The Shadow of Arms (28 page)

“Come back after lunch, by then I'll have the stuff loaded.”

“You can't load more than two pallets of large cartons?”

“We can do better than that. First, we'll load two side by side, then we'll squeeze a third in behind. A tight fit, but we can force them.”

“The payment ought to be made the next day. The rate outside is changing day by day.”

“Fine. No need to pay me this time, since you took me out Saturday night.”

“That was just a good time among friends. You can return the favor next time.”

A black guy driving a forklift grinned at them as he passed by.

“I told him about you. He was cracking up.”

“Where's Stapley?”

“He's over at another warehouse.”

“Let's take him out, too, next time we have a little fun.”

“Sure. He'll kill you he's so funny. And he's a very bright guy.”

By the time Yong Kyu came out of the cafeteria where he had eaten fish, potatoes, and spinach with the other supply troops, the goods were all loaded. Three pallets of salad oil: two hundred forty cans in sixty boxes. The Vietnamese love fried food, and before long a lot of households would be frying shrimp, bananas, corn, and whatever else with that oil. All Leon had to do was leave a space blank for that truckload and move on to the next one on his list of requisitions to be checked. As they left, Leon made an OK signal with his thumb and index finger.

Falling in line behind other trucks that had finished loading their cargoes, they made their way without incident back to the Y-junction. When they broke away from the convoy and headed downtown, the Vietnamese QC guards at the checkpoint gestured for them to stop. Slowly the truck rumbled to a stop in front of the guards. Pretending to be annoyed by the delay, Yong Kyu casually held out the special vehicle pass issued by General Liam, the Second Army commander. The guard took a step backward, saluted, and quickly signaled for them to pass through.

“He looked shocked.”

The driver sped down the road in high spirits. They drove straight to the ocean, passed the oil reservoir towers with giant “Gulf” and “Shell” labels on them, and entered the rear gate at the pier. The docks were hectic with the loading of all kinds of civilian cargo arriving in Da Nang for shipment from all around Vietnam. Once more they showed their special pass to the Vietnamese police and were guided in the right direction to go for unloading. As they parked the truck, Toi and another man emerged from a dilapidated wooden shack that served as an office. Toi called up to the cab of the truck, “Container 19 and conex box 5 over there are for our use only. Pull the truck to number 5.”

The truck backed up and a forklift came around and quickly moved the three pallets one at a time into the conex box. Toi locked the iron door, pulled the key out and handed it over to Yong Kyu.

“All done.”

Yong Kyu sent the truck back to the rec center and left with Toi in his Jeep.

“It's been agreed that we'll pay a monthly rental fee for the storage. So, when the pass expires, we'll pay for both together.”

“Major Pham, he's airtight.”

“You see, I've discovered that all the Da Nang docks are in his hands. That huge pile over there, you know what that is?”

Yong Kyu saw innumerable sacks stacked up and covered with tent canvas. The pile was as big as a two or three story building. A series of similar heaps were occupying half the space across the road from the piers.

“What is it? Flour?”

“No. Cement and fertilizer. They're coming in in unlimited quantities. Ever heard of the phoenix hamlet project?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Three hundred new villages are being constructed. Flour and rice will be arriving, too. Nails, slate, iron bar, glass, paper, you name it. Cattle and feed grain, I can't even remember all of it.”

“When they get those things, will the war end?”

“Not at all. It's as if you've beaten someone to a pulp and call on the cripple with a bouquet of flowers to express your sympathy.”

“We have an old folktale like that. A man was rewarded for mending the leg of a broken sparrow. So another man found a sparrow and broke its leg just so he could mend it, expecting to be rewarded in the same way.”

“Was he rewarded?”

“All sorts of demons popped out, and he struggled to escape, drowning in shit and filth. Now we've got to go keep our rendezvous with the merchant.”

“Right, to the Bamboo.”

“Next time we'd better change the meeting place. The Bamboo is far from ideal.”

