by Eric Hammel
Though the roundup was aimed at civil servants and politically prominent South Vietnamese civilians, Americans and Europeans in Hue were by no means spared. American businesspeople and European residents of Hue were not immediately molested, but all American civil servants were targeted for swift arrest on the basis of the not altogether farfetched notion that they were intelligence operatives.
Steve Miller, the U.S. Information Service official who had joined Jim Bullington and the Than Trong clan for dinner the night before, was warned in the early hours that thirty VC had occupied the building next door to his home. Neighbors offered to conceal Miller and escort him to the hoped-for sanctuary of Hue Cathedral, but Miller opted to remain at home to see how the situation developed. Possibly, he did not want to endanger the neighbors in the event he was discovered among them. Whatever his reason for staying at home, Miller paid with his life. When his body was discovered weeks later, his arms were bound behind him and he had been shot in the head.
Jim Bullington did not work in Hue and was therefore not on any of the Communist hit lists. Asleep in the guest house on the grounds of the Hue municipal power station, he had been awakened by the sound of mortar rounds detonating at the start of the Communist assault, but he had gone back to sleep because he knew there was nothing he could contribute to the defense of the city.
Bullington awoke again at 0730, this time to the sound of scattered small-arms fire. "The police must still be a little nervous about the attack," he thought as he knotted his tie. "Or maybe they've cornered a sniper somewhere." He decided to check in at MACV to see what the situation was before he drove across the Phu Cam Canal to see his fiancée, Tuy-Cam.
As Bullington walked out the door of the power-station guest house, he saw his host, Albert Istvie, a Franco-Vietnamese who managed the Hue power company. Istvie, who was in a building about twenty meters away, across a courtyard, looked authentically shocked when he noticed Bullington. He said nothing, but the meaning of his gestures was perfectly clear: get the hell back inside the house and be quick about it.
Bullington knew nothing and could only sit in the guest house and imagine what might be going on. He had been in a few close situations before, however, and decided that there was no reason to be unduly alarmed. Still, the continuing small-arms fire became worrisome, so Bullington took his pistol out of his suitcase, just in case.
The waiting grew unbearable. Bullington's curiosity finally got the better of his prudence, and, at about 1030, he ventured out again. This time, he walked all the way across the courtyard to the building where he had seen Istvie. Istvie, who did not see Bullington until he was already nearing the building, ran to the door and whispered, "What are you doing here? I told you to stay in the house. They're here; the North Vietnamese are right here. They're all around us! Now get back, quick."
"They're right here?" Bullington asked.
"Yes, dammit, right here! In this building. Now go."
Bullington returned to the guest house. For the first time, he began to realize the gravity of the situation.
As dire thoughts echoed in Bullington's head, he chambered a round in his pistol. It was a Chinese 9mm automatic, given to him a month earlier by the district chief in Quang Tri, who had taken it from the body of a high-level VC political cadre. Bullington had never fired it. In fact, he had never fired any pistol before, so he spent a few minutes figuring out how it worked, a simple enough matter. He had brought it along chiefly for its trophy value, to show some friends who valued such things. He had never considered the prospect of actually using it.
For many interminable hours, Jim Bullington sat in the guest house and waited. And worried. Finally, at about 1500, there was a quiet knock on the door. For a moment, Bullington was terrified, but then he reasoned that the NVA probably wouldn't bother to knock. However, he was still terrified. "Is that you, Albert?" His voice came out in a croak, from the fear.
It was indeed Albert Istvie. He had brought Bullington a ham sandwich and a warm bottle of beer. "You are a very lucky man," Istvie said. He explained that an NVA company had occupied the large compound, which was composed of the guest house, the courtyard, the building where Istvie had been, and several other structures. It was a major miracle, he noted, that Bullington had not been spotted on either of his two ventures out of the guest house. Istvie guessed that the North Vietnamese had apparently invested the entire city and intended to hold it.
