White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  Dinh flashed him one of his rare grins, brushing debris from his uniform. ‘Fear is debilitating, Comrade. You will have to learn not to capitulate to it so easily.’ There was no censure in his voice, only amusement. ‘Let us see if the jeep is still roadworthy. If it isn’t, we have a long trek ahead of us.’

  Together the four of them managed to rock the jeep back on to its wheels.

  ‘The petrol tank is still intact,’ one of the NVA officers said optimistically. ‘I don’t think we’re going to have a problem.’

  They didn’t. Ten minutes later, with freshly hacked saplings camouflaging the hood, they were trundling north, again.

  ‘In another few minutes we shall be on a very safe section of the trail,’ Dinh said to Gavin in confidence.

  Gavin looked across at him suspiciously. ‘We’re not going underground again, are we?’

  Dinh grinned again. He was beginning to enjoy Gavin’s company. ‘No, Comrade. For the next few miles we are going to travel by stream.’

  They didn’t take sampans. Instead, the NVA officer at the wheel simply drove into the shallow water, using the bed of the stream as if it were a road, constantly changing gear as he moved from sandy stretches to pebbled beds or to deeper portions.

  ‘These sections of the trail are difficult to spot from the air,’ Dinh said, visibly relaxing. ‘The bushes on either bank give natural camouflage and the water erases all traces of movement immediately. Deeper streams are used to good account as well. Supplies are packed into waterproof containers and floated downstream from one supply post to another.’

  Gavin believed him. He was beginning to think that there was nothing that he now wouldn’t believe about NVA ingenuity.

  The next day, at a busy supply post, they exchanged their battered jeep for a six-wheel-drive ZIL army truck.

  ‘In which we will drive into Hanoi,’ Dinh said, highly satisfied at the progress they were making. ‘There is no more jungle to negotiate. From here on we should experience no more delays.’

  He was overly optimistic. Within an hour they came under attack again, this time from three F-4s. They survived the attack unscathed, but those travelling in trucks ahead of them were not so lucky.

  It was dusk the next day when Dinh prodded him lightly in the side and said, ‘You’ve been asleep for the last hour, Comrade. If you sleep any longer, you will miss our entry into Hanoi.’

  Gavin shot upright in his seat, his heart beginning to beat in thick, short strokes. Hanoi! Whatever he had envisaged when he had left Paris for Saigon, it had not been this. To be riding in a Russian truck, accompanied by three NVA officers, in to Hanoi! It was incredible! Unbelievable!

  The shanty houses of the suburbs gave way to gracious stone-built mansions. On their right-hand side the broad, deep waters of the Lake of the Restored Sword gleamed dully. On their left-hand side, as more houses came into view, Gavin could see that despite their original grandeur, their façades were now crumbling, their paintwork peeling.

  ‘Your first night in Hanoi will be one of comfort,’ Dinh said, watching Gavin’s reactions to everything with interest. ‘The French built a splendid hotel in the city centre, the Metropole. A room has been booked there for us. You will excuse me this evening if I leave you almost immediately. I have to report to my superiors.’

  Gavin nodded, unable to drag his gaze from the sombre streets. They drew up outside a huge, grandiose building that looked unutterably drab. But still Gavin was overwhelmed at his good fortune. He was in Hanoi. Hanoi. With luck he would soon be interviewing General Giap. Possibly even Ho himself.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  As she sat on the plane, flying from San Francisco to Washington, Abbra knew that she was on the verge of permanently alienating herself from her father-in-law. He regarded all antiwar demonstrators as traitors, and she knew that when he discovered she’d been involved in the march on the Pentagon, he would be both bewildered and outraged.

  She gazed out of the window at banks of cloud and an autumn sun and wondered what Lewis’s reaction would be. He had always believed implicitly that American involvement in Indochina was both a moral and a political necessity. Would he still think so? She had no way of knowing.

  The plane began to descend through the clouds towards Washington’s National Airport. She had no friends in the city; she knew no one who would be participating in the march. Scott would have come with her if it weren’t football season but she was no longer able to ask Scott to accompany her anywhere. Their days of easygoing camaraderie were over.

