The Man from Saigon

A lot of Vietnam correspondents have a story of how they came to the country: chosen by accident, paid for their own ticket by winning a game show, confused with another guy, filled in for someone else on R&R and the person never came back. Susan was no different—the choice to send her seemed random, the end result of a chain of assumptions. She was working for a women’s magazine and had a private interest in horse training—it was really the combination of those two facts that had brought her into the war. One long summer in ’66 she moonlighted for the police department, desensitizing their horses to gunfire, preparing them to cover student protests, city riots, rallies. The job required learning to shoot a pistol, launch smoke grenades from the saddle, and move the horses away from rings of fire, then toward them again—hours of this until they would happily jump through them. What we need here, said one of the officers, a transplant from the Southwest, a guy fond of flicking his hair back, of swaggering cowboy style into the barn in the early hours and staring right down at her ass as she worked, what we need here is a cow-y pony that can separate one man from another in a crowd, you know what I mean? A bolshie sonovabitch, gelded late.

She looked up from where she was working, bending down to trim a loose flap of frog off a front hoof. You mean a mare, then, she said.

Like hell! Mares can’t hack it when the chips are down. I don’t want to be right up against it and have my horse go all girly on me.

She took in a breath. She’d worked late on a story the night before and she was tired; she didn’t want an argument, especially one as inane as whether a mare was capable of going “all girly”. She moved to the next hoof and began clearing one cleft, then another, ignoring the guy. It was the only defense.

He came closer, gave the tag end of her chaps belt a little tug, and said, I like the way you ride.

She stood straight, dropping the horse’s leg, staring at the guy, the hoof pick held like a pirate’s hook. Quietly, as though sharing a secret, she said, You can fuck right off. To which he laughed hard, backing up as he did so.

That’s good, he said. That’s real good.

He told her he was biding his time for her. It won’t be long, he promised.

The horses had to walk through smoke, explosions, throngs of people. It was exactly the opposite of what is natural for them. She taught the small herd of four the same skills as for cutting cattle and slowly the horses began to disregard everything but the job at hand. Before work, on the weekends, late into the Midwestern evenings when the heat gave way to the velvet of a summer’s night, the training took up all her free time all that summer long, until she could have ridden beside a firing canon and the horses wouldn’t spook, until not even a dog was safe in an open pen because the horses would chase him out. Finally, at the end of the summer they sent a bunch of the officers into the ring with her and she focused her gaze on the one with the swagger, and felt her horse connect with her meaning, hooking on to the guy.

He made a run for it, whooping as though he enjoyed being chased, showing off to the others. He lifted his hat like a clown running in a rodeo; he made a show of pretending he was scared. But it took only four strides to catch up with him and less than ten seconds until she was circling him at a canter as he held up his hands in surrender, laughing. He expected her to let him go now, but she didn’t let him go. She kept up the revolutions, the horse rolling on its hocks, the sound of hooves like a drumbeat, so close to the guy he looked as though he’d been corked in a bottle. Now the officer stopped smiling; he stared at her helplessly, unable to move an inch, 900 pounds of horse around him like a cyclone. She watched a window of fear open on his face. He suddenly looked young and stupid; he suddenly looked like someone she felt sorry for. She sat back, bringing the horse to a halt.

Meet Millie, she said, patting a swatch of mane.

At the magazine, they thought horse training meant she was a particular type of person, a kind of rugged, intrepid girl willing to take physical risks—not what she thought of herself, not at all. Spring the next year she was called into the editor’s office and given the assignment to collect women’s interest stories for a feature they wanted on Vietnam. She was to be there only a few weeks.

War reporting? She was confused.

Her editor kept looking at the copy she was marking, barely registering the question. As you seem to like adventures, she said. The editor’s desk was littered with typescripts, paperweights, trays stuffed with clippings, envelopes, a grammar, a stamp pad, a half-empty bottle of aspirin, caffeine pills, two dirty coffee cups which sat next to the one from which she was now drinking. She smoked Larks, her lipstick ringing the filters of a collection of spent butts in the ashtray. She wore browline eyeglasses in the style of Malcolm X and had an affecting glare such that one tended not to argue.

