White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘I want to meet him,’ he said, laying down his fork and sipping a glass of water. ‘Can you arrange it, Nhu?’

  She didn’t answer him for several seconds, and when she did, her voice was unsteady, betraying the agitation that lay beneath her veneer of unruffled composure. ‘Yes,’ she said, so quietly he could barely hear her. ‘That is why I am here.’

  Her reply was so unexpected that his hand shook and water spilled as he set his glass back down on the table. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, wondering if he had misheard her. ‘I don’t understand …’

  Her eyes were troubled. ‘Neither do I, but I have shown Dinh the letters Vanh sent to me in which she says you be trusted. And he wants to talk to you.’

  Sheer elation sang down Gavin’s spine. He had hoped that his family-by-marriage in Saigon would prove helpful to him as a reporter, but he had never envisaged a coup such as this. Gabrielle had said that when Dinh had come south in 1963, it had been on the express orders of General Giap. And Giap was Ho Chi Minh’s right-hand man, the architect of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. He wondered what on earth Vanh had put in her letters that such a man would trust him, sight unseen.

  He said hesitantly, knowing he would never forgive himself if his confession ruined his chances of a meeting, yet knowing he would never be able to live with himself if Gabrielle’s uncle were to risk capture and death under the mistaken impression that he was meeting a fellow Communist, ‘I sympathize with the North, Nhu. I think the American bombing campaign against northern towns and the killing of large numbers of innocent civilians is morally indefensible. But I am not a Communist.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ she said, a slight smile touching her mouth, ‘I am a nationalist, and I support Ho. Although he is a Communist, I believe that he is also, first and foremost, a nationalist and a patriot.’

  A waiter approached and she fell silent. When he had refilled her glass and moved away a safe distance, she continued quietly. ‘And as a patriot I believe he will always place Vietnam’s interest above that of personal ideology.’

  It was a popular view. From everything he had read about Nguyen That Thanh, born seventy-six years ago in the village of Kim Lie, some 300 kilometres south of Hanoi, and known to the world by the alias Ho Chi Minh, Gavin thought that it was probably also correct.

  ‘Are there any arrangements for me to meet your brother, Nhu?’

  ‘I haven’t yet been told. I had to meet you first and—’ she blushed slightly, looking much younger than her thirty-two years – ‘and make my own judgement about you.’

  He grinned, knowing that trust had sprung up between them immediately and that her judgement would be favourable.

  The waiter approached again, removing plates and asking if they were ready for coffee. Gavin said that they were, and when the waiter was once again out of earshot he said curiously, ‘I must confess I was surprised when you suggested we meet here, Nhu. Isn’t it a very conspicuous rendezvous? Aren’t we liable to attract attention?’

  Her smile deepened. ‘Have you never read that great story “The Purloined Letter” by Edgar Allan Poe?’

  He shook his head, bemused at the unexpected range of her literary knowledge. Reading his thoughts, she said, unoffended, ‘You forget that I was educated at a French school, Gavin. American literature was part of our syllabus in my last year.’

  ‘It was part of mine as well,’ he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘But somehow or other we seem to have overlooked Mr Poe. Tell me about his purloined letter. What does it have to do with us meeting here, at the Continental?’

  The waiter came and served coffee. The terrace where they were sitting overlooked the plaza surrounding the old opera house, and as the hour grew later, the always-chaotic traffic intensified. Young Vietnamese pimps on-souped-up scooters and Honda 50s zipped between Citroëns and Renaults as they transported their charges from rendezvous to rendezvous. The girls sat behind them, some in miniskirts so short it was doubtful if they were wearing anything below the waist at all, some in gossamer-light ao dais, their split skirts fluttering like streamers in their wake, and all with exotically painted faces.

  She said, ‘The letter was searched for in vain. Under carpets, beneath mattresses. But because it was known to have been hidden, no one thought of looking in the most obvious place.’

  ‘Which was?’ he asked, wishing that Gabrielle were with him to enjoy the company of her delightful aunt.

