by Laura Lam
Ten garrisons, we wiped out seven
Touching my own skin, I felt like an old man
Three more garrisons, we swept out at once
Now looking in the mirror, the youth of my 20’s finally returns
On the morning of 8 April 1975, an ARVN Air Force pilot named Nguyen Thanh Trung climbed into the cockpit of his bomber at Bien Hoa military airport. His squadron had just received orders to bomb some rural villages in the Mekong Delta – including his home village, where his mother was still living. Thanh Trung was one of a handful of ARVN pilots trained in the United States. He was now a lieutenant. With his charm and impeccable manners, he was trusted by his superiors and popular among his colleagues. But he was deceiving them. His heart had belonged to the National Liberation Front long before his military training in the United States.
Thanh Trung made a second circuit over the military airport. He was perspiring heavily. He thought of his mother, his wife and their two children. He feared for their lives. But his decision had been made. He waited for two other bombers to go ahead. When they were some distance ahead, he turned his plane away, flying toward central Sai Gon. He headed straight for the Presidential Palace. He believed President Thieu was in residence. Focusing intently on the T-shaped compound he targeted the Palace’s right wing. He then released two bombs. He circled back over the city to make a second run before anti-aircraft defences could target him. In this second manoeuvre two additional bombs were dropped on the now panic-stricken palace. Thanh Trung then sped away at full throttle. Thirty minutes later he landed in Phuoc Long, a liberated zone controlled by the National Liberation Front. He was given a hero’s welcome.
The explosions blew up part of the palace and killed several people. President Thieu emerged unharmed, but he was badly shaken.
I was at my office that morning, a few minutes walk from the Presidential Palace. Some of my colleagues had just arrived when we heard the first explosion. We also heard the shouting and screaming of people on the streets and their rapid footsteps. A senior colleague burst into the office and announced he was going to the Palace grounds to see what had happened. I ran after him. Standing near the Two-Soldiers statue on Lam Son Square, we were in time to see the second bombing run. We watched the fourth bomb fall and land on one of the wings of the palace, but it failed to explode. Sirens began wailing and police cars, fire engines, and ambulances started arriving. Fearful, people on the streets began running for shelter. I went back to the office and joined the rest of the staff hiding under desks and tables. Shortly afterwards a government announcement came over loud speakers, and on radio and television, telling people to return home as quickly as possible. A round-the-clock curfew was imposed until further notice.
Nine days later, on 17 April, the evacuation of Americans by the US Embassy began.
On the evening of April 25 the CIA assisted President Thieu to flee the country. They provided him with a convoy of cars bearing US diplomatic licences. The convoy passed Tan Son Nhat airport’s security checkpoint. The president, impeccably dressed as usual, ducked his head to avoid being identified by the security police. The convoy headed straight to a boarding area heavily guarded by the US Army. The American Ambassador Graham Martin was waiting for him, alongside an American C-118 aircraft. With tears in his eyes, Thieu said goodbye to Martin and the CIA’s representative before boarding.
On 27 April, Thanh Trung returned to the airspace over Sai Gon, this time piloting the lead plane of a squadron. That day he surprised his former colleagues and superiors by leading the defected ARVN air force unit Quyet Thang and bombed Tan Son Nhat airport. In the resulting confusion, the political prisoners kept at the airport broke free and tore open the prison’s gates. Among the hundreds of inmates storming out of their cells were Thanh Trung’s wife and their two daughters.
That same day, prison guards at Thu Duc Women’s Prison in Sai Gon, where Uncle Nam’s adopted daughter Mai was held, also broke open their gates; four thousand women freed themselves. Mai walked out a free woman for the first time since the assassination attempt. She had served three of her nineteen-year sentence. She boarded a bus and headed straight for the Mekong Delta, to be reunited with her mother. She was later rewarded with an important position in the new regime.
