Sweet Caress

by William Boyd

  There is a curious, unspoken class system working here amongst the journalists. ‘Staffers’ versus ‘stringers’. Staffers are serious professional journalists; stringers are wild cards, eccentrics, fools, war-lovers, freaks, potheads, dangerous. There’s a celebrated stringer called John Oberkamp (an Australian) who has been here since 1965 and has been wounded in action three times. He and some friends rent a big house on My Loc Street – near Tu Do Street (where all the bars are) – that is known as the ‘Non-Com Hotel’. It’s like a just-under-control-twenty-four-hour nightclub. Lots of drinking, music, drugs – and, most valuably, information, contacts, rumours.

  There’s still a strong prevalence of the French colonial days in Saigon, despite the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of Americans in Vietnam. And you can eat very well in the old style if you can afford it, and find it. I remember the other day I went to the café at the Hotel de la Poste and I asked for a whisky.

  The waiter said, ‘Do you want a bébé? Or a grand bébé?’

  ‘What’s a bébé?’

  ‘A small whisky.’

  I made contact with Lily Perette at a MACV briefing, and she claimed to remember me from Paris in ’44. ‘No, no, absolutely. You got me assigned to Patton. I interviewed him, thanks to you. Made my name.’ The young enthusiast I recalled from the Hotel Scribe had turned into a lean, mannish, somewhat bitter, but respected journalist. She wore a short-jacketed denim suit and smoked small cigarillos more or less constantly. She makes up the contingent of ‘Old Gals’, here in Saigon. Not that Lily’s old – she’s in her late forties – but most of the dozen or so women journalists and photographers here in Vietnam are young, almost all in their twenties. Lily, Mary and I are relics from the past, from other, older wars. She suggested we go out on the town – have a meal and then show up at the Non-Com Hotel for some fun.

  ‘Aren’t we too old for the Non-Com?’ I said as we headed there in a taxi.

  ‘They don’t fucking care,’ Lily said. ‘And we don’t fucking care. The main thing is that they know what we need to know – the units that like journalists.’ She was now writing for a magazine called Overseas Report that was perceived to be too left wing, and had found it difficult to gain new accreditation. ‘They keep saying no to me,’ Lily said, ‘so I’m going to take matters into my own hands.’

  I have to say I did feel a bit old in the Non-Com Hotel, however, as I wandered through its rooms, the music blasting out, the mood raucous and edgy – and self-regarding: the place was full of people burnishing or developing their own myths. A lot of these young men – they were mainly men, the stringers – seemed to be high on the war, excited to be relaying atrocity stories, weird GI rituals, and the sheer thrill of choppering-in to a firefight near the DMZ. The air was bulky with acronyms.

  I stood in a corner of one room, lit with blue neon, sipping at a can of beer, smelling the pungent reek of marijuana, the Rolling Stones telling everyone to get off of their cloud, thinking – this is different, this is why you came, my dear. This is why you’re not at the Northern Meeting in Inverness taking photographs of bagpipers.

  ‘Hi.’

  I turned. A young man stood there in a silk collarless shirt. It was blue, everything in that room was blue, including our faces. He was small and handsome, this blue man, with big candid eyes – something elfin about him.

  ‘I’m John Oberkamp.’

  ‘Amory Clay.’

  We shook hands. He had a noticeable Australian accent, I registered, as he asked me what I did and who I was stringing for. He said he was a photographer himself, currently unattached to any magazine or newspaper, though when the conversation turned, as it always did, to cameras and techniques, I realised he was something of an amateur. He could load film and press the shutter release but that was about it, I concluded. He brought me another can of beer.

  ‘Could you get me some kind of a job at Sentinel? I just need some validation.’

  I said it was very unlikely; even I was deemed surplus to requirements.

  ‘Surplus to requirements.’ He repeated the phrase a few times. ‘Story of my life.’

  I lit a cigarette. ‘Why can’t you get accreditation?’

  ‘Because there are too many fucking stringers in this town. Kids buy a camera, just jump on a plane in Europe, fly over, think they’re “war photographers”.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve been here for over two years, my pictures have been published in Life, in Stern, in the London Observer, but I can’t get accredited.’ He looked at me closely. ‘Do you mind if I ask you how old you are?’

  ‘Not at all.’ I told him.

  ‘You don’t look that old.’

  ‘It’s this blue light, takes years off you.’

