Eyewitness (34 page)

I took it on myself to protect the gentle reader of the
Sydney Morning Herald
and the Melbourne
Sun-Pic
. I didn’t write about the American with no balls. Nor that when darkness fell Terry Loftus had called out, ‘Stay there you slant-eyed cunts and when it’s dark we’re going to crawl out and get you.’ Nor how good they’d been, the other guys, that, well-drilled, they had assaulted 6 Platoon on the run firing from the hip on full automatic, that you could tell from tugging the insides from another man’s pack that he was a disciplined, sure soldier, what 6 Platoon would call a ‘good Digger’.

I didn’t write that no matter how brave you were great pain forced from you a sharp cry, a loud moan, that aid stations were full of these cries, that in fact the wounded did cry.

In the quiet moments lying in platoon harbour secure behind your own perimeter we – 6 Platoon and I – had always got back to why we were there. I couldn’t see why they had not dodged the draft, stayed back in Holdsworthy with their birds and surfboards, like other Australians their own age. And they could not understand why I would go out with an infantry platoon instead of at least sitting back with company or battalion headquarters. It had always been a stalemate. In a lull in the action Loftus had said to me, ‘Now, do you understand? We want a bit of what our fathers were …’

I felt the reader had to be protected from a lot of that, that he simply would not understand, that it was ‘private and personal’.

But the marbles were already being rattled and the gentle reader or the gentle reader’s son stood a good chance of coming to rest in a gully in War Zone D, or an aid station full of shrieks and moans.

Were the British public really ‘surprised and angry’ by the suffering of the Crimean wounded? Did it make them uneasy in their drawing rooms, turn them away from their fish and chips? Perhaps I was right after all. The Crimean reader might have been no more ready than the reader in Martin Place or the Treasury Gardens.

If his despatches for the
Times
did achieve what Billy Russell thought they would, then the anger and surprise were soon forgotten. The poet Siegfried Sassoon, lying wounded in a World War I hospital, thought like Billy Russell: ‘When they know the truth, the killing will stop.’ But the later battles of the Somme were as inhuman as the earlier. The gas hung thicker in the shell holes, more men hung on the wire. It was far worse than Balaclava, far worse even than Kokoda or any jungle clearing in War Zone D.

Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, called Billy Russell ‘that miserable scribbler’. It has not been the fault of the miserable Australian scribblers who joined his ‘luckless tribe’, correspondents like C.E.W. Bean and Osmar White and Damien Parer, and Jack Percival, and John Pilger and John Cantwell in Vietnam and Tony Clifton in Lebanon that the reader does not know the truth. And still … I didn’t write that the great concern of 1 Battalion was ‘to get into it’. To explain all the ramifications of what that meant would have taken too long. And even then, it would certainly have been misunderstood. I didn’t write that, in the battalion’s terms they had finally ‘got into it’.

They were an infantry battalion; combat was what they had come to Vietnam for. In other operations whenever there was the rattle of gun-fire the companies and platoons and sections listened, perhaps someone had ‘got into it’. The word had gone from field radio to field radio, 6 Platoon were ‘into it’. There was probably a lot of apprehension there, too. Very few in the battalion had seen combat. And for those who had it was mainly minor skirmishing in Malaya or Borneo.

The story I wrote was a very simple news piece. It had to be. I had been instructed not by the
Sun
editor, Clinch, who was my immediate boss, or Stuart Brown, the Melbourne
Herald
editor who was syndicating my coverage, but by the Fairfax Company executives not to cable, to send feature pieces only. It was explained that the cost of cabling from Saigon was prohibitive. Buying transmission rights through Reuter was also considered an extravagance. I was to aircargo my copy to Hong Kong where a former
Sun
reporter called Alfie Lee would pick it up and put it on the wire at the cheap Commonwealth rate.

The Fairfax executives were probably not aware that this system meant travelling by taxi to the airport – a journey of at least an hour – and there clearing the package and copy with the Vietnamese Customs, sometimes waiting for an hour until the Customs Officer took time off to attend to you. Even when you strategically placed an American $10 note among the pages of the copy. Then you had to find a taxi and get back to the city.

After War Zone D action I rebelled. Using my World Cable and Wireless pass I filed through the Post Office and to hell with the expense. I didn’t need a lot of words. Simply told, the story had to get a run everywhere. Other reporters would have interviewed members of 6 Platoon when they came back to Bien Boa, would have spoken to the wounded. But my story would have already been published.

