Goodnight Saigon

by Charles Henderson

  “Suzie,” he called to them, and they both waved and smiled at him. Bar girls in Da Nang usually adopted an easy-to-pronounce, American-sounding name like Suzie.

  “You come out tonight?” one called back to him.

  “Maybe for one beer, in a little bit,” he answered as the cyclo pulled to the curb in front of his apartment. He stepped out and paid the driver, who then pedaled away.

  Sparks waited by his gate and watched as the two girls reached the front door of the nearby club where they worked. They both stopped and waved at him again, smiling, and then they disappeared.

  Inside his apartment, the Marine switched on his Sansui stereo system wired to a pair of three-foot-high Pioneer speakers, stripped off his clothes as he walked through the bedroom, tossing the dirty laundry across his double bed, and stepped into the shower. As a staff noncommissioned officer, assigned temporary additional duty to the Marine Security Guard Battalion, he rated certain privileges, among them a private apartment, which he had already made very comfortable in the few weeks he had lived there.

  Sparks planned on eating a light dinner and then having only one cocktail or maybe two at the nightclub, making it an early evening. He knew that several of his Marines and perhaps some of the consulate staff would also be at the club, so he didn’t want to make any bad impressions on any of them. Besides, he planned on getting to work early in the morning so that he could finalize his preparations for the Marine Corps birthday celebration in a couple of days.

  In an hour, he stepped through the nightclub doorway, greeted by the sounds of a recording of Eric Clapton singing I Shot the Sheriff, blaring through a speaker system that would crack plaster. In the red lights of the stage, a young woman with waist-long hair, wearing a green, sequin-covered G-string, danced bare breasted to the music, pointing her fingers and pretending to shoot them like pistols at the several Marines and consulate staff members seated at tables that ringed a small dance floor.

  Busy in booths that lined the walls and alcoves, girls in long gowns and high heels hustled drinks from a host of South Vietnamese soldiers on liberty and an increasingly dwindling number of Americans assigned to various posts in Da Nang. These days, however, several tables sat empty even on the best nights. The girls had to work twice as hard, often for half as much money, since most of their customers now were Vietnamese and knew the tricks. Thus, the girls highly prized an American customer, especially a serviceman, who usually bought plenty of drinks and gave generous tips.

  For Staff Sergeant Sparks and many of the Marines under his charge, the club offered a refreshing change from what they had known in the bars in Hinoko, Kin Village, Ishikawa, Taragawa, and Koza, Okinawa. A dollar here went a much longer way, and nightclub acts could get fairly wild. Girls openly practiced prostitution without fear of police.

  Next to the Philippines and Bangkok, liberty in Da Nang or Saigon still rated as the best and wildest for American soldiers in the Far East. A serviceman with five dollars in his pocket could have a long and happy night in the ville here.

  Walter Sparks ordered his usual, Jim Beam and Coke in a tall glass with lots of ice. Before he could step from the bar and sit down, however, one of the Suzie girls who had waved to him on the street earlier locked her arm in his and accompanied him to the table where three other Americans from the consulate sat. He reminded himself that he would still make it an early evening.

  THAT SAME NIGHT IN SAIGON

  FOR YEARS, THE Caravel and Continental hotels in the heart of Saigon reigned as the primary watering holes of the Western press, foreign diplomatic corps, and South Vietnam’s social elite. The Caravel’s rooftop had often served as an attractive platform from which American television journalists filmed their reports on the war. Over their shoulders the cameras picked up the smoking hills, giving viewers the sense that the reporter faced eminent danger, while in reality he stood only a few steps away from the cocktail bar.

  While the Caravel’s rooftop featured islands of tables set among exotic potted palms on a system of multilevel risers and terraces surrounding a poolside-style outdoor bar, as well as an attractive enclosed rooftop lounge behind French doors, the Continental towered across the way. It overlooked Saigon’s great white opera house and had its own unique character and polished woodwork cocktail center that Westerners had come to call the Continental Shelf.