  Her eyes sparkled mischievously, reminding him so much of Gabrielle that a pang of longing stabbed through him, so sharp he had to physically prevent himself from crying out. ‘In the card rack,’ she said, gurgling with laughter. ‘And the Continental is our card rack. Meeting openly like this, in front of all Saigon, will arouse far less suspicion than meeting furtively.’

  They had drunk their coffee and then he had walked her down the steps leading to the plaza and had flagged down a battered blue and yellow taxicab for her.

  ‘I will contact you,’ she had promised, and then her eyes had become dark and urgent. ‘But please remember, Gavin. Tell no one of who it is you are going to meet.’

  He needed no reminding. Enormous trust was being placed in him and he had no intention of betraying it. ‘I won’t,’ he said gravely. ‘Good night, Nhu.’

  She stepped into the taxi, and as it began to draw away she leaned toward the open window, once again smiling, calling out teasingly, ‘I did not think an Australian nephew by marriage would be at all a nice thing to have, but I was wrong! Welcome to our family, Gavin!’

  He waved, grinning with pleasure, and then turned and walked slowly back into the hotel. Despite the success of his trip to Hue, he was still very much a new boy at the press bureau and he had no idea if Paul Dulles would be cooperative about his disappearing on a story he was unable to even talk about.

  He had a nightcap in the bar and decided that he would say nothing to Paul for the moment. There would be time enough to worry about Paul’s cooperation when Nhu made contact, and that might not be for days, or even weeks. He slid from the bar stool and made his way to bed, wondering what Gabrielle was doing at that very moment, whether she was thinking of him – if she was missing him as painfully as he was missing her.

  The next afternoon Paul sent him with Jimmy Giddings to JUSPAO, the Joint United States Public Affairs Office.

  ‘It pains me to admit it,’ Jimmy said, munching on a hamburger that was serving as a late lunch, ‘but these biased announcements issued by the American command are almost the only source of our news. Investigative trips like yours to Hue are rarer than you might think.’

  They turned into the JUSPAO building, passing an armed marine at the door. Above the entrance was a framed portrait of a smiling President Johnson. ‘That guy sure has a lot to answer for,’ Jimmy said as they began to walk through a maze of windowless corridors. ‘He got America into this damned mess, but Christ knows how he’s going to get her out of it.’

  Corridor led into corridor, and just as Gavin was beginning to wonder if they were ever going to end, they came to a small theatre crowded with newsmen.

  ‘Here we go,’ Jimmy said, finding a space against the rear wall and settling himself comfortably against it. ‘The cheapest, most entertaining show in town.’

  There was a chuckle of agreeing laughter from the reporters standing nearest to them, and then the noise level in the room died down a little as an American colonel strode across the stage to a lectern. Behind him was a large-scale map of Vietnam, liberally highlighted in blue and pink, and on a board by his side were pinned half a dozen statistical charts.

  ‘The blue bits on the map are areas controlled by US and allied forces, the pink bits are the areas controlled by the Cong,’ Jimmy whispered as the colonel wished them all good afternoon and a soldier in front of the stage activated a large reel-to-reel tape recorder.

  ‘What are the white bits?’ Gavin whispered back.

  Jimmy began to chew on a piece of gum. ‘The white bits are
so-called “movement areas”, all moving towards being blue bits if you believe what the man up there is going to tell you. Personally, I don’t.’

  Gavin listened to a recap of the Buddhist disturbances in Hue, the descriptions of the horror that he had himself witnessed sanitized by specialist lingo. The reports of engagements between American troops and Viet Cong were treated in the same disorienting manner. Accidental civilian deaths were ‘friendly casualties’, Americans killed in action were referred to only by the letters KIA, and figures that looked horrendous to Gavin were described as being ‘light’. There was a sheet on which was estimated the weekly kill ratio, the number of Viet Cong killed per American, the conclusion seeming to be that no matter the number of American dead, if numerically there were more Viet Cong dead, then the war was being won.

  ‘How do they know that the figures for Viet Cong dead are correct?’ he whispered to Jimmy. ‘I thought the VC tried to recover their dead whenever possible?’