Several days later there was a cable from an editor in Melbourne asking for interviews with 6 Platoon. It had to be a mistake; he must just not have got the copy distributed through the Fairfax office in Sydney. By that time the agency copy and the copy from other reporters as well as the Australian Army official communiqués would have reached the papers. I wasn’t worried. I’d cabled at the expensive rate.

A week later there was a gentle tapping on my door. A young Vietnamese stood there, crisp in white shirt and black pants. He was apologetic in slow English. I looked down and went cold. In his hand he held my copy, my story of the War Zone D action.

‘Has it been sent?’

‘Very sorry. Man in cable office make mistake. No, no, Sir, very sorry. Not possible. Everything OK, Number 1. But this form here, not signed. Please sign and cable will go tonight or early tomorrow, I promise.’

Hugh Lunn

Hugh Lunn (born 1941) was sent to Vietnam for Reuters in 1967 and spent over a year there, including during the Tet offensive in 1968, where the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) staged simultaneous attacks all over South Vietnam including the American Embassy in Saigon and the Citadel in Hue. This was unsuccessful in the strict military sense, and resulted in the destruction of a substantial proportion of the local strength of the N.L.F. However, it was a political victory, demonstrating that the Americans, Australians and South Vietnamese did not control the country. It brought the North Vietnamese more strongly into the conflict.

After Vietnam, Lunn worked in Singapore and Indonesia before joining the
Australian
in 1971. He wrote an unauthorised biography,
Joh
(1978). He has won three Walkley Awards and
Vietnam: A Reporter’s War
was the
Age
Book of the Year in 1985.

*

Each year in about late January the Vietnamese celebrate Tet, the Lunar New Year – exactly when depending on the cycle of the moon. For the 1968 celebrations, the Viet Cong were secretly preparing a very special surprise for their frustrated opponents. Hill 875 had impressed on me the difficulties the Americans faced out in the isolated mountains of Vietnam, but as 1968 began not even the most pessimistic reporter could have guessed how vulnerable the Americans were to be in the provincial cities – and even in Saigon itself.

One of the things I found strangest about this bitter war was that every year near the end of January the fighting would stop while the Vietnamese celebrated their lunar festival. Tet to the Vietnamese was like Christmas, Easter, the Queen’s Birthday and Show Week all rolled into one and including, as well, much worshipping of ancestors.

Both sides were, usually, more than happy to honour the truce. But this year things began to take a slightly different form. The truce traditionally lasted a full week, and that was what the Viet Cong wanted this time, starting on Saturday, the 27th of January. However, because of the worsening military situation the Americans and the South Vietnamese didn’t think it prudent to give the Viet Cong so long a time to regroup and reorganise: they offered a truce of 48 hours and, in the end, only 36 hours – from 6 p.m. on Monday the 29th of January until 6 a.m. the following Wednesday. And the truce was abandoned altogether in the five northernmost provinces. The Americans believed two North Vietnamese divisions had entered the area and were planning to swamp their isolated base of Khe Sanh. So they also refused to acknowledge the truce for 175 kilometres above the DMZ to allow the bombing of North Vietnam to continue.

It didn’t seem much of a truce to me.

Even so, as the Lunar New Year festivities began there was certainly a holiday atmosphere in Saigon. Nguyen Hue Street, the street of flowers, was a mass of blooms down the centre and a market of canvas awnings had been set up. On Sunday the 28th of January, my girlfriend from the British Embassy and I wandered lazily through the flowers wondering where they all came from in a country that seemed bereft of everything except bomb craters, rice paddies and jungle. It was a very pleasant afternoon mixing with people who were all obviously and unusually happy. Tet meant double wages for all workers for the month (by tradition wages were paid monthly), and everyone bought themselves new clothes for the celebration. I was happy too because I had survived my time in Vietnam: with a week’s owed leave up my sleeve I had just one week to go. My replacement, 29-yearold English reporter Ron Laramy had already arrived in Singapore from London. I just had to sit in Saigon for a week and I was out. And as that was a traditional truce week anyway, I knew I had made it through.

The fact that there was a big war going on now seemed to make Tet even more of a celebration than ever, since depth of sadness equals height of happiness. Tet itself is a four-day affair and, although this year’s truce was only for 36 hours, it was obvious that everyone was expecting to celebrate the full four days. There was a relaxed feeling about Saigon – even among the Follies briefers.