General Duong Van Minh, now head of the ARVN regime (replacing Thieu), held a meeting with ARVN General Nguyen Huu Hanh, a secret agent for the NLF. Within hours Hanh became Commander- in-Chief of the Joint General Staff Headquarters in Tan Son Nhat, replacing General Cao Van Vien who had already escaped the country with his family. Hanh telephoned the ARVN commanders and ordered them to withdraw their troops from combat. A few dedicated commanders defied his orders and were left on their own. They were quickly crushed by Northern troops.
Again on 27 April, General Minh appointed another NLF secret agent, Trieu Quoc Manh, to be head of the National Police. A lawyer, Manh had been a member of the highest court in the ARVN regime. The next day he delivered a speech to the police force. He ordered the dissolution of its most powerful unit, known as the F5. The men had been trained in the United States secretly during the 60’s. The entire ARVN police was paralysed. The regime swiftly collapsed.
ANDREW
A fable, song, or fleeting shade,
All love, all liking, all delight,
Lies drowned with us in endless night”
Robert Herrick
In early 1975, when Andrew visited Sai Gon a second time, I expressed to him my urgent desire to leave the country. It was the one imperative that drove me. We began exploring all sorts of makeshift and increasingly desperate options.
Nu and I had contemplated a suicide pact; we gave much consideration to finding the least painful method. In light of mounting fears of vengeance from the forthcoming regime, especially against government employees and friends of Americans, and given the degrading behaviour of soldiers of the disintegrating ARVN force, these earlier conversations were far from idle speculation.
I had met Andrew the previous July, and when he came back the following January, in the middle of increasing violence and political turmoil, passion overtook us. He was staying at one of the hotels near my office. We arranged to meet in the hotel lobby.
I arrived in the city centre about half an hour early and went for a quiet walk along the waterfront. I was wearing a white silk ao dai, embroidered with tiny purple flowers. The weather had been warm and humid during the day, but now it was cooled by the currents of an east wind coming off the river. A feeling of freshness came over me, like the fragrance of wet water lilies. An elderly woman sang as she paddled a fruit laden sampan against the lapping of the dark waves. In the distance, some fishing boats were returning. There were no ferries or ships nearby that night and the river seemed vast and deep, almost like the sea. Reflecting the bright neon lights from the riverbank, the water surface gleamed and sparkled like jewels.
On my way back to the city centre, I saw two ageing bargirls giggling and laughing with a foreign man in front of a hotel. I walked faster. I entered the reception area of the hotel where Andrew was staying. There were more women with heavy makeup, and white men, sitting and chatting. I walked past them and stood near an elevator to wait for Andrew. He came down and we greeted each other quite formally. He was wearing a light blue Oxford shirt, a delicate floral tie, and a blue-grey pinstripe suit. “Let’s go to the café on the roof terrace,” he suggested.
The roof’s concrete floor was bordered by giant pots of white and red-pink bougainvillea in full bloom. We sat at a white, round, wrought-iron table next to the white iron balcony overlooking the city and its lights. Other tables were unoccupied. I hoped they would remain so, at least for a while. Andrew ordered drinks and we talked about his research contacts in Sai Gon, which I had helped to arrange.
Andrew presented me a box of Chanel N° 5. I stared at it. Its black lettering looked accusing. I could not but think of George, the Apple Man. I changed the subject, unable in my discomfort to than
k him. When we left for the restaurant, I deliberately forgot to pick up the perfume from the table. Andrew picked it up and handed it to me.
One evening, after Andrew had left Sai Gon, when I was alone in my attic room I took out the box of perfume. After staring at it for a while, I tore off the clear plastic cover. I opened the box and lifted out the glass bottle. I began to shiver involuntarily. When I opened the bottle it fell from my hands and landed on the wooden floor. I threw myself on the bed, stared angrily at the ceiling, and began to breathe in the distinctive scent, now filling the room. By the time I picked it up, less than half the perfume was left in the bottle.
The next morning I came to terms with Andrew’s gift and accepted the fact that it was my perfume. I had laid one of my ghosts to rest. I began wearing perfume for the first time.