  She clenched her hands tightly in her lap. She would not think of Scott. Thinking of Scott was almost as painful as thinking of Lewis. Instead, she would think of the days ahead of her in Washington. She would need to check into a hotel, to find out where the meeting point for the beginning of the march was to be, and she would need to keep an eye out for other women who were in the same position as herself, women whose husbands were also either prisoners of war or missing in action in Vietnam.

  In the first class cabin of a Boeing 707, Serena slipped on eyeshades and stretched her long, suntanned legs out in front of her. There were another six hours before the plane was due to land at Washington’s Dulles International Airport, and she intended spending the time asleep.

  A stewardess asked her quietly if she would like a blanket and she nodded. It was 19 October. As the planned march on the Pentagon was to take place on the twenty-first, it meant that she would have to wait until the twenty-second before travelling on to Atlantic City and visiting Chuck Wilson.

  She had not communicated with him since April, when he had written to say that he had been discharged from the hospital and was going to his uncle’s ranch for the summer to recuperate. For all she knew, he could still be in Wyoming. If he was, she had no address for him, and if his uncle’s last name wasn’t Wilson, tracking him down would be impossible.

  She began to drift off to sleep, wondering why his letters had been so curt and odd in tone, wondering if the antiwar demonstration in Washington was going to be similar to the one she had participated in in London, wondering what the French girl would be like who had written to her in response to her Washington Post letter, and wondering if they would manage to meet, as they had arranged, at the Lincoln Memorial before the march began.

  Gabrielle drove into Washington on Route 46 with the same nonchalant expertise with which she drove in Paris. Their gig the night before had been in Baltimore, and though Radford still planned on making the march, there had been problems with the sound system and he had been forced to stay behind, ironing out the kinks.

  It was a year and one month since Gavin had dropped so precipitately from sight. Since then there had been not a word about him, not even a rumour. Nhu’s letters still arrived, strained and distressed, but she never mentioned him. Gabrielle did not believe he was dead. Why was she so certain that he was still alive?

  However hard she tried, she could find no logical reason. Her conviction was based on instinct, nothing more. Her hands tightened fractionally on the wheel. Instinct was something that had never failed her, and she was willing to stake her life that it was not failing her now. Gavin was alive. All she could do was live through the time until he returned home.

  She turned left, heading towards the Lincoln Memorial. Was that true? Was passively living through the intervening time all that she could do? She was half Vietnamese. Saigon had been her home, was, in her heart of hearts, still her home.

  ‘Mon Dieu,’ she whispered softly under her breath. She began to slow down, no longer able to concentrate on her driving, her heart racing.

  Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Merciful heaven, how could she have been so stupid as to not have thought of the obvious months earlier? She would go to Vietnam. She would make contact with whoever it was who had told Nhu that there would be no further news of Dinh and Gavin. She would follow the route that they had taken, and she would find Gavin herself!

  The crowds were enormous. Ab
bra had never seen so many people all gathering together with one purpose in mind. The crush had been so dense that it had taken her over an hour to walk from her hotel in N Street, close by the White House, to the rallying point of the march, the Lincoln Memorial, a little over a mile away. The lawns around the memorial were black with people camping out. The majority of them were long-haired, and outlandishly dressed in Afghan coats and love beads, but a surprising number were no longer young.

  There were middle-aged and middle-class protesters among the throng. The angular, silver-haired figure of Dr Benjamin Spock, the baby expert, was clearly visible, as were other notable personalities. Abbra caught a fleeting glimpse of both Arthur Miller and Norman Mailer before the throng closed around them and they were lost to view amid a sea of waving placards.

  Some of the placards had pictures of President Johnson on them, and were headed with the words WAR CRIMINAL in scarlet print. Others bore the words OHIO STATE, GET US OUT OF VIETNAM, BRING OUR BOYS HOME, MAKE LOVE NOT WAR, and STOP KILLING, STOP IT NOW.