“We should rent an office or a shop.”

“Right. Talk with him about it. After all, we have to be there in Le Loi market.”

From the pier they turned off the beach road and walked the whole way, passing through a street packed with stores. They reached the end of Le Loi market, only one alley away from the old market district. Amidst the shouting of the people and the great variety of merchandise on sale, the smell of death seemed to have completely vanished from the city.

 

 

19

General Westmoreland decided that the only way to suppress the communist guerrillas was to expel all communists from the phoenix hamlets and establish free-fire zones everywhere else. Warnings had been coming from the operations headquarters. With the combat situation getting hotter, circumstances were pressing the peasants to discard the lukewarm attitude of neutrality they had thus far maintained and to make a decision.

They too were finding it increasingly obvious that to survive in these circumstances they were going to have to choose one side or the other. In the past, the farmers had three options to make a living: in accordance with their natural instincts they could stay put on the land where their ancestors were buried; they could move to zones under secure government control; or they could join the National Liberation Front. From now on, however, those who tried to stay on their land would encounter increasing peril.

The Viet Cong did not even know how to dress wounds properly, but those who moved into the zones of government control would receive food, shelter, and personal safety as well as jobs, along with the hope of returning home after a successful conclusion of the war. The alternative was to join the NLF. But the Front made hollow promises. They could not hold on to the territory they occupied for very long. B-52 strikes would get worse, the Viet Cong would raise the taxes, their young sons would be drafted at gunpoint, and labor would be demanded for transporting supplies. In present circumstances, the tide of battle on the ground was turning gradually in favor of the enemy.

In the conference room of the provincial government office, a monthly meeting of the US–Vietnam Joint Committee was underway. The joint committee was an organization first set up in conjunction with the strategic hamlets initiative in the early 1960s, and it was now being restructured and expanded to administer the phoenix hamlets project. For this resettlement plan the Vietnamese government had inaugurated a “Developmental Revolution Committee,” and the chairman of this committee was none other than General Liam, the military governor of Quang Nam Province.

Present in the room were Major Pham Quyen, acting on behalf of the chairman, AID representatives assigned to Da Nang, an American military advisor for Quang Nam Province, the mayor of Hoi An (also vice-chairman of the Developmental Revolution Committee), the commander of the ARVN Second Division stationed at Da Nang, the chiefs of the agriculture and education sections of the provincial administration, and, up from Saigon as advisors, a Filipino specialist in community development and a young man from the International Support Corps.

The air conditioner was buzzing, but it did not impede their discussions. The thick curtains were drawn on the windows of the conference room that normally looked down on the streets. From inside it was hard to imagine where in the world they might be. The soundproofing was so good that no street noise at all penetrated the conference room. Standing at the front of the room was a huge map of East Asia along with a large chart written in both Vietnamese and English. Nearly a hundred tasks were listed on the chart, in each case with specifications showing the details of the task for each site—such-and-such village in such-and-such province—with budgets and monthly timetables for distribution of supplies. Just now the US military advisor was emphasizing once more the strategic importance of the phoenix hamlet project, reiterating the announcements by the headquarters of the US forces in Saigon. However, the mayor of Hoi An was not convinced and spoke bluntly.

“As for the search-and-destroy operations commenced by General Westmoreland, our commanders on the front have presented some criticisms. In fact, ever since the Tet Offensive, our general staff have also taken the view that, due to the general problems of such operations, it is a very doubtful way to achieve a decisive victory. We would like to believe that the new operational strategy of newly appointed General Abrams will bear our reservations in mind. I've long thought that the headquarters policy on designation of free-fire zones was a very dangerous approach. Could it be that headquarters has given up hope of winning the loyalty of the Vietnamese peasantry?

“It is practically the same as giving up the entire highlands region of central Vietnam to the NLF and the North Vietnamese. It is a development of deep significance, meaning, in effect, that from now on nobody can be neutral. What you're saying is, you will take no responsibility for whatever happens to people who have not moved into the hamlets or into our zones of control. What you're saying is, those villages that had joined with the NLF in the past can and will be annihilated.”