I had been attracted to Andrew’s physical appearance, his intellect, and his charm from the first time we met. Dinner at a quiet table, in a cozy candlelit restaurant, delicious food, and conversation of depth and intimacy, led to an easing of all tensions. It wasn’t long before my feelings and emotions bound me to him. He later told me that at three o’clock in the afternoon of 5 July 1974 he had come to believe in “love at first sight”. He said the effect was instant, powerful, electric, and that it had not faded.
I imagined that our happiness would be temporary and a great deal of pain would follow. This had been my experience with Robert. Part of me was afraid of becoming too attached to Andrew. I expressed these feelings to him one night and he seemed to understand me with very clear insight. He confessed that his marriage had very serious problems. I respected him for his honesty. We ended our discussion that night with a declaration that left me both angry and sad, “I can’t leave my wife because of the children.”
Andrew made a number of equally brief visits over the next few months. Our main connection was built through an impassioned correspondence. He wrote to me nearly every day and I would reply, even if I couldn’t keep up with the frequency of his letters. I worked hard to express myself in English, encouraged by the sweet words that this serious thoughtful man wrote to me. The intensity had taken us both by surprise. His initial reactions were of amazed gratitude – as he wrote to me in early February:
“It was so beautiful and I am still trying to convince myself that it was real, and that I did not imagine it all. And the wonderful thing is that it was real and every time I sit down and think about it I have the exquisite satisfaction of knowing that you do exist, and that you are not some mythical goddess. And yet you are certainly a goddess. But a real one.”
What followed was based on an unspoken sense between us that we had a clear destination, even though we saw no clear route to getting there. Meanwhile there was love, simple and pure, yet complex and painful in its context.
Andrew stressed, time after time, that this was much more than physical passion. He flattered me extravagantly:
“Let it then be officially recorded that your attractiveness is so very much more than your statuesque physical beauty - it includes, for this slave of an Englishman, your assurance and self-confidence which is at the same time modest; your activeness and capability for initiative; your confessed love of children; your joie-de-vivre in the face of such causes of sadness as the average girl never knows; your enormous, delicious, infectious sense of humour; your honesty and openness; your concern for other people; your ultra, ultra- femininity; your intelligence - despite your speaking to the pillow one night about being ‘stupid’ in the American pronunciation.”
For someone whose self-image had been undermined by years of maternal abuse, this description of me was intriguing and intoxicating. During and after his visit that January my mind and heart were filled with endearing images of him, and also the painful reality of the relationship. I was too occupied with these issues to fully sense the dangers around me. The long-term agony over the war temporarily escaped my mind and the trauma of the Apple Man had faded. I no longer felt repressed, and with someone I truly loved, I would let myself enjoy the pleasure of love. I became my natural self and rose above the intimidating circumstances that had imprisoned me for years.
Our closeness led him to a series of tributes to the fire that had set him alight.
“I want to hear your voice with that delicious characteristic of a chuckling, questioning ‘huh’; with eyebrows raised and eyes wide open – those delicious, magical, gorgeous, liquid, happy, sad, beautiful, beautiful eyes. And your beautiful breasts. Oh. I catch my breath thinking of them. And that delicious, lissome body. And the way you move – so smooth, so graceful, so young and full of life.”
His letters left me on a high plateau. But over time the reality we faced began to make itself felt and the practical issues of getting me out of the country began to occupy our correspondence.
We skirted what we would do if I did get out, and even where I might go. Andrew’s first aim was to save a life – mine – then we would decide what to do with it. Getting married was not an option. We knew what we wanted but we would have to let fate work over a long period before what he called “the mountains that stood between us” could be got over. But we both believed that doing something, even in conditions of increasing frustration and uncertainty, was better than doing nothing.
