Prime Green : Remembering the Sixties

by Robert Stone

  Prime Green : Remembering the Sixties

  gether a London weekly tabloid modeled on New York’s Village Voice. It was called INK. I procured a letter from Ed, and one from Mike Zwerin of the VV itself, addressed to whomever I found in charge over there. I bought a cheap ticket to Saigon, via charter to Kuala Lumpur, from an Oxford Street bucket shop and took off. Spending the night in Kuala Lumpur, I had Southeast Asia come upon me. The scent I remember was of incense trees on the way into the city. I spent the night walking the Chinese quarter, intoxicated with jet lag and the street life. Of course this was all more than thirty years ago and Kuala Lumpur did not yet contain the world’s highest building. In my meaningless terms, it appeared still lately postcolonial. Let me not say unspoiled. The next day I flew Air Vietnam to Saigon. At Ton Son Nhut, as I went through customs, an enormous clap of thunder sounded out of a nearly black sky. The many Americans around the civilian termi- nal stopped what they were doing, tensed, and faced the sound. I checked into a hotel called the Royale on a street called Nguyen Hue, a place suggested by friends in London. It was the hotel of choice of the “third-country press,” meaning many of the European reporters and photographers who were not, as they say, on board. The Royale was inexpensive but wonderfully atmospheric, a quality I was in the market for then. The Americans who stayed there were, in general, not on board either, but extremely knowledgeable. Judy Coburn, who wrote for the Nation, was a fellow guest and one of many people there who were of great help to me in finding my way around. My credentials from INK, as it turned out, were not acceptable to the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam: MACV (Mac Vee, like some Scots Covenanter or hairy-handed Irish chief ). My press ac- creditation was to the Vietnamese Ministry of Information, which 208 robert stone

  entitled me to the courtesies and cooperation—in matters like transportation—of the ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Viet- nam, what GIs called the Arvin. The courtesy was more than satis- factory. The transportation, I was told, was less than reliable. Also, like most reporters, I was inducted into the Arvin with the honorary rank of major. I was given a pin with the little curlicue of a French major’s epaulets to sew on my uniform, if I had owned one. I found it possible, for the most part, to insinuate myself into the American presence and talk my way aboard such vehicles as I might require to travel wherever I might want to go. Once, the Marines laid on a press pool helicopter to Da Nang, and thence to Phu Bai. I got another ride into the mountains to a lonely place called Dakto. There were still some American troops there, and the place was at- tacked later in the year. In the course of my brief ventures, I learned it was customary to sit on one’s flak jacket (borrowed, in my case— my unweathered unmilitary gear attracted attention). Passengers in the choppers sat on their flak jackets to protect themselves from in- ternal injuries in the event of a round from below. People told the story of the guy who spent days in surgery having little pieces of a map removed from his interior spaces. I had a ride from Ton Son Nhut to another beautiful, lonely place called Dalat, a resort once. At Phu Bai, a longtime Marine base south of Da Nang, at Da Nang itself, at Dakto during the Tet offensive of 1968, and at the citadel of Hue, incredible courage and self-sacrifice were displayed by troops on both sides. But the North Vietnamese Army, briefly in control of Hue, treated the city and its inhabitants the way the spe- cial Kommandos of Totenkopf SS treated the average Byelorussian shtetl. When evidence of this was unearthed, as they say, the business went a little underreported in Europe and the United States. It roughly coincided with the American massacre of villagers at My prime green: remembering the sixties 209