The thought suddenly struck Jim Bullington that his life was completely in Istvie's hands. Istvie wasn't a government employee or a member of an anti-Communist political party, and he didn't work for the Americans. Bullington reasoned, therefore, that Istvie was not a target of the Communist assassination teams that had already begun their work. But if it were discovered that Istvie was hiding Bullington, they both knew, he and his family would immediately become targets.
Bullington had known Istvie for several months and considered him to be a friend. But was his friendship strong enough to protect Bullington when to do so meant risking his own life and the safety of his family? Bullington could only pray that it was.
Istvie returned at about 1730. He had arranged a special signal—four knocks—so Bullington was spared the terror of his first arrival. He said that it wasn't safe for Bullington to stay where he was—no startling revelation, since Bullington could hear the N'VA soldiers who had moved into a building only fifteen meters away. It was best, both men decided, for Bullington to flee the power station altogether. The NVA were sure to search the guest house sooner or later. Istvie explained that a pair of French priests he considered to be good friends lived two houses down the street. He thought that it would be much safer for Bullington there, and the priests had agreed to take him in. Bullington was to leave the power station at 1800, when the NVA would most likely be occupied with their dinners.
Before Istvie left, he looked at Bullington's pistol and said, "You'd better hide that. It wouldn't do you any good against more than a hundred of them. And if something goes wrong and they find it on you, that would make it much worse for both of us." That seemed to make sense, so Bullington hid the firearm.
At the agreed hour, Istvie rapped on the door. By the time Bullington cracked it, his friend was walking quickly across the courtyard. Istvie looked up at one of the NVA-occupied buildings, then moved away without signaling Bullington to follow him. Something had gone wrong. Bullington closed the door and considered once again just how risky the movement operation was.
Istvie returned in about thirty minutes. He explained that one of the NVA soldiers in the house across the way had been looking out the window at the start of the previous attempt. Bullington and Istvie agreed to try again.
On the second attempt, none of the NVA seemed to be looking, so Istvie motioned for Bullington to come ahead. Bullington walked across the courtyard unobserved, then ducked through the gate in the wall behind Istvie's home. He waited briefly in the family's outhouse while Istvie scouted ahead. At Istvie's direction he crawled through a side window and jumped down into the yard of the house next door.
A stranger met Bullington at the door and escorted him quickly indoors. He introduced himself as Father Marie Cressonier and presented Bullington to Father Pierre Poncet, a fellow missionary who had been evacuated from Khe Sanh and was staying with him.
Bullington spoke good French, but he knew that it would be obvious to any Frenchman—though not necessarily to an NVA soldier—that he was not a native speaker. After discussing several options, Father Cressonier gave Bullington a black clerical gown and other priestly garb. In the event the NVA spotted Bullington, the Frenchmen decided to try to pass him off as a visiting Canadian priest.
"You're welcome here as long as you need to hide," Father Cressonier said at length. "But I'm sure your Marines will retake the city by tomorrow or the next day, and you will be safe." Jim Bullington shared Father Cressonier's unfounded optimism, little thinking that the many shocks of January 31 were only the
beginning of his ordeal.
After staying up all night to the sound of running feet and shouted voices with northern accents outside their lavish home, the Than-Trong family's worst fears began coming true. At daybreak, the four sisters again heard people running outside. Someone cried in a northern accent, "Stop or I'll shoot! You are the enemy of the people!"
Next, the sisters heard what sounded like a lot of people walking and running in the street. "It is here, this house," someone said.
"Are you sure?" another voice asked.
"No, I'm not sure."
"He does not live here?" a northern-accented voice asked.
"No, I don't think so."
"Maybe this will help you recognize the house!" Then the sisters heard a man moaning.
At about 0800, soldiers in NVA uniforms banged on the door. "Open up or we'll shoot," one of them demanded. "Hurry!"