The chief of the agricultural section in the local government was an ARVN major on reserve status and senior to Pham Quyen. He cautiously supported the comments of the mayor of Hoi An.

“All of this is, of course, a by-product of the agonizing war we have been through. We've witnessed the wretched fate of many farmers who've been deprived of their land and livelihood by the establishment of free-fire zones. If you go up in a helicopter and cross the metal fences at the boundary of the division defense zone, then you'll see the parade of refugees slowly creeping along under the hot sun. No one knows where they come from and they themselves don't know where they're going. The old men have pots and pans on their backs, or a couple of chickens, their entire property, and the children ride in rickety wooden carts, many of them already sick. On the outskirts of all the cities, Da Nang included, tens of thousands of refugees have swarmed in, making slums of shacks on a giant scale, and they keep on growing, too.

“The Americans have provided these refugees with vast quantities of relief supplies and have tried to find jobs for them, but they couldn't possibly have understood the various problems presented for these Vietnamese people by such transplantation. Putting aside the two most important things, carrying on permanent family life and worshiping one's ancestors, they think of their own villages as an entire world in microcosm and their worlds are lost.”

As usual, Pham Quyen found himself cast in a sort of master-of-ceremonies role, and he felt a need to move in a direction different from their pessimistic, impractical pleas.

“Our Developmental Revolution Committee and the US—Vietnam Joint Committee are anti-war organizations founded basically to fulfill the hopes of the Vietnamese people to be free from hunger and terror. In other words, furthering self-reliance and realizing peace have been the permanent goals of the projects of our organization. So, our goal is not to expand but to end the fighting. If, as in the past, our enterprise exists and is seen merely as a derivative part of a strategy to achieve military goals, then it is bound to fail. Hence, I would very much like to focus on the fact that this self-reliance project must take the lead on all policy fronts, and the military operations policies need to be supportive of our enterprise.

“Earlier, the advisor reminded us of the characteristic intensity of headquarters' operations in the run-up to the Tet Offensive, and we now hope that experience would help us to stabilize our project so it can take root and be transformed into a process of securing strongholds that one by one can be expanded. In that respect, General Liam, our committee chairman, upon receiving the report I submitted on the deficiencies in the old strategic hamlet project and the causes of its failure, instructed us to carry out an organizational reconstruction and recruitment of new personnel in the course of planning the phoenix hamlets project. Consequently, I hope this meeting will be devoted in large part to the differences between the strategic hamlet and the phoenix hamlet projects that are expected to improve the prospects for the new initiative. We each can voice our opinions, beginning with the divisional commander, here, please.”

The Second Division commander was from Hue. A young general in the Rangers, he won a field promotion to general when the ARVN First Army was reorganized following the ousting of General Nguyen Chanh Thi in 1966. He had no knowledge whatsoever about pacification techniques on the civilian level. Thumbing through the project plan that had been typed up and distributed, he spoke falteringly:

“To be honest with you, I know almost nothing about the strategic hamlets project. But within the limits of my knowledge, I'd like to mention a few things I think could be helpful for such a pacification project. Adjutant Pham just mentioned that as a project pursuing peace and stability, military operations should be subordinated to the project. However, we are not facing, as our main resistance line, the seventeenth parallel, which looks like the neck of a sack tightened from the sides, Laos and the ocean. There is no front line—the enemy is at our flank, in the rear, beneath us, everywhere. So, just because phoenix hamlets are being established, we cannot stop other operations and devote our forces only to protecting and securing the hamlets.