  Lai. Since most newspapers are into telling readers what they are used to hearing and think they already know, any suggestion of con- gruity in the cruelty of desperation would have been the occasion of moral confusion. In Ayutthaya, Thailand, I chatted with a French businessman named Dur, which I thought was a great name for the sort of tough old colonizer he was. He had been captured by the Communists in Hue and, as a French civilian, spared. The two French Benedictines he was staying with, however, were not spared: one was burned, one buried alive. Before that, Dur had been an officer in the Colonial Naval Infantry attached to some regiments of the Légion Etrangère. He said of the three U.S. Marine battalions who took the Hue citadel, “Listen, I would have kissed these types, eh. They fought like legionnaires.” In the poissard those thuggy old-time Frenchies spoke everyone was un type. Looking around the citadel years later, I held my manhood cheap that I was not there on that Saint Crispin’s Day. But I wasn’t. I’m grateful I wasn’t. I wouldn’t have liked it. Back in Ayutthaya, it pro- voked me to tell M. Dur about Ismailia and the French Navy pot- shooting the mole. He laughed. He added that even the Arvin troops at the citadel, from which not so much was expected, had fought very well too, because many of their families had been tor- tured to death during the three weeks of NVA control. Outside of some ceremonial mortaring from beyond the perime- ter, Americans were scantily engaged in the spring of 1971. As for the mortars, the other side had to do something with all the hard- ware they were collecting from the Russians and the Chinese. But the Nixon regime had already started pulling grunts out of the line. Something called “Vietnamization” was in progress, in which Amer- ican troops would be replaced by Vietnamese. 210 robert stone

  Odd things were happening, but I was wanting to go home. Much as I loved the Royale, its colorful, Corsican proprietor and its clientele, I was restless. Restlessness and ignorance led me to enter- tain a thoroughly dreadful idea. I went over to one of the network offices at Graham Greene’s old haunt, the Continental, and asked the guys whether they thought going to Cambodia might be a good idea. I don’t know what they thought I meant by that. I don’t know what I thought I meant. I’m still puzzled by the enthusiasm with which one network man encouraged me. I was thinking, among other things, of the opium dens I had heard about in Phnom Penh, and the drolleries of the Lon Nol regime, although I didn’t mention such things at the Continental. However, the rat from Televi- sionland really insisted I go for it. I must have seemed to be more of a pain in the ass than I imagined. By then Sean Flynn, Dana Stone, and other adventurers who had ventured across the Parrot’s Beak were already dead. A certain playfulness about the network man’s tone eventually discouraged me. Regulars at the Friday Night Follies, the weekly briefing sessions for the press, were receiving relentlessly upbeat reports that they considered less than reliable. I was falling out of touch with the big picture. The more days I spent in the country, the further I felt from anything I could conceive of as a narrative of the war’s course. By this time I had located some kindred spirits and was sliding into a pattern of life that could best be called alienation, in every sense of the word. I was part of the “stringer” world, stringers being the journalistic trade term for part-time or semi-employed or other- wise unattached members of the press. Of itself there is nothing compromising about being a stringer; energetic and courageous stringers in the right place at the right time have been responsible for some great journalistic coups. But I was hanging with some of prime green: remembering the sixties 211

  the less reputable elements in town, regularly visiting a crash pad on Tu Do Street (once the rue Catinat and the home of Givral’s ice- cream parlor). The apartments were rented by a gang of mainly Aus- tralian photojournalists and writers, and their mainly Vietnamese girlfriends; the odd Filipino or Filipina rock musician might also show up. Anyone, actually, might show up—from an overzealous war protester who had decided to carry her protest to the very edge of the pit, to the editorial staff of a midwestern high school newspa- per who had simply applied for a Vietnamese tourist visa—like mine—and taken Daddy’s credit card to Thai International Airlines. Every few days, a number of us might take off out of town toward the huge complex at Long Binh and follow the traffic. One route might take us beyond the Capital Military Zone and a short distance in the direction of what was called the Iron Triangle. This road led to the Michelin rubber plantations
and, at Cu Chi, the headquarters of the Twenty-fifth (Tropic Lightning) Division. We never thought of running the whole route overland. At Cu Chi the army had fought its surreal and truly horrifying war in the tunnel complex that housed the operations of the Viet- cong–North Vietnamese Army contingent responsible for the provinces around Saigon. Farther along the road, the army had fought two operations called Cedar Falls I and II along the edge of the Ho Bo woods. The road ran between rice paddies, dry or flooded, depending on the time of year, and rows of rubber trees. At the jun- gle terminus was the capital of the Parrot’s Beak, Tay Ninh, home of the cathedral of the syncretic Cao Dai sect, whose avatars included Jesus, Buddha, and Victor Hugo. From Tay Ninh a continuation of the road approached An Loc and the border with Cambodia. In my brief period there, Cu Chi was approachable, and we would go out there on motorbikes, me riding double with a drinking 212 robert stone

