White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘What is the condition?’ he asked, wearily taking a pack of Winstons from the pocket of his tiger-stripe fatigues. ‘That you teach me English,’ she said. As her eyes fearlessly met his, he knew what it was about her that reminded him of Abbra. She was not only vital and strong-willed. She was also, beneath the grime of sweat and dried tears, exceptionally beautiful.

  He knew damned well why she wanted him to teach her English.

  She would be of great value to the Cong if she could serve them as an interpreter.

  ‘Khong xau,’ he said, determining to so successfully win her heart and mind for the South Vietnamese government that she would forget all ideas of running away and joining the Cong. ‘Okay. No sweat.’

  He grinned suddenly. Not only was it going to be easy. It was also going to be fun.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kyle was on the longest, most mind-bending high he had ever experienced. It was better than alcohol, better than drugs, better than sex. It was combat high, and after six weeks in’Nam he was drunk on it.

  He had been assigned to a company of the Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). Their base was on the perimeter of the Central Highlands, where there had been heavy fighting ever since the vicious Ia Drang Valley battle, six months before.

  For the first two weeks he flew only routine flights, ferrying commanding officers to neighbouring units in Pleiku and Qui Nhon. Nothing he saw or experienced made him sorry he’d volunteered. The countryside was lush and dramatic, dense jungle interspersed with soaring, gleaming ridges of rock. He loved skimming low over them, clearing them with only feet to spare, flying the Huey over the jungle canopy with the same measured recklessness with which he had driven his Ferrari.

  The women were another reason for signing up. They were all beauties, slender and fragile-boned and, according to his buddies who had been in ’Nam for a while, universally willing. Regrettably, he had not put the truth of their statements to the test. Saigon, with its bars and clubs, was 260 miles away to the south, and though some lucky bastards had been detailed to fly down there on administration flights, and had enjoyed overnight stays there, Kyle had pulled nothing more exotic than quick, celibate daytime trips to Pleiku and Qui Nhon.

  On his third week in-country he had his first taste of flying troops in to a landing zone. He and Chuck Wilson, his copilot, were to fly to Yan Len in formation with sixteen other Hueys and four gunships. When they had dropped the troops at the scheduled landing zone, they were to fly back to a cold landing zone some distance away and stand by until radio contact instructed them to make a pickup.

  ‘It’s going to be a walkover,’ the experienced Chuck said nonchalantly.

  Kyle grinned, a flicker of excitement twisting deep in his gut. He didn’t want it to be a walkover. He wanted it to be adrenaline-packed hassle. After all, that was what he was here for. To walk on the wild side and to live dangerously. Anything else just plain sucked.

  The early morning sun was fierce in his eyes, sweat already staining his fatigues as the signal to crank up was given. He slipped on his sunglasses and clicked on the intercom.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked the crew chief and the gunner, and on receiving their affirmatives he rolled the throttle open. The starter motor whined, the rotor blades began to accelerate, and then the turbine caught. Slowly Kyle pulled the collective up, and the heavily burdened Huey rose, climbing laboriously above tree level as it closed up in formation with the other three ships in the squad.

  The elation he experienced at being airborne surged through him. Flying in close formation, he would have no opportunity to do any of the acrobatics that he loved, flying fast and close to the ground with only a couple of feet between the treads and the treetops, or executing wild, ship-shaking U-turns that terrified whoever he was flying with half to death, but there would be compensations.

  Although Chuck had predicted the mission would be a walkover, it was more than likely that they would meet with enemy fire when approaching the landing zone. And it would be Kyle’s first time. His heart began to race, his nerve ends tingled with anticipation. For the first time since he had been in ’Nam, he found himself thinking of Serena. It was a crazy time to be thinking of anyone or anything besides the job at hand, but he knew why she had suddenly sprung into his thoughts. Her heedless, reckless nature would have responded to the dangers of ’Nam just as hungrily as his own.

  He grinned to himself as they neared the landing zone, and he slowed the Huey down from 100 knots to 80 knots so the gunships could fly ahead. Hell, but she would have made a great chopper jock. She was certainly a great lay. It was even possible, when his tour of duty was over and if she didn’t send back the divorce papers, she would make a great wife.

