Last Man Out

by James E. Parker, Jr.

  Sitting in the half light on the front porch that night, I thought a case could be made for both sides. I agreed with Zee that there was a short future to South Vietnam, but my sense was that we would not be attacked there, that I was safe as long as I didn’t threaten the local VC. However, it wouldn’t hurt to double the size of the night guard and keep a loaded gun at my bedside.

  That night we decided that if the bad guys did sneak into the compound and come into the house, they would probably be gunning for me, Parker, the CIA guy. I figured that I had to convince them that they didn’t want me, Parker, but Barker in the next room. Barker, not Parker. Maybe it was a typo, maybe they had just misunderstood their orders, which I would try to say was easy to do, confusing the names of Americans.

  Right, said Terry.

  Over the months that followed, I worked to develop information on the situation in the lower delta. I spent hours at 21st Division headquarters and finally obtained a permanent pass to visit the G-2 and G-3 sections. General Hung spent most of his days in the field. His command helicopter left early most mornings to make the rounds of the isolated positions so he could talk with his field commanders. I met him most often at night, sometimes over supper, sometimes for drinks. Occasionally we met during the day in his office. Over time our contacts became relaxed and comfortable. We enjoyed one another’s company.

  Terry introduced me to the province chief, Colonel Canh. He was the ARVN “soldier of the year” prior to coming to Chuong Thien, an honor he received in part because of his heroics in a battle with North Vietnamese mainline forces near An Loc. Terribly wounded, he had lost part of his face. When I met him, his disfigurement had been corrected to some extent by plastic surgery, although the first thing my eye went to was the long scar running along his jaw. Canh had a positive attitude about the war, as dismal as it was in Vi Thanh. He was a soldier’s soldier, brave and incorruptible. He traveled alone by sampan at night to remote outposts to deliver salaries and supplies and to lift the morale of his soldiers. He said that he had good men and they would fight the Communists until they died or until his country was free.

  At night, Terry and I had to work hard to entertain ourselves. Our favorite pastimes were playing rummy and watching 16mm movies. During our rummy games Terry got up to owing me eighteen zillion dollars. Then we played one hand double-or-nothing and he came back even. We received only five or six movies every other week. The first time we showed each movie we invited our Vietnamese counterparts. Although Terry and I watched the same movies again and again, we never tired of the musicals.

  My parents wrote that everyone in the States was talking about Watergate and the prospects of Nixon’s impeachment. Everything was a downer. Fortunately, some distance on the other side of the world from those sordid goings-on, we blissfully played cards and watched musicals and did not feel deprived.

  We also played tennis at the old MACV compound across the street and read several books a week. And we played chess—conventionally at first, and then battle chess. We placed a thin piece of board across the middle of the chessboard so we couldn’t see the placement of the other person’s pieces. After arranging our pieces any way we wanted, we lifted the board and flipped a coin to see who went first. Those were bloody skirmishes. Each lasted fifteen minutes or less.

  General Hung’s outlook did not change while I was in Chuong Thien. He was convinced that the real struggle for the delta was under way in other places, possibly in Saigon parlors. A Buddhist, Hung believed in fate; whatever happened with whatever consequences was the natural order of things.

  Hung thought his role as 21st Division commander was to keep his division together, to maintain communications and keep everyone alert, to fight for survival, and to take the net advantage from any engagement. He did not believe in trying to win the war or in squandering supplies. Survive and things will take care of themselves, he said.

  I usually called for an Air America plane and flew into Can Tho once every two weeks. During alternate weeks I tried to find time to visit a neighboring province, either Rach Gia or Bac Lieu. A person could get cabin fever by staying in Vi Thanh too long at a time, plus it was safer to meet away from Vi Thanh the few unilateral agents whom I handled. I maintained a schedule of twenty-eight days in-country and six days with the family in Taipei.