  He laughed at that.

  ‘It’s pretty fucking amazing that you’re here,’ he said. ‘I mean that’s really cool, someone like you.’

  By now I realised he was very stoned, a thought confirmed when he touched my breasts. I gently removed his hands.

  ‘You’re not my type,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’ But I was thinking: intriguing, wild, irresponsible, sexy.

  He nodded. ‘Surplus to requirements . . . Have you ever seen action?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doc Tri, Rockpile? Highway One?’

  ‘Second World War.’

  ‘No shit?’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘That is completely amazing. Amazing. Can I kiss you?’

  The evening at the Non-Com Hotel did provide me and Lily with information about a unit that had a reputation of being journalist-friendly, even woman-journalist-friendly. Lily suggested we team up – print and camera – and put in a joint request to MACV as if it came from both Sentinel and Overseas Report and she might just be able to sneak in unobserved. We applied and were accepted and four days ago we were flown in a Caribou transport plane up to An Boa – ‘Sandbag City’ as it was known, a huge airbase and firebase up north by Da Nang.

  Before we left, Truong drove me to a rackety emporium in Hy Kiy Street where I could buy, on the black market, a helmet and flak jacket that fitted me. ‘Où allez-vous, madame?’ he asked. We tended to speak in a mixture of French and English. I told him. ‘Ce n’est pas good place,’ he said. ‘Beaucoup dangerous.’ I could see his concern. I told him it was my job but I wouldn’t take any risks.

  The night before we left, Lily and I had a meal in the Majestic Hotel, treating ourselves. She had been in Cuba and Algeria, she told me, and she wondered if it was the reports she filed from there that made MACV think she was some kind of communist. She was eager for our trip; I could see she still had that ardour and driven ambition of the true correspondent, driven also by the fear of being left out, missing out, somehow. I didn’t have that kind of zeal, that much I was sure of, and I thought of Truong’s anxiety and wondered again about my actual motives for coming. Now I was here in Saigon my vague thoughts about finding myself, needing a new war so I could reassess my old self, seemed a bit woolly and pretentious. Maybe, I thought, I was just as driven and ambitious as Lily Perette and was hiding it from myself. Did I want that adrenalin rush; did I still worry that I was missing something, just as much as Lily, I wondered?

  An Boa is a ‘firebase’ – in so much as it is home to batteries of long-range artillery and vast numbers of helicopters – but that appellation gives a false impression. The place is huge, square miles of it, with its precincts and streets, just like a city, even though one constructed out of sandbags, cinder blocks, chipboard sheeting and corrugated iron. We queue for food in a giant cafeteria for T-bone steaks and a choice of six ice creams; shower in tiled bathrooms; sleep in bunkers – ‘hooches’ – with ceiling fans; buy six-packs of beer at the PX.

  At night, though, the mood changes and the war comes calling, but distantly: we can hear the thud of far-off mortars, see multicoloured flares falling beyond the invisible perimeter. The dugga-dugga-dugga of helicopters passing over, low, wakes you in your ‘rack’. Lily Perette has dys
entery and is being flown back to Saigon to hospital. So I’m on my own.

  I climb into the Huey helicopter and squeeze in behind the gunner. A section of ‘D’ Company, 1st Battalion, 105th Infantry Brigade, joins me. My hair is tucked up under my helmet and I’m sitting on my pack and my two cameras – a Nikon and a Leica – are in my musette bag along with six rolls of 35 mm Ektachrome film. We are going to a ‘Country Fair’, so called. ‘D’ Company choppers into a village in the Que Son Valley, surrounds it, searches for suspected Viet Cong amongst the inhabitants and any caches of weapons or ammunition that might be hidden, and then departs. Country Fair operations, as their name suggests, are routine and usually safe, which is why I chose to come along. The village is called Phu Tho, anglicised to ‘Pluto’. ‘Is there life on Pluto?’ some joker asks as we take off. It is 5.45 a.m.

  In the pearly morning light, mist evaporating from the meandering rivers and the creeks, the sky hazing into blue, Vietnam looks very beautiful. Only the scars, the bulldozed brick-coloured scabs on hilltops and ridge-ends of abandoned firebases and observation posts, mar the abundant, lush greenery. Looking closer I see areas of felled or flattened trees, and occasional clusters of rimey, water-filled bomb or shell craters, like pustulant ulcers. The green landscape seems primordial, untouched – but of course it isn’t.