  Jimmy looked across at him pityingly. ‘They do,’ he said, transferring his chewing gum from the left side of his mouth to the right. ‘But whenever a platoon has engaged the enemy, the officer in command is asked how many Cong they hit. He doesn’t have to have the bodies to back up his figures. He just has to think of a number and double it.’

  ‘You mean the Viet Cong dead figures are estimates, and only the American figures are for real?’

  ‘If you get any sharper, you’ll cut yourself,’ Jimmy said with good-natured sarcasm.

  ‘–American aircraft bombed targets close to Hanoi and Haiphong yesterday,’ the colonel continued, ‘destroying an estimated fifty percent of the North’s fuel supply—’

  ‘If we can’t rely on what we’re being told, why do we come?’ Gavin demanded, sotto voce.

  ‘Because it’s easy,’ Jimmy said, his tone indicating that it was a fact even a three-year-old would have grasped. ‘And because only the military know what’s been happening all around the country, each and every day. They may tell us only what they want us to know, but at least we get some sort of a coherent picture. You could spend weeks hitching helicopters with the troops, but you won’t necessarily get any clearer a view of what the hell is happening.’

  Gavin’s mouth set in a tight, firm line. Jimmy, middle-aged and war weary, had settled for relying on the information being given out by the American military, but it didn’t mean that he had to. The sooner he could hop aboard a helicopter with the troops, the better he would like it.

  Two days later he got his chance. ‘How would you like to cover the making of a free fire zone?’ Paul asked as he strolled into the office. ‘As the answer is obviously yes, get yourself down to the air base. There’s a party of marines on their way to a place called Cam Lai. They’re expecting you.’

  It was his first time in an army helicopter. A big, black marine grinned at Him and handed him a helmet and a flak jacket. ‘Don’t worry, man, this ain’t no heavy situation, just a safe little hop, a pleasant afternoon out in the boonies.’

  Gavin looked around at the other marines seated on the floor of the wide-bellied Chinook. From the bored expressions on their faces, he figured he’d been told the truth.

  The village they were flown into was made up of thatched-roof huts and paddyfields.

  ‘Come on men!’ the officer shouted as the marines began to bundle out of the helicopter into the stifling mid-morning heat. ‘Let’s git it on and over with!’

  The first thing that Gavin heard above the roar of the rotor blades was the sound of desperate sobbing. Women were milling bewilderedly in the mud-baked streets, babies on their hips as they struggled with boxes and baskets of pitiful possessions.

  The leading marine was already shouting to them to make their way toward the waiting Chinook, jerking his rifle to emphasize his words.

  ‘How long have these people had to prepare to leave their homes?’ Gavin shouted to the officer over the sound of the still-pulsating rotors.

  ‘They were leafleted at nine this mornin’,’ the marine said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it as his men began to search the huts, ejecting wailing toddlers and terrified old people at rifle point.

  ‘Christ!’ Gavin felt as if he were in a lunatic asylum. ‘It’s only eleven now! How the hell do you expect them to be ready to abandon homes they’ve lived in for generations in just two hours?’

  ‘Aw, they ain’t got much stuff,’ the officer said complacently.

  Gavin wondered what would happen to his press accreditation if he socked an officer on the jaw on his first trip out in the field. One of the women, nearly dwarfed by a bundle of household belongings, tottered and fell as she was herded towards them. None of the marines made any move to help her to her feet.

  ‘These are our allies, for Christ’s sake!’ Gavin yelled at the disinterested marines as he ran forward, taking hold of the woman’s arm and helping her ease herself up from the dirt. ‘We’re supposed to be winning their hearts and minds, not terrifying the life out of them!’

  The officer strolled threateningly towards him. ‘You’re goin’ to make yourself very unpopular playin’ the boy scout,’ he said as the woman hurriedly picked up her bundle, clutching it close to her chest. ‘Seems to me you should be askin’ yourself why there’s no able-bodied men in this here village. And the answer is, because they’re probably all VC. If they are, then it’ll be a pleasure to burn their village to the ground, and if they ain’t, then I reckon they should be pretty glad to be goin’ to a camp where they’ll be protected ’gainst the VC.’

