by Bing West
“That is Saigon,” Suong laughed. “How would I pay them? Or arm them? Besides, they’d be a bunch of amateurs and my men would have to spend months training them. We wouldn’t be able to rely on them. They’d get lost in the My Hués, and they might run away.
“No, it would be a lot better if Sergeant Mac and the Marines would come back.”
“But the Marines you knew are gone,” I said. “Mac is a civilian in a university in the United States.”
Suong spent several minutes digesting that piece of information. He found it hard to imagine a sergeant in any army being admitted to a university. After a pause, he spoke again.
“Well, Garcia is on Binh Thuy Island and he still visits the village, and there are a few others. Perhaps you could all spend the night with us in Binh Nghia?”
A boat ferried us from Binh Yen Noi to the island, where we met Garcia. He said he had gone back to the United States but after six months of garrison duty he “couldn’t hack it any more” and asked to be sent back to the combined unit. He did not like what he had found on Binh Thuy. The replacements for McGowan and the old group had brought with them the antagonistic attitude of line troops toward the villagers. The only Vietnamese whom they liked was Joe, who was still with the unit and doing very well in school. Garcia said he spent a lot of time in Binh Nghia, away from the other Americans.
The only other American from the old group in Binh Thuy was Foster, whose stolen watch had been returned after the intervention of Captain Dang. Like Garcia, he enthusiastically responded to Suong’s invitation. But there was something he had to do along the way.
So the four of us set out to walk the short mile back to the ferry crossing to Binh Nghia, Foster in the lead and taking us by a roundabout way, across the green paddies under a hot July sun at a leisurely pace, Benoit stopping often to chat with villagers, we others envying the ease of his tongue and the grace of his manner.
We came out on the river bank just south of Binh Nghia at the tiny hamlet of Chau Tu, and Foster stopped and stood for a minute looking at the quiet, tree-shaded houses in front of him and the people bent over in the paddies and the water buffalo wallowing in the mud at a low spot in the river and the dragonflies droning in the summer afternoon.
“This is my hamlet,” he said. “I’m the only American who comes here. Watch this.”
From a pocket in his utilities he drew out a snowball wad of plastic explosive with a short piece of fuse.
“The people here are really poor,” he said. “They have to go the farthest, so they get the worst fishing spots out at sea. I try to help out by bringing fresh fish.”
With that he ignited the fuse and dropped it in the water. The explosion brought black mud bubbling to the surface and boys streaming out of nowhere shouting “Gene! Gene!” even before they could see him. To the bank they raced, shed their clothes and plunged laughing in. Soon their dives recovered several small fish, but many boys were still empty-handed. So the corporal walked the bank with a dozen naked urchins traipsing behind. He would peer into the water and locate schools of minnows, raise his M-16, and fire into their midst. The concussion would shock them, and the boys would jump in and scoop them out.
In the midst of this laughing, giggling procession, we entered the hamlet. The shooting and the shouting had brought the people to their doorways and, when they saw Foster, they simply waved and went about their business. One small, sturdy lad, his breeches stuffed with minnows, was allowed to carry Foster’s M-16, now unloaded, and he walked at the head of our small procession, turning constantly to joke with Foster, finally running pell-mell up the trail and disappearing into a small grove of banana trees. Foster did not seem concerned about his rifle and we ambled up the trail, turning in where the boy had gone.
In front of us stood a small, thatched house with Foster’s rifle propped against one of the outside walls. The boy had his back to us, tugging at his young, attractive mother, who stood in the open doorway, looking pleased and flustered and trying to shoo her son away while smiling. The smile was all for Foster, who grinned back, said a few words and settled comfortably into a chair beneath a palm tree, gesturing to us to sit down on a bench nearby. The young woman had gone inside and was bustling about preparing hot tea and snacks. While we waited, Foster talked.
“Everybody has sort of his favorite place and favorite family. This is mine. Nguyen Co was in the combined unit with me. He was a good man with a BAR, and one morning after a long night he took me back here to meet his wife and boy and have breakfast. Co and I were tight. It got so I spent as much time here as I did at the fort. He got killed in a firefight near My Hué about four, five months ago. A grenade got him.
