M Y O B

November 1, 2009

The hiatus in posting was occasioned by a drive to Pennsylvania and back, by way of Denver, where a dear friend lives. He accompanied me to PA and back as far as Denver.

It was a quick trip, driving a lot of miles:

Trip Miles

That entry for Denver to Barstow is correct: I miscalculated the distance, and planned to stay in Las Vegas to shorten the day. However, I got off the freeway there, could not find a hotel, and could not get back on the freeway due to massive reconstruction. I finally said, “To heck with it”, and drove on to Barstow as planned. It was a long day!

Otherwise, the trip went fairly well, despite some bad weather and in spite of my taking a rented car rather than my own old Chrysler. About all I can say for the modern Chrysler “Town & Country” is that it went father on a gallon of gas than my old car.

Trip Gas Costs and Miles Per Gallon

One thing I found noticeable and annoying: since we ate in restaurants, we were subjected to numerous disgusting children, better known as rug-rats. With few exceptions, they were ill-mannered and loud, and their parents did nothing to induce better behavior.  For the life of me, I can’t figure out why americans are so afraid of gay people: at the rate mid-westerners reproduce, it can’t be they fear depopulation! Could it be that deep in their hearts, they’re worried that some of their own precious little brats will grow up to be gay?

I did have some time to complete a new story: Life After Charlie turns the Nature-Boy trilogy into a tetralogy, so read the Nature-Boy triplet first, then Life After Charlie. They are all on Nifty, and formatted pdf files are available if you drop me a line at [email protected] .

Once I get used to the changed time and catch up on a flood of emails, I will continue the narrative of my trip: Thailand turned out to be very different from Cambodia. I expect it still is.

I spent more than a week in and around Siem Reap. Now, I am surprised to find on-line references to many of the places and temples I visited. I’ve selected one link for some in the material which follows, but anyone wishing to learn more can cut and paste the names into google and find much more information. Bear in mind that in the forty years since I was there, some changes have certainly occurred.

One thing I had not realized until I got to Siem Reap:  Angkor Wat, is the most extraordinary of a large group of Wats, most of them located in the same general area. In fact, there are numerous temples all over Cambodia, Wat Nokor being the first I encountered. In the rainy season in 1968, many of the more remote temples were beyond reach except by water buffalo and cart! I tried to reach one or two, but the motorcycle met its match on flooded roads and mud churned up by herds of water B’s.

Here is a letter I wrote when about to depart Siem Reap for Thailand: following the letter is a group of diary entries which are more detailed and interesting.

23 Sept 68
Dear Everyone~

Unfortunately, I seem to have lost track of just when I wrote last. Probably Phnom Penh. I spent four more delightful days in that charming capital, taking several tours around thereabouts. Got on some really wonderful back roads, where I’m sure my appearance on a “moto” was as startling to the natives as a green martian would be to me. But the reception was, always, courteous and friendly. Got to Prey Veng & Kampong Cham, the latter a very charming city on the banks of the Mekong, & with Wat Nokor  (contemporary with Angkor) nearby.

Then off to Kampong Thom. Stayed overnight there, but not much to see other than a local zoo) of all things!) that had some interesting beasts & birds. Pressed on (through some rain) & arrived in Siem Reap Wed the 18th. Except for a brief excursion to Battambang on the 20-21st, I’ve been here ever since, and day after tomorrow, alas, I have to go on.

Angkor is simply not to be believed—except that is very much here to be seen. The various temples and ruins are incredible, both in their dimensions, and in their decor. The feat of simply cutting and piling the necessary stones to make Angkor Wat, for instance, is fantastic enough; but then every square inch of the whole thing inside AND out was carved and decorated—a  process that must have taken years. I wish only there were some artists’ renderings or scale models available to show what the temple looked like in their hey-day. Since all the wood involved has disappeared, and since virtually all the colors used on the relief-work have similarly disappeared, one really has to use his imagination to see the temples in their more complete state. One of the most fascinating of the group is Ta Prohm, which has been left largely as it was re-discovered, still greatly over-grown by the jungle. Seeing it as it is now, one can more readily see how temples even as large as Angkor Wat were “lost” in the jungle—it is amazing how it swallows things up. Poking around in this rubble one can almost get the same sensation the discoverers of the 1860s must have had.

