by Dennis Foley
Where the population began to flag the concentration of often overlapping bomb craters increased. Each crater was a small perfect pockmark with raw dirt edges half filled with blue-green alkaline rich water. Some had been taken over by small families of mud ducks. Where the craters had damaged trails Pascoe could see the traffic had simply been rerouted around the damage to make a new trail. Life went on in Hau Nghia Province. These were people who had never known peace. Never in their lifetime.
Pascoe looked across the chopper at Thi Van Minh. In spite of Pascoe’s efforts to avoid it, Minh was now his new counterpart—a recently minted term invented for Americans assigned to advisory jobs.
Minh’s actual post was Operations Officer for the Vietnamese 6th Infantry Division. It would be Pascoe’s job to help his counterpart improve combat planning and operational techniques peculiar to infantry division operations—something Pascoe had been trained in. For most advisors counterpart relationships were strained and unsteady. Americans found it uncomfortable working with Vietnamese officers whose jobs were often political appointments. Promotions were frequently influenced by family relationships and political considerations rather than merit or experience. To this was added the differences in culture in general and the less-than-aggressive style of combat operation conducted by the South Vietnamese.
A greater problem was their tendency to confuse their personal and professional lives making most American advisors uneasy with the appearance of impropriety. Pascoe was already uncomfortable with the man, his appearance, his shaky flying and his unwillingness to allow Pascoe to try out the Vietnamese he had studied hard to learn.
Minh blended French and passable English. He seemed to take delight in practicing his English and had spoken nothing but since they met. Pascoe had learned to expect all this in advisory training at Fort Bragg, but he would never let Minh know of his dissatisfaction. He couldn’t.
Minh’s kept talking without added focus on the task at hand as he wrestled the chopper into an abrupt turn just after they passed over a military compound.
“Welcome to the 6th Infantry Division. This is our headquarters,” Minh said as he set the chopper up to land on the large H formed by sand bags laid out on the hard baked center court yard of the compound. The chopper cleared the dual flag poles flying faded US and Vietnamese flags, both flapping furiously in the rotor wash.
Pascoe hadn’t expected much, but the headquarters at the Sugar Mill was a shock. It was all one color—beige, from years of road traffic dust on the adjacent unsurfaced highway which passed the gated headquarters. The only real color in the compound was the large red and white barber-striped pipe horizontally spanning the compound’s single lane entrance. It rested on a stop in the fencing at the small end of the pole and was counterbalanced on the other by a huge block of concrete.
Three Vietnamese soldiers wearing American helmets dwarfing their small heads stood in a sandbagged guard house topped with a corrugated tin roof to keep the sun and rain off of them and provide for their comfort.
As Minh awkwardly settled the chopper onto the helipad, a thick donut of dirt blown up from the earthen compound boiled away from the rotor blades bathing each building and the guard post in a whole new shower of dust. Such dustings happened as many as twenty times a day, with each chopper taking off and landing at the busy headquarters.
Pascoe popped his seatbelts free and looked around the chopper as Minh shut it down. He was sure the first order of the day for him was to brush up on his own flying techniques. If he was going to continue to fly with Minh he wanted to be able to take over control of the chopper if he had to.
Glassless windows provided only marginal ventilation in the wooden building originally designed as a large sugar mill. After the French owner’s left the Vietnamese division commander moved most of the mill’s employees to smaller buildings in the nearby town then moved his headquarters to the Sugar Mill which controlled the area to the west—toward Cambodia. Still, the buildings were nowhere near a perfect fit for an infantry division headquarters.
Minh led Pascoe deeper into the warren of small rooms and crowded hallways. Clusters of uniformed Vietnamese clerks and headquarters staffers were crammed into corners too small for any clerical or combat functions. It looked as if the take over of the headquarters had happened in uncoordinated and unplanned phases. There was no apparent method to the assignment of space and no consideration given to facilities or utilities. Extension cords threaded through holes in walls and draped over door tops. The lighting alternated randomly between harshly lit pools and dark corners. Glaring fluorescent lighting fixtures were scattered haphazardly around the office spaces, some humming, some flickering.