“That was pretty tough on the family. I mean, there’s no one to look out for them. The government didn’t give them too much, so I sort of drop around and help out. Little Nguyen’s a real good kid. We have a lot of fun together. He’s the best swimmer in the hamlet. You saw him diving for those minnows. He and Joe are best buddies, so he stays at the fort with me a lot.”
The mother came out of the house with a tray of food and drinks. When we had each taken our cup, Foster put the empty tray on his knees and from six different pockets drew C-ration cans of fruit and meat, along with several packets of cocoa and sugar. He piled them all on the tray and handed it with a wink to the boy, who winked back and walked into the house.
“It’s not what you might think,” he said. “I’m not shacking up here. I don’t think I could if I wanted to, which I don’t. Besides, if I did, I might spoil her chances of remarrying. And the Cong around here are mean bastards. I don’t want to give them an excuse to fuss with this family. So I never go inside that house. Whenever I visit, I sit right out here. If I’m going to eat, I eat off a tray, right here.”
We finished our drinks, thanked the woman and walked the short distance to Binh Yen Noi. There the villagers fed us well, and there were several bottles of beer drunk while old anecdotes were retold for the fifth or tenth time and Benoit almost succeeded in convincing me to swallow a red pepper whole. In the growing dusk we left the hamlet and trudged up PF Hill, looking forward to a full night’s sleep.
But Suong was on the radio.
“Do you know what he said?” Benoit asked. “He just told the district chief that he has a strong American squad at his position and he would like to send an ambush to My Hué. Now if we don’t go, he’ll lose face, almost like he was lying to the district chief. I think he’s determined to show us that things aren’t going well.”
“Don’t worry,” Foster said. “We’ll protect you.”
With four PFs and two Marines, we walked off the hill at eleven that evening. Luong was in charge of the patrol and he took point, stopping at every trail intersection to run his hand through the dust for possible trip wires. As we cut across dunes, he cast for tracks in the sand. When we waded swollen paddies, he went first and left ripples without splashes. We set in at a river crossing point in My Hué, and, sure enough, the enemy were signaling with lights from the far shore.
Luong grinned and the PFs and the Marines lay down in a row and waited for a boat to cross. And waited and waited. The light kept flashing on and off, on and off, while somewhere near us a contact man with a lantern must have sat inside his house and, having seen or heard us, was not about to commit suicide by striking a light. Luong thought they might try to cross regardless, but they didn’t. We waited until dawn, when the fishermen and their sons stumbled sleepy-eyed to their boats and, upon seeing us sitting in the foliage, set off with haste down-river. It was obvious the PFs weren’t visiting as frequently as they had the previous year.
Garcia had snuggled in the shadows of a doorway, and when the hamlet started to stir, a fisherman opened the door and Garcia lurched sideways. Thinking Garcia was some drunk who had not made it home after a bad night, the fisherman gave him a hearty kick. Surprised and shaken to find himself sprawled in the dust, Garcia sprang up, giving his wide-eyed and dumbfounded antagoni
st a shove which sent him reeling back into his house. That set off the fisherman’s wife, who was not about to be intimidated by some grubby American, and Garcia found himself evicted from the premises in a torrent of verbal abuse, despite his best efforts to strike back with single-syllable swearwords. That confrontation ended any hope for the ambush and we left, Luong being soundly pummeled on the way back by a pretty young miss when he kidded her about a possible pregnancy.
At the edge of the Binh Yen Noi hamlets we met Suong, who was taking his platoon into the My Hués in the hope that some Viet Cong had entered after we left. He asked if we were satisfied that the enemy were trying to come back into the village. We said yes, but we thought he could handle it. Suong growled and said he could handle it a whole lot better with even a few Marines, meaning he would like to have Garcia and Foster if there were no chance McGowan would return with a full squad—an allusion to the echelons of support he knew were guaranteed by theU.S. military if even one American was in danger. After a half hour of discussion, Suong finally and reluctantly accepted the notion that we were civilians and could not order Marines back to Binh Nghia. We said good-bye, promising to visit again.