  White smoke streamed behind the gunships ahead of them as they peppered the landing zone with flex gun and rocket fire. He hoped she wouldn’t return the divorce papers. The fun they had together was too mind-blowing to be thrown away. His grin deepened. Christ, if he wasn’t careful, he would be metamorphosing into an adoring husband!

  ‘Close up,’ Chuck said tersely over the intercom, breaking into his thoughts.

  Kyle acknowledged, closing the distance between the Huey and the gunships, and dropped lower.

  ‘Clear to use gun doors! Clear to use gun doors!’ his flight leader radioed from the leading Huey.

  As the Huey lost height, the rotor pitch changed and the noise deepened to an ear-splitting whine. They were only three hundred feet from the ground now, and a bare quarter of a mile from the landing zone. Kyle felt his stomach muscles tighten. The landing zone was hot. There was enemy fire as well as the blasting fire from the gunships.

  ‘When do our gunners get the okay to fire?’ he yelled across to his twenty-three-year-old senior.

  ‘Now ought to be about the right time,’ he said laconically, flicking on his intercom.

  They were only a hundred yards from the landing zone. Kyle could see the gunners in the Hueys ahead of him, blasting down into thick bush. He wondered how the hell they could see what they were firing at. Rockets were pounding the ground, shooting earth scores of feet into the air. The white smoke from the gunships was barely discernible now among the swirling coloured smoke that-identified the centre of the landing zone, and the dense black and grey plumes of artillery and rocket fire.

  ‘It’s a hot LZ, guys,’ Chuck said unnecessarily over the intercom to the troops about to disembark, and then, to the door gunners, ‘fire at will.’

  Kyle’s hands were slippery with sweat on the control stick. The pilots of the Hueys ahead of him were reporting that they were taking enemy fire. He knew it hadn’t been expected. The operation had changed character. They were flying into enemy fire, and he didn’t envy the troops about to disembark one little bit.

  They were losing height rapidly now, the tail rotor spinning just a few yards from the ground. Chuck’s hands joined his on the control stick, army regulations in case one of them was hit. The door gunners behind them were giving it all they’d got, the noise from their guns deafening, the reverberation decidedly disconcerting.

  ‘Jeez!’ Kyle exclaimed beneath his breath, the blood hammering in his temples as bullets smashed into the Huey’s airframe. He began to decelerate rapidly, the Huey’s nose rising steeply to slow its forward motion. As he hovered some three feet from the ground, about to land vertically, the troops began to leap to the ground, racing for cover, firing as they went.

  Sniper fire was raining in on them, a pilot in one of the other Hueys was hit, and the last of the troops had sprung to mother earth before the skids had even made contact with it. Fear and exhilaration, equally mixed, surged through Kyle’s veins. This was reality. This was the big time. At any second the ground fire could blast the Plexiglas chin bubble under the Huey’s nose, or destroy the instrument panel or slam into his own unprotected body, winging him on his way to eternity.

  Over the intercom the order came for him to go. He didn’t need telling twi
ce. The other choppers around him were all dipping their noses in unison as they picked up airspeed, the gunships still darting and swooping above them as they gave covering fire. The downdraft from the rotors riffled the tall grass beneath them; the air was heavy with the smell of cordite, thick with smoke.

  The Huey gained height, whirring up above the tree line, the door gunners still blasting away into the bush beneath them. Kyle pressed back on the control stick and began to climb to cruising height and the chatter, chatter, charter of the guns ceased.

  It was over. They were flying to a standoff position and they hadn’t been hit. He hadn’t screwed up. Wilson hadn’t had to take over.

  He did so now. ‘I got it,’ he said over the intercom and then, dryly, ‘I told you it would be a walkover.’

  Kyle clicked off his intercom and let out an exultant whoop. It hadn’t been a walkover, but it had been the most mind-blowing few minutes of his life. He was drenched with sweat, bathed in it. He clicked on his intercom again, so keyed up with adrenaline that he couldn’t wait for the moment when they flew back in. ‘For a walkover, it was pretty hip,’ he said with a grin.