"Yes, yes, I'm opening the door," Tuy-Cam's mother replied. But she dawdled a bit to allow Tuy-Cam to shepherd her aged grandmother into the family bunker. Tuy-Cam's two military-officer brothers, An and Long, had already been hiding in the attic for several hours. When Tuy-Cam's mother finally opened the door, several of the uniformed men rushed in, their rifles leveled at the family.
"Where are the men?" the soldiers asked.
"Here they are," Tuy-Cam's mother replied, and she pointed to her youngest son, Dung; the houseboy, Chuong; and Tuy-Cam's cousin, Sy, who lived with the family. They were all boys, barely teenagers.
The NVA soldiers stared at the youngsters in open disbelief. As one of them searched the house, he found Tuy-Cam in the family bunker with her aged grandmother. "Get out! Get out of there," he ordered. "Is there anyone else?"
"No," Tuy-Cam replied. But the soldier stuck his head into the bunker to make sure. "Is there anyone up there?" he asked, pointing at the attic.
"No," Tuy-Cam's mother replied emphatically, "there is no one there."
The soldier made no move to check the attic, but he warned, "Later, when we come back, if we find people in there, we will shoot you."
With that, the entire family was herded with rifle butts out into the street, where thousands of people were already on the march. When the throng reached a span across the Phu Cam Canal, it joined an even larger throng. Tuy-Cam saw many relatives, friends, and neighbors, but no one spoke to anyone else. Everyone just looked at each other and kept silent.
"Your fingers are red!" an angry female VC cried into Tuy-Cam's face. She was referring to Tuy-Cam's nail polish. Then, to everyone the VC announced: "This kind of woman could not even lift a stick, much less fight the American imperialists."
"Is there anyone here who speaks English?" an NVA soldier asked. "These people," he said, pointing to a pair of men who stood by a tree, "are not Vietnamese."
"They are Filipinos," someone said.
Tuy-Cam was afraid she would be denounced by someone who knew she worked for the Americans in Danang. Fortunately, no one gave her away. Extremely fearful, she clung to her grandmother, who clung to her like a baby.
An airplane, apparently on a reconnaissance mission, appeared high over the city. The female VC stood in plain view and opened fire at it. Other VC followed suit, but with no apparent effect. The airplane circled for a few minutes, then quickly disappeared.
Well past noon, an ARVN jeep pulled up. An NVA soldier got out of the jeep, signaled for the leader of the VC unit, and talked to him in a very low voice. Tuy-Cam could not make out what they were saying. Then the NVA soldier jumped back into the jeep, which departed.
"Listen carefully," the VC commander said. "You are allowed to go home." Everyone instantly stood up, ready to leave, but the Communist officer yelled, "Sit down again! I mean only the women and small children. All the men, go over there." He pointed in the direction of a vacant lot. Immediately, soldiers began pushing all the men to the lot. Tuy-Cam's mother started to cry when an NVA grabbed brother Dung, houseboy Chuong, and cousin Sy by their shirts and pulled them roughly toward the men's group. Then the women and children were allowed to leave.
Tuy-Cam and her family's women were barely home before a squad of NVA soldiers arrived at the front door. "Mother,'.' one of them called politely to Tuy-Cam's mother, "we have not eaten since the day before yesterday. Do you have anything to eat?"
The NVA consumed a big meal—almost everything left over from the previous night's banquet. Then they sat down and simultaneously interrogated and propagandized the family. For nearly two hours, they asked questions about everything and everyone. Then they adjourned to the rear of the Than-Trong compound and searched for picks and shovels in the two thatch huts there. With the implements they found, the NVA dug a trench along the bamboo fence. By the time the trench had been completed, Dung, Chuong, and Sy were home.
After a time, Tuy-Cam's brothers, An and Long, signaled from the attic. One of Tuy-Cam's sisters was posted by the back door and another sister was posted by another door—to make sure no NVA soldiers were in sight. Then Tuy-Cam and her mother answered the signal. The brothers wanted to go to the bathroom. Chuong, the houseboy, found an empty kerosene can, and the women managed to pass it up to the brothers. Then the family sat down and tried to eat what little food the NVA soldiers had left in the kitchen. No one could swallow anything. Tuy-Cam's mother looked up at the attic and down at the food, but no one made a move. No one had the nerve to try to pass food to An and Long.