  buddy whom I’ve written about under the name of Harry Lime. By now I’ve called him Harry Lime for so long that I can’t remember his actual name. Nowhere in the country was completely secure at that time, but we were once advised that near the capital, our prin- cipal danger might come from encountering a wandering battalion of Korean infantrymen, or else some escapees from one of the Arvin’s penal battalions. These were mainly perfectly respectable Vietnam- ese soldiers being victimized in some fashion by rogue superiors. But resentment was building so late in the failing war. A section of the tunnel complex at Cu Chi, ostensibly cleared of the enemy presence, had been converted to use by the Twenty-fifth as a tunnel school where infantrymen were instructed in tunnel- fighting tactics against the army that had built the tunnels and had been at home in them since the Japanese occupation. It seemed to me a course of instruction about as useful as a three-week intensive immersion seminar for eternity in hell. EVERYTHING YOU’LL NEED DOWN THERE AND HOW TO USE IT! Press people in Saigon (and U.S. soldiers stationed there) could choose from a formidable menu of user-friendly processed drug packages. The handiest way to score was to walk to any downtown corner where Vietnamese ladies (“mama-sans,” in the U.S. Army occupation-pidgin spoken in Japan) sold American knickknacks of all sorts, usually stolen, or sometimes illegally purchased from PX stores for resale on the street. Among the duty-free Luckies and ra- zor blades, a brand of cigarettes called Park Lane was on sale. Park Lane cigarettes were machine-packaged, filter-tipped marijuana joints. They came twenty to the cardboard packet, in a conservative presentation, complete with crushproof box, cellophane wrapper, and familiar design—not in the least sportive or coy. The marijuana was of indifferent quality. Connoisseurs, of whom the U.S. Army prime green: remembering the sixties 213

  had very many, derided the contents as factory floor sweepings, and street lore said the cigarettes were assembled by lepers. Joints available at our Tu Do Street repair were of a different or- der. The concierge there always wanted good-quality American laundry soap. For a family-sized box of detergent she would ex- change a packet of well-made joints soaked in opium or clear liquid heroin. Sometimes the additive was brown heroin that bubbled aro- matically under the wrapping paper, sidewinding the joint as one held it. But sometimes it was powdery white and sparkled as it burned. There were no geekish additives like acid, angel dust, or cheap speed, later Communist innovations. These, like fake icons and counterfeit American Zippos with backward lettering, came in with Russian sailors. Vietnamization was cutting down on American military traffic in the Saigon–Ton Son Nhut–Bien Ho conurbation, but there were still enough U.S. armored columns and truck convoys to justify the comfortable existence of a helicopter-borne, on-the-half-hour traffic reporter who could guide his listeners through town. This soldier’s nom de guerre was “Parker Lane,” and he became a figure of legend. In some versions, Parker shared some general’s live-in lotus petal, who got the giggles driving with her boss to the office and confessed all. The brass hat punished Parker with some life-threatening as- signment, transferring him, for example, to the Hanoi Traffic Re- port. In other versions, he thrived. Anyway, as I did not yet quite realize, I was not over there to be Ernie Pyle or Richard Harding Davis. The story I had was the stuff of fiction, and if I could make it worthy fiction I was quits in the scheme of things. If it distracted my compatriots with a glimmer of the insight by which this race survives, if it served truth, then I had done my job, about as much of an accomplishment as I might hope 214 robert stone

