Goodnight Saigon

by Charles Henderson

  The sudden silence startled Le Van Reung. Then came the moans and cries from the dying. Reflexively, trying to bury his emotions and move his mind from the horrible presence, the guerrilla began to hum a song about fishermen that his mother used to sing. The sight of such massive slaughter made the soldier’s stomach turn, and the hardened veteran of more than ten years of close and ugly fighting had to shift his eyes from the gory scene below him and turned their attention to his smoking machine gun. He said nothing to his assistant. He wanted to make no impressions at all. So he simply busied his fingers as he hummed the old song, checking the weapon, careful to not burn his hands on the hot metal. While death came in his life almost daily, he had never celebrated killing.

  BRIDGE REPAIRS AT EASTERN EDGE OF CHEO REO

  THE SHARP TASTE of vomit stayed on Nguyen Manh Tuan’s pallet, like red wine stain on a white shirt. He could not rid his tongue of its nastiness no matter how much he spit. Acid fumes from the foul spew seemed to color the smell of everything that entered his nostrils too.

  While only vacuous liquid had refluxed this time, it had burned his throat and sinuses much worse than when the lieutenant colonel had upchucked the greater portion of his lunch just a half hour earlier. Drizzling water out of his canteen, he soaked the green bandana that he had previously worn tied across his face to stop the road dust and now wiped his brow, eyes, cheeks, and nose with it. The cool wetness against his flushed skin felt good. Then he spat again, trying to clean from his mouth more of the bad-tasting, sick-stomach residue.

  He had just finished taking yet another short stroll, one of several already this day, among the bushes and brushy mounds that spread on each side of the road west of Cheo Reo, where he had surreptitiously cleared his bowels and his stomach. As he meandered back toward his stalled unit, rubbing the damp kerchief on his throat and neck, he noticed a familiar figure among a group of soldiers, plodding along the traffic-jammed roadside.

  “Colonel Tuan, when you have finished your business, come speak to me,” Colonel Le Khac Ly said to the approaching artillery commander, sighing as he collapsed onto the passenger seat of Nguyen Manh Tuan’s parked jeep and then unlacing his hot and dusty boots.

  “Sir,” Tuan said as he wiped his mouth with the wet bandana and then spread the green cloth on the hood of his jeep to dry. “I am pleasantly surprised to see you.”

  “Thank you, but it is not a pleasant mission that brings me here, Lieutenant Colonel Tuan,” Ly said, stretching his legs while still seated and letting his socked feet dangle and cool in the breeze. “I have walked nearly thirty miles in the past day and a half, working my way up here to take charge of the madness that has caused our column to sit still and fester while the enemy increasingly harasses our flanks and surely closes on us at this very moment.”

  “That is why I am pleasantly surprised to see you,” Tuan said. “The engineers’ endless conferring with no real action initiated needs the decisive foot of leadership placed squarely into their endless discussions.”

  “At the very least, my friend,” Ly said and smiled, clearly agreeing with the observation. “I sent a captain and two lieutenants ahead of me, to the bridge work, to convey my displeasure at this chaos and to announce my presence here. Perhaps, by the time I get my boots laced back on my feet and walk these last few hundred steps to the river, the engineers will have finally concluded on a plan, and we can get on with crossing this bloody river. Right now, we are like the man lying in hospital, dying with a bullet lodged in his stomach, and the surgeons reluctant to take it out for fear that their operation will kill him. Immediate action just might save the poor wretch. Delay will only assure his death.”

  “Sir,” Tuan said quietly, “I am deeply concerned that the enemy will attack us while we sit. We have poor defenses here and little room for countermeasures. While these low dunes and scrub thickets offer us no real cover, they do present a large enough blind to allow the enemy a means for rapid maneuver in an assault. I have tried to deploy my guns and have managed to get a few placed along the roadside here, to give us some flanking cover. In all practical terms, however, where we stand now, my guns provide us little more than a boost to our troops’ morale. Positioned at a narrow point on the low ground, surrounded on three sides by much higher terrain, represents very poor tactics and an unenviable set of circumstances. If we can just get across this ford so that we can deploy my artillery in a more appropriate fan and give this column some decent fire support, we might then have a glimmer of hope.”