Everywhere field desks were piled with paperwork and occupied spaces not otherwise dedicated to headquarters functions or storage. Just walking through the crowded corridors was difficult. And the mood seemed to be light and uninvolved in the war effort. Many of the soldiers playfully laughed and lounged about, completely unconcerned about the war going on outside the high walled, concertina topped fences surrounding the compound.
Minh stopped at a desk manned by a sergeant who, unlike most of the others, diligently sorted paperwork. The Vietnamese fascination with bureaucracy—a leftover of the French occupation—would soon become apparent to Pascoe. The sergeant leaped to attention on seeing Colonel Minh. Minh spoke too rapidly for Pascoe to catch it all, but he did understand something about an appointment Minh needed to see the general. He turned to Pascoe. “Major, one of the soldiers will take your things from the chopper to your quarters. Come.” He opened the first closed door Pascoe had seen in the building.
Minh led them to an anteroom more claustrophobic than the others. There another Vietnamese sergeant spoke rapidly into a radio hand microphone. “What is the problem?” Minh asked.
The sergeant continued to argue with someone on the other end having trouble convincing the Vietnamese artillery headquarters in the provincial capital of Tay Ninh to approve a request for supporting fires. They were refusing to fire on some targets listed on the request Minh had submitted earlier that morning.
“Give it to me,” Minh said to the sergeant. With one hand he grabbed the mike and with the other he pointed in the direction of still another room. “Major, I will only be a short time with this. Please be comfortable in my office.”
Inside, Pascoe stood in the center of Minh’s office trying to take it all in. It was more like a shrine to Lieutenant Colonel Tri Van Minh. Only one wall was set aside for the business of war. There a canvas drape concealed what Pascoe thought might be a map or bulletin board. The other three walls were covered with carefully posed photos of Minh. One large one with Minh in full uniform standing against a limbo background. It had been taken in a photo studio complete with all the strategic lighting to highlight Minh’s glossy hair and give the appearance of a stronger chin. Minh appeared to be wearing makeup as he stood stiffly, his new chin raised with a hint of arrogance above the high collar of his dress white mess uniform.
Many of the other photos were of Minh in America—at Fort Rucker, the Army’s Flight School. Minh with choppers. Minh with American classmates. And Minh accepting his graduation certificate from some American general Pascoe didn’t recognize.
Pascoe walked around the room. It smelled of dust and smoke and mildew. Scattered among the framed photos were several certificates from Fort Benning’s Parachute School, The Infantry Officer’s Advanced Course and an out-of-context proclamation from a mayor in Enterprise, Alabama proclaiming Vietnamese-American Friendship day—Minh’s photo prominent in the attached newspaper clipping.
The single worn desk took up a large amount of floor space in the office. The desk must have been nearly fifty years old and had probably seen service in other government buildings. A new coat of varnish failed to conceal the blue ink stains tattooed deep into the grain of the desk’s top.
Pascoe couldn’t resist picking up the gold plated ceremonial dagger which held a pos
ition of honor on the desktop. Handmade, it was decorated with an engraved serpent extending from the hilt to the knife’s point. In the blood groove which ran down the center of the blade was an inscription to Minh from General Nguyen Cao Ky, the Commanding General of the Vietnamese Air Force.
Worried Minh might catch him, Pascoe put the dagger back and turned to look at the rest of the office. The décor throughout the room was a strange amalgam of Asian and military furnishings. A flat topped ceramic Chinese dragon served as a side table for a folding lawn chair with woven webbing of bright colored plastic. A small table in the corner of the room held a cluster of American liquor bottles. Next to them four small shot glasses stood upside down on a clean white napkin.
Minh’s voice startled Pascoe.
“Sit.” Minh pointed at a straight-backed chair centered on the desk. “We talk.” He pulled out a blue pack of French Galouise cigarettes and offered one to Pascoe.