  There were no direct flights from Saigon to Taipei, so I always transited Hong Kong. Sometimes I lay over in Hong Kong for a few hours on a shopping errand for Brenda. On those excursions, as I had done on my R&R from infantry days in Vietnam, I took the Star Ferry back and forth to Kowloon. The cruise was soothing, and I always compared those times with my life in Vi Thanh. There was so much industry and energy there, so much to see, so much going on. I felt so safe on the edge of the crowded Star Ferry. In Vi Thanh, life was very quiet. Its days were measured, and gloom and doom permeated the place. And danger always lurked nearby. Hong Kong was a reaffirmation of life. One round trip on the Star Ferry convinced me that a world, prosperous and alive, lay beyond Vi Thanh.

  Homecomings were also uplifting. I could see how much the kids had grown between my visits. Their lives were full and challenging. Undeniably American kids by that time, they had their slang and their favorite junk foods and their Hollywood heroes.

  Mim and I still had our special times together. She appeared honestly disappointed that I wasn’t wearing boots for her to take off when I came home, but she took off my shoes anyway. Once when I came in she took off my shoes and socks, and because she was in a playful mood she ran into her room, came back with fingernail polish, and painted my toenails red. I never removed the polish but just let it wear off in time. It was Mim’s special mark on me.

  Brenda’s sister Betty Jo came to Taipei for a visit during the fall of 1974. After dinner one evening she and Brenda went to the Grand Palace Hotel to buy postcards. When they had finished shopping, Brenda pulled away from the curb near the entrance as she chatted away with her sister, made the first turn leading out to the street, and found herself going down the stairs from the hotel to the street below—in our 1971 Oldsmobile.

  The doorman came running up to the driver’s door and with his hands over his eyes shouted, “No, no, no, no!”

  The car wouldn’t back up. The rear tires were lodged against the top step. So the doorman called everyone in the area, workers, guests, everyone—the car was surrounded by Chinese. Brenda put the car in reverse and gave it the gas as they pushed it up the stairs. When she drove off they all applauded.

  Back in Vi Thanh, I continued to send out dispatches on the situation in Chuong Thien and the lower delta to what I perceived to be an uninterested readership in Saigon and Washington. My grades were mostly 1s and 5s. I tried for balanced reporting, without sensational language, but the message was clear that the Communists dominated the countryside and the long-term prospects for GVN forces were bleak.

  One day field officers were called to Can Tho for a briefing by the CIA’s chief analyst in Saigon. I had heard that he was from North Carolina, so I was looking for an educated redneck in the hope that we could have a substantive give-and-take on the situation in the delta. I was excited about the visit. It would be my first opportunity to give my views of the situation directly to someone in a position to make a difference.

  As it turned out, I was very disappointed. “Terry Balls” [alias] was a condescending, pedantic elitist who ventured south to give us a “big picture” lecture, resplendent with insignificant order of battle information and minutiae on North Vietnamese personalities, trivia gleaned during his years in the air-conditioned confines of Saigon.

  Balls’s talk did not reflect the realities of the countryside. It had no sense of sweat and no military or historical perspective on what was going on where we worked, where the war was being fought. Plus, he didn’t ask us any questions. Despite the recent setbacks to the South Vietnamese troops in the central and northern parts of the country, the southern area, especially the delta, was secure, he said. Generat
ions of case officers would follow in our footsteps in the delta. Eventually there would be tacit understandings to the negotiated cease-fire, signed in 1973, with which both the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese could live. There were factors at work, not apparent to us in the field, that ensured this to be the case. There is no question, he said, that South Vietnam will survive.

  It occurred to me much later that no reasonable person could have believed that the North Vietnamese, who had suffered a million casualties in that war, were going to stop short of complete victory. Maybe, I thought later, Balls was part of a U.S. government conspiracy to keep us at our posts in the field while we waited out that decent interval until North Vietnam took over the South.