However, one little incident disturbed me and I could not get it out of my mind as the celebrations began. Since I had been in Saigon I had always found the Vietnamese very friendly. But on the Monday morning I was walking along Tu Do Street with my girlfriend and Jim Pringle, towards the Majestic Hotel down near the river. We weren’t going anywhere in particular, just wandering the streets enjoying the carnival atmosphere. I was busy talking to Jim and didn’t notice that I was on a collision course with a Vietnamese in his mid-20s. I swerved too late to miss him and, as he didn’t deviate from his path, we bumped into each other quite forcefully. I turned to apologise and smile but he turned and gave me the blackest look of hatred I had ever seen. It was such a look that I could see it still that night, exactly, truly, already: hard eyes staring, eyes tight, lips turned and slightly open. Who was this bloke who hated me, or what I represented, so much, I wondered. Who was this Vietnamese who wasn’t celebrating his Tet? It made me regard as sinister complaints over the Viet Cong radio that 36 hours wasn’t long enough for a truce.

But I didn’t have too much time to dwell on it all because, while it was an easy time for everyone else, a truce was a very busy time for the press. The first accusation of one side breaking the cease-fire was the big traditional Tet story every year – and every newsagency journalist sweated on this because the media love news they recognise and know. Someone had to remain in the office almost all the time: as soon as anyone was shot or a rocket went off the Americans would announce the Viet Cong had broken the truce, or vice versa. This year there had also been threats to end the truce, and the various changes announced by the Americans.

Things outside were quiet that Monday – unusually so, even for a truce. In fact the lack of action was the only story I could write as I sat in the office with little to do. But I was hardly bored or disappointed. Not with just four days and a wake-up to go before I was out of Vietnam on my way to Australia. I was sitting back with my feet up thanking fortune that I’d managed to stay alive. It was a nice feeling thinking I’d never have to go out into the field again, where, I now knew well, it was ‘very quick and easy to be killed’.

That night, however, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, without any warning, launched withering attacks in the ancient capital of Hue and in the second city of South Vietnam, Danang. Even though these two cities were in the five northern provinces where the truce had been cancelled by the Americans it was still quite a surprise. There had always been some skirmishes during truces in the past, but there were indications that these were major assaults.

Luckily for Reuters it was the first time we had based two reporters in Danang. Bruce Pigott and John MacLennan were both there because of the perceived threat to the lonely outpost of Khe Sanh. They started filing stories on the northern offensive late on Monday evening, including stories on Khe Sanh which was said by the Americans to be surrounded by North Vietnamese regulars hidden in the hills. Jim and I worked all next day taking stories from them by radiophone and adding quotes from the Follies briefers in Saigon.

I had expected to finish early that Tuesday night, and my girlfriend was waiting in the office, her white Mini-Minor parked outside ready to take us off to join the celebrations. There had been so many attacks in the north, however, that I had to write a nightlead summing everything up. I had just started this when, suddenly, Dinh
*
stood up from his desk at the office entrance and, solemnly, walked over to me. He had been unusually quiet this evening. ‘Gunsmoke, you tell Miss go home,’ he said gravely. I was used to bantering conversations with Dinh but this wasn’t the time and I asked him, politely, why he thought he could run my social life. He stood unsmiling looking down from too close to my desk. ‘Tonight the VC attack Saigon. She go home,’ he said. My girlfriend was a secretary at the British Embassy and she never appreciated my telling her that the Americans were losing the war. This had become a point of some friction. Her attitude was that the British Embassy was in close contact with the Americans and she believed the Americans were close to winning. Therefore, since what Dinh was saying was impossible, she believed we were just trying to get her out of the office. She walked out angrily, got in her Mini, and drove off home to the compound of units where British Embassy staff lived.

With the Hue citadel now under assault I was too busy to argue and knew I could patch things up later. I turned to Dinh and said, jokingly, ‘The VC to attack Saigon? That’s a bloody good story. I’ll put that in this nightlead here.’ Dinh, who was always giving me inside information and saying: ‘You can say government sources,’ or: ‘You can say informed sources,’ this time missed my three-quarter smile. He still looked very serious and said, ‘No background. No source. No report. But we must be ready. First with big story.’

Jim Pringle reacted in his usual way to serious news when I called him down. He stood, one arm leaning on the desk and the hand of the other opened palm outwards on his hip, and stared straight ahead through his thick glasses, lips pursed. We waited for his decision. Eventually Jim too decided that, although Dinh was almost invariably right, this was hard to believe. Even when the French were in Vietnam the Viet Minh never got within miles of Saigon.

And there had been no whisper of this from anyone else – American reporters or officials or other Vietnamese. Dinh alone claimed Saigon would be invaded, and during a truce. But, still, Jim decided we would have to act as if Dinh were right and stay in the office, just to cover ourselves.

Dinh would still not reveal his source but he said the attack would come at 1 a.m. Although I wanted to straighten things out with my girlfriend, I stayed on with Jim at the office just to see what would happen, if anything. Dinh went home to his family, saying he’d return after midnight. With a few hours to kill, Jim and I walked down Tu Do Street to the
New York Times
office to tell them we had heard Saigon might be attacked – hardly believing it ourselves. Tom Buckley got us a beer each out of their fridge: I think he thought we needed it. They clearly didn’t believe it, either – by then it was third-hand hearsay anyway – but they stayed talking to us until after midnight.

Jim and I walked back to the office even though it was after the midnight curfew. Occasionally we ignored it but Americans were never seen after that hour. Everything was as quiet as normal at this time of night in Saigon, with little movement and few lights. As we walked up the street alone in the dark I knew that Dinh was wrong, because otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to walk about freely. I knew there were hundreds of thousands of American and ARVN troops in camps in and around Saigon. Surely if the Viet Cong were ever going to enter the capital it would have happened a long time ago when the opposition wasn’t as strong.

Anyway if something were going to happen the Americans would have known about it for sure and there would be signs of extra defence. And I remembered Dinh had received a Christmas card from President Thieu: he had good contacts, yes, but they were on the wrong side. Maybe he had succumbed to VC propaganda. A week ago American intelligence had revealed at the Follies that Khe Sanh was under threat. Surely they would know if Saigon were similarly threatened.

Back at the office we rang Dinh and told him not to bother coming in unless something happened. When he agreed, any last nagging doubts I had left disappeared. Nothing was going to happen. Still, Jim and I waited until well after one o’clock, just to be sure.

There wasn’t a sound in Saigon. About 2 a.m. Jim offered to drive me the two blocks home to the two adjacent flats Bruce Pigott had arranged near the office so we would be within easy reach if something broke. I said I had better go to the British compound. Jim didn’t really like the idea but, seeing I was going to find my own way there, he offered to take me. He drove slowly through the dark streets the three kilometres to the unit block of several storeys. The compound was opposite a large US transport depot; and the only people we saw on the journey were a few Americans there who were smoking behind the sandbag bunkers which for many years had guarded it – although never a shot had been fired.

Jim dropped me off and I stood facing the huge solid-steel gates with spikes on the top which barred the way into the compound. The entry was seldom locked, however, and I pushed the gate open and went through. To my regret, I didn’t even bother shutting it. Casually I made my way through the parked cars inside and up the few flights of stairs.

My girlfriend was lying on the bed in her flat, apparently asleep. As I’d been working for most of the last 18 hours, my clothes felt stuck to my body and I decided to have a shower. This would wake my friend up, I hoped, so we could resolve our differences there and then. I got out of the shower and was getting dressed when I heard some explosions and gun-fire, and then a louder explosion just outside. A window in the flat went white as I looked out the bathroom door, and it fell in as if someone had thrown a bottle of milk at it.

Immediately my girlfriend rolled over and said coolly, as if she had believed Dinh all along, ‘It’s started, hasn’t it?’ Only then I realised Dinh had been right. I rushed out to the balcony and looked down over the side at the spike gates I had come through. Men in old clothes with guns were coming out of a manhole in the ground on the other side. They were firing and US troops were firing back. There was a large block of apartments on a triangular block nearby and a European girl over there who had also rushed out on her balcony was hit by a bullet and, I found out later, died. As soon as I glimpsed what was happening I headed back inside, where my friend’s flatmate was now awake and crying.

I knew I had to get to the office. For the first time, Saigon was under Viet Cong attack. This was the big one: poor Jim was alone with the biggest story in history and I wasn’t there to help him. But at least he was in the office, as his flat was upstairs, and he would immediately start filing stories.