Though Pascoe didn’t smoke, he took one of the cigarettes and put it to his lips. Turning down the offer would be taken as an insult by Minh.
Minh produced an America Zippo lighter with an enameled flag of the Republic of Vietnam in orange, red and green stripes—the national colors. He lit the cigarette and then lit his own as he walked to his desk. “Bui!” He called out for the sergeant in the outer office.
Almost immediately the sergeant knocked respectfully and, not waiting for a reply, entered carrying a tray. He placed the tray on the top of the ceramic dragon and served each officer hot tea French style—in glasses instead of cups. He left as quietly as he entered. Personal servitude was common in Vietnam. Something else Pascoe would have to overlook.
At first the sight of the tea troubled Pascoe. He could plainly see something resembling a knot of worms gathered in the bottom of the glass of golden-brown liquid. A closer look revealed the tea had been cut into long thin strips, like American chewing tobacco. It was dropped loosely into the glass and covered with the hot water to steep. The tea was served with the shredded leaves still in the glass.
Minh picked up his tea by the rim avoiding the heated glass. In a toast-like gesture, he pointed the glass in Pascoe’s direction. “Welcome, Major. May we enjoy a productive time together.”
Pascoe braced himself for the first sip. Though he found the tea very hot, the flavor was pleasant and absent the biting aftertaste common in American teas. It was strange to drink hot tea in a climate already draining his energy and soaking his new jungle fatigues with sweat. “This is very good, sir.”
Minh beamed. “Good. Good. I’ll have some sent to your quarters for you. I hope you will like many things about my country.”
Minh leaned back in his chair, savoring his tea and his cigarette.
The moment felt awkward to Pascoe who wasn’t sure if he should restart the conversation or wait for Minh. He opted to take the initiative. “How can I best help you here, Colonel?”
Minh waved his hand indicating the unseen outer offices of the building. “As you can see, we are a very poor division. We need many, many things. We are far from Saigon. And they do not think about our needs out here—out here where the Viet Cong control the night.”
In advisory training Pascoe had been warned the Vietnamese were more likely to ask for resources and equipment than actual tactical advice. He mustn’t make promises he couldn’t keep because nothing he said would be taken as idle conversation. He selected his words carefully as not to suggest any promise at all. “Maybe, after I get settled in, you can show me around and point out what is lacking.”
Minh stood, smoothed out the wrinkles in the front of his flight suit and stepped to the drape on the wall. He pulled it back revealing a tactical map of the area of combat operations for his division. Unit locations were well marked on the clear plastic overlay in blue grease pencil. Enemy positions in red and imaginary boundaries between regiments in black.
He picked up a wooden pointer from the narrow tray below the map, tapped the clear plastic overlay and began as if giving a performance. “This is where my war is, Major.” He circled the center of the map with the tip of the pointer. He tapped a point on the border with Cambodia jutting toward Saigon. This we call the Parrot’s Beak. At the top of the map he moved the pointer over a more gentle curve in the black border, “And this is the Angel’s Wing. Oh, yes, and now it is your war.”
Pascoe tried act interested but not ignorant of the situation. Minh couldn’t know he’d read every book he could find on Vietnam, its history and culture, the French war and the communist insurgency eating away at South Vietnam like a cancer. He knew young Vietnamese men, women and children had been dying in the area adjacent to the border for centuries over differences in religion, border disputes, land, power and money.
Minh traced the length of the thick black boundary between Cambodia and Vietnam and continued speaking in the pattern Pascoe was becoming accustomed to—as if Minh was first thinking in Vietnamese and then searching for each equivalent English word. “We are responsible for this section of border. Seventy three miles long and not possible to seal. Communists soldiers from the north travel hundreds of miles down small trails inside Cambodia to come to South Vietnam.
“Cambodia gives them safe passage because we cannot strike them there.” He flatted the pointer out against the border. “Here they break into small groups. They become farmers and wood cutters and fishermen. They infiltrate into my country and then reform later to attack government outposts, towns and military bases.”
