Blood: From the Sky

The Night Café, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

35

...the officers were playing billiards in the mud-walled club-house when orders came to them that they were to go on parade at once for a night-drill.

Rudyard Kipling, The Lost Legion 

Who are these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?

Woody Guthrie, Deportees

1972

The road from Mỹ Xuyên to Lịch Hội Thượng on the South China Sea paralleled a wide canal that eventually emptied into a slackwater inlet that barely deserved to be called a bay. The hamlet there was a shallow-water seaport with a few fishing sampans tied up at ramshackle docks. Not many Americans ever visited this hamlet even though there was a lovely Catholic church set in a bamboo grove nearby with a Vietnamese priest who spoke very good French and kept a large garden enclosed by the bamboo and banana trees.

At the intersection of the canal road and the road that led to the church was a little shop. It could perhaps be called a tea shop, or a cigarette shop, or maybe just the corner store. The building was a shabby mixture of tin, woven bamboo, and thatch. The roof projected enough forward to provide a small rectangle of shade and shelter from the rain over the beaten earth in the front. Under the shelter an old woman sautéed plantains for passersby and for folks such as myself and my little team. I was making my rounds in that peculiar window of time in Vietnam where the war, for Americans, was at an end and the Delta was relatively peaceful. We stood in the shade and watched the bananas sizzle in the black pan. My interpreter and I chatted with the Deputy District Chief, a civilian, in a bizarre mixture of French, English, Cambodian, and Vietnamese. We spoke of Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism, and other Existentialists.

This sort of thing happened in the Delta because it was not really a good place for war. This man, the Deputy District Chief, was of mixed blood, Cambodian and Chinese. He was a French-trained bureaucrat who could remember the Japanese occupation of the area during World War Two. He fondly recalled his one visit to Paris and his teacher of calligraphy in Chợ Lớn. We sat at a rickety table and drank tea and ate fried plantains.

My interpreter, Kiêm, was also a man out of time and place. He was Vietnamese by ethnicity but he and all his kin had lived for generations in Phnom Penh until they were driven out in the early 70’s. They fled downriver to end up in Ba Xuyen Province. (He would, much later, after re-education, flee again and traverse Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand before finally coming to live in Arlington, Virginia.)

We spoke of Albert Camus and the final irony of his death, as a passenger, on a highway in France. 

The Deputy District Chief led us into the gloom of the store/cafe/tea shop and from there into a back room where he swept his arm out like a headwaiter showing us to the finest table in the house. He grinned and the gold in his teeth flashed in the dim light. There stood a billiard table.

For a moment two images competed in my mind. The first was of a faintly-remembered painting of a green billiard table in a pool of Van Gogh’s inimitable yellow light. The second was in black and white, a recollection of a movie and of a man sweeping the cover off a billiard table to Paul Newman’s astonishment.

But here in Vietnam? In the Delta? In Lịch Hội Thượng? A billiard table? A Catholic church down the road? A Khmer Buddhist temple visible in the distance? 

The cues were warped and only thin shreds of leather remained on the tips. The heavy, ivory-appearing balls had chips gouged out of their surfaces. I rolled a creamy yellow ball across the table. It lurched over the seams where pieces of the slate bed had become misaligned. The ball eventually fell against the dead rubber and torn felt of the rails. I looked at the Deputy District Chief and we both slowly shook our heads in respect to an irretrievable past.

I went back to my jeep. We all shook hands and bowed to each other. The hiss of the radio hung from the back of the seat intruded as my driver fiddled with the squelch. We drove away leaving the French-trained, Cambodian-Chinese, official of a Vietnamese equivalent of an American county standing in front of the billiard parlor. I checked my weapons, chambering rounds into my M-16 and into my .45. I used the radio to tell the Province Headquarters where I was and when I expected to return. We drove along the canal, the flat, felt-like Delta on both sides of us.

We crossed the ferry at Mỹ Xuyên and went on towards Sóc Trăng. I dropped my interpreter off at the entrance to the refugee village where he lived with his father, wife, and daughter in a hut made of woven bamboo. The road led past the airport on its way into the city and as we came near we saw a black cloud beginning to boil up out of the rice paddies between us and the airport.