  Journalists tended to gather at the Caravel while diplomats, American contractors, politicians, and the local elite preferred the Shelf’s social setting. Almost any night would find at the Continental bar a variety of CIA analysts, embassy staff workers, American military officers, and South Vietnamese aristocrats.

  This evening at the Continental Shelf was no different. Several of the United States Embassy junior staff officers gathered near South Vietnam’s former premier, former vice president, and current commander of the nation’s air force, Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky. The mostly youthful group politely listened to his harangue about the resolve of the Republic of Vietnam’s armed forces despite the inept leadership of President Nguyen Van Thieu, the crippling blows dealt to them by the latest United States aid cutbacks, and the ceaseless violations of the Paris Peace Accords by the Communists. He told how the Provisional Revolutionary Government, fronting for the North Vietnamese, only paid lip service to the accords and from the cease-fire’s beginning had used the truce to their advantage to stop South Vietnam from thwarting the Viet Cong and illegal NVA buildups secretly going on.

  “We act only in retaliation to their aggression,” Ky insisted, spilling some of the Scotch whiskey from his glass as he shook the drink with his speech. He stroked his moustache and smiled at his friend, Vietnamese film star Kieu Chinh.

  Kieu nodded in agreement with the former premier. She wanted to believe him. Like so many others in South Vietnam, she depended on his word that the Communists could never overwhelm the superior forces of the Republic of Vietnam. She hoped that one day soon they would defeat the Communists once and for all. Then she could return to her birthplace and home in Hanoi where several members of her family still lived.

  As a girl, she had fled to Saigon where the Geneva Peace Accords and cease-fire of July 20, 1954, dissolved French Indochina and divided Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel, along the Ben Hai River, creating the infamous Demilitarized Zone and two separate Vietnamese nations. From the Viet Minh war to cast out French colonial control and overthrow its puppet regime under Emperor Bao Dai emerged Ho Chi Minh’s continued campaign to ultimately unite all of Vietnam into a single, independent Communist state. For the Communists, the accords of 1954 and those of 1973 represented only steps in an unending effort, with only names and political labels changing. Their revolution never lost step.

  Ho and many of his closest followers had seized upon their dream of a single Communist Vietnam even before the Japanese had invaded French Indochina in World War II. Then in 1946, with weapons, munitions, and funding provided to Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh rebels by the allied powers, Ho launched in earnest his Communist rebellion. In 1954 the Viet Minh may have agreed to the terms of a formal cease-fire and peace accord, but like those adopted in 1973, they meant little. Their agreement paid only lip service to the accords simply to buy time, establish new boundaries, and enable the Communists to launch into a new phase of their protracted revolution. Although the political climate had changed from French to American, the Communist objectives had not changed at all.

  In those twenty years since the first peace accords, Kieu Chinh had found widespread fame on the cinema screen and now enjoyed international notoriety as South Vietnam’s most renowned star.

  Today she boasted friendship with world-famous film and stage actors and with producers and directors in Paris, London, New York, and Hollywood. She accumulated wealth and status in Saigon and attended all the A-list social events, speaking on a first-name basis with her country’s highest leaders, military officers, and foreign diplomats.

  Yet she secretly worried. She knew that with so ma
ny things changing so quickly in her country, the test of its resolve and courage would come very soon. However, she told these thoughts to no one. She knew better. With the winds shifting so quickly, she spoke only with positive caution and hoped that what she heard her longtime friend, Air Marshal Ky, say was true.

  However, these days the words of Nguyen Cao Ky meant little in terms of real political power. Today he mostly had only the reputation of a strutting peacock, fanning his flamboyant tail and boasting outrageously.

  Unseated as Nguyen Van Thieu’s vice president, Ky had built a formidable opposition to Thieu in an effort to claim the presidency for himself. However, in the 1968 Tet Offensive, vital members of Ky’s camp were killed, badly crippling his political machine. Ky never knew for certain if these men had actually died at the hands of the Communists. His South Vietnamese political opponents could have just as easily used the Communist offensive as an opportunity to murder his allies and put his presidential hopes out of reach.