On our return to the area in October, we learned that Foster had become a hero and a legend. The people told us first—the boatman who was taking us from district upriver to Binh Thuy and Binh Nghia, and his other passenger, an old grandmother who wanted her picture taken. Later the PFs and village officials filled in the story.
It seemed that during September enemy activity on Binh Thuy Island had picked up considerably. At night small bands would circle near the fort and fire their newly acquired AK-47 Russian automatic rifles to scare the defenders and impress the villagers. A Viet Cong with a megaphone, nicknamed “Rudy Vallee,” came three times a week to exhort the PFs to desert and to curse the Marines in pidgin English. Unable to ambush Rudy, the Marines acquired a German shepherd and Rudy had not returned since. The PFs were bringing in reports of VC movements in every hamlet.
Then on a routine patrol one evening, Foster, who was walking point, had the uneasy feeling that he was being stalked. He was on a well-traveled trail hemmed by houses, and each time he paused to listen he had the prickly sensation that another person was pausing opposite him in one of the backyards. Worse still, Foster was convinced he was outclassed. The man was moving through backyards and over fences at Foster’s pace and with less noise.
Foster wanted to give it up, to quit before he found out just how good the man was, to turn around and go back. But behind him there were two Americans and two PFs, and he didn’t know how to tell them he was afraid without being laughed at. He was uncertain. He didn’t want to go on.
So he stopped, gesturing to those behind him to keep their distance. With his safety off, his finger on the trigger, his body in a slight crouch, he stood ready to fire at the slightest sound or movement. He stood and refused to budge, and the man came looking to kill him and brushed ever so slightly against the side of a house and Foster tore loose a full magazine of tracers.
The man screamed as a searing bullet cut into him, while Foster in his fear slammed another magazine into his rifle, sending twenty more bullets spitting forth in search of the sound. Then the other patrollers joined in and the man was driven into the ground.
The man was alone. Foster picked up an AK-47 which lay beside the body and turned to leave. But the highly excited PFs would not hear of it. They insisted on carrying the body back to the marketplace at Binh Thuy. All the next day, villagers came from both Binh Thuy and Binh Nghia to stare at the dead man in disbelief. Mr. Minh, the hamlet chief, presented Foster with a case of cold beer. The people smiled and bowed when he walked by; the children swarmed after him; and the son of his dead PF friend from Chau Tu came to the fort to share in the glory of his American foster father.
It was no ordinary VC who lay in the marketplace; it was a man whose reputation was feared throughout the district, a killer who had been the PF leader in the village but who in 1963 had gone over to the VC and had since risen to become a company commander. He had long terrorized his former PF colleagues, for he liked to hide in their houses at night to catch them alone when they came to visit their families. At first he would try to persuade them to join him, but later he came just to kill. Mr. Minh estimated that over the years the renegade had executed close to two dozen PFs. Foster was a hero.
He repeated the shooting performance a few weeks later, when he was taking a patrol along a treeline bordering some paddies swollen with rain. It was fairly open terrain and, ahead of him several meters, Foster saw a few men with weapons, chatting idly. Thinking they might be PFs out where they shouldn’t have been, he whispered, “Nghia Quan? PF?” The group froze, then lit out running. Foster raised his M-16 and fired, saw a man go down, crouch back up and hobble on. A general firefight ensued, each side testing the strength and position of the other. At first Foster thought his five-man group might get the worst of it and was preparing to pull out, when the enemy fire slackened. Foster’s group then decided the enemy were just trying to provide cover and time for their wounded comrade, and so pressed in. Two sides fighting for the life of a man.
When the VC flinched first and pulled out, the fight became a search in the paddies. A PF found a weapon lying in the open, left perhaps in the hope that its souvenir value might be enough and the PFs and Marines would turn back. But they knew the man was near, and that his friends had left him. The searchers were passing by a dark mudhole filled with water when they heard a splash close at hand. The Marine at rear guard wheeled with his shotgun, firing as he turned. Alone, with a leg mangled by bullets, the man had sought refuge in the hole. But he slipped and splashed and died in the mud on a warm summer’s evening.
