White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  He sat on the low pallet in the cell, smoking one of the three cigarettes a day that were given them in Heartbreak. Chuck would tell Trinh that he had been shot down, and that he had not simply abandoned her. Chuck knew how serious they were about each other. He knew that their affair was not just the usual easy-come-easy-go arrangement enjoyed by the vast majority of Americans in ’Nam. He would have contrived a two-day pass to Saigon and would have gone straight to the International to tell her what had happened.

  She would be waiting for him. She wasn’t Serry, who he couldn’t imagine waiting faithfully for anyone for even twenty-four hours. She was loyal and steadfast, and he was certain that she would wait years for him if necessary.

  His body never recovered from the severity of the torture he had undergone on his arrival, and all through the long, tedious, pain-filled days of spring, the knowledge that Trinh was waiting for him sustained him.

  He wasn’t taken for questioning again for a long time. He knew the reason. New prisoners were being processed through New Guy Village and into Heartbreak thick and fast. America was obviously escalating the air war and the information to be obtained from shot-down B-52 and F-4 Phantom pilots was far superior to any that could be extracted from a mere helicopter pilot.

  When they came for him again, it wasn’t to try to extract further military information. It was to force him to make a written ‘confession’ that Hanoi could use for the purpose of anti-American propaganda.

  It was just the beginning of the end for him, and he knew it. J-U-S-T D-O Y-O-U-R B-E-S-T fellow prisoners had tapped through the walls to him. T-H-E B-A-S-T-A-R-D-S W-I-L-L B-R-E-A-C Y-O-U. T-H-E-Y B-R-E-A-C E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E E-V-E-N-T-U-A-L-L-Y. J-U-S-T D-O-N-T G-I-V-E I-N T-O T-H-E-M R-I-G-H-T A-W-A-Y. T-A-C-E A-S M-U-G-H A-S Y-O-U C-A-N F-I-R-S-T.

  Kyle had no intention of giving in to them at all. He was taken to Room 19. It had been christened the Knobby Room by men unfortunate enough to have been questioned there. The nickname came from the fist-sized knobs of plaster on the walls designed to absorb the sound of screams.

  The routine was exactly the same as it had been at his earlier interrogation. He was asked to write a statement confessing to war crimes. He refused. He was asked again, and at his second refusal his arms were once more yanked behind him and strapped tight and high at the elbows, almost separating his shoulder blades. His legs were forced into spurlike shackles, and a pipe and strong rope were used to lock his ankles into place.

  As the pain intensified he struggled against it with mental strength. He would not write a statement that could be broadcast by Hanoi Radio. He would not. He would not. He would not!

  When they returned him to his cell he was unconscious. His mute cellmate shook and shuddered, doing nothing to help him, terrified that he himself might be subjected to the same treatment.

  The next day they came for him again. And the next. And the next.

  T-H-R-O-W I-N T-H-E T-O-W-E-L C-I-D came the instructions via the tap code. Y-O-U H-A-V-E D-O-N-E Y-O-U-R B-E-S-T. D-O-N-T L-E-T T-H-E B-A-S-T-A-R-D-S C-I-L-L Y-O-U.

  He couldn’t throw the towel in. He was obsessed with shame at how easily he had capitulated when first under torture. He wouldn’t give in to them again. He would endure all the fires of hell, but he vowed not to become a coward or a traitor.

  Y-O-U C-A-N-T D-O A-N-Y M-O-R-E C-I-D the tap code repeated time and time again. N-O O-N-E-I-S G-O-I-N-G T-O T-H-I-N-K A-N-Y L-E-S-S O-F Y-O-U F-O-R M-A-C-I-N-G P-R-O-P-A-G-A-N-D-A S-T-A-T-E-M-E-N-T-S F-O-R T-H-E-M. T-H-E W-H-O-L-E W-O-R-L-D W-I-L-L C-N-O-W I-T W-A-S O-B-T-A-I-N-E-D U-N-D-E-R T-O-R-T-U-R-E.

  Kyle was no longer able to tap messages back. His fingers were broken, his nails wrenched from their beds. Somewhere in the part of his mind that was still functioning he knew he was being a fool. They were killing him by inches. He would never see Trinh again, never be able to take her to America. The knowledge made no difference. He was obsessed by his vow. Consumed by it. He would not be paraded before the world at large as a grovelling, humiliated traitor. He would die first. And he knew he was going to die soon.

