Monsoon (22 page)

E
VEN FROM THE PLANE
Tom could tell the city was a vastly different place from that which he remembered from the war years. It didn't matter whether it was called Ho Chi Minh City, its official name, or Saigon, the name everyone used: the place had certainly changed. High-rise hotels, neon signs, roads twinkling with lights and cars: it looked like most international tourist cities. The swift taxi ride from the airport to the city confirmed this: the shops and restaurants, the people and the cars meant he could have been in Hong Kong, Bangkok or Shanghai.

For old times' sake he checked into the Caravelle Hotel, now modernised, but the first place he wanted to go for a drink before dinner was at the refurbished Continental Hotel.

He hadn't walked more than a few metres when he felt the need to stop and reflect. He looked around. Yes, it all came back. This was about the spot where he had so often paused to give a few coins to a girl, probably no more than five years old, who was there nearly every day selling little cardboard baskets of flowers. Like most of her foreign customers, he never took the flowers. Back then there were so many children on the streets, boys selling cigarettes or touting an introduction to their sister in sing-song English. ‘You like my sister, sir. Very nice Chinese. Very cheap, sir.'

To his delight, the ground floor of the hotel was still pretty much as he knew it. No major structural changes had been made, although it now had modern interior décor and the outside had been given a facelift. But the mood of the hotel brought a fresh surge of memories. He had a sudden flashback to 1965 when he and some other correspondents had had dinner in a private room at the hotel with Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, who became vice-president after yet another coup d'etat.

He remembered the handsome mustachioed man in the black flying suit and purple scarf. He had been a friendly, shrewd and gregarious man who nonetheless set up public execution stakes in the Central Market as the first step in a campaign to stop racketeers profiteering from the war, and had spent the entire meal justifying his actions. Yes, it had been quite a dinner that evening. One of many extraordinary experiences he'd had in this city.

Over the next few days Tom wallowed in the past as he strolled the streets, all the time conscious of being in a modern tourist city bursting with energy and commerce. Half the time he wondered if he was on Boulevard St Germain in Paris, Rodeo Drive in LA or Fifth Avenue, New York. He soon wanted to get out of the city and go back to the very different places that had made a really big impact on his life and career . . . Vung Tau and Nui Dat.

He walked to Saigon harbour, glancing up at the old Majestic Hotel where he had spent many a happy hour on the rooftop terrace with other correspondents, and bought a ticket on the hydrofoil leaving for Vung Tau in Phuoc Tuy province. Tom hadn't felt so rejuvenated in years.

While not all the memories of his time in Vietnam were happy ones, it was a time that had shaped him as a journalist and as a man. War changed people. But there had been some great times. Good friends, heroic efforts, stories that touched the hearts and minds of Australians back home as well as fuelling the anti-war protestors. War brought out the best and worst in men. Men who'd never challenged authority, or accepted a dare from a mate, or who'd never shown courage in sport or at work suddenly dug deep and found themselves capable of great acts of bravery. There were insanely mad and funny times and inspirational people who would never be forgotten. How different from the control, the technology, the spin doctors and the organisation behind the media at war these days.

In Tom's day it had fallen to the honest men and women of the fourth estate to tell it as it was. There were those who got close to the action and saw it for themselves and there were those who reported stories from the safety of their favourite bar. But there was a hint of pride in his reflections. He had not been influenced by editors or the military. He'd tried to find out the truth himself and send back balanced and insightful reports.

It occurred to him that his kids had no idea what he'd done, or been through, from the battlefields to the freewheeling letting down of hair in bars, hotels and barracks. He grinned. His kids would be quite shocked if they knew some of the stories.

When it had become clear to Tom, after talking with other correspondents, that the Australian effort at Bien Hoa was a sideshow to the deteriorating scene further up the country, he had moved north and saw for himself the massive build-up of American forces taking place through the port of Danang. He flew on helicopters and bombers spraying jungle battlefields in the highlands with chemicals and went on raids aboard Puff the Magic Dragon planes, old C-47 transports fitted out with banks of machine guns, which poured millions of bullets into dense jungle suspected of sheltering the enemy. Then came Agent Orange which denuded the landscape like an atomic bomb had gone off. He recalled the blackened earth, no foliage, the bare countryside a scene of utter devastation.