Death came to the Delta that afternoon when a C-130 transport plane fell out of the sky in sunlight so bright that, after the plane exploded, the flames could barely be seen. The plane gouged a wide furrow in the paddy and spilled out its fuel. The black pillar of smoke arose softly and quietly. My driver and I saw the cloud and at almost the same time the radio began to chatter. Jeeps and trucks were coming out of the city. My jeep was coming into the city. We gathered on the side of the road.

Soon we were struggling thigh deep in the rice paddy mud. Americans from the Province Team and Vietnamese soldiers from the airport converged and got as close to the heat as we could. But then we had to wait, holding our hands in front of our faces, circling around the pyre, dodging the pools of flame that spread across the top of the water with the leaking fuel.

Eventually the flames slackened and we could approach. We heard the clicking cooling of the aluminum. The stench reached into us. On that day death was in my hands and death became simply work. It became the gathering of charred remnants of human beings into heavy rubber bags and zipping the bags up.

One pair I will remember forever, because they were a pair. The inferno fused their bodies together. I and my team mates could not bring ourselves to tear them apart. We placed both of them into one bag and made an annotation on the tag attached. 

Every one of us working in that mess of mud and blackened aluminum and broken rice stalks found his own way through the afternoon. Some were angry. They tore pieces off the plane with their hands and wrestled bodies out to have them flop and almost disappear under the water into the mud before someone else would grip a hand or toe or shoulder. Others wore gloves, the thick leather kind used for stringing barbed wire, as if that layer of leather would keep death and pollution away. Some were excruciatingly gentle, so gentle that they would stay inside the fuselage for ten or twenty minutes just to loosen a melted seat belt and gently, so gently, try to separate a form from the charred frame of a seat. One of us thought to relieve his own anxiety through a blackly humorous comment and was angrily rebuked, although several days later, over a bottle of sour mash whiskey, the same comment brought unrelenting, tear-evoking laughter. We worked in pairs or threes, sharing the burden, solving the small puzzles of where one body stopped and another started, lifting the corpses together, taking turns on the really difficult tasks.

Hours and hours it seemed that we bagged blackened bodies and dragged them to the edge of the paddy. Chopper after chopper lifted off. Truck after truck drove away. Someone arrived with a manifest and the body count didn’t match the list. Cables from armored personnel carriers were attached to odd pieces of the aircraft that stuck out from the wreckage and the plane was ripped apart. We spent the twilight looking for the last body, but we never found it.

We returned to our compound and drank a lot that night. We all showered again and again until the hot water was gone and then we took more showers. We put our uniforms into plastic bags and threw the bags away. But we couldn’t escape the smell.

Those were not infantrymen’s deaths. Falling out of the sky? How could that be a way for a soldier to die? Helpless, belted into a machine. It could not be right. We, we infantrymen, like to think we have a choice. Is this just the arrogance of youth, that we will choose the time and manner of our dying? Or is it any soldier’s necessary illusion?

Blood: Above the Wagon Wheel

Huey and Farmer, Jerry Barnes, 1969
Used with permission of the artist

30

The Delta is silent below Saigon. Where the land falls away to sea level, the waters of the Mekong fan out, pulse like plasma through the dark silt and infuse it with the slow, rich life of rice, sugar cane, and bananas. The Delta nourishes the country and is silent, complete within itself. On its rivers and along the grey strips of road, cargoes of rice move east to Saigon, west to Cambodia and to the North, as they did in the days of Indochina.

Frances FitzGerald, The Long Fear

1972

From the air the Delta was a pale shade of green that time of year. The particular spot I was over was called, by Americans, the Wagon Wheel and wasn’t very far from My Xuyen. At the Wagon Wheel several canals met and from a helicopter it looked like a hub with thick spokes radiating outward. Looking down I wondered just how and why the configuration came to be. I had seen canals being dug and had an understanding of the human effort involved. I thought this must go back to French times before World War II. Where else in this country’s past had people been able to organize themselves for something like this kind of effort? And why this hub and spoke arrangement?