  They threw him in a cell in Vegas. He was deprived of sleep, deprived of food and water, and no comforting messages came through the walls. The scar tissue on his back had been sliced open by rubber whips and was festering and crawling with worms; he was covered in boils; every joint in his body was dislocated.

  Then they took him into Room 18. The Meathook Room. He knew what they were going to do to him, and he knew he couldn’t survive it. He thought of Trinh, of how her world would collapse when he did not return for her.

  He was no longer screaming. He couldn’t scream anymore. He could barely whimper. He thought of Serry as she had looked the day they had met at Bedingham, her pale gold hair falling water-straight to her waist. Serry, tall and high-breasted and magnificent, her crystal-grey eyes alight with joyous recklessness.

  From a far distance he could hear the sound of Mick Jagger singing, and feel the warmth of the sun on his face as it filtered through the heavily laden branches of the beech trees. Then there was nothing. No music. No sunlight. He was flying. Flying higher than he had every flown before.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Gavin’s emotions were in turmoil the five days that he spent with Dinh in the tunnels of Cu Chi. His main worry was Gabrielle. Somehow he had to let her know that he was alive and safe, yet he had no reliable means of doing so. Nhu would certainly write Gaby that he had been going to meet Dinh, but he was convinced that Nhu did not know Dinh planned to abduct him, and that she would be as alarmed and perplexed by his continuing absence as Gaby.

  Dinh promised him that Nhu had been told about the mission, and that he was alive and well. Gavin hoped and prayed that he was speaking the truth.

  ‘Because of the urgency with which my report is being awaited in Hanoi, our trek north will not be as arduous as it has been for me in the past,’ Dinh said to him in a moment of rare confidence. ‘Once we leave the Iron Triangle we will travel most of the way by jeep.’

  Tingles prickled down Gavin’s spine. He had heard the phrase ‘Iron Triangle’ before, on American lips. The area was rumoured to cover sixty square miles, and ever since the Second World War it had been a refuge for antigovernment forces. The area was cut by marshes and swamps and open rice paddies, and huge stretches of forest so thick that only foot trails could penetrate them, making penetration by American and South Vietnamese forces nearly impossible. It was in this area, to the northwest of Saigon and bordering the Cambodian border, that the Office of South Vietnam was rumoured to have its headquarters. Was that where they were going? To COSVN? To Viet Cong headquarters?

  He knew better than to ask. Vietnamese were secretive by nature, and asking would end Dinh’s quite extraordinary candour. The mystery of the COSVN’s location obsessed the Americans. Jimmy Giddings had spoken of it as if it were a miniature Pentagon buried deep in the jungle, though when he had done so, Paul Dulles had corrected him, saying that in his opinion COSVN wasn’t a place or a building, but that it was people.

  Whatever it was, the Americans had gone to enormous lengths to find it and to bomb it into oblivion. So far, unsuccessfully. And now Gavin was probably going to walk right into it. If he had to wait a year before he could file his story, it would be worthwhile. He would have the scoop of a lifetime.

  In the five days he spent in the tunnels, the area came under American surveillance three times. The first time, as US troops swarmed over the ground above them, they were so near that Gavin could smell their aftershave lotion.

  ‘How can they not sense our presence?’ he whispered to Dinh as the troops moved away, oblivious that they had been within feet of a North Vietnamese Army platoon, and an entire regiment of Viet Cong.

  A slight smile touched Dinh’s hard, straight mouth. ‘Americans are not attuned to the earth as we Vietnamese. They look for the obvious. Even when they do stumble on to a tunnel entrance, it does not occur to them that it is anything but a short, underground bolt-h
ole. The trapdoors leading into the main complex are rarely discovered.’ He paused, his eyes gleaming in the light from the makeshift oil lamp. ‘And when they are, the discoverer does not usually live to tell the tale.’

  Two days later Gavin saw first-hand what happened when a tunnel entrance was discovered. He and Dinh, and the handful of NVA men who were with Dinh, had been moving steadily through the tunnels in a northwesterly direction. The other occupants of the labyrinthine tunnel system were all Viet Cong. Their numbers staggered Gavin. Entire platoons were moving with ease beneath ground that was rigorously patrolled by South Vietnamese and American forces.