He had even been in Pleiku when a battalion of the American First Air Cavalry choppered into a valley near the Cambodian border and landed right on top of a North Vietnamese jungle base. The three-day battle that followed was the bloodiest of the Vietnam War to that time. It changed the course of the entire war for both sides. Almost three hundred American soldiers were killed and hundreds wounded. The Americans claimed to have killed and wounded about two thousand enemy soldiers.

Tom had managed to get onto the battlefield briefly. He had talked his way onto a helicopter evacuating American wounded. He flew in through a hail of bullets and clouds of smoke, took in the terrifying scene on the cluttered landing zone, helped load some wounded and came out a shaking wreck, so different from the gung-ho reporter who went in so boldly looking for a headline story.

Later, when opposition to the war began to increase, positive stories got buried. Trying to filter the truth from the official reports was frustrating and it sometimes meant good journalists got moved away from the action or found their avenues to get a story suddenly not available. In contrast there were always the bar Johnnies who rarely left their hotels and certainly took no risks in order to file stories that suited the political climate back at home.

As Tom strolled around Saigon he wondered what some of his old mates would think of the modern, glitzy city and the capitalistic and commercial enterprise happening in Vietnam now. It was a country united culturally, economically and politically and in its own way, it was moving forward.

Now he was freewheeling around the country again. He'd befriended two gorgeous young women and he was getting the old adrenalin buzz. He was back in harness, smelling a story. It felt good. He knew that Sandy and Anna, visiting Danang and Hue, would have very different impressions of those cities and he wondered what they were doing. There'd been a typhoon report in the area so he hoped they were safe. He'd be sure to contact their families as he'd promised the minute he got back to Australia.

There was little hint of the busy wartime harbour as the hydrofoil rose on its floats and churned out into the South China Sea for the hour and forty minute trip along the coast to the beach resort of Vung Tau. During the war it had been the port of entry to Phuoc Tuy Province where the First Australian Logistical Support Group was stationed. Tom recalled visits to the rest in country base at Back Beach. The rest centre, known as the Badcoe Club, had excellent facilities including a swimming pool and volleyball and badminton courts where Tom had enjoyed a game or two. The beach had no surf to compare with home, but for a hundred or so twenty-year-olds on R in C (Rest in Country), Vung Tau's numerous bars and bar girls were a big temptation. The soldiers had been given advice, warnings, condoms and pills to combat venereal disease, but some of the servicemen found that it was their wallets that suffered most.

The hydrofoil was cramped and stuffy as the air conditioning wasn't working, but Tom preferred the peace of the waterway to a crowded noisy drive down from Saigon.

As the hydrofoil slowed Tom was amazed at the hotels, houses and apartment blocks ringing the horseshoe bay beneath the headland where a large statue of Jesus stood, arms outstretched. On the hillside Tom recognised the elegant French colonial white house that had been a holiday home of a one-time French governor and later a local army general. Probably now owned by some wealthy local businessman, he supposed.

Ashore, the first place that caught Tom's eye was an Australian-themed restaurant festooned with coloured signs decorated with kangaroos, koalas and a picture of a bush hat strung with hanging corks to keep the flies at bay. It was called the Swagman Cafe. There were outdoor tables and a blackboard menu advertising burgers, chips and Aussie steaks. He wandered over to investigate and the smell of frying bacon made him realise he was hungry. He dropped his bag and sat at a table.

A pretty young Vietnamese waitress who spoke good English came to take his order.

‘What's with the décor?' he asked.

‘My father is an Aussie . . . mate,' she answered with a smile and a pretty good imitation of an Australian accent.

‘Is that right? Is he around?' asked Tom.

A large man came through the doorway. ‘That'd be me. How're ya going?'

‘Good. The smell of bacon and fried onions dragged me in,' said Tom, holding out his hand. ‘Tom Ahearn.'

‘Pat Lang.' He shook Tom's hand. ‘You a vet?'

Tom was slightly taken aback at such a direct inquiry. ‘Er, no. War correspondent though.'

Pat nodded. ‘Figured something like that. More and more people are making the pilgrimage. Beer? Coffee?'

‘Cold beer wouldn't go astray,' said Tom. Pat waved to the waitress who hurried to the bar.