Minh put down the pointer and lit another foul-smelling cigarette.
“From the looks of the terrain it appears to me slipping across the border would be hard to do without being detected,” Pascoe said.
Minh laughed. “These are cunning men. They are dedicated and unlike you Americans, they are very patient. They learned from their fathers and their grandfathers. They can sit in the marshland all day and not move. At night they move in the darkness. We set out many ambushes, but they slip through. We conduct aerial reconnaissance each day by helicopter and all we can find are the trails through the mud where they moved at night.”
“You don’t sound like you are having any success at all,” Pascoe said.
“Oh, do not mistake my words, Major. We kill many, many Viet Cong here. But for every one we kill ten get into Vietnam and take the lives of our brothers and our children.” His eyebrows drew together over his eyes and his tone became very dark. “They burn our homes and they steal our rice. Then they get drunk after they kill the men and they rape the women and young girls. They are animals, Major. They are all animals.”
Pascoe noticed it was the very first time Minh’s smile had faded. “What kind of surveillance do you have on the border?”
“We send out small patrols—into the swamps, but we cannot always see VC or hear them.” He threw his hands up in the air. “There are hundreds of square miles out there where my enemy can hide and we only have a very small number of helicopters to patrol the skies and few combat soldiers to setup ambushes at night. And we suffer many, many casualties.
“The terrain out there is very hard on my soldiers. Even when they do not make contact with enemy forces they suffer from mines and booby traps. Malaria, Dengue Fever, and dysentery take my men. The worst is the marsh water. Even in the dry season they become casualties from the being wet all day and night. They have to move and hide in the low places to keep from being seen by the enemy. This keeps them in stinking bogs and filthy water —”
“Let me guess,” Pascoe said. “Then the leeches open sores on them and then bacteria sets up housekeeping.”
“Yes, Major. They make, ah… How you call them… Ulcer—?”
“Ulcers. That’s right, Colonel. Skin ulcers,” Pascoe said.
“A soldier with these infections is often gone for many weeks before he can go back to the field to search again for VC.”
Pascoe thought about what to recommend to Minh that wouldn’t involve trying to overcome the problem with h
ardware or American money. But before he could come up with something Minh continued.
Minh turned back to the map, reached up and knuckled a number in red in the corner of the map. Ashes fell from his cigarette. “And this is our combat strength as of today.”
Pascoe could understand Vietnamese well enough to get by if someone wasn’t speaking it too rapidly. In the few minutes he’d been in the headquarters he could see he’d have to work harder at understanding the heightened speed of dialogue. And he was not very good at reading Vietnamese handwriting, especially acronyms. Still, what was immediately apparent to him on the map’s acetate was the number—forty-one, followed by a percentage mark. It was enough to be understood in any soldier’s language. It was the division’s foxhole strength—the number of combat ready soldiers. Less than half of their authorized strength.
After Minh finished his informal briefing he pointed to Pascoe’s flight bag still sitting by the doorway to the office. “I have taken too much of your time. I must get you to your team house. You will want to meet Colonel Wills, the Division Senior Advisor, before dinner in the General’s Mess.”
“Thank you for the briefing, Colonel. Would you mind if I spend some time going over your recent After Action Reports to get myself oriented on some of the details of what the division has been doing?”
“I will make them available. You are welcome to read anything you wish.”
Pascoe looked around the team house located on the opposite side of the helicopter pad. It must have been a storeroom of sorts before being pressed into service as the quarters for the small advisory team. The large cavernous building had been broken up into small single rooms by the amateur construction of stud walls and wallboard, a combination of plywood and bamboo matting. Together they offered a modicum of air circulation and some privacy.
Someone had put his other bags in one of the empty rooms. He stepped inside to look around. It was more than Spartan-like with a single tropical slatted window he could neither open nor close, a single light bulb hanging from a twisted cord in the center of the room and a single cot topped with a rolled mattress and no pillow or bedding.