  “Feathers in the wind, my dear colonel. Spinning feathers, flurrying in a gale. I am afraid that what little hope we held at the beginning of this foolish parade has now dwindled to nothing, your artillery fan withstanding,” Colonel Ly said in a hushed voice, sighing as he spoke. “General Tat and his rangers have repelled constant harassment by the Viet Cong, and it is only a matter of time before all of the NVA divisions in this region converge a full-scale attack on us. On my way here, I ordered the Twenty-third Ranger Group to immediately deploy their forces into guard positions above us on Ban Bleik Pass, where I expect that the enemy will initiate their main infantry assault. I also suspect that they have reserve forces and artillery converging beyond the far side of Cheo Reo, with the objective of establishing blocking positions there, to hold us here while their units staged on the high ground annihilate us. Hopefully, the Twenty-third Rangers can buy time so that these engineers can finish repairs on this crossing. If we can manage to bridge the river before those NVA blocking forces get in place, then some of these people might succeed at making a run for the sea. Beyond here, the terrain improves, and so does this road. However, like you, I am confident that the enemy sees this too and moves fast upon us.”

  TRUONG QUANG THI awoke with a jerk, hearing the thunder from the predawn barrage striking below him, on the lower slopes of Ban Bleik Pass. He smiled as he raised his head and leaned on one elbow to see the impact of the exploding shells launched by artillery batteries of his own 320th NVA Division and sister batteries from the Tenth NVA Division. They had maneuvered their guns through a day and a night into blocking positions east of Cheo Reo, effectively closing the highway there. From those firing emplacements, they now converged their bombardment on the South Vietnamese rangers, who had until this moment successfully repelled the infantry assaults of Truong’s battalion.

  Rather than waiting for coordinating forces the previous day, Truong had begun his attack early, on his own initiative, once he saw the II Army Corps begin movement across the bridges that they had finally repaired. His hit-and-run tactics succeeded in distracting and, thereby, stalling much of the column, while only a handful of vehicles and people managed to trickle past the bridges and flee eastward.

  While the rangers had chased his illusive forces, he watched, in the dimming light of that evening’s setting sun, as many of the people still trapped on the roadway had celebrated their small victory. Among them, Colonel Le Khac Ly reluctantly accepted congratulations from Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Manh Tuan.

  “I think we may finally reach the coast,” Tuan had said happily, intoxicated by the jubilance that now surrounded him.

  “Yes, as long as our rangers show such fierceness to the enemy, he may think twice about attacking us again in such a way. We surely do have good fortune presently on our side,” Colonel Ly had replied, knowing well that his words only offered false hope.

  “I wish that we could move the traffic more rapidly across these narrow bridges,” Nguyen Manh Tuan told the colonel, looking at the creeping jam of vehicles and people waiting a turn to finally cross the rivers to apparent freedom.

  “Unfortunately, that will be a task that you and other battalion commanders must oversee on your own,” Colonel Ly said in a low voice.

  “What do you mean, sir?” Tuan said, a sudden sense of alarm seizing him. “Your decisive leadership has saved the day for us! Will you now leave?”

  “Yes, Colonel Tuan,” Ly said. “General Pham Van Phu has ordere
d me to join him at Nha Trang, since it appears that we have overcome this last obstacle and the remaining task seems only to press this column forward to Tuy Hoa. The commander requires my services in his planning for the recapture of Ban Me Thuot.”

  IN THAT SAME evening light, but from a rock face overlooking Cheo Reo and the long, slowly moving column of traffic, the North Vietnamese battalion commander, Truong Quang Thi, watched a solitary South Vietnamese helicopter land by the bridges where one man then climbed aboard the aircraft and departed. Truong confidently suspected that the aircraft had taken with it the last of the enemy force’s senior officers, abandoning their subordinate, expendable leaders and the bulk of their forces to the Communist onslaught.