  A large contingent jostling near her was carrying red and white flags with yellow stars on them. She stared at the flags for a moment, puzzled, and then understanding dawned. They were Viet Cong flags. Horrified, she began to push through the crowd away from them. She was against the war, and didn’t care who knew it, but that didn’t mean that she had become a Viet Cong supporter, and she didn’t want to be mistaken for one.

  As the crowd began to move off, heading towards the Arlington Memorial Bridge, Abbra saw a girl who looked as bemused as she herself felt. Elegant and willowy, with pale blond hair falling straight down her back, she stood nearly a full head taller than most of those milling around her. A sumptuous wolf-fur coat protected her from the October chill, and because she wore it negligently thrown open, with her hands thrust deep in her pockets, Abbra could see that the dress beneath the coat was white and ravishingly short, barely skimming her thighs. Knee-high snakeskin boots and a distinctive silk Union Jack scarf completed the ensemble, and looking at her, Abbra wondered if the day would ever come when she, too, would be as stunningly, as effortlessly, sophisticated.

  As the chant ‘Hell no, we won’t go’ was taken up by the thousands around her, Abbra began to squeeze her way across to the girl who, despite the very British scarf, she was sure was Scandinavian.

  ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ she said when she at last reached her. ‘I never imagined so many people would be here. There must be 40 or 50,000 at least.’

  ‘More, probably,’ the girl said with a grin. Her voice was low and attractive, the accent not Scandinavian but decidedly English.

  ‘Do you mind if I walk with you?’ Abbra asked a little shyly. ‘I was nearly swallowed up a few moments ago by a group carrying Viet Cong flags, and though I’m against the war, I don’t want to be seen as a Viet Cong supporter.’

  ‘Oh?’ the girl queried, falling into step beside her. ‘Why not?’

  Abbra paused for a second. She very rarely spoke of Lewis, and never to strangers. Now she heard herself saying with surprising ease, ‘My husband is an MIA.’

  Eyes the colour of smoked quartz held hers. ‘And mine is a POW,’ Serena said, holding out her hand. ‘My flame is Serena Anderson, and I’m very pleased to meet you.’

  Abbra shook her hand tightly. For an insane moment she wanted to cry.

  ‘I’m Abbra, Abbra Ellis,’ she said thickly, knowing that at last she had found someone who understood her suffering, someone with whom she could share her grief and her hopes. ‘Have you been at antiwar demos before?’

  Serena nodded. ‘In London. Outside the American Embassy.’ She flashed Abbra her wide, dazzling smile. ‘I thought the numbers there were enormous, but this is incredible! I was supposed to be meeting another POW wife here. A French girl whom I’ve never met before. If you see anyone wearing a silk scarf replica of the French flag, let me know. It will be Gabrielle.’

  They had reached the bridge and a crisp, chill wind was blowing off the waters of the Potomac. Abbra was wearing a bright red jacket over a dove-grey turtleneck sweater and dark grey trousers, and she pulled the collar of the jacket up high around her throat.

  Serena plunged her hands even deeper into the pockets of her coat. ‘My husband, Kyle, is being held in Hanoi. In Hoa Lo prison.’

  All around them the chant ‘Peace now, peace now’ had been taken up and Abbra had to shout as she replied, ‘My husband’s name is Lewis. He’s a captain and was serving with a four-man mobile advisory team deep in the Delta. He and his men were ambushed on one of the canals shortly after searching a village that was suspected of harbouring North Vietnamese troops. A survivor said that he saw Lewis being taken prisoner by North Vietnamese who had attacked them. That was a little over a year ago.’ Her eyes were suddenly overbright, ‘There’s been no news of him since,’ she finished tightly.

  ‘Jesus,’ Serena said. For a moment she didn’t say anything else. She couldn’t. In coming to the march she had hoped that she would meet another woman in the same situation as herself, and she had met one whose situation was worse. At least she knew where Kyle was. There was even the faint hope that he was receiving her letters. Abbra had no such hopes. At last she said simply, ‘I’m sorry, that’s really tough.’

  The words were trite and inadequate, but as their eyes met, she knew that Abbra understood the depth of feeling that was behind them.