  Arriving at Phu Tho village, Que Son Valley, 1967.

  Soon we swoop down with our reverberating clatter towards the rice fields around Pluto. The men leap out of the Hueys that then soar up and peel away, having disgorged their human load. As we hover closer to the earth I lean out past the gunner and – click – grab my first photo. Pluto’s Country Fair has begun.

  The men fan out, sloshing through the rice fields, plodding along the low causeways, and the village is quickly surrounded. Captain Durado goes into the village with the interpreter and the 200 or so villagers are led out – women, old folks and children are separated from the young men. They settle down on their haunches, patiently, uncomplainingly, waiting for this rude interruption to their daily lives to be over. The men of ‘D’ Company occupy the village, the dog handlers set their German shepherds loose, sniffing out tunnels and buried bunkers, for any sign of VC or NVA presence.

  Off to the Country Fair. Que Son Valley, 1967.

  Midday. It’s hot and wet. Clammy and hot. All the village haystacks have been set on fire and the smoke curling from them seems reluctant to climb into the sky.

  I ask Captain Durado why he gave the order to burn the haystacks as doesn’t that rather signal our presence in the valley? He says he gave no such order – the men did it themselves, it’s something they seem to like to do, almost a habit, a rite de passage, I infer. I wander away and sit on the edge of a drainage ditch and eat my C-rations – ham and lima beans and a can of fruit cocktail – then smoke a cigarette.

  ‘Excuse me, ma’am, but – if you don’t mind me asking – what the fuck are you doing here?’ A GI sitting along from me cannot contain his curiosity.

  I explain that I’m a journalist. It’s my job. ‘Just like you,’ I add.

  ‘Yeah, but I didn’t ask for this job.’

  General laughter at this.

  ‘No, what I mean,’ he goes on, ‘is that aren’t you a little bit—’

  He never finishes his predictable question because all heads turn to look, turning to the sound of popping gunfire from the treeline across the rice fields from where we are sitting. Everyone starts swearing and grabs their weapon. I jump into the drainage ditch and scurry along it, heading for a wooden culvert. Shouts and orders ring out. Captain Durado is standing on the culvert ordering his men to take cover. Whump! Whump! The first mortar shells explode and Captain Durado leaps into the ditch beside me. The villagers begin to scream and scatter aimlessly, heading for obscuring vegetation – nobody tries to stop them. Now there’s a steady rattle of enfilading fire from the treeline. Now we are firing back with more intensity. I think I can see where the shooting is coming from but I can’t spot the enemy. Suddenly I’m back in Villeforte in the Vosges mountains.

  Captain Durado is joined by his radio operator who twiddles with dials and switches on his machine. Hiss of static, voices.

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have set fire to the haystacks,’ I say to no one in particular.

  Captain Durado is young – twenty-five or twenty-six, I’d say – with a light moustache. He is swearing profanely as he unfolds a map and peers at it. Squinnying over his shoulder I see that it has various coordinates and names scribbled on it in capital-lettered blue biro: ANIMAL, ABODE, JUDY, BEER, PARIS, CITY.

  ‘Twenty-five Judy,’ Durado calls into the handset handed to him by his operator. ‘Proximity to enemy three hundred yards. Twenty-five period one. D-three period two. Zone fire.’ He blinks and shakes his head as if he’s suddenly remembered something. He stands up and yells at his sergeant: ‘Get some guys round the back by the bridge!’

  The mortar shells are coming over with more frequency but landing short in the wet rice fields which robs them of their effectiveness, flinging up columns of muddy water, and spattering us with mud droplets.

  I move away from the captain, heading further up the ditch, now filled with ‘D’ Company grunts answering fire with fire, blasting away with their CAR-15s at the invisible enemy in the treeline. Back by Captain Durado’s position by the culvert the mortar fire appears to be more accurate. There are shouts of alarm as the blasts creep closer and erupt on the causeway. Stones and earth begin to fly around. A pebble pings off my helmet.

  Then I hear our artillery going over, called in by Captain Durado from some distant firebase – a brake-screeching sound mingled with a vibrating swooshing in the air – and, in one giant rippling volley, the whole treeline across the fields is obliterated by the exploding shells. The mortaring stops abruptly. There’s a few popping rounds from AK-47s then another salvo erupts. Smoke drifts away. There are no more trees. Silence. ‘D’ Company begins to whoop and shout; men stand up, light cigarettes, the mood one of sudden, relieved jocularity. Fuck, shit, hell, motherfucker, gooks, way to go, man.