  Now crouched by a small breakfast fire in the shadowy grayness of predawn, sipping hot tea and eating a warm bowl of rice, Truong rocked on his heels as artillery shells exploded in the heart of the ranger positions and stalled line of traffic on the ridges and roadway below him. At first light, his infantry forces would again move forward, but today they would attack with a determination fed by the blood scent of certain victory.

  DIRT CAKED NINH’S eyes, clogging them shut with grit that bit with searing pain into their soft flesh. She whimpered, but no one answered her. What little she could see hid in blackness.

  When the tiny girl tried to breathe, the weight of the metal debris and broken wood from what was once the handcart and its heavy cargo that her mother had pulled pressed against her lungs, causing severe pain. It cut short her breathing, and she tried to cry. However, the daughter of the two peasants who now lay dead in the roadway could manage only choppy gasps. Desperate, she finally sang out a pitiful pule in what sounded to Nguyen Manh Tuan a dying child’s voice.

  “Mama!” the three-year-old Ninh Ca sobbed as the tall, kind man who had found her under the wreckage of her family’s only possessions held her close to his heart. Tears rolled from the lieutenant colonel’s eyes as he comforted the lone survivor of the nearby blast of a 120-millimeter mortar.

  “Hold tight to me, daughter,” Tuan whispered to the baby, sheltering her head under his chin. “Hold to me as tightly as you can.”

  Just then, several more 120-millimeter mortar projectiles exploded in a salvo that began landing only fifty yards ahead of him, and the lieutenant colonel dove off the roadway, skidding down the rocks and dirt on his shoulder, clutching the baby girl at his breast. Thick dust, stones, and more debris showered over him as he cupped his hands over the child’s face, protecting her from the fallout.

  Calmly Tuan whispered, “This will soon stop, and we will leave this place and find your family. Until then, I will keep you safe with me. For now, little daughter, keep your head close to my chest.”

  The countless fires ignited by the explosions lit the smoke-filled morning darkness bright orange. Tuan had barely escaped the first strikes of the Communist artillery bombardment as his entire convoy of trucks and the howitzers that they towed took direct hits. The ammunition the trucks carried detonated in secondary blasts, leveling everything and everyone near them.

  Shrapnel from the truck exploding immediately behind his jeep had killed his driver instantly, blowing a ten-inch-wide hole completely through the soldier’s back and out his chest. Another foot-long chunk of iron smashed between the driver and passenger and drove the vehicle’s dashboard into its engine. In that same split second, Tuan had leaped from his seat and felt himself propelled through the air by the concussion from the secondary detonation of the truck’s cargo.

  Lying on his back, choking on the smoke and dirt that engulfed him, Tuan quickly realized that his command had suddenly terminated. If he wished to live, he should now focus on taking care of himself.

  Tuan found a nearby ravine where he snuggled until the barrage moved to targets away from him. Then he crept out of his hiding place and ventured back to the roadway to see how many of his men had survived.

  As he worked his way up the trail of wreckage that had once represented his artillery battalion, dead bodies and utter destruction greeted him. Cries of badly wounded soldiers and civilians surrounded him. If any of his men had survived unscathed, they had, like him, dashed for shelter off the roadway, but he could find none who had returned.

  The lieutenant colonel felt the grip of fear tightening in his throat, and he too wanted to run. He wanted to join those who now sought escape through the thickets of low bushes and dunes that spread from the hills above Cheo Reo and stretched across the wide, dark landscape. However, Nguyen Manh Tuan abdicated his fear to a stronger force that had burned within him since his youth, a quality he had cultivated at the United States Army Command and General Staff College and at artillery school at Fort Sill, Oklahoma: his sense of integrity. His very honor.

  This dusty, disheveled, badly broken soldier believed that in life others can take virtually everything from a person, money, home, even the person’s life, except for one thing, one’s honor. For a man to lose his honor, he must give it up by his own will.