Siem Reap is remarkably unspoiled despite the tourist flow. Right now, probably the worst time to see the ruins because of weather, there are marvelously few tourists here. So the town in quiet—except for the calls of jillions of frogs in some nearby [marshy] areas near the Hotel here. Altogether, very restful place. Although it rains nearly every afternoon for a couple of hours, this is no trouble, since  having started the day around 6 am (to get the best light in the ruins) one is generally quite ready for a siesta come 3 or 4 o’clock!

And everywhere, the wonderful Khmer people, who have just got to be one of the world’s most unspoiled and delightful ethnic sub-groups. Their friendliness and good nature are matchless; the only “danger” in this country is that of falling in love with it and its people. It will be truly with regret that I push on to Thailand, though I may find the Thai’s friendly as well.

The Honda runs beautifully—even through water 2½ feet deep! The only mishap so far has been one unexpected bump that I took rather too fast on a remote track somewhere between Angkor and Beng Mealea; the violent rebound brought the luggage rack and the tail-light into smart contact, smashing the latter. Not even a flat tire yet, and I’ve driven over 2000 km since arriving in P.Penh! The enclosed map shows my routes to date. As you can see, I couldn’t make the whole circle of the Tonle Sap—just not enuf time!

Much love~
Bruce

Here is the Map I Actually Carried, Marked with My Routes

DIARY ENTRIES: Sunday,15TH [SEPTEMBER, 68] Off to a somewhat later start than desirable, about 9. The road to Svey Reng is not too bad—about 40 mph except in the villages. Made Svey Reng, after about 1/2 hour wait for the ferry, about 12. Not much to see here, but the flooded country-side is beautiful!! Ride across the Mekong pretty, but takes only about 5 minutes. [Retraced my route back across the M again, then turned north on Highway 25 and] Pushed on to Kampong Cham, which is quite a large city on the banks of the Mekong, and very pretty. The ruins of Wat Nokor are just outside of town. Between S R and K C I went through a large rubber plantation—the trees are being tapped now, and they are dropping their nuts, which hit the pavement with a loud noise. Between K C and Skoun saw 4 elephants—photographed one group of 3. A third ferry (not on map) across the Mekong put me about 30 km out of P.Penh at sundown, and when the sun goes down here, the bugs go up!! Very buggy from there on to P.Penh. Got sun/wind burn on face and legs rather badly. Will see how I feel after a night’s rest, but doubt I want to go all the way to Pursat tomorrow. Maybe to Kg. Chhnang. Will see.

First Mekong Crossing – Road to Svey

Elephants and the Gent Approaching Asked for Payment for the Photo.

Awaiting Ferry to Kg.Cham – On Ferry, Bikes Take First Place

Bicyclettes Awaiting Our Arrival, Kg. Cham

Passenger Ferry, Kg. Cham – Approaching the Far Shore of the Mekong

Monday 16th: I awakened early after a good night’s sleep assisted by a vitamin pill & a darvon tablet. Face too sore to shave, but legs (except ankles) not bad except in looks. Face not uncomfortable—just thought it better not to risk messing it up really badly by shaving. But I really don’t feel like the trip to Pursat—too far for round-trip in one day, and Kg. Chhnang will have to wait until my next trip here.

Instead, I took off with a “guide” for Odong. It was a very leisurely trip, passing Kg. Lovor. Parked at the bottom of the Phnom & climbed the time-worn steps to top of the hill. Said hello to Buddha. Spent three hours up there, with the guide; very pleasant. Back to Kg. Lovor for Pepsis, then leisurely back to P.Penh. Released the guide. Expensive, but helpful and spoke rather good English. Tonight I will have my last Cambodian Beefsteak at the Champey Siemreap, & visit with the French Peace-Corps worker I met on the ferry to Svey Reng.

BACKSTORY: The chap I spent most of my time with in Phnom Penh introduced me to a guide, who made it clear from the start that his fees included sex. He was one of the most handsome guys I ever met anywhere! Taller than most Khmers, I might