  Thieu, meanwhile, enjoyed the favor of the American government, and with the CIA’s help, he systematically eliminated Ky’s remaining political foundation. Thieu’s campaign proved so effective that all other opposition dropped from the race as well. Concerned that critics at home in the United States would question the legitimacy of Thieu’s election, American agents in Saigon went to guilt-ridden extremes to cover up their dirty work. They even approached political moderate, General Duong Van “Big” Minh and offered him $3 million to stay in the race. Despite the handsome bribe, Minh nonetheless declined the offer, not wanting to lose face in a lost cause. Thieu won the 1971 election virtually unopposed.

  A survivor, Ky recognized where the Americans stood with his political aspirations and wisely accepted his place for the time being. For now, he relaxed his grip on the political reins that remained within his grasp. However, he still enjoyed basking in the spotlight in his decorative but emasculated position as air marshal.

  COLONEL BA SIPPED his tea and gazed at the night sky. Outside the walls of his villa he could hear the sounds of the nightlife, people laughing, cycle motors speeding past his gate, and beyond that the whine of jet engines at nearby Tan Son Nhut Air Base.

  On the table in front of him, in the yellow light of a candle-lit lamp, he thumbed through a stack of papers and waited for his assistant to return with a plate of fruit. He blinked through his glasses and rubbed his narrow face, pondering the impact of what the documents represented.

  Vo Dong Giang, commonly known among the Americans, the Western press, and South Vietnamese leaders as Colonel Ba, now enjoyedthe status of diplomat rather than regimental field commander and intelligence officer in the North Vietnamese Army. Today he proudly held the title of deputy foreign minister, an official member of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, and enjoyed the attention from the Western journalists that it brought.

  He sat as a member of the Joint Military Commission along with Commander in Chief of the Army of the National Liberation Front, the Viet Cong, General Tran Van Tra, his old friend and former field commander. Together, they spoke the Communist policies and positions of the Provisional Revolutionary Government on the commission. However, because of his command of English, Colonel Ba spoke to the world press for his nation.

  “Sit, sit, sit,” he said to his assistant as he set the bowl of bananas, berries, and sliced oranges on the garden table.

  “Look at this,” the colonel said, pushing the stack of papers toward his aide. “They have put it in writing. The politburo in Hanoi debates this as we speak. Next year we will either stand in control of our country, or stand behind bars, if we are lucky and they do not shoot us first.”

  Colonel Ba sat back in his chair, lighting a cigarette in a black, plastic holder, and studied the face of his assistant, a man not much younger than himself and a soldier of significant combat experience too. He trusted the man’s opinions.

  “I knew of this weeks ago,” the aide said. “I worry that too many people now talk about it. Many of our soldiers.”

  “They know where their bread is buttered,” Colonel Ba said and laughed, popping a slice of banana in his mouth. “Besides, we have nothing to say or do about it. General Tran only gave this to me so we could make our own plans.”

  “The politburo remains divided though,” the aide said.

  “Of course. The doves must be allowed to speak,” Colonel Ba said arrogantly. “But we both know how it will end. Party First Secretary Le Duan and revolutionary hero General Vo Nguyen Giap still speak the voice of Ho Chi Minh. We will attack next year with absolute resolve. There will be no turning back. We will utterly win or lose this war.”

  The aide had never heard anything negative spoken by Colonel Vo Dong Giang, not in the battlefields west of Da Nang nor in the privacy of his colonel’s home, until now.

  “Lose?” the aide said. “Sir, how can you consider we could ever lose? Our revolution is without end until we succeed with unification of Vietnam.”

  “The revolution will always continue,” Colonel Ba said, “but under what circumstances? Generals Tran Van Tra and Van Tien Dung, along with First Secretary Le Duan, himself, devised this plan with nothing remaining in reserve. All of our military equipment and resources are committed to the front line with this campaign. They must be in order to strike at once throughout the region. Thus their name for it, Campaign 2/75: The Blooming Lotus.