  Chuck banked to the left to keep in formation and shot him a pitying look. ‘You won’t think so in another few weeks,’ he prophesied darkly, ‘not after you’ve flown a few dust-off missions.’

  ‘How did the medical rescue missions get the name dust off?’ Kyle asked curiously.

  ‘Rumour has it that it was the call sign of one of the first medevac pilots to be killed,’ Chuck replied, levelling out and cruising at twelve hundred feet, high enough to be out of the way of any stray ground fire but low enough for a quick descent to the cold landing zone they were fast approaching – where they were to laager, or stand by.

  They didn’t have to wait long before they received a radio call instructing them to return and pick up. This time Chuck took the controls, Kyle assisting him when tracer fire streamed past them and the Hueys descended to the landing zone, door gunners firing like a swarm of predatory dragonflies.

  It was hairier picking the troops up than it had been disgorging them. This time the Huey had to make a firm landing, its rotor blades beating the air as men raced across the clearing to scramble aboard.

  Kyle could see one running figure fall, and then another, both of them hauled to their feet by their companions and half dragged, half carried to the Huey’s open doors.

  Over the radio came the order to power up, and Chuck rotated the throttle, watching the gauges, then the order came to lift off, and as Kyle watched a black-pyjama-clad figure burst from the bush, racing towards them, a grenade in his hand, the order came to go.

  As they did so, picking up airspeed, one of the door gunners hit the figure running in their wake. There was a violent explosion, a billow of dust, and then the Huey swung up and over the trees edging the clearing, and the black-pyjama-clad figure was no longer discernible. Ali he could see were scraps of black cloth blowing in the downdraft.

  During the next few weeks such missions became routine though not all of them were into hot landing zones. Many were straightforward drop and extraction missions, as unexacting as a courier or an administration flight. Others were not so pleasant.

  The first time he had had to fly back to base with a load of bloodstained canvas body bags aboard he had nearly puked. Unseen arms and legs poked stiffly and grotesquely at their coverings. Even worse were the bags that looked half empty. Just a trunk being delivered back to base for shipment home. He remembered the army’s proud boast that any man wounded would be hospitalized, by chopper, within twenty minutes, and the promise that serious injuries would be flown to Japan within twelve hours. He gagged at the stench rising from the bags. The army had forgotten to add that any man killed would be home in a week.

  A month after his arrival he finally drew a coveted three-day stopover in Saigon. It was a maintenance trip and he was to fly his Huey down to Tan Son Nhut air base so that it could be overhauled at the big depot there. His copilot was Chuck Wilson.

  ‘Seems like the army doesn’t want you out of my sight, Anderson,’ he had said with affected weariness.

  Kyle had grinned. He liked Chuck Wilson. He had a sophisticated, laid-back, world-weary attitude to the war that he himself liked to assume. At twenty-three Chuck was the old man of the outfit, a possessor of three Purple Hearts, and on his second tour of duty. Kyle couldn’t help wondering what he had been like before ’Nam. When he had been young.

  ‘Maybe they figure you’re too old to totter around the big city by yourself,’ he said, itching to be in the Huey’s cockpit, winging his way south.

  ‘And maybe they figure that you’re not going to live too long unless you start treating your seniors with a little more respect,’ Chuck said, cuffing his ear.

  The flight down to Saigon was great. The country they were flying over was mainly Viet Cong territory, so they flew high, at a cool five thousand feet.

  ‘What made you up for another tour of duty?’ Kyle asked curiously over the intercom as the coast flashed into view and they neared the city.

  He knew that Chuck must have volunteered. With three Purple Hearts, he never had to serve in ’Nam again.

  A faint smile tugged at the corners of Chuck’s mouth. He had wondered when Kyle would ask. ‘Because if you’re sane you hate the ’Nam with every single cell that’s in your body, and if you’re insane, you get hooked on it.’

