the scummy water in a small barque.
My welcome aboard was warm. Captain Herri Pentoh, her Indonesian skipper, showed me to my cabin. He was a lean, hard, intense twenty-seven-year-old with long, greasy hair over his shoulders. I had heard he was ‘a real crackerjack’, who had made several river runs already, and was reassured he would not let us down. Pentoh was touchingly apologetic for my spartan accommodation, the peeling paintwork and the plague of cockroaches which had invaded decks and cabins. He said there was no time to scrub Bonanza Three clean. She was a ‘warship’. His politeness was unnecessary. The sixty-seven bullet and rocket holes I counted in her hull were a more persuasive testimony than words.
The wheelhouse was protected by a thick wall of sandbags. The journey took us downriver from Saigon to the mouth of the Mekong, then up to Tan Chau, a wealthy South Vietnamese river town near the Cambodian border. This part of the journey was enchanting, trouble-free. We passed through lush, green countryside dotted with bobbing sampans and placid villages which showed Vietnam in a rare and attractive light.
At Tan Chau, the convoy formed up for the dash upriver to Phnom Penh. There was a late-night briefing ashore between the ships’ captains and the Cambodian navy which had sent gunboats to escort them up to Phnom Penh. In Tan Chau’s pre-dawn gloom, the ships were fuzzy outlines in the darkness. The crew, roused from their slumbers at 5a.m. by a clanging bell, sat around drinking coffee, waiting for the signal to depart.
Captain Pentoh was standing in the wheelhouse, gazing through binoculars at the river bank. He did this awkwardly because his vision was obstructed by the sandbags, but also because he had only one eye.
Without warning, three white signal rockets curved gracefully through the sky – the departure signal. On the ships there was great activity. Anchors were raised, engines started. Ship by ship, the little convoy manoeuvred into mid-channel, a conglomeration of misty shapes cutting through the dark waters of the Mekong. The rhythmic beat of the engines was the only clue to their existence.
Bonanza Three was falling apart. As the voyage upstream progressed, it became apparent that she possessed some magic quality which tied her to her crew. Their affection for her was boundless. Nor was it misplaced. When the crunch came, she showed herself a gallant ship.
On this occasion, she carried 1600 tons of rice. Her crew was composed of twenty young Indonesians and Thais. Their flak jackets and steel helmets made their slender Asian bodies incongruously chubby. But they were a hard, ragged bunch of volunteers, risking their necks for free board and lodging and 120 dollars a month, including danger pay.
They lived for the moment. Ashore, between trips, they went on bacchanalian drinking sprees, revelling in the bars and brothels of Saigon and Phnom Penh, climbing back aboard in the hot mornings, broke and hungover. But on the voyage they were quiet, well-mannered and sober.
That Captain Pentoh had made the Mekong run for more than two years and survived with nothing worse than a minor arm wound, was clearly of enormous comfort to his crew. In Mekong river circles he was something of a legend, for he had been the skipper of the Ally, an ill-fated freighter which the Viet Cong had sunk nine months before in an ambush just outside Tan Chau.
Aboard Bonanza Three, the big joke was the loo. Apart from making privacy a farce, fist-sized shrapnel holes in the door and wall made it obvious that using it at the wrong moment could prove fatal for the unwary occupant. Happily, the Khmer Rouge gunners had not yet caught anyone with their pants down.
I inquired about the ship’s radio officer. ‘He’s absent,’ I was told. I discovered later that ‘absent’ was a euphemism. The poor fellow had been killed two months before, blasted in his cabin by a rocket. Members of the crew scooped up the pieces in a plastic bag, and were still trying desperately to erase the event from their minds.
Many lives depended on the convoy being adequately protected. The plans were announced at a special briefing at An Long naval base, near Tan Chau, the night before we sailed. The convoy commander, a smart Cambodian naval officer, confidently told the assembled captains not to worry. He called them ‘gentlemen’ and gave bland assurances that his twenty to thirty gunboats, backed by planes and artillery, would provide adequate protection. He said Cambodian troops had secured some of the most dangerous parts of the route in a series of amphibious assaults that very morning. The captains, sitting in slacks and sandals opposite him at a green baize table, nodded politely. The doubt showed in their weary faces.
