The Life of Graham Greene (1939-1955)

by Norman Sherry

  He should not have felt his conduct was an embarrassment. The operation was recorded as follows in the regimental history: ‘During Operation “Stymie” we received a visit from Mr. Graham Greene. He was collecting material for … Life magazine … He insisted upon going on a patrol in spite of his lack of physical fitness. It was a short strenuous operation with every likelihood of meeting terrorists. On one occasion he passed out with exhaustion but carried on to the end regaled by an air-drop of brandy and ginger ale.’

  McGregor Cheers told me that no special arrangements were made for Greene except that a Gurkha orderly had instructions to keep Greene in sight, not lose him in the jungle and, if necessary, to push him up the hillsides. Until the end, when he was quite sick, he carried a full kit and was fitted out like anyone else in the patrol. McGregor Cheers’s last word on Greene was that he survived the ‘ordeal’ extremely well, but was astonished with the gruelling conditions the patrol worked under and the very strict discipline maintained.

  One final word about Greene’s experience of McGregor Cheers: ‘On that first night’s sleep – one was sleeping on the ground on a mackintosh, with a mackintosh tied on the trees above one’s head to keep the rain off. In the middle of the night, McGregor Cheers rolled over on his side and put his hands around my throat and began to squeeze. I can only suppose he thought he had come on the communists.’

  On 10 January 1951 Greene received a telegram in Kuala Lumpur from Catherine, saying she would meet him in Paris. It had the usual effect: ‘Life seemed good again & as a consequence began to be nervous of bandits.’60 But any optimism was shortlived, for, two days later, Greene awakened depressed: ‘Worried by so few letters from C[atherine]. Despair of the future settling over me again.’ He was still in search of trouble and by 15 January, whilst not involved in action, there seemed every possibility of it. There is a detailed entry in his journal for that day, cryptic though it is:

  With Adler 1 1/2 hrs. by scout car to jungle camp. Damaged telegraph wires. More Communist posters. European officer was out on patrol. Reported bandit ambush of 200. Patrol had asked for transport. Went down & joined transport, then to tin mine. Arrival of patrol with naked body strung on pole. The bicycle. The identification at tin mine. The pillow. The old manager – ‘My best boy: he was absolutely fearless.’ The scowl & open mouth of death. Beaten about the mouth, stabbed through the heart. Like a new joint at the butcher’s. Feeling off meals & off-colour afterwards … Restless night with bad dreams.61

  He described these final experiences in Malaya to his mother: ‘One day we found the murdered body of a young Malay constable – stripped naked & stabbed through the heart [with a bayonet]. He had only been dead a few hours – an ugly sight. I had to nerve myself to take a close-up photo of him.’62

  Three years later he placed this event as an incidental memory of his hero Fowler in The Quiet American: ‘I turned my memories over at random like pictures in an album … the body of a bayoneted Malay which a Gurkha patrol had brought at the back of a lorry into a mining camp in Pahang, and the Chinese coolies stood by and giggled with nerves, while a brother Malay put a cushion under the dead head.’63

  Greene left Kuala Lumpur for Singapore on Wednesday, 24 January 1951, having spent almost two months seeking war and danger. By now his greatest desire was to leave Malaya; he had seen all he could see, and as he wrote his mother: ‘I feel I’ve had enough of this place & I’ll be glad to move on & gladder still to find myself in Europe. I don’t find the East has any glamour.’64 So he left Malaya, steaming ‘away under the almost daily rainfall, sapping the energy of tired, overworked men’.65

  Reaching Singapore, he records in his journal: ‘Up at 4.30. Airport 5.15. Left 6. Arrived Saigon & met by Swan 10.’66 Greene could not have known upon arrival that his experiences in Saigon and Hanoi would reveal to him that glamour which he had told his mother the East did not possess.

  * * *

  fn1 Yvonne Westerman was a quiet girl, well liked by men. She was pale with light blonde hair, almost like an albino: ‘There was something almost snobbish in her.’ Eventually she married twice, the second time to a baron.2

  24

  Bonjour Saigon

  Some may, perchance, with strange surprise,

  have blundered into paradise.