  The Country Fair operation at Pluto hasn’t been quite the saunter in the park that was envisaged. I climb on to the banked causeway between the rice paddies and feel my legs trembling. My mouth is dry and I crave the syrupy sweet fruit cocktail that had been in my C-ration. The last accurate mortar rounds had caused casualties, it transpires. Three wounded in action and one killed in action. I walk over to join the group looking down on the dead man – the dead boy, I see – as we wait for the corpsmen to arrive. He has been blown out of his refuge in the ditch and his body lies awkwardly at the fringe of the paddy field. The blast has ripped his clothing and webbing from his body, leaving only his trousers and boots, and his skinny white torso is revealed. He has vivid ginger hair and this is what makes his body look so incongruous. A pale, freckled redhead lying by a paddy field in South East Asia, his back a small crater of mangled ribs, flesh and protruding organs. I think about taking a photograph but the idea revolts me. Somebody throws a poncho over him. I make a decision – no more combat missions. The men are right: I’m too old. One visit to Pluto is more than enough warfare for me.

  I was sitting in the rooftop bar of the Caravelle Hotel with a dry martini, smoking a cigarette, looking through my contact sheets that I had produced in the small darkroom I had managed to create in a little-used lavatory on the top floor of the SPS building. Back to school – shades of Amberfield and Miss Milburn, the ‘Child Killer’. We had been sending film off to labs in Hong Kong and Tokyo where they were developed, printed and transmitted by satellite to the New York office. But now we could print our own (black and white only) we could send them down the wire, with a short-wave drum printer, so we could be up there with AP and UPI in terms of speed. Even Renata Alabama was grateful. From my point of view it meant I could keep copies of photos I liked – I had my own record and my own little, growing archive. My book was taking shape.

  I had
a new plan, after my experience at Pluto’s Country Fair. I was going to ignore the field – the combat zones and flashpoints, the search-and-destroy missions – and stick to the bases. My idea was to take pictures of the soldiers, the grunts, off duty. When you saw them shed their carbines and flak jackets, their helmets and ammo packs, you suddenly realised how young these soldiers were – teenagers, college kids. They became youngsters again, not menacing, multi-weaponed warriors, anonymous in their bulky armour.

  South Vietnam, 1967. From Vietnam, Mon Amour.

  And I also started travelling out to the countryside with Truong, taking photographs of the people of this small beautiful country we were visiting as if I were a tourist and not part of the media sideshow of an enormous military machine. I was a war photographer but the book I had in mind would have no war in it.

  I looked round at the screech of metal chairs being pushed back against terrazzo tiles and saw the large group of people who had been sitting behind me make their noisy, bibulous exit from the roof terrace. My eyes flicked over the messy detritus of their table – the bottles and the glasses, the ashtrays and the empty cigarette packs, abandoned newspapers – even a book.

  I called out: ‘Hey! You’ve forgotten—’ but it was too late, they’d disappeared.

  I wandered over to the table and picked up the book. It was French and I felt that shiver of ghostly shock run through me as I read the title and the author’s name.

  Absence de marquage by Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau.

  Vietnam. The noise of frogs, deafening, in the back garden of the Green Tree coffee shop on Binh Phu Street. Truong introducing me to his family, bowing to me as if I were visiting royalty: Kim, his wife, his two tiny daughters, Hanh and Ngon. A thirty-foot high metal hill of malfunctioning useless air-conditioning machines in a field by Bien Hoa airforce base. The Saigon police in their crisp bleached uniforms – the ‘white mice’. The press escort officer who looked like Montgomery Clift. Endless rain in August. The massive percussion of the B-52 strikes – felt ten miles away, a trembling, an uncontrollable flinching of the facial muscles. The tamarind trees in Tu Do Street. The rich Vietnamese kids in their tennis whites at the Cercle Sportif. Black-toothed women at the Central Market selling US Army gear. ‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place’, a song by the Animals. Motorbikes. Australian troops playing cricket. Beautiful villas on the coast at the foot of the Long Hai Hills – built by the French, decaying fast, empty. Women in conical hats sifting through the waste of US Army rubbish dumps. The smell of joss sticks, perfume and marijuana – Saigon.