I couldn’t ask the question of the men I rode with. True, I spoke more Vietnamese than most on the advisory team, which was why I was the only American on this helicopter. But I didn’t know enough to ask them why the wagon wheel was there.

The Vietnamese infantrymen were down there on the ground. Small figures walked along the paddy dikes that ran like lacework between the spokes. It was another day of endless searching. I sat near the open door of the VNAF Huey with two PRC-25 radios near my feet and a map in my lap. In the helicopter with me were other Vietnamese, mostly officers, and more radios and maps. Somewhere up in the air and far away were U.S. Navy jets. Nearby in the sky with us was a U.S. Air Force FAC, Forward Air Controller, in a high-winged, propeller-driven aircraft with rockets hung under his wings.

It would be nice to think that the FAC’s presence — and the fighter-bombers soon to come on station — was all part of a carefully thought-out plan, an acute analysis of Mission, Enemy, Terrain, and Troops available. I’d like to think that my job was to sit here on high and conduct a small, carefully composed concerto of death, or at least be the percussionist, the guy who stood in the back of the orchestra, eyes glancing at the score from time to time, waiting, waiting, then almost casually unleashing a burst of thunder.

But I knew better.

I had personally delivered the bag of VC and NVA flags (sewn up by the mother of one of the hooch maids) and sworn their provenance as having been captured at the end of a desperate fire fight. This was over shots of Jack Daniels while sitting at the FAC squadron’s table in the Ton Son Nhut Officers Club. I had also delivered the books with our radio frequencies and codes so that we’d be able to talk to each other. I had bartered for a promise.

“Sure,” one of the FACs said, “we ever have anything extra, anything we can’t use, we’ll give you a call and come down and put it anywhere you want.”

So on this day I had a FAC up in the air with me. He’d refueled in Can Tho and had given us an hour’s warning that something might be available. Navy aircraft were coming on station with ordinance they had not used on their primary mission to the west. They would stay nearby for as long as they could before flying back to their home on the sea. The FAC passed on to me the ordinance — the types of bombs — available and the station time — the time that they would become available and when they would be leaving. I passed the information on to my counterpart, a Vietnamese Major, Thieu-ta, now sitting beside me. We’d spun up the chopper and flew to circle over an operation that was already in progress. Now we were above the wagon wheel waiting for the jets.

I checked with the province headquarters on the other radio to make sure the Americans there were listening. Our helicopter and the FAC kept on circling. The troops on the ground kept on making their way across the paddies and dikes below them.

The Thieu-ta listened to his radio and drew a circle on his map. He tugged on my sleeve and held the map in front of me, pointing at a blue-green hatched area on the map. Then he pointed out the door at a smudge of green alongside one of the canals that radiated from the hub. I had been down there. I knew what it was. It was a swamp full of dark green plants and snakes and spiders.

I picked a spot in the middle of the green and made a quick computation of the grid coordinates. Just before calling the FAC I shouted my last question to the Thieu-ta — had the Province Chief approved? “Ya-phai! Yes!” the Thieu-ta shouted back. I nodded, encoded the numbers, and called the coordinates to the FAC. Then we circled away to be out of the path of bombs falling from aircraft. We would never see either the bombs or the bombers. The FAC buzzed down low and marked the point with a white phosphorous rocket. A thin trail of white smoke fell up out of the green. I confirmed that the smoke marked the right spot. Moments later great black gouts of mud and water began to erupt into the air. They formed odd bulbous patterns in the green, like bubbles boiling up in a sauce, as if the Delta’s surface was a thick green stew left too long on the stove.

It was someone’s unlucky day. From the edge of the deep green a sampan came sputtering out. One man was standing up in the narrow boat holding the tiller of the outboard engine with its long propeller shaft thrashing the muddy water behind him. The FAC was excited. He was screaming for permission to follow up. The Thieu-ta, excited himself, was calling for more bombs. In the flat voice I adopted in crisis, I laconically passed the request to the FAC. Everyone was very happy.