Vietnam, Susan said. Women’s interest. It was more a question than anything.

The editor had a rash around her hairline, some kind of eczema that worsened with stress, and a large vein in her neck that bulged when she shouted, which was not infrequently. She looked up from what she was doing, scribbling over some copy with what might have been a glass marker, and reeled off a list: Orphans, hospitals, brave young GIs, gallant doctors, heroic captains, courageous American-loving civilians…go there, find it.

Susan nodded. So, no dying—She was going to say So, no dying sons, but her editor fixed her with a look that brought the entire discussion back to where it had begun, as a set of instructions. Then the older woman scratched her head and told Susan there were newsmen all over Chicago desperate to go to Saigon—didn’t she know that? Her fingers unstuck a file drawer and suddenly she slapped a manila envelope on to the desk, her eyes never leaving Susan’s.

Open it, she said.

There were photographs of women in combat gear, cameras around their necks, ponytails beneath helmets. She recognized one right away, the late Dickey Chapelle in her horn-rims and pearl studs, squinting through the lens. Another showed a girl with reddish blonde hair, a long, freckled nose. She was smiling at a soldier wearing a helmet that listed the months of the year, four crossed out, a pack of cigarettes tucked into the band.

Her editor said, That’s Cathy Leroy, age twenty-two. Little French girl arrived in Saigon with no job and no experience as a photographer. The way she makes a living is by taking more risks than the guys.

Cathy Leroy was built like a gymnast, not even five feet tall. In one of the photos she was following a group of four marines as they carried their dead buddy over a field of elephant grass flattened by the force of wind off a chopper’s rotor blades. Susan thought it was impressive what the girl was doing; it made something flicker inside her, a rush of possibility as though she had just stumbled upon a vision of herself in that same place, beneath the same hot sun and the same deafening sound of a medevac arriving. She had never, not once, considered a foreign assignment, let alone in a war zone. Now, as she flipped through the photographs her editor gave her, it occurred to her this was exactly what she wanted, or could want, if she dared.

She came across a black-and-white glossy of a brunette with cropped hair and large dark eyes, a pad out, a pen, a casual look on an intelligent face.

Kate Webb, her editor explained. She’s a stringer.

There was a pause between them, a lot of silent air that seemed solid. Susan cleared her throat. I’ve not really had any experience—she began.

The editor interrupted. Kate went out with no job at all. Like Cathy. But you have a big advantage in that your room is paid for. You’ll be on salary. She took out a fresh cigarette, waving it as she spoke. This assignment might lead to more. So think carefully before you say yes. She gave Susan a long look, brought a match to the cigarette, and inhaled sharply. Then she went back to marking up the pages she was working on while Susan sat in the chair across from her, not sure whether to leave or stay, to say yes or no. Not even sure whether to hand back the photographs.

After a minute the editor sat back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest and frowning at Susan, who had not shifted from her seat. When I said think carefully before saying yes, I did mean you should say yes. She dug into her handbag for a new pack of Larks, stripped the plastic seal, and offered one to Susan.

I don’t smoke, Susan said.

Start. It’s good for keeping the bugs off you in tropical climes.

It’s not that I don’t want to go—

I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t think you wanted to go. Of course you want to go. What I’m telling you is this: you won’t likely get another chance.

Susan tried to look confident, relaxed. She tried to imagine herself in Vietnam. I’m just letting the idea sink in, she said.

The editor attempted a smile, but it came out wrong, the smile was more like a grimace between streams of smoke. The idea is to have a chance to distinguish yourself, she said. The idea is to be somebody.

And so she had arrived early in 1967. By then there was already plenty of every kind of reporter in Vietnam, almost all men, and she doubted more than one or two of those who gathered at bars and restaurants, who stood in line at the cable office or wrapped up their film for shipment, expected her actually to go out into the field. The magazine, too, had imagined she would remain, more or less, within the protection of Saigon, staging occasional day trips to nearby (secure) bases.