  “Those dirty Russians will give us nothing more. We received our last shipment from them nine months ago. This while the South Vietnamese have the millions of tons of munitions and supplies left by the Americans, and the millions of tons of munitions and supplies the Americans shipped to them after that and continue to ship to them.”

  “We should wait, then,” the aide said.

  “For what?” Colonel Ba said.

  “For a better time, when we have reserves,” the aide said.

  “The Russians do not have the money to keep giving us what we need,” Colonel Ba said. “They have their troubles.

  “No. The generals are correct with this plan. It has just come to this, our moment of truth.”

  Colonel Ba then took a newspaper and tossed it on top of the papers in front of his aide.

  “Meanwhile, our friend Henry Kissinger tells the American Congress that those dirty Russians are giving us more, 150 percent more,” Colonel Ba said. “That bastard Ford wants to increase aid and probably land troops too, if we knew the truth of it.

  “We count on the American government, however, to help ensure our success. Consider that in 1973, when we enacted the Paris Peace Accords, the United States Congress authorized $2.2 billion in aid to South Vietnam. They have cut that aid by half each year since, which communicates their people’s strong discontent. Their cutting aid now to $700 million for this fiscal year has had a telling psychological effect on South Vietnam’s government and ultimately on its military forces. We see this and count on it.”

  Vo Dong Giang leaned over the table and pointed at the stack of papers. “Our army will make a proving strike somewhere on the border next month,” he said. The colonel again studied the face of his aide, smiling at the look of enthusiasm his subordinate now tried to hide.

  “If no one reacts,” Colonel Ba continued, clenching the black plastic cigarette holder in his teeth, smoke puffing from his mouth with each word that he spoke, “our forces will make another probe, this time, much more deeply, and this time they will hold the objective, an air field, in January. If the Americans do not react, then we can gamble that they also will do nothing at all when we launch the campaign in the spring.”

  The veteran colonel sat back in his chair and turned his face up at the night sky, enjoying the cool breeze of the evening.

  “For now, though,” Colonel Ba said, “we should enjoy this peaceful moment.”

  Chapter 3

  FIRST STRIKE

  CAMP BUTLER, OKINAWA—SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1974

  A WARM AROMA OF coffee brewing greeted Steven Lynn
Tingley at 6:30 a.m. as he stepped through the doorway of his workplace at Marine Corps Base, Camp Smedley D. Butler. The twenty-year-old corporal liked to start his routine in the central bureau and headquarters of the Joint Public Affairs Office, Okinawa, at least an hour early on Saturdays. The extra time allowed him a greater likelihood of completing chores by noon, when the shop regularly stood down for weekend liberty.

  Tingley’s office functioned as the official source of public information and internal communications for all Marine Corps activities on Okinawa, and the entire III Marine Amphibious Force, primarily composed of Third Marine Division, Third Force Service Support Group (formerly Third Force Service Regiment), and First Marine Aircraft Wing—approximately fifty-six thousand Marines and their equipment. Among its functions, the Joint Public Affairs Office published the Okinawa Marine newspaper and provided civilian press with news accounts, feature stories, and photographs of III MAF Marines in action.

  The articles and images that the office released came from a small legion of approximately thirty Marine Corps reporters and photojournalists, called combat correspondents, assigned to key frontline units deployed throughout the Far East. These combat correspondents often reported and photographed initial engagements whenever Marine Corps units became embroiled in a conflict, usually long before any civilian media could arrive on the scene to cover the story.

  The freshly made coffee’s inviting smell raised a smile on Steve Tingley’s face. Rarely did anyone ever arrive at work ahead of him, especially on a Saturday morning. Thus, seeing the lights on and coffee already in the pot surprised the young corporal, a tall, neat-freakish Marine from Matoon, Illinois, who oversaw the majority of the Joint Public Affairs Office’s clerical administration. Although trained as a journalist, Tingley readily told anyone that he did a much better job managing correspondence, balancing budgets, maintaining a fully indexed, cross-referenced and color-tab-organized system of files, and helping out with community relations than he ever did writing news or feature stories. However, he did pride himself on his photographic skills.