  Then, I thought, no. Our government isn’t that smart when it comes to Vietnam. The prediction of a North Vietnamese–South Vietnamese coexistence is just foolish enough for our policy makers to believe.

  At the bar later that night, I told Balls that despite what he might think, the North Vietnamese were not going to stop this side of a complete victory in the South. The South Vietnamese military could not stop them. Hung’s 21st Division was among the best the ARVN had, but it was outgunned and only waiting for the end. There was no democratic future for South Vietnam. Balls, accustomed to briefing world leaders, looked at me strangely and turned his back to me without comment.

  On my return to Chuong Thien, I was in a gloomy mood so I decided to visit the local orphanage, one of my all-time favorite places. The small Catholic chapel and orphanage complex was on the edge of Vi Thanh, across a small river. I drove a motor scooter to the river and yelled to a boy who poled a boat across to pick me up.

  Most children orphaned in Vietnam were taken in by members of their immediate families because it was part of the culture and it was common for extended family groups to raise orphaned relatives as adopted siblings. The children taken to an orphanage were often deformed, sickly, or disturbed, and beyond the ability of their families to care for them. Many of the children in the Vi Thanh orphanage were horribly disfigured. The nuns gave them loving care, which was reflected in the faces of the kids. The children were always either happily at play outside or sitting dutifully on little pots—all in a row—doing their daily business.

  When I visited the orphanage and sat under the trees to watch those scrawny, deformed kids laugh and play, I always felt better. It was often the high point of my day, to go over to the orphanage after work, and I frequently carried the kids around the play area on my shoulders.

  For Christmas, Terry and I enlisted the help of our parents in the States and Brenda in Taipei to get enough gifts for all the kids. We bought cases of ice cream and candy in Can Tho and invited everyone in the orphanage to the compound. Remembering how excited the children were in Udorn, Terry and I sought to make the Vi Thanh Christmas party just as joyous.

  The party was grand—a wonderful holiday.

  EIGHTEEN

  My Bodyguard

  The North Vietnamese launched a coordinated offensive in the northern areas of South Vietnam in December 1974. There was no subtlety. They got their conventional forces on line and charged straight at the South Vietnamese positions. After each attack it appeared to us that they waited for a response from the United States. When there was no response, they attacked again. On 6 January 1975 the North Vietnamese captured Phuoc Long Province, north of Saigon.

  Finally, the U.S. government did something. It reduced the size of the official American community in Vietnam, which clearly indicated that our government had no confidence in the ability of the South Vietnamese to survive.

  In late January, as a consequence of the reduction, Terry was transferred out of Vi Thanh. I would be the only American left in the province.

  Jim D., the new CIA base chief in Can Tho, asked if it was tenable, and I told him it was and that the only thing I feared was fear itself. If the local Communists had not attacked when only the two of us were there, I figured they would not attack now just because I was alone.

  After I put Terry on the plane, I called aside the chief guard, Loi, and told him that his job was being changed from ensuring that his men changed shifts on time, stayed awake at night, and received correct pay. From then on, his main job was to be my bodyguard—that is, bodyguard. He was to think about the safety of my body at all times. He was to move his bed to the room of the guardhouse nearest the corner of the main house where I slept, and he was to be within several steps of me all day. If I was in the office, he was to be in the office. If I ate at noon in the house, he ate at noon in the house.

  Loi stood almost at attention. Wide-eyed, he took in everything I said.

  If I went to division headquarters, I wanted Loi to go to division headquarters. If I rode the motor scooter at night, he rode his motor scooter with me. If there was any danger, anything out of the ordinary, he was to get between me and it. I wanted him to take spears in the chest. I wanted him to die before I died. I wanted him to be a living, walking, talking shield. That was his job. If he didn’t want it, I would get someone else, either there or in Can Tho.

  Loi, after waiting a second to be sure I was finished, said he understood. He said he would take spears in the chest if he had to. “What are spears, anyway?” he asked.