Once inside Cambodia and ploughing up the Mekong at a steady eight knots, it seemed the captain’s misgivings of the night before had been misplaced. Both river banks were rich ribbons of green. But in striking contrast to Vietnam, where the Mekong and its lush banks buzzed with small-boat activity, great empty spaces of green slid leisurely by. The rich and varied sampan traffic of South Vietnam, the gnarled fishermen and their conical-hatted women were far behind us. The Cambodian river pilot, taken aboard at Tan Chau that morning, explained that the fishing folk had long since departed, their villages destroyed or insecure, to swell the pathetic ranks of Cambodia’s two million war refugees.
The gunboats were already around, quivering with anticipation. They fussed among the cargo ships like worried flocks of geese. Twin-barrelled machine guns mounted on their sharp bows whirled constantly, black snouts sniffing the air. Sometimes they let rip at the river bank.
Bonanza Three’s entire crew – with the exception of those deep down in the engine room – were by now tightly jamming the wheelhouse. The crush inside and the sticky heat recalled being stuck in the London tube in a summer rush hour. Those who could squatted on the floor with the ship’s mascots, seven dogs, for company. The pilot, erect by the wheel, gave orders in a low, matter-of-fact tone. Otherwise there was silence.
Thus the convoy passed the first big danger point virtually unchallenged. At Peam Chor, fifteen miles beyond the frontier, the Mekong suddenly curves and narrows to a 500-yard channel, an ideal and frequent ambush point. Conspicuous to our straining eyes were the hulks of the two ammunition barges sunk ten days before, during the last run – forlorn pieces of rusting machinery poking out of the sluggish water. We rode past them, the river banks drab and hostile at this point, despite the dazzling sunshine.
The chatter of small arms fire showed that the Khmer Rouge were there somewhere. But we were through, the gunboats darting busily among us, covering our passage with a brisk curtain of fire.
With Neak Leung a fading smudge to stern, the danger seemed over. The convoy had suffered no damage and it was now only thirty miles to Phnom Penh. Even Pentoh relaxed, unzipping his flak jacket and pulling off his helmet. No convoy had been hit on the home run for nearly a year. Bowls of steaming rice and spicy fish appeared from nowhere to be wolfed down by the crew. Spirits rose and someone switched on the radio.
The ambush came suddenly, with a rocket attack on the lead ship, Monte Cristo, as she steamed past the Dey Do plywood factory twelve miles from Phnom Penh. From Bonanza Three’s wheelhouse, two ships astern, it was impossible to assess the damage. But flames and a feather of black smoke on the Wing Pengh, 300 yards in front, showed that she too had been hit.
The instinct for self-preservation at such a time is overwhelming. All of us sheltering in the wheelhouse, knowing that our ship was next in line, unashamedly made ourselves as small a target as we could. The situation was too tense and desperate for chatter. In our ears there was only t
he pounding of blood. The crew were very still, their big American helmets swamping their tiny heads.
Pentoh dominated the scene, taking the wheel himself and steering an erratic course through the fire. The awful din of battle swirled and eddied around, but all we could see from the wheelhouse was dirty puffs of smoke and splashes of dirt on the river bank as shells struck home.
Machine-gun bullets clanged and rattled off the hull. The gunboats leapt almost vertically through the water, their crouched and helmeted crew drenched in spray, their guns becoming living things in their hands.
In the wheelhouse, the little Cambodian pilot carried on with his instructions, his voice as steady as a rock. Only his delicate fingers, tightly wrapped round a small ivory Buddha, betrayed his fear.
The thump of the ship’s engines rose above the noise. The words ‘starboard easy’ had just left the pilot’s lips when the rocket burst aft. The explosion was like a mule kick. No one moved. No one said anything except the battle-hardened skipper. ‘Bloody hell, we’ve been hit,’ he said, then looked around, embarrassed.
The battle exploded with renewed fury. Then it receded, leaving a sharp whiff of cordite in the air and an overpowering sense of relief and fatigue. More than anything else in the world, the crew wanted to sleep. In a daze, they lay on the wheelhouse floor, which looked like some strange, heaving animal rising and falling.
It was not until we were safely tied up at Phnom Penh’s dirty brown waterfront an hour or so later, that anyone bothered to leave the wheelhouse and inspect the damage. The rocket had missed the steering column by a fraction of an inch; had it hit, Bonanza Three would have been circling out of control at a particularly tricky moment. A winch was badly damaged. There were a lot of holes. Nevertheless, Bonanza Three had survived yet another Mekong river run.