  – FRANCIS THOMPSON

  IN VIETNAM GREENE entered a world of civil war. The odds were heavily stacked against the French; their opponent Ho Chi Minh was both a communist and a nationalist. Although not in favour of French colonialism, the Americans feared that the success of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam would have a domino effect. If Indo-China fell, so would Indonesia, and in short order so would Malaya, Singapore, Burma and Thailand. India would be extremely vulnerable and Australia unenviably exposed.

  In March 1946, five years before Greene arrived in Vietnam, Ho had negotiated with the French, recognising that their departure would leave a vacuum. France spoke of Vietnam becoming a free state within the French Union, to which Ho seemed agreeable. Indeed he attacked his pro-Chinese comrades:

  Don’t you realize what it means if the Chinese stay? … The last time the Chinese came, they stayed one thousand years!

  The French are foreigners … Colonialism is dying out. Nothing will be able to withstand world pressure for independence. They may stay for a while, but they will have to go because the white man is finished in Asia. But if the Chinese stay now, they will never leave.

  As for me, I prefer to smell French shit for five years, rather than Chinese shit for the rest of my life.1

  Ho may have been anti-Chinese, but he did not refuse the Chinese troops and arms sent to aid him.

  Ho was immensely popular and even General Eisenhower had to admit that in democratic elections Ho would have won 80 per cent of the votes. But the French (and Americans) no longer trusted him. The French solution was to support the Emperor, Bao Dai. This failed chiefly because the Vietnamese public thought he was a French puppet. The 37-year-old Bao Dai was easy to criticise. He had a reputation as a playboy and debauchee, and he had, as a secret American legation telegram showed, corrupt financial dealings with the Binh Xuan: ‘The Binh Xuan honorarium to Bao Dai from his gambling concession amounts to between twenty-four to thirty million piasters annually according to Nguyen Phan Long, former Prime Minister of Vietnam.’2 Yet Greene, who interviewed him, found him to be ‘an intelligent and subtle man, resolved not to compromise himself, and to survive’.3

  It looked as if France’s postwar rule in Vietnam was rapidly coming to an end. Its expeditionary force was being decimated, its troops on the verge of a rout. In a secret note Dean Acheson, then American Secretary of State, observed that the Asian communist principle in war was to use mass in terms of men, while the Western principle used mass in terms of firepower, and admitted that the Asian principle was more successful for ‘they seem able [to] capture any French post at will and destroy [the] garrison’.4

  The French losses overall were so great that they decided to evacuate the garrison at Lang Son when it was not even in difficulties. Adding to their fear was the decision to evacuate French women and children from the capital Hanoi. Confidence ebbed; no one, not even the French, believed the Vietminh could be defeated.

  The French then recruited a secret weapon in the shape of a 61-year-old French hero, General de Lattre de Tassigny, and gave him the powers of a dictator. De Lattre’s only son was at that time serving in Indo-China and it was rumoured that he had written to his father saying: ‘What we need is a leader who leads, fresh blood and new machinery, and no more niggling, small-time warfare; and then, with the morale that we still have in spite of it all, we could save everything.’5

  The position offered to de Lattre was not to be taken lightly: how could anyone win against the Vietminh, led by Ho, whom the peasants loved and followed, as opposed to Bao Dai, the emperor-puppet? It looked hopeless. But de Lattre had the reputation of being a brilliant, erratic, bad-tempered and heroic man. Seymour Topping (the Asso
ciated Press Correspondent), who, like Greene, had a number of furious passages of arms with him, nevertheless admitted that he was a magnificent soldier:

  he was a terrific soldier … a great soldier. Later on when I came back to Vietnam with the Americans and saw all these American generals who were amateurs in comparison to de Lattre in terms of knowing the country and the tactics and the terrain and everything else, it was just incredible to me that they could carry on.6

  De Lattre arrived in Saigon on 17 December 1950 (only five weeks before Greene), when the French army was still tasting defeat. Edmund Gullion, then second in command at the American legation, remembered that de Lattre impressed him even before he had set foot on Vietnamese soil:

  French Vietnam was then a valley of discontent, of despair. Period. And [de Lattre] arrived and they had all turned out, everybody, to meet him, everybody: the army, the diplomatic corps, the Church, school teachers, all lined up there. And he arrived over the plain and he circled it several times so that he could touch down at exactly the same hour that the gun salute took place and he got the maximum salute, borrowing this from American and British military services (they don’t do that particular thing in France normally when arriving) … His plane came in and de Lattre stood at the top of a flight of stairs, on the platform, the gangplank and he turned his profile this way. He had a magnificent profile (something like MacArthur), and watching him arrive, he seemed seven foot tall, stiff and straight and he took white gloves and pulled them carefully on his hands, like that – a very symbolic gesture, symbolising in the honour of the corps a gentleman aristocrat was in office. But the symbolism of pulling on the gloves was lost to no one … He was coming down to clean up this mess.7

  As he descended from the plane the band began playing the ‘Marseillaise’. When a wrong note was struck by one of the bandsmen, they all received a severe tongue lashing – everyone had to know that there was a new master controlling events. When he landed in Hanoi two days later he sacked the area commander within five minutes of his arrival because he considered the Guard of Honour sent to greet him was sloppily turned out. He then assembled all the officers, but particularly addressed himself to the junior officers (one of whom was his son Bernard): ‘To you Captains and Lieutenants, it is because of you that I have agreed to take on this heavy task. I guarantee that from today you will be commanded.’8

  On 1 January 1951 the American consul in Hanoi, Wendell Blancke, sent a secret telegram to the State Department about de Lattre: ‘This New Year morning De Lattre received civil and military leaders, made a moving speech which had most eyes swimming, Vietnamese as well as French. Theme was, they shall not pass, plus slogan “confidence and resolution”. Said Vietnamese independence and national army must soon become reality … added his wife now arriving Saigon, will leave her in Hanoi … as earnest of confidence and family feeling.’ The evacuation of women and children from Hanoi was abandoned, as were plans to give up the Tonkin delta. He stated that the French army would fight and if it had to be, be destroyed, but it would not evacuate. Bringing his wife to live in Hanoi did much to restore the morale of military and civilian personnel: ‘I shall often be among you. I shall come with my wife …’ This was an act of genius and won him complete confidence. Having lost entire companies and prepared for the worst by evacuating its civilians, the French High Command, in the person of de Lattre, now stood firm and assured.

  With his Napoleonic jaw and Roman nose, he looked messianic. An electrifying speaker, he delivered his speeches in a husky voice ranging from a whisper to fortissimo.9 When he addressed the downhearted troops, he made them see their mission in a new light. He expressed his objective to an American journalist:

  We have abandoned all our colonial positions completely. There is little rubber or coal or rice we can any longer obtain. And what does it amount to compared to the blood of our sons we are losing and the three hundred and fifty million francs we spend a day in Indochina? The work we are doing is for the salvation of the Vietnamese people. And the propaganda you Americans make that we are still colonialists is doing us tremendous harm, all of us – the Vietnamese, yourselves and us.10

  This political philosophy was commendably on the side of the youth of Vietnam:

  This war, whether you like it or not, is the war of Vietnam for Vietnam. And France will carry it on for you only if you carry it on with her … Certain people pretend that Vietnam cannot be independent because it is part of the French Union. Not true! In our universe, and especially in our world of today, there can be no nations absolutely independent. There are only fruitful interdependencies and harmful dependencies … Young men of Vietnam, to whom I feel as close as I do to the youth of my native land, the moment has come for you to defend your country.11

  Edmund Gullion recalled de Lattre inviting Vietnamese students to fight for Ho Chi Minh: ‘If any of you young men want to fight for your country and don’t think it’s this country, then go, go and fight for Ho Chi Minh.’12

  *

  General Giap began the Vietminh offensive in the middle of January 1951. He was out to test de Lattre and decided to invest Vinh Yen, twenty-five miles north-west of Hanoi. He made an initial attack on the 13th and by nightfall the French were forced up against a marshy lake. It looked desperate for the French – 6,000 French troops faced 20,000 Vietminh. De Lattre flew into Vinh Yen in a light plane and took charge of the battle. He ordered major reinforcements from as far as South Vietnam. On the 17th he took a great risk and committed his reserve troops. Shortly after noon the Vietminh forces quit the field of battle, leaving behind them over 6,000 dead. It was a disaster for Giap.