  The first night after our talk I was riding my motor scooter, with Loi right behind me on his. The route, which I had taken before, ran past the market and out to the northern edge of town, then on a built-up road to a bridge and back by the orphanage and home.

  At the edge of town, Loi came up beside me and sputtered, “Where are you going?”

  “Down to the bridge.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Bossman, the bridge belongs to the local VC,” he said.

  When I told him I had been going there for weeks, he slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand and said, “Are you crazy?”

  So I didn’t go there anymore, but I checked Loi’s information and found that it wasn’t entirely true. The VC tax people were there only some of the time.

  Also, when Terry left I asked one of the interpreters to help me have a talk with the cook. The kitchen had been Terry’s responsibility. He paid the cook and bought the things she needed in Can Tho. Her name was Ba Muoi. In English that’s number ten. She was the tenth child born in her family. Naming children by number is an ancient Vietnamese custom that promotes family unity by giving each child a place. Ba Muoi knew how to prepare about nine dishes, which she served on a rotating schedule. We almost knew what day it was by the meals she prepared. I asked her to vary the menu. It would make my stay much more pleasant. I liked Vietnamese food. Don’t always cook Western, I told her, give me some down-home Vietnamese food. For example, I said, I pass the market often and see these giant frogs. I used to hunt frogs as a kid, and I want some frog legs. Try fixing me Vietnamese frog-leg food.

  There was some distance between what I intended and what I had for my next meal. I think maybe the phrase “down-home” got garbled in translation.

  Ba Muoi went down to the market and bought some frogs. She put them on her cutting board, chopped them up from the heads to the ends of the legs, and served them in a soup.

  I had frog soup. Not fried frog legs, but frog soup, with frog lips, frog eyes, and other green stuff swimming around in it. I had lived with the mountain people of Laos for a couple of years and eaten some odd things, but I had never seen anything as unusual as that woman’s frog soup.

  I told her to go back to her nine meals.

  She was walleyed. When I told Brenda, she said that was what she expected me to say—my maid was a walleyed older woman—but I said it was true and that she was a grandmother, too. Because Ba Muoi’s eyes looked out opposite sides of her head, she had a blind spot in front and had to walk with her head cocked to one side.

  Ba Muoi had been working at the U.S. compound in Vi Thanh since it was built years before. Someone, sometime, had told her to make up the beds at eigh
t o’clock in the morning, so she would come into my bedroom to make up that bed at eight o’clock, whether I was in it or not. And I swear she went into Terry’s room to make up his bed for months after he left. She’d go into his room and say “Oh,” and then go into the kitchen.

  One weekend morning at eight o’clock, I heard her come into the house while I was still in bed. I got up and walked over to the closet to get dressed. Intent on making up my bed, she walked into the bedroom. Because the curtain was still pulled, it was dark in the bedroom and she apparently did not see me. She headed for the light on the bedside table where I kept a 9mm pistol, loaded and cocked, when I slept. I had been reading late the previous night and had dropped my glasses on the floor beside the bed. They were in Ba Muoi’s blind spot and she stepped on them, mashing them flat. She stepped back and cocked her head to one side to see what she had crushed. When she saw that it was my glasses, she backed out of the bedroom, leaving them flat on the floor.

  I went outside a few minutes later with my flat glasses and I said, “Hey, what happened to my glasses?”

  She said she didn’t know.

  One night some VC came into the cluster of houses across the field from the compound. They carefully put together wooden troughs, aimed them across the field, placed rockets in them, and fired the rockets in our direction.

  What we pieced together later was that some merchants had slipped through the VC checkpoints without paying taxes on the goods they brought into town. The VC tax collector was letting the merchants know that he wasn’t happy with this.

  The first rocket whizzed over the compound, exploding in the market beyond. Loi came tearing out of his room and ran to my bedroom window.

  He started yelling, “Hey Boss, Boss, Boss, Boss!”