  ‘Do you think there’s going to be any trouble?’ she shouted across to Abbra as she caught her first sight of the thousands of US army troops and state marshals and national guardsmen who surrounded the Department of Defense.

  Abbra had no previous experience of antiwar demonstrations, but she shook her head. ‘No. David Dellinger is the main organizer of the march, and he’s a lifelong pacifist. The purpose is simply to seal off the Pentagon through sheer numbers so that no one can get in or out. Because of the scores of different groups of people taking part – women’s groups and church groups and war veterans and civil rights pacifists, as well as students and black militants and left-wing intellectuals – Dellinger figures that the government will have to recognize how widespread opposition to the war is.’

  They were near enough now to see the rifle barrels being held at half guard by the soldiers, and Serena, remembering the violence that had taken place at the much smaller demonstration outside the American Embassy in London, hoped that her conviction was well founded.

  ‘What would your husband think of all this?’ she asked curiously over the roars of chants of ‘Johnson out! Johnson out!’

  Abbra hesitated for a telltale second, and her cheeks coloured slightly. ‘I guess he wouldn’t like it, but when he comes home, I think that he will understand why I did it.’

  They were no longer moving forward, and the crowd around them were so tightly packed that it was impossible to move more than a few inches to either the left or right.

  ‘The enemy, we believe, is Lyndon Johnson!’ one of the organizers of the march declared ringingly from the Pentagon’s main entrance as the vigil began. ‘He was elected to the presidency as a peace candidate and within three months he has betrayed us!’

  ‘Do you think those things are loaded?’ Serena asked Abbra, her eyes once more focusing on the half-raised rifles.

  Abbra shook her head, a smile of amusement quirking the corners of her mouth. ‘No. How could they be? This is America, Serena. Not some third world dictatorship!’

  As Serena saw some of the young women at the front of the crowd flirting with the soldiers and placing flowers in the rifle barrels, she laughed at her idiocy. ‘Sorry, I have a brother who always suspects the worst where authority is concerned, and some of his paranoia must have rubbed off on me.’

  A wave of singing rippled through the vast throng. ‘All we are saying, is give peace a chance,’ thousands of voices sang in unison. Serena and Abbra sang with them, Abbra deeply grateful that she had not asked how her parents and her father-in-law would react when they knew
of her participation in the march, and Serena far more moved than she had expected to be by the sight of so many Americans demonstrating against a war that their country was committed to.

  ‘Can’t we go any further forward?’ Serena shouted across the roar of voices. ‘Can’t we get inside the building?’

  Abbra shook her head, blue-black hair swinging silkily against the upturned collar of her jacket. ‘No. The permit for the demonstration allows us to assemble on the blacktop parking plaza outside the Pentagon’s main entrance, and on the nearby lawns, but though public visitors are allowed into parts of the Pentagon, none are being allowed in today.’

  Serena was disappointed. Even Lance would have been impressed if she’d been able to enter the American government’s military headquarters.

  An Indian summer sun had broken through the clouds, and all around them coats were being shed. The unmistakable sweet-sweet odour of pot drifted over their heads and, looking around her, Abbra realized for the first time that they were no longer amongst a mixed section of the crowd – women’s groups and church groups and middle-aged intellectuals – but that they were deep in a crush of hippies and left-wing activists.

  She was just about to suggest to Serena that they edge their way back into a more moderate flank, when scuffles broke out a few yards away from them.

  As the singing around them changed to shouting and the crowd began to sway disruptively she shouted, ‘What’s happening, Serena? Can you see?’

  ‘Dellinger!’ a long-haired student in front of her yelled back before Serena could reply. ‘He’s been arrested for sitting in front of troops who ordered him to move on!’

  From that moment the tone of the demonstration changed. The left-wing activists surrounding them began to taunt and jeer the military police who were standing on the wall that separated the lawns from the parking plaza.

  To the left of Abbra a youth wearing a Viet Cong flag tucked into his headband, picked up a stone and threw it at the nearest MP. Other left-wing demonstrators began to follow suit.