‘What about you, Dad?' she called.

‘I'll have a coffee, love.' He smiled at the girl.

‘How long have you been here?' asked Tom.

‘Came back to Vietnam fifteen years ago. I was divorced, at a loose end and pretty screwed up. Figured I'd come back to try and find the happy-go-lucky young bloke who first landed in Vietnam.' He paused. ‘I wasn't the first to do so, of course.'

‘You were based at Nui Dat?'

‘Yeah, it was the Australian HQ base. Lot of men saw a lot of action down there. Vung Tau was for R in C.'

‘I only had a brief visit there, just as the fireworks started that became Long Tan. I was covering the Col Joye concert and then all hell broke loose,' said Tom.

‘Yeah. It certainly did. Too bad the full story never got told. It's taken forty years to get a decent acknowledgment of what we did,' Pat said with some bitterness.

Tom smiled his thanks to the waitress as she put his drink on the table. ‘What's your name?'

‘I'm called Patsy. After Dad.' She grinned at the red-faced burly man sitting opposite Tom.

Pat's face softened. ‘Light of my life, she is. Next to her mother. Her mum was single and struggling to manage with a two-year-old son when I first came to Vung Tau. I kinda hung around and ended up taking 'em all on and started this place.'

Tom thought of Barney in Hanoi. ‘It's not an unfamiliar story.'

‘Back then there were many blokes who wanted to take their girls home. The brass made it as hard as hell, of course. Most liaisons were casual . . . but meant something at the time.' Pat took the tiny cup of short espresso from Patsy. ‘As in every war, eh?'

Tom nodded. ‘It's the children without fathers one feels for.'

‘I might be guilty there. Who knows? A night screwing and boozing with a bar girl and you move on. Must've been hard for them left behind. I s'pose that's another reason I feel an obligation to help.'

‘You have a family back in Australia?'

‘Yeah. All grown, doing their own thing. The ex-missus has finally given up trying to get any more money from me and is living with some bloke she met at the bowling club.'

‘Your children . . . have they visited?' asked Tom.

‘Struth, no. They think I'm nuts. And frankly, I'd rather they didn't know that I'm doing quite nicely, thank you,' grinned Pat. ‘I go back twice a year and check in; that's enough. This business has been a sweet little earner, passes the time.' He drained his coffee.

Tom glanced around. ‘Who does the cooking?'

‘I have two young blokes and another girl who do the cooking and wait on tables. My lady runs a travel agency. This was always a holiday spot for the Vietnamese and the French before the war. But once I encouraged a few blokes from my old platoon to come over here for a visit it started a trickle. So we arranged places for them to stay, then they'd come back next year with their wives and families and so we started organising itineraries and so on. Now the trickle is becoming a full flow so we have a growing business. Mostly all vets,' he added.

‘Have any come back to stay, like you?' asked Tom.

He nodded. ‘There's a group of us. It's a loose kinda organisation where we look after Vietnam vets who do come back and who encourage others to come back because, well, without putting too fine a point on it, it can help straighten 'em out a bit. Settle the ghosts.'

‘How many are here? Do they have families?'

‘About a dozen of them. They mostly have local women as partners, some like me have started second families. They go back home once or twice a year but most of us think of this as home now.'

‘Sounds like you have quite a good life here,' said Tom.

‘The pension goes a heck of a lot further. Cost of living is cheaper. And the country might have self-determination and be unified but a white face and a pocket full of dollars buys you a lot of clout and attention.' Pat took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. ‘So, why're you here? You going to write about the anniversary?'

Tom took a swallow of beer to collect his thoughts. ‘I've been retired for a while. But when my old editor raised the notion, I thought I'd come back. Vietnam was my first war assignment and in retrospect I realise I got off lightly compared to the servicemen. A few months here and there, saw some action, got a sense of the place and moved on.' Tom paused, deciding against going any deeper into the memories. ‘Knowing what we know now . . . how badly the Vietnamese servicemen were treated, the political change, and the long-term effects it's had . . . Hell, they're still paying.' He tried to find the words as he organised his thoughts. ‘Fact is, I was here. Maybe I'm thinking the full story hasn't been really told, to the general public anyway. And maybe I owe the men of Long Tan that.'