  At one point they rested near a conference chamber where a small group of black-clad figures were in urgent conversation. On seeing Dinh, the leader of the group immediately approached him with slightly awed deference. Gavin could hear words that sounded like the name of a village, and then the Vietnamese name for Americans, but very little else. When the man had returned to his waiting companions, Dinh turned towards Gavin with a slight shrug of irritation.

  ‘We are going to be delayed. The man who just spoke to me is the political commissar of the local defence force. The Americans swooped on his village a little less than an hour ago and in their search they found a tunnel entrance. They have blown the trapdoor away and are at the moment waiting for reinforcements before attempting to explore it further.’

  ‘What will happen when they do? Will they simply lob dynamite down here?’ Gavin asked, trying to sound casual about the prospect of being blasted into eternity.

  ‘Our tunnels are too cleverly made for them to be able to cause much damage to the main complex from an entrance,’ Dinh replied, a glimmer of amusement in his voice. ‘We will go a little nearer and I will explain to you the steps that are being taken in order to turn events to our advantage.’

  They were back to wriggling, bellydown, through the narrow communication tunnels. Above him, vibrating through the dark red earth, Gavin could hear the whump-whump-whump of helicopter rotor blades. They went up a three-foot shaft and into another communication tunnel and then Dinh motioned for him to crawl into a side alcove. Ahead of them Gavin could dimly discern the dark shape of another figure, a Viet Cong with his back towards them, crouched and waiting.

  Ten minutes passed and then, as the sweat began to run into Gavin’s eyes, there came the vibration of voices and feet above them. No matter how many Americans had been brought in by helicopter, only one could enter the tunnel at a time. And when he did, the waiting Viet Cong would kill him.

  Gavin began to shake. The situation was pure nightmare. He had to remain hunched and silent as an American slid into the tunnel to his death. If he called out he would probably be able to save him, but his own life would be forfeit.

  There was the sound of a small earth fall, and Gavin knew the American was beginning his descent into the entrance shaft. All entrance shafts were shallow, little more than three feet in depth, and now Gavin saw why. The American had entered feet first, and as his feet touched the bottom of the shaft, and while his head and torso were still above ground, the Viet Cong several yards ahead of them fired at point-blank range into his undefended lower body.

  Gavin clenched his nails so tight into his palms that he drew blood. At that moment he knew he had lost any innocence remaining to him. From now on he would feel, and be, old beyond his years.

  There were cries of terror and agony from the wounded man, shouts of alarm from his comrades as they struggled to pull him free.

  The Viet Cong in front of them had now turned towards them and was wriggling rapidly back down the tunnel towards the shaft leading into the lower communication tunnel. He paused, his hand flying once again to his pistol as he neared the side alcoves and he saw Gavin’s pale, distinctly western face.

  ‘De ve nha,’ Dinh said softly. The Viet Cong stared hard at him for a moment and then continued his rapid retreat.

  Gavin and Dinh followed hard on his heels. Behind him Gavin could hear the wounded American yelling desperately, ‘For Christ’s sake get me the hell outta here before that goddammed gook cuts off my balls!’

  Gavin knew damn well that when they did get him out, a barrage of firepower would be directed down the tunnel at their rear, and he propelled himself at top speed down the next, slightly deeper shaft, and into the second communications tunnel.

  The Viet Cong had inserted himself into an alcove near the trapdoor above the shaft, and Gavin and Dinh wriggled past him like eels, not pausing until they had reached the trapdoor leading down into the main tunnel network.

  ‘What happens now?’ Gavin spat at him.

  ‘If we are unlucky, they will throw gas canisters into the entrance shaft. The zigzag of the tunnels and the ventilation system will prevent the gas from poisoning the central complex, but there is not much chance that we would escape the fumes. If we are lucky, the Americans will do what they usually do. They will enter the first tunnel with the intention of rooting out whoever it was who injured their comrade.’

  From Dinh’s words Gavin realized with shock that it was possible the Americans still had no idea the tunnel could be anything other than a small, localized hiding place big enough to give shelter to one or two guerrillas.