***
PART III
Into the Fog
***
Chapter 8
The first help the Americans sent to embattled Hue from the outside came in the form of a strange fighter-bomber sortie. Major Tom Johnson was a six-month combat veteran flying with Marine Attack Squadron 311 out of Chu Lai, which was about 170 kilometers southeast of Hue. The first two missions Johnson had flown in response to the Tet emergency had been undertaken in the dead of night with the aid of his A-4 bomber's on-board radar bombing-guidance system. In essence, he had lugged his bombs to a point in space, presumably over a target of value, and had dropped blind when the radar system cued him to drop. His mission over Hue would require a little more of his flying skills.
Johnson was ordered to fly his A-4 jet to Hue on the wing of another A-4. At daylight, as they approached the target area, they were turned over to a Marine O-l Bird Dog spotter-plane pilot, which was to be their airborne controller. The aerial observer aboard the O-l told the A-4 pilots that he had "some VC" and that the target was beneath an overcast five-hundred to six-hundred feet thick. The observer also said that he had come in under the cloud deck from the southeast and had found the visibility good underneath.
Johnson and the other jet pilot slowed their A-4s to 250 to 300 knots and carefully let down through a break in the overcast. They scooted along beneath the clouds and returned to the vicinity of the O-l. There, they encountered several tall radio masts that poked up into the overcast. The A-4 jocks knew that there would be guy wires between the masts and the ground, so they stayed clear until they could actually see the cables. Major Johnson realized that it would be a real challenge to fly below the overcast, avoid the O-l and the guy wires, locate the target, get into position to roll in, track the target, pickle the bombs, and pull off without making a mistake.
Fortunately, the A-4s were carrying 250-pound delay-action Snakeye bombs, which could be released at a very low altitude without blowing the A-4s out of the air. However, at the speeds involved, the limited altitude would prevent the pilots from tracking the target for as many seconds as they would like before they had to pickle their bombs. Also, the dive angle was much shallower than Johnson wanted it; he and the other A-4 pilot could not ensure' the accuracy they could have guaranteed had the ceiling been higher. The two pilots took deep breaths, flew in, and unloaded the Snakeyes. All things considered, Johnson felt the A-4s had done well.
The next task was a napalm drop, which generated more worries. The A-4s would be able to lay the incendiary canisters
right on the target, but Johnson knew from bitter experience that the napalm bombs might not ignite if they were dropped from too low. If the napalm did not ignite, the A-4s would have to make another pass to set it off with tracer rounds from their 20mm cannon. Fortunately, the napalm ignited when it was dropped, so the A-4 pilots did not have to risk a strafing pass.
As the two A-4s departed the area, the aerial observer gave them a bomb-damage assessment, passed the word that the ground troops thanked them, and said that everyone was impressed with their performance in the overcast. He told Johnson and the other A-4 pilot that theirs was the only flight he had ever directed under those conditions.
"Those conditions" were the reason the battle for Hue was to be waged with virtually no air support. The low overcast that greeted fixed-wing airmen on January 31 hovered over the city for the next three weeks. On January 31, in addition to Major Tom Johnson's mission, the only known aerial sorties over Hue were undertaken by Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) A-l Skyraider propeller-driven attack bombers, by spotter planes like the one that guided Johnson, and by the reconnaissance plane Tuy-Cam saw early in the afternoon.
*
Following their wild defensive reaction to the 804th NVA Battalion's assault, the few authentic combat veterans in the MACV Compound worked to cobble together as strong a defense as their numbers and the available weapons and ammunition allowed. There were nowhere near enough weapons to go around, but, then, many advisors and clerical workers opted to take refuge in bunkers.