  for, and not nearly so easy as I had imagined. But my time there had been short, and I was among people who despised risk and seeing young men whose early deaths had been imposed on them. (There were young women too, who endured horrible deaths, most of them Vietnamese—NVA or VC nurses, for example, daring Communist cadres, or too-popular Catholic-school teachers.) In the hands of those screwballs at Palo Alto Stanford Hospital years before, in Antarctica and Ismailia, I had felt ready for any- thing. Now I wanted to see my kids ride their bicycles. How many times did journalists in the line hear the bitterness of drafted sol- diers, risking it all for their buddies, for their personal honor, even—God help us—for their country, as they had been told and be- lieved? How many times did one hear it: You don’t have to be here, you’re here to make money off it, you could be anywhere you wanted—with your high school and your college—anywhere—but you’re here, you sick son of a bitch, here, because you eat this shit up, don’t you, and I hope you die, you rotten-hearted motherfucker, I hope you die. Many times. Because, of course, why should you be alive when his lovely buddy was now a maggoty shitstain riding a black plastic bag, in an overpriced coffin under a flag, in his welcome-home parade? Diffi- cult to answer. However, as I insist, I had my job and I was doing it. One Friday, prior to crashing a party at the Continental that would celebrate the retirement of a U.S. Air Force general, or else a change of command—something—I crashed the Friday Night Follies. I was merely Major Stone of the South Vietnamese Army without my JUSPAO card, so unauthorized infiltration was necessary. Admission to the Follies turned out to be far less difficult than I had imagined. I felt for the briefers. By this time only hatred of the reporters sus- prime green: remembering the sixties 215

  tained them. The military may train you at apple-polishing and a little artful dodging, but it doesn’t exactly train you to lie. Then again maybe it does. Other correspondents provided what I considered more reliable information about the course of the war. The most important mili- tary operation of the past few months had been an incursion into Laos from a remote province of northwestern South Vietnam. The U.S. had fortified the decommissioned Marine Corps base at Khe Sanh. This time it was not the Marines as garrison but the Army’s famous 101st Airborne, along with a brigade from the Fifth Infantry. The 101s were about the best troops Mac Vee could deploy. So it was rather high profile for any border jumping. Khe Sanh is still probably the best-known battlefield of the American Indochina war. The most beautiful too, although too few had time to notice. I once had something of an argument over this observation, as though such a declaring of a place where so many died must be a play for irony. No. Khe Sanh had become famous because of a nearly two-month siege its Marine garrison endured before the Tet offensive of 1968. The base was athwart the Ho Chi Minh Trail, commanding high ground over the Ashau Valley, close to the Laotian border. Because the Communist effort against it was so fierce, because of its position in the northwest corner of South Vietnam, it invited comparisons with Dien Bien Phu, a battlefield to the north where the French had essentially lost Indochina forever. In late 1967, Khe Sanh’s defense had obsessed Lyndon Johnson. He kept repeating his determination that it not become for the United States what that other place, Dien Bien Phu, had been, the place whose name was an infernal bell no Christian could pronounce, where the heathen played poker without cards for no money. His 216 robert stone

  Texican passes at sounding its tones were a bad Washington in-joke. But it was no joke to him; Khe Sanh was not that goddamn place, nor would it be, because its fall would disgrace the name of Johnson retroactively to
the first generation and henceforward. The president ordered a replica of the Khe Sanh base constructed in sand and placed in the White House Situation Room so that he could oversee the fortunes of its defense at any hour. He had ordered the Commu- nist troops investing it subjected to heavy bombing from air bases as far from the scene as North Carolina. People who were there (Michael Herr, for instance) knew that to be there was worse than could be imagined from Washington, and remember it through rings of fire. “Maybe memory distorts,” Michael said. Six months after the siege, by which time the Communists had removed their troops to attack the urban area near the coast, the place was bucolic again. Marine patrols discovered, it is averred, that Communist troops around Khe Sanh had always controlled its water sources and could have closed them off at any time. The month after that, the base was dismantled. Secretly, no announcements. Khe Sanh was just a mountain, it wasn’t going anywhere. Like its lovely companion peak Apbac, which came to be known as the American Slayer, it didn’t really command anything except a succes- sion of ghostly, foggy mornings, oblivious of the dead. Years of the morning’s fog and the evening’s mist rose and fell to the lamenting of wolves turned ghoul and tiger spirits. Evangelical missionaries to the Lao and the Hmong there saw devils. Nevertheless, in early 1971, the can-do Seabees turned to with their jackhammers and articulated loaders to provide Khe Sanh—now ever so strategic again—with contoured ammo pits and latrines and sheds, with helipads and A-9 landing strips. It was all to be part of the Amer- ican support effort behind a military operation called Lam Son 719. prime green: remembering the sixties 217