* * *
Andrew’s last visit to Sai Gon was in early March. Two weeks before that I made a bold symbolic decision. I acquired three metres of deep pink silk for a new ao dai. I also bought floral and green fabrics for a blouse and a skirt. The day I actually wore the pink ao dai – the day Andrew arrived – my colleagues were even more surprised. They asked me for the reason but I didn’t tell. They kept smiling and whispering.
Andrew arrived at mid-morning that day. It was a beautiful spring day, unusually cool, with a bright blue sky. I saw him passing through the immigration checkpoint. My heart began to beat rapidly. When he came out to the dusty and noisy greetings area, I leaned over the railings and greeted him with a big smile. He looked surprised and also amused at the new “me”. He gave me a kiss on each cheek, “You look splendid!” he said. As an Englishman, he was more restrained in showing affection in public, but I knew he had been as anxious as I had, before his arrival.
In the taxi from the airport to the hotel, I leaned my head against his shoulder. He squeezed my hand. “I missed you,” he said. I felt an overwhelming sense of happiness: rare, precious, but temporary. I wanted to remain silent, to feel the current flowing between us. But other images kept crowding – his marriage, the obstacles, the goodbyes, my war-torn country, and my fear of death. I chased them away. The old Renault taxi advanced in a long drawn out series of hesitant lurches along the busy streets. Gusts of dusty hot air came through the jagged hole in the metal floor at our feet. Andrew covered it with his foot and gave me an amused smile.
The taxi stopped in front of the grand old hotel and the emaciated looking driver said, “Miss, if you and your gentleman are going somewhere today, I will be very happy to take you. I will be around here today and tomorrow.” He bowed his head with a grateful smile as Andrew handed him the fare and a tip.
A bellboy picked up Andrew’s suitcase. I walked past the reception area without looking at the people there. After checking in, Andrew joined me at the elevator. Once inside, he pulled me closer to him, with a loving smile.
The first evening, out of nostalgia, we returned to Aterbea for dinner and enjoyed its traditional specialties, especially the Dalat strawberries. Knowing that my birthday is in March, and thinking I would only wear white, he had brought a package of white silk as a gift. He also gave me an amethyst ring.
Each day, after his work was finished, Andrew would wait for me at the same white, round iron table at the café on the hotel’s roof terrace. One afternoon I took a swimsuit with me and we went to the swimming pool on another floor of the hotel. It was a hot and humid day and the water was refreshingly cool. I was tempted to tease him in the way that often happens when one is relaxed. Other coup
les started arriving and talking loudly – foreign men with their bargirls. I quietly got out of the pool and picked up my belongings. Andrew followed me, understanding my discomfort.
The visit was again a short one and the farewell painful. Meanwhile a time bomb was ticking, louder than ever. I returned to the reality of war and to thinking about attempts to leave the country. I applied for a passport; a matter that was not at all routine.
At the passport office I was told quite frankly, “We can’t give you a passport application unless you can prove that you are marrying a foreigner.”
The government had announced the cancellation of all foreign travel for its citizens, except for “prospective spouses of foreigners.” I went to the travel agency where I had previously worked. They helped me locate a foreigner, an American, with a massive beard and very casual look. I couldn’t tell his age but guessed that he was in his early thirties, and not well educated. He said without hesitation, “I will be happy to help you by marrying you. The arrangement will cost you four thousand US dollars. I will need a deposit of two thousand dollars. I promise you that we will start the paperwork immediately.”
There was no way to find out if he was honest. I had heard about a case of a white foreigner entering into multiple marriage arrangements, taking half of the money from each young woman, then disappearing for good. I was still willing to take the risk and tried to negotiate, “I don’t think I can afford that amount. Will you be willing to accept two thousand dollars for the arrangement?”
“No Ma’am! That’s my price and no negotiation.”
Shortly afterwards I met a Eurasian man with a French passport. Nu and I talked to him. He said he could enter a marriage arrangement with me any time, for two thousand American dollars, but he was oddly vague about other matters. Nu observed him closely and didn’t think he was really single. She also disliked his attitudes and manners. We didn’t pursue the idea any further.