But she soon discovered this was not possible, not if she wanted an actual story. She attended the afternoon press conferences, winding her way through the maze of corridors and windowless, low-ceilinged offices at JUSPAO, chatting to the reporters doing the same, but found nothing in the press releases that would translate easily into magazine articles. The military gave battle statistics: body counts, numbers killed in action, wounded in action, killed by air. They talked about the enemy, but rarely about people. They talked about territories, but not homes. They had a particular way of describing the Vietcong’s movements, how they “infested” villages, so that Susan imagined them like the enormous, prodigious cockroaches that roamed freely through cracks in the skirting boards of Saigon buildings, emerging from tiny spaces in plaster where wires flowed, even up through sinkholes. It was part of the jargon—WHAMO, LZ, DMZ, ARVN, PVA, NVA, SOP—that she was learning, that she was trying to learn, and which at first felt as mysterious and incomprehensible as Vietnamese itself. One day during her first week in the country, she made the mistake of drawing attention to herself by asking the lieutenant colonel making the announcement, a man who seemed to dread the afternoon press conference as much as the press who attended (who were said to be divided into two camps: those who did not believe the information, and those who did not care), a question about this terminology. Raising her voice so that it could be heard in the front of the room, she asked the lieutenant colonel to please tell her what “WBLC” meant.

The officer stood on a raised platform in front of a large map on which there were highlighted areas, circled areas, circles within circles, and a great deal of cryptic numbers. He was older than he ought to have been for his rank, somehow stalled at the lieutenant colonel status now for so many years it was certain he would remain there through to his retirement, which was imminent, though he was saddled for the moment with this band of undisciplined correspondents as though with unruly children. His uniform was newly starched, immaculate, with knife-point creases, reminding Susan all at once of something she had forgotten: how her father told the story of how he would examine his own dress uniform with a magnifying glass for wrinkles—this, before state dinners. She wondered if the lieutenant colonel in front did the same, whether he glided the glass across the crisp collar and sleeves, along the pressed seams on which she could not help but bestow a certain feminine admiration. Her own summer dress stuck to her skin, having lost its shape in the humid air. If she’d had to stand next to the lieutenant colonel she would have felt like a servant girl in an inadequate frock, and she was grateful that she was sandwiched, almost obscured, between the men sitting on either side of her.

You want me to explain what a WBLC is? the lieutenant colonel said. He leaned over the edge of the platform in a hawkish manner, his attention directed at her. She immediately regretted the question. She seemed to have ignited something inside the man. The lieutenant colonel had been using a pointing stick made of pale wood to indicate places on the charts and maps that flashed across the screen behind him. Now he slapped the pointer across his palm brusquely so that it reminded her of a policeman’s nightstick. His face seemed devoid of expression but she could tell by the way he set his mouth, as though holding back all manner of unsaid words, that nothing good would come of this conversation, which—she was reminded now—was being held publicly in front of all her colleagues, most of whom she had not yet had the opportunity to meet.

She nodded. The way the lieutenant colonel glared at her had an effect she would not have imagined of herself: her heart pounding, the heat lifting from her like a series of veils, her throat becoming uncomfortable as though she’d swallowed a bug. I’m afraid that is correct, sir, she said, grateful she was sitting down. I’ve never heard of a WBLC.

Miss, if you want to cover a war it is important you have some familiarity with military terms.

In one of her notebooks, one that she hoped would never be seen by the likes of the lieutenant colonel, or anyone gathered in the press room at JUSPAO, was a glossary of military terms which she had committed to memory. That is why I am asking the question, she said. Sir.

He grunted his disapproval, twirling his pointing stick in his hand. For a moment she thought he was going to strike the screen.

WBLC would be waterborne logistics craft, miss. I hope that will help with your education.