The villagers knew that man also, and news of his death added to Foster’s prestige. It seemed for the first time to the villagers of Binh Thuy that Americans could fight in a way that meant something and that their PFs were beginning to hunt the VC, instead of the other way around.
Pressure from the enemy side slackened significantly in the hamlet adjacent to the fort, but remained high in the outlying areas. The rice was high and the VC wanted the harvest. Word was passed to the fort that a band of thirty were taxing each night in Chau Tu, Foster’s hamlet.
So he set out that same night to protect that hamlet, taking two Marines with him. Their trip across the paddies and through the treelines went quietly enough, but as they neared the hamlet, a series of flares silhouetted them. They hunkered down to wait for the illumination to flicker out. But it persisted, along with the dull sounds of artillery, for the Viet Cong were harassing the district headquarters, four miles to the southwest.
The Marine at point had just decided to move on despite the light when he saw a face peering at him from some nearby bushes. Just as he turned to warn the others, Foster, hearing something, stood up and said, “Nghia Quan? Nghia Quan?”
That was how Foster died, making sure he did not shoot one of his PF friends by accident. The Viet Cong who shot him ran away.
1969–70
It was growing dark on a cold, drizzly evening a year later when Benoit and I walked back into Binh Nghia. We had planned to spend the night with a combined unit across the river, but at five that evening Marine headquarters had called, refusing to allow two unarmed civilians to stay in a hamlet where there were Marines and PFs. A colonel in an air-conditioned office said it was too dangerous. Having been evicted, we hitchhiked part way and walked the rest into Binh Nghia, only to find PF Hill deserted.
“What do we do now?” Benoit asked.
“Find some bushes and hide until dawn?” I said.
“I think we might be a little bit too late,” Benoit replied. “Look behind you.”
We were standing at the foot of the hill, with open paddies on three sides, and out of the treeline on the fourth side about fifteen yards away had stepped a group of men dressed in black pajamas with a few odd bits of khaki, carrying assorted types of
weapons and staring hard at us.
“Know any of them?” Benoit asked.
“No. They’re not PFs. If they’re Cong, I want to see you talk us out of this.”
“It’s simple. I’m going to tell them there’s a reward on you and I’m turning you in.”
Not one had raised his weapon, and as they crowded in around us, they were staring the way one does when trying to recall the name of a person he has met casually once or twice. I stood, as usual, dumb and foolish while Benoit carried on his usual rapid-fire conversation, but I was damned if I was going to ask him what our status was, and at length, when he thought he had kept me on tenterhooks long enough, he said:
“Remember last year Suong told us he couldn’t be bothered with a people’s self-defense force? Well, you’re looking at part of them. They say Suong has over one hundred of them under arms. They remembered us from before. They knew we looked familiar. They just couldn’t place us.”
We found Suong together with his PF platoon near the marketplace in Binh Yen Noi Number 3. He greeted us warmly and told me he had a surprise for us: we were going to My Hué. I said, “Oh no, we’re not; I know the VC are still there. He doesn’t have to prove it each year we visit him.” When Benoit phrased my objections in colorful Vietnamese, the PFs howled with laughter. Suong said they were going to My Hué. We could stay where we were, alone. We would be safe—probably.
So we all went to My Hué, arriving shortly before nine while lights were still on and the children were playing along the main trail and radios were blaring. Suong didn’t even have a point ten yards out in front of us and Luong was carrying his rifle casually by the barrel. We came to the cluster of houses where Colucci’s RD friend, Truong, had been killed almost three years earlier and Suong turned off the path.
Amid smiles of welcome we entered a medium-sized house and sat down to thimbles of whiskey. I looked at Suong to see if he had already been drinking. He caught my disapproving glare and laughed delightedly, explaining to Benoit that this was his surprise. How did I like being treated like an old grandfather in My Hué, where, when he had first met me three and a half years earlier, we had fought our way in and out, night after night?