More bombs came. One splashed into the canal in front of the sampan, another behind. The prow pitched up over the wave and the man could be seen struggling for control. The Thieu-ta shouted in Vietnamese for me to stop the bombing. He was pointing to the troops on the ground who were running down the bank of the canal and firing their rifles. I passed the cease fire order to the FAC and both our helicopter and the FAC’s plane dropped down low, so low that we could see the moment the man pitched forward into the bottom of his boat. One of the soldiers on the canal bank dropped his gear, jumped into the canal, and swam out to retrieve their prize.

I switched to another frequency, one for only myself and the FAC. “Why don’t you and the Navy take a KIA for that? Looks good to me.” I heard a click-click of acknowledgement before I switched back to the open frequency and called a report back to the province. The FAC came up on that frequency and reported that the “fast movers,” the fighter-bombers, were outbound. He thanked me for the action. Said it was the most fun he’d had in a long time. We agreed that the FAC would buy a round of drinks the next time I was in Saigon.

Up in the cockpit of the helicopter the alarms that had been sounding for several minutes finally got my attention. I saw red lights flashing on the instrument panel, but didn’t know what they meant. I replayed in my mind the gallows humor of the team house about the risks of flying with the Vietnamese. It wasn’t the pilots. They were generally thought to be almost as good as the teenage American warrant officers. It was the maintenance and the maintenance crews who sometimes left off vital parts or tightened the wrong bolt, or left out the odd cotter key.

“Chung-ta phai di. We must go back now,” the Thieu-ta shouted. The pilots took us up to gain enough altitude for a possible fluttering autorotation, that peculiar death spiral unique to helicopters that could sometimes be walked away from. I spent the flight back in indecision regarding my seat belt. Should I keep it buckled? Or would I be better off if I were thrown from the crash?

The district town of My Xuyen came into sight and the big white H of the helipad was a beautiful sight. The pilot banged the Huey down on its struts and immediately began shutting down the engines. Everyone else just climbed off like it was an ordinary ride. I gathered up my radios and my rifle and strolled to the edge of the pad where Chen, my bodyguard/driver, and Kiem, my interpreter, were waiting. I gave the radios to Chen who held them while I made one last check with the FAC and then turned that radio off. I used the other radio to report my location to the province CP and gave the mike to Chen, who knew my call sign and would bring the radio to me if I were called.

All of us, the Thieu-ta, a Dai-uy, Kiem and Chen had a mildly celebratory meal in the shade of the marketplace. We commandeered two tables. Kiem and Chen began walking through the stalls and coming back with sellers of fish, shrimp, and crabs, each of them with a basket full of their wares. The Thieu-ta made the decisions and I dealt out stacks of Vietnamese currency, dong. In a few minutes bottles of Ba Muoi Ba beer, filthy glasses with chunks of probably contaminated ice in them, bowls of rice, and platters of cooked shrimp and crab were on the table. I picked a pair of chopsticks of equal length from the container and competed with them all for the shrimp and morsels of crab, pausing from time to time to shovel some rice into my mouth or to take a swig of ice-cooled beer.

When the meal was finished the sun was past noon. The Thieu-ta and the Dai-uy went back to the district headquarters, probably for their mid-day naps. I decided to wait for the ground unit that had been sweeping the wagon wheel to return. I planned to have a chat with their commander and then head back to Soc Trang to make a full report on the day’s operation.

This was in the days when American presence was slowly being pulled out of the Delta. The problem, as I saw it then, was not in the Vietnamese soldiers or even the young officers. Even this Thieu-ta was reasonably competent and did not lack courage. The problem was very simple — there was no way to “win” unless you killed them all, every VC and NVA soldier — to the last man. And neither the South Vietnamese nor the Americans had the heart for that. It wasn’t a war, not even a battle. There was no place to stand, no place from which victory could be proclaimed.