There was a smattering of conversation in response to this remark, a twitchy sort of laughter, exchanges whispered between the correspondents, who, Susan imagined, would either be agreeing with the lieutenant colonel that she was severely unprepared for her assignment here in Vietnam, or who were simply relieved it was the female reporter from Illinois being singled out for attack rather than themselves. She felt her face flush. She felt a beading of sweat along the rim of her skull. If her father hadn’t been a full colonel, she would never have dared to ask the next question. If she hadn’t grown up watching such men overindulge in every available vice, seen them drunk, heard their stupid off-color remarks, and the ridiculous manner in which they made every conversation a contest, she would never have said another word. But she’d seen it over and again and she was, after all, the daughter of a full bird. She cleared her throat. I’m sorry, sir, I don’t think I know what a waterborne logistics craft is.

The lieutenant colonel wheeled around, glaring at her, then glanced to the side, shaking his head. It was too much to look at her, so ill-informed, unwise enough to let her ignorance show. It was like seeing a man admit he had no clue, not an inkling, how to do his job, like having some failing fucking New Guy stand in front of him, parroting back the words he himself had instilled in the recruit: No, sir, I do not have any idea how to perform, sir! How to be a useful part of the US Military, sir! It angered him, enraged him. He looked across the audience of assembled press, with their unkempt hair, their fat bellies, their ridiculous safari shirts, sneering, he thought. Totally unaware. He was tired of them, tired of seeing them at the airports and officers’ clubs, ready to pounce on the smallest mistake made by the lowest-ranking of officers, ready to spread yet more tales of woe when the war, as he saw it, was going very well—magnificently, in fact. It was an impressive war if you looked at it properly, which these reporters never seemed to do.

You don’t know—he began, his voice rising with each word.

Someone passed a note to her. It arrived from across the room, hand to hand, over the laps of journalists. She held it in her palm, feeling the moisture of her skin soften its corners. She wished she wasn’t so nervous. It seemed completely unprofessional of her not to assume the same lazy confidence of the others in the room. Sampan, the note read. Sampan = WBLC.

She imagined the sampans she saw along canals. Long, primitive boats whose name literally means “three planks”. She’d seen them stocked with fish, fruit, paddled by families, by children even, in their black pajama trousers, their broad conical hats. She read the note, then carefully, silently, pressed it back into quarters, then eighths. Meanwhile, the lieutenant colonel was still talking. I don’t have time, he emphasized, the US military does not have time, to educate unprepared girl reporters—

It was that expression “girl reporters” that did it. It lit something inside her she didn’t quite understand. She found herself interrupting the lieutenant colonel, then rising up despite how nervous she was, despite the crowded hot room, her face dotted with perspiration, the spectacle of it all. She stood, craning her neck to look taller and focusing her gaze directly at the man who glared down at her from his theater of maps. Her dress was ridiculous; she decided on the spot never to wear such a dress again. Even so, she stood, balancing herself on the back of the chair in front, holding the note, which she hoped the lieutenant colonel could not see, in the clenched fingers of her right hand. Are you talking about a sampan? she said, as forcefully as she could. It came out loud enough to hear, not a scornful question, not a challenge, but a genuine enquiry delivered with the assurance of one who will be able to evaluate the answer. When you say WBLC, do you really mean sampan?

It was as though a bubble of air between herself and the lieutenant colonel had been punctured, as though she were standing right up next to him, balancing on her toes, stretching her entire, compact frame up to meet the gaze of this large man. She was no longer afraid; she was no longer an observer. She felt herself finally to be among the press. There was a beat of silence between them, then the lieutenant colonel dropped his chin, blinking as though suddenly awakened from a dream.

A few chuckles, a reporter from AP laughing loudly, then a voice from the crowd, Son’s voice, the first time she would hear it, his heavy Vietnamese accent in which she could detect distinctly Anglican vowels, his light, slightly nasal tone. Can we have confirmation that a WBLC is a sampan, sir?

The colonel stayed his position, breathing purposely in, then out, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. After a moment he let out a sigh, turning his face so that the projector etched out the line of the Demilitarized Zone across his left cheek. His pointer, which he had dropped during the exchange with the female reporter, with Susan, he now retrieved from the floor. When he spoke, it was to the map screen. Yes, that is correct, he said, finishing the matter.