  They were over the city now, and it looked as if it was going to live up to all the names it had been given in the past. Pearl of the East. Paris of the Orient. It lay beneath them, a panorama of long, wide avenues flanked by tamarind and lime trees; spacious, lushly green parks, delicate, pink-stuccoed houses; the Saigon River winding its way sensuously through its centre.

  Chuck’s smile broadened. ‘I got hooked.’

  Kyle began to decelerate as they approached Tan Son Nhut and the rotor pitch changed, the noise deepening as they lost airspeed. ‘I know,’ he yelled back, the Huey responding beneath his hands as smoothly as pure silk. ‘I’m hooked as well!’

  ‘There’s a word for it,’ Chuck said, and this time he wasn’t smiling. The tone of his voice made the hair on the nape of Kyle’s neck stand on end. ‘It’s psychotic.’

  From the ground Saigon was not the flawlessly elegant city it had appeared from the air. It was still possible to see how graciously French it had once been, before the hundreds of bars and clubs and strip-joints had opened. But the freshness and charm it had once possessed had been destroyed forever.

  ‘You’re the one who knows his way around,’ Kyle said exuberantly, relishing the sensation of being let loose after a month’s captivity. ‘Where do we hit first?’

  They had left the Huey at the maintenance base and hopped a cab to the central square, two blocks down Tu Do Street. ‘We check into somewhere decent,’ Chuck said, paying the driver off and leading the way across the square. ‘Somewhere with hot baths, clean beds, and a decent bar.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Here.’

  They were outside the four-storeyed European splendour of the Continental Hotel.

  Kyle gave a whistle of appreciation. He liked the way Chuck did things. It was the way he had always done things himself.

  ‘Isn’t this where Graham Greene is supposed to have written The Quiet American?’

  ‘The very place,’ Chuck said as they strolled across the lobby to the reception desk. ‘He wrote it on the terrace, and there’s always a hyped-up journalist sitting there, reading it.’

  The room they were given was enormous. ‘How come we get the VIP treatment?’ he asked, impressed.

  ‘The proprietor is a personal friend,’ Chuck said, strolling across to the Windows and looking down into the square. ‘And for a friend he’ll always find a room, even if it means throwing someone else out!’

  Kyle began to take off his sweat-soaked shirt, making a beeline for the shower. ‘Give me five minutes and then I want a tour of Tu Do from
beginning to end!’ he shouted, turning the water on full blast.

  It was a tour that was still only half completed nine hours later, when the city’s curfew forcibly curtailed it. First they had descended on the bars. In the Sporting Bar, packed with Green Berets, Kyle had become happily drunk. In the Bluebird he had been delighted to find that ready-rolled joints were easily available, being dispensed on demand from a jar beneath the counter.

  Weaving their way out of the Bluebird, they had made their way to La Bohéme, where the girls paraded in see-through dresses and descended on them like a flock of vultures, taking their hands and thrusting them strategically down their dresses and up their dresses, cooing, ‘You buy me Saigon tea?’

  Kyle had grinned. If Saigon tea was what it took to get on even friendlier terms with the ladies of the town, then he was quite prepared to buy it until it ran out of their ears.

  ‘I think this is where we split for half an hour,’ Chuck had said with a wink, a golden-skinned beauty draped around his neck.

  Kyle had been only too happy to agree. His only sexual outlet since he had arrived in the country six weeks earlier had been the near orgasm he experienced when flying the Huey fast and low in and out of combat zones. ‘Come on, baby,’ he said to the girl who had claimed him by the simple and effective expedient of clutching his balls. ‘You’ve got a customer. Lead the way.’

  Half an hour later he and Chuck had staggered into the nearby Melody for a reviving bourbon.

  ‘This is a journalists’ bar,’ Chuck had said, heaving himself on to a bar stool. ‘It’s a good place to come if you don’t want to be harangued by Green Berets telling you how they could win the war single-handed if it wasn’t for the ARVN.’

  ‘Lucky journalists,’ Kyle said, looking around him. The girls were prettier and fresher-looking than the girls in La Bohéme, and he was beginning to wish that he had saved his strength.