  On 23 January Wendell Blancke reported: ‘DELATTRE left town yesterday rather like bull fighter turning his back on fixed bull. As trophies he bore congratulatory effusions from BAO DAI, HUU … which tickled him so he could not wait next days press splash and called in British Consul [Trevor Wilson] and me to crow over them.’13

  Blancke’s praise of de Lattre or as he called him in the telegrams CINC (commander-in-chief) was grudging: ‘It is true CINC has restored confidence and his personality overshadows all at moment.’ Blancke believed, as did many others, that if de Lattre had not come to Vietnam to replace General Carpentier, Hanoi would have fallen. Success also came because the French used close air support and dropped napalm for the first time. Under napalm there was panic among the Vietminh troops – who could blame them for running into the forest screaming?

  The life of the military and political world in Indo-China seemed to be picking up because of the arrival of one man – de Lattre. It was even reported in a secret memorandum dated 21 September 1951 that the Echo du Vietnam noted that ‘Vietnam will honor General de Lattre by building a temple to him as a “Tutelary Deity”.’ Edmund Gullion responded to the foolish article by adding tartly: ‘The Legation by no means intends to detract from the honest praise of which the General is so genuinely deserving. It is perhaps a little too early, however, to place him among the immortals.’

  *

  Greene arrived in Saigon on 25 January 1951, after de Lattre’s great success. He entered a world of nightly bombings, anonymous grenade throwing, and the frequent assassination of both communist terrorists and government officials. Greene came seeking refuge. His troubled spirit, so often darkened by melancholia, lifted while in Vietnam. The country was to get firmly under his skin: ‘the spell was first cast … by the tall elegant girls in white silk trousers, by the pewter evening light on flat paddy fields, where the water-buffaloes trudged fetlock-deep with a slow primeval gait … the Chinese gambling houses in Cholon, above all by that feeling of exhilaration which a measure of danger brings’.14 It was a love he shared with thousands of others, including many retired colons and officers of the Foreign Legion whose eyes would light up at the mere mention of Saigon and Hanoi.15

  His initial enthusiasm is revealed in his journal:

  What a difference between Saigon & K[uala] L[umpur]. Gaiety in spite of grenades.
Lunched with J[enkins, of Reuters] who drove me around afterward … Begin to see my programme clear. So much happier here. Met Fr. journalist to hear about the Cao Dai at 7. 8 Swan fetched me to dinner. Vietnamese Minister of Information. French I[ntelligence] officer with pretty wife. Invitation from General de Lattre. All is set. To bed at 1.16

  That first day he wrote to his brother Hugh: ‘This is the country, not Malaya. The women … really lovely & beautifully & sophisticatedly dressed. The situation is fantastic. One lunches and dines behind iron grilles or wire netting to keep out the grenades. Good food, good wine, & tremendous friendliness.’17 He gave the impression that the French authorities were perhaps more accommodating than the British in Malaya; there was certainly a difference in style:

  A car was put at my disposal at once: within a few hours of arriving I was asked to dine informally (no black ties) with General de Lattre who lives in a magnificent place, 200 men changing guard to music.18

  The original meaning of the name Saigon was ‘gift to the foreigner’, and so it was to the French. Ninety years of French occupation had turned a simple village of palm trees and atap huts into something very French – wide, straight boulevards, gracious squares, solid main buildings, all speaking loudly of France even today, for there has been little rebuilding in the twenty years of communist rule. In the Majestic hotel the colonial trademark of the Lyons manufacturer is still in the lavatory bowl.