My Xuyen was at the junction of a couple of large canals that connected to the Bassac, a lower branch of the Mekong. Narrow sampans made their way along the canals carrying rice and other goods. Roads paralleled the canals. At key points the canals were crossed by bridges or ferries. The market was near the largest of the canals and I walked along the banks with my little team. I was an infantryman without my fellow soldiers. I was alone, but I was not fearful. A child came up to me and brushed his small hand along my bare forearm. The boy wanted to feel the hair. A woman scolded the child and the boy ran to the shelter of her shadow. At a corner an old woman tossed peanuts into a metal pan atop a charcoal brazier. I watched as she shook them back and forth. I bought all of them and shared them with my team as we walked along.

Behind us I heard the sound of trucks pulling into the square in front of the marketplace. I turned around and walked back to them. I reached the square just as they were pulling the corpse off the back of one of the trucks. They laid the body out on the steps to the market. I saw the District Chief, a Lieutenant Colonel, Trung-ta, walking across the square followed by his small entourage, the Thieu-ta and the Dai-uy. I met them at the steps and we discussed the operation over the dead body. The dead young man wore only loose black cotton trousers. His hair was still damp with streaks of mud in it. His bare chest was hairless and marked only with a small, round, blue blemish, the bullet’s hole. He was still and composed, like an old cat in a pool of sunlight.

The District Chief was smiling and pleased with himself, as if this one dead body was his own kill, as if he were a hunter returned from the mountains above Dalat with a tiger instead of a sad dead boy who may not have even been a soldier but a poor unfortunate who picked the wrong day and time to check out his father’s fish traps.

The Trung-ta began a long oration directed at my interpreter. The gist of it was that he was sure that this person was from the local area. He would leave the body here in the market square until someone claimed him. Then they would know who he was. The District Chief was pleased with this playing off cultural values — the desire for a proper burial — against his own need for military intelligence.

The District Chief gave a small speech to the townspeople who were nearby and waited for a few minutes, rapping his swagger stick against his thigh. No one came forward. He strode off with his retinue, back to his headquarters. A soldier squatting near the body brushed away a fly that had landed on the dead boy’s cheek.

I waited, sitting in my jeep, for the length of a couple of cigarettes. I talked for a while to the Dai-uy who had led the ground operation. Then I drove across the bridge and onto the highway that would take me back to Soc Trang and my team house.

Dirt: The Delta

Rice Paddy, James S. Hardy, 1969

10

The Delta perhaps demands every reserve of mysticism from the Americans who live there.

Frances FitzGerald, The Long Fear

1972

The Delta was a place of regular geometries. It was a place of straight lines and pale shades of green. It was a man-made terrain of dikes and canals with deceptive distances in which a line of darker green trees could hide almost anything. It was a place of almost billiard-table green flatness. This hydraulic, engineered landscape was designed so that the flat sheets of water sustained the rice and also could move ever so delicately from place to place. This was the Wagon Wheel, a place that was the junction of six canals into a hub on the edge of Ba Xuyen Province.

That day we walked down the path on the top of the paddy dike and I was among them, very tall and unlike any of my fellow soldiers. In the luminous morning light the men I walked with were in single file with blackened rice-cooking pots strapped to their gear. They were carrying obsolete rifles and they chattered softly in their musical language.

If I had to find a hiding place here it would be down in the water up against the side of the dike. As I walked I towered above my companions and I was even more marked out by the cluster of radio men who followed me everywhere. As I walked I was simply a target, hard to miss.

Our course was a step-wise approach to the hub of the wagon wheel. We made right angle turns at the intersections of the dikes and sometimes had two files of small men walking parallel to each other on different dikes. Water buffalo with their little boy handlers stood in the water and watched us pass. The deep, black, patient eyes of the buffalo kept secrets from us They seemed to be waiting.

We moved slowly as we approached the green cluster of planted trees that marked the hub. One of the dikes intersected a canal and now there was still brown water on one side and green rice fields on the other.

The rotting woven bamboo huts of an abandoned hamlet marked the end of our march. The cooking sites there were long cold. We huddled and and I listened to them chatter about what to do next on this empty day. The soldiers began to go slowly down into the earth on the edges of the hamlet. Water began to fill their holes before they’d gone more than a foot or two deep.