  In the darkness he could see peasants beginning to dig in the rubble, looking for their loved ones. He could hear the moans of the wounded, who needed his help. He knew that he could not abandon these people now. How could he otherwise live with himself? As badly as he wanted to survive and live free, cowardice did not exist within Nguyen Manh Tuan.

  The enemy at the very least would imprison him, perhaps for the rest of his life. They even might execute him, because of his rank. However, Tuan knew that they could never take his honor. So he decided to stay and help his people and face his fate.

  Tears streamed from his eyes as he pulled the twisted steel and broken bits of wood from atop the little girl whose tiny, weak voice had caught his ears. When he finally had wrenched her from the debris, he held her to his heart because she represented the cause for which he had dedicated his entire life. This unknown child to him now meant the world, and he loved her.

  “PASS THE ORDER for the battalion to advance on the enemy,” Truong Quang Thi told his radio operator.

  Suddenly, along the lower slopes of Ban Bleik Pass, bugles from his companies echoed, and men shouted war cries as they charged forward.

  In the golden light of the early morning, as far as he could see, lines of several thousand North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers rushed across the landscape. It was a sight even Truong could never have imagined in even his most far-fetched dreams.

  Other battalions had joined the line with his and now moved in a final thrust on a defeated enemy. In front of them, soldiers ran or threw up their hands. The few who tried to make a stand died.

  Three days of bombardment now ended. Truong knew the fighting would end by sunset this day, March 21, 1975.

  The bugles’ sounds caught Nguyen Manh Tuan’s ears, and he straightened his back, holding Ninh Ca crooked in his right arm. Severalother newly orphaned children followed close to his side, and a growing crowd of fearful adults stood behind them with what remained of their families.

  “We must try to maneuver around their lines and strive to make it to the coast,” Tuan told the people who gathered in rapidly increasing numbers behind him. “Their infantry has now launched their assault and will catch us here if we do not hurry.”

  With the sun rising rapidly, spreading bright daylight across the bushy landscape, Tuan saw his chances to slip past the encircling enemy lines diminishing. Perhaps if only he and the little girl could move alone, they could still slip through. However, with a half dozen waifs clutching his sides and a throng of panic-stricken peasants running close with him, the attacking soldiers would quickly take them down.

  Tuan had led the people hardly more than a kilometer when he saw the line of black-clad soldiers.

  “Chu hoi,” Tuan shouted to them and held his left arm high above his head, while still clutching Ninh Ca. “Please, do not shoot us. I am only trying to protect these children. Please allow them to live.”

  “Stand still, then,” Nguyen Thien Luong growled at the tall
ARVN officer who held the child. “We do not intentionally harm children, as I have seen your soldiers do.”

  Tuan bowed his head respectfully to this man who obviously held a significant rank, commanding a company or even a battalion. He knew to keep his mouth shut and not argue the truth that he also knew, seeing the bodies of children shot by Viet Cong in their attacks on villages sympathetic to the South Vietnamese government.

  Seeing the enemy force, many of the people who had followed Tuan turned and ran. In an instant, shots burst from the line of black-clad soldiers, dropping several of the fleeing peasants.

  “Please, sir,” Tuan begged, “these people have no place to go. They cannot escape you. Please, sir, do not shoot them.”

  The Viet Cong battalion commander nodded to a nearby soldier and said, “They are unarmed. Just gather them up.”

  A company then swept in a closing circle, firing intermittently in the air to halt the peasants.

  “Now, what is your name, Lieutenant Colonel?” Nguyen Thien Luong said in a stern, commanding voice.

  “I am Nguyen Manh Tuan,” Tuan responded, still bowing his head respectfully.

  “Your unit?” Luong then asked.

  “Destroyed, sir,” Tuan answered.

  “What of these people?” Luong then asked.

  “Peasants and orphans,” Tuan said. “After losing my command, I set about trying to keep these children safe. The peasants merely followed me, believing that I might deliver them also to safety.”