  There was nothing Gavin could do. He stood impotently, white-lipped with rage, as the crying, protesting villagers were herded aboard the Chinook. God alone knew where they were being taken. The officer had said a camp. Wherever it was, it wasn’t home and it never would be. Home was the village where their fathers had been born, and their father’s father, and their father’s father’s father.

  ‘We’ve got a problem, sir!’ one of the marines yelled out, running up to them. ‘There’s an old man no one can move! Says his family shrine is here and he has to stay and tend it!’

  ‘Assholes,’ the officer said succinctly. ‘Tell him this is goin’ to be a free fire zone, and after today, anythin’ movin’ here will be regarded as VC and shot. Got that?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ the marine said unhappily. ‘I’ve already told him that, sir, and he says he won’t come. He says it’s his duty to stay with the graves of his people. That if we want to move him, we’ll have to kill him first.’

  For one terrible moment Gavin thought the officer was going to give a laconic order for the old man to be shot. Instead, he said irritably. ‘Okay. Leave him. We’re behind schedule. Zippo the huts and let’s be off.’

  As the last of the villagers crowded aboard the Chinook, some with baskets of squawking hens, a couple of them with pigs in their arms, none of them knowing where they were going or what was to become of them, the marines set fire to the straw-thatched huts.

  The smoke billowed thickly up into the hot, humid air. Aboard the Chinook the sobbing gave way to despairing whimpers and then to passive, helpless silence. Gavin climbed aboard and joined them, sick at heart. The old man had run off limping towards the paddy fields and, presumably, his family burial ground. Gavin knew that he wouldn’t survive there for long. In a free fire zone nothing, man or beast, survived for very long.

  ‘So you didn’t like what you saw?’ Paul said to him later at the bureau office.

  ‘I didn’t understand what I saw!’ Gavin exploded savagely. ‘Those people are our allies! America is supposedly in Vietnam to help and protect them! Can you imagine American or British generals in occupied France or Italy during the Second World War, ordering the herding of whole communities away from their homes to live in what can be described only as concentration camp conditions so that free fire zones could be created? The answer is that you can’t, and if you want to know what the difference is, then I’ll tell you! The difference, conscious or unc
onscious, is racial. If those Vietnamese I saw being ordered on to that Chinook at gunpoint and against their will had been white civilians, then the operation would have been carried out with a damned sight more civility!’

  Paul leaned back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, his foot tapping the air and revealing a flash of a startling emerald sock. ‘I thought you said the officer in charge was black?’

  ‘I did. For all I know, the majority of black servicemen may have more empathy with the Vietnamese than their white counterparts, but the one I came across today didn’t.’

  His rage was so white-hot, so naive, that Paul suppressed a cynical smile. He could vaguely remember reacting the same way himself when he had first arrived, but that had been over a year ago. Since then, in order to survive, he had learned the art of remaining aloof from the insanity surrounding him. It was an art Gavin would no doubt learn too, in time.

  ‘There are always two points of view to every argument,’ he said, reaching for a glass and a bottle and pouring himself two fingers of whiskey. ‘From the American military point of view, creating free fire zones makes sense.’ He raised a hand to silence Gavin. ‘Once the villages in a Viet Cong-infested area have been destroyed, and their inhabitants removed to a safe place, then the Viet Cong have nothing and no one to shelter them. They become clearly identifiable targets. And they can be attacked without the lives of innocent civilians being put at risk.’

  ‘If they are still there to attack!’ Gavin snorted derisively. ‘Which they won’t be! And while they scarper off to new pastures, we destroy homes and communities and create hundreds of thousands of refugees. And that’s another point!’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Why the hell are they referred to as refugees? They’re not refugees, and calling them that distorts the truth of this situation. They’re evacuees, and that’s what they should be called!’

  ‘That could be the beginning of the end,’ Paul said dryly. ‘Before you know where you are, even enemy WBLCs would be given their right name.’