  In the darkness he could sense rather than see Dinh’s rare smile. ‘You will see that though we are now at a trapdoor leading down into the main tunnel system, this particular tunnel does not stop here. It continues on for another twenty-five yards.’

  ‘Where does it lead?’ Gavin whispered, listening fearfully for sounds of action from the first shaft.

  ‘It leads nowhere. And if my comrades’ plans are successful, it is all the Americans will ever find.’

  There came the sound of first one pair of booted feet dropping cautiously to the floor of the first shaft, and then another.

  ‘We must retreat to the main tunnel network to give my comrade room to manoeuvre. I will tell you what it is he is doing as he is doing it,’ Dinh said, opening the trapdoor and slithering down into the black hole beyond.

  Gavin followed quickly. As far as he was concerned, Dinh could have explained the entire exercise verbally, without having risked both their lives by bringing him along to watch.

  Gunfire reverberated from the first communications tunnel down into the tunnel in which they were lying. Earth showered over them and Gavin was gripped by a new fear, a fear so terrible it almost made him lose control of his bowels. What if hand grenades and dynamite were thrown into the tunnel? What if the earth fell down in a wall both behind and in front of them? What if they were buried alive?

  ‘The Americans are now entering,’ Dinh whispered unnecessarily. ‘My comrade will have removed the trapdoor to the second shaft and will be crouched in it, waiting for them.’

  ‘And the gunfire?’ Gavin whispered back, the blood pounding in his ears, his heart hammering so fast he thought it was going to give out.

  ‘The Americans, firing down the tunnel ahead of them.’

  Gavin wiped dry red clay from his face. The bullets would not find their mark. Their target was not hiding in the darkness ahead of them, but was concealed in a shaft leading downwards.

  ‘What happens when the Americans crawl so far along the tunnel that they come to the shaft?’

  ‘Wait,’ Dinh said, his voice tense. ‘And you will find out.’

  A split second later the roar of an AK-47 blasted Gavin’s eardrums. The whole earth shook around them as first one clip was let off and then another. Screams tore through the dank, enclosed darkness, and Gavin could feel his self-control galloping away from him. He didn’t know if the screams were from the Viet Cong or the Americans, and he didn’t care. He was bathed in pure terror. He wanted out. He wanted out as he had never wanted out before.

  Dinh had begun to move again, wriggling fast and furiously deeper and deeper into the main tunnel network. When at last he reached an alcove and paused, he gasped out, ‘That moment, as the Americans approach the second shaft, is the
most dangerous moment of all. If they had rolled a hand grenade ahead of them and it had fallen into the shaft, then our comrade would have been killed. As it was, he waited until they were nearly on top of him and then he jackknifed out of the shaft in front of them, taking them by surprise.’

  There came the sound of someone wriggling with practiced ease towards them, away from the hell of the continuing screams.

  ‘It will be a long time before the Americans are able to remove their dead and wounded,’ Dinh said comfortably. ‘When they do, and when they pluck up the nerve to investigate again they will find the tunnel empty. The trapdoor to the second shaft will have been replaced, and will be indiscernible to them. They will simply crawl along the tunnel and into the decoy tunnel. At the far end of it they will find an escape hatch, assume that the guerrilla who inflicted the damage on them has escaped by it, and very thankfully regard their mission as complete. The dummy tunnel they have found will be dynamited and destroyed, and there will be no damage to the main network.’

  The guerrilla who had, single-handed, inflicted such horrendous damage on the Americans slithered abreast of them.

  ‘Khong xau,’ Dinh said to him warmly.

  Behind them, beyond the closed trapdoor, dull cries could still be heard. As Dinh and his comrade began to wriggle back towards the main complex of conference chamber and kitchen and sleeping chambers, Gavin followed them, consumed by horror and relief. He no longer felt like a journalist. He felt like a traitor. Not until he experienced an American bombing raid on Phu Hoa village some five days later did his sense of balance return.

  They had left the tunnels behind them and their small party, consisting of himself and Dinh and two of Dinh’s aides, had been travelling northwest at night, by bicycle.

  ‘We will be able to replenish our supplies and rest at Phu Hoa,’ Dinh said to him as the night sky began to pearl to grey, presaging dawn, ‘I will also be able to renew some family contacts. A second cousin of mine is married to the local village chief and I have not seen her since we were children.’