(EDITOR’S NOTE: Charles Black, Enquirer military writer, has returned home after four months in Viet Nam. He was with men of the 1st Cavalry Division during many of their recent engagements with Communist guerrillas, and his articles on the war as he saw it will continue in The Enquirer daily.)
By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer Military Writer
M-Sgt. Charles McCowan and I
got off the Air Force C123 at Saigon on my last trip out of An Khe and
trusted
our lives to the hectic whims of a Vietnamese taxi driver.
He had a little blue
Renault, a meter which was obviously broken and a limited but
enthusiastic
vocabulary of English. It was the
language problem all over again, but with a new twist.
He knew just enough English to prove
dangerous.
I wished he hadn’t ever
learned his first word of our strange language at about the time he
almost
sideswiped one of the pushcart restaurants (called “Howard Johnsons” by
GIs)
which sell mysterious, hot foodstuffs along the curbs of Vietnamese
cities.
He almost hit the pushcart
because he was facing all the way around to wish Mac “. . . Good
morning, major
general.”
He almost hit a cycelo (a
bicycle turned into a rickshaw which puts the passengers up front where
the
action is) loaded with a woman, three children and a huge collection of
fresh
produce. This came when he told me that
“. . . you No. 1. Want change green,
you see me, best rates!”
He did graze the back bumper
of another taxicab when he turned to continue his conversation with
“Maj. Gen.”
McCowan. He had a momentary lapse of
memory and had told Mac good morning again when the collision occurred.
He braked to an indignant
stop and got out.
Neither of us could follow
the huge volley of Vietnamese the two drivers exchanged.
Both waved their arms and seemed to be very
angry about it all.
The contestants suddenly
turned and walked to their respective antique vehicles, slammed their
gear
shifts loudly and engaged in a wild drag race down a street crowded as
only a
Vietnamese street can be. Mac and I stared
at a wild strip of ox carts, rickshaws, Army trucks, cycelos, motor
scooters
and official sedans as they flashed by the windows.
Our driver won, gained
enough lead to stick his head out of the window and shout a Vietnamese
insult
back to the loser (almost hitting three dogs and one of the few fat
women I saw
in that country) and screeched to a stop by the Caravelle Hotel. He was so proud of his triumph that he only
attempted to overcharge by 300 percent and didn’t argue more than 10
minutes
before accepting the correct price.
We had an offer of a room
from American Broadcasting Co.’s famous John Hughes, who was up at An
Khe
producing a program to be shown on “The Saga of Western Man” series. It was about Capt. Theodore Danielsen, my
long-time paratrooper friend, and Hughes had been living with Capt.
Danielsen’s
company for two weeks.
Hughes was with his crew out
on patrols, assaults and other hard sky trooper work, grimly moving
along with
the infantrymen to get on-the-scene film of Danielsen’s life as an Army
officer.
Rooms are impossible to get
in Saigon without such arrangements, incidentally.
The military has taken over many places to provide homes for men
on rest and recreation leaves and for men coming down for duty. Our problem was that we didn’t exactly fit
into either category, according to Mac’s masterfully worded orders
which seemed
to fit any occasion demanded of them where transportation, food and
suspicious
clerks were concerned.
“If you aren’t on R and R and if you aren’t on temporary duty, you don’t fit into any military hotel category and you just have to find a bunk out at Ton San Nhut. What we will do is to see the guys at ABC, tell them John Hughes told us we could use his room and make arrangements with them to settle it all up somehow,” Mac told me when I asked him about a bivouac area.
ABC was charming. The
Caravelle was equally charming. John
Hughes had a wonderful room, and I
sincerely hope he found time to enjoy it sooner or later.
Mac and I stayed there six days, as I
recall, worrying about him out in the brush with the infantry.
We got in touch with Lt.
Col. William Hacker, who had come back to Saigon from a trip out into
the wilds
and was at his desk at the Military Assistance Command Viet Nam
headquarters. He was a superb guide,
having located good restaurants and having scouted out the best routes
of
approach to them.
“We won’t go down that
street. Last time I walked down that
way two policemen were shooting at a couple of Viet Cong and I was in
the
middle, flat on the sidewalk behind a garbage can,” Lt. Col. Hacker
told us as
we started to make a turn once.
We bought some souvenirs,
loafed and played tourist. Then Mac
became bored with Saigon and went back to An Khe and I suddenly decided
to be
sick for a few days. This is an easy
thing to do in Viet Nam.
The maladies are mysterious,
the symptoms general and usually deal with low fever, stomach problems,
headaches, complete exhaustion and such.
They usually go away as mysteriously as they arrive.
This one lasted a week,
during which time I moved to the venerable old Majestic Hotel to a room
Lt.
Col. Hacker found open and contemplated a 14-foot-high ceiling
decorated with
live lizards from a bed with solid wood springs.
Sometime during the arrival
and departure of the sick spell, I decided to commence instituting
proceedings
for a return to Columbus.
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