“Rather, it seems to me that the phoenix hamlets project brings various setbacks for our operations. In my view, the rural areas must be subdivided and communities drastically broken down according to the use of the land. Then, a small number of cultivators and teams of agricultural technicians should create large-scale production complexes, and the military can demarcate operations units for each such complex. And many people who are moved back onto the rural land, after going through a camp-like assembly process, can be set to work on industrial projects, with a good number of factories set up in the environs outside the cities. We have to correct and control the misdistribution of population and efficiently utilize the workforce, then military operations will be able to function better. Unless it is preceded by such a reorganization of settlement patterns, the concentration of the rural community in its present positions will bring no good practical results. Unless more effective control as well as improved security systems are introduced, it will be hard for us to expect victory.”

On the surface, the division commander's remarks sounded quite reasonable. Pham Quyen felt this honest presentation of a rather extreme functionalism was not very far from what the Americans actually had in mind. A kind of domino theory in which, if one falls down the rest will tumble one by one; each individual domino is not likely to be seen as a distinct entity alive with its own thoughts and dreams, but just as a cube assigned a simple material value.

As though he were moving pieces and jumping squares on a black-and-white checkerboard, the division commander was talking of the land as the flat plane he was used to seeing whenever he looked down at his maps. That square frame, containing streams drawn in ballpoint pen, with the elevations of mountain ridges appearing as connecting ovals, could not show the forests, the birds or the fish, nor could it show the hearts of men stooping over in the rice paddies or their rejoicing at night in the embraces of their wives and children.

The chief of the agricultural was to the left of the commander and this position earned him the opportunity to speak next. He was slightly outraged by the general's remarks and had been looking at him with contempt. He spoke:

“A mechanistic mentality, to be sure. Of course, I have no doubt about the division commander's remarkable ability as a combat commander. But it was precisely such thinking that guaranteed the failure of the strategic hamlets project. As Adjutant Pham aptly explained, the establishment of free-fire zones by the US military command in the course of setting up the phoenix hamlet project has been a fundamental impediment to our enterprise. To rectify these problems is why we are meeting here today.

“We have in our possession accurate information on the startling changes that have accompanied the social revolution that has unfolded in North Vietnam since the 1950s. What is startling is how effective were the strategies and techniques they employed to acquire and hold the hearts of Vietnamese farmers. Americans must realize, first and foremost, that they have entered into a cultural sphere that has nothing in common with their own. Material support cannot be the key for solutions. As the Developmental Revolution Committee is now recognizing, the most urgent thing is the realization of social justice.

“People should be paid for their labor, and a land reform of sweeping breadth must be accomplished in the pacification zones. However, based on our experience, once the government forces move into a new pacification zone, the pattern has been that the farmers see their land seized by new landlords, vile opportunists with relatives or friends in the military or other speculators with military connections. The Vietnamese are people who follow the teachings of Confucius. Unlike Western people, we attach more importance to seeing rightness put into practice than to the fulfillment of material desires. The Liberation Front focuses its concern on the corruption endemic on our society. . . .”

“Chief, couldn't you use some other expression?”

Pham Quyen interrupted in the nick of time, for he was conscious of the first lieutenant who was busily taking down all of the remarks of the proceedings. The contents of the conference would be reported later, and Pham Quyen did not relish being questioned by the Da Nang internal security agency later. Of course, as Liam's right-hand man, and with Liam having a direct family line to the president, they would not dare do anything to Pham, but all the same he wanted to avoid any mutual unpleasantness.

Sitting next to the Americans was an interpreter they had hired who was translating for them every word spoken. The chief of the agricultural section mopped his brow with a handkerchief and continued. As far as Pham Quyen knew, he had been a sincere and outstanding student in his younger days. He was from Quang Ngai. Though he had graduated from the officer candidate school, he was scarcely cut out for the military. He had once worked for USOM, where he impressed his superiors, so they had sent him to the Philippines for further education. There was no doubt he had superior knowledge and skills in agriculture, but to Pham Quyen he was a stubborn idealist. He did not fit the reality in Vietnam, and now it seemed he had almost gone crazy over this phoenix hamlet project. For some time Pham Quyen had been thinking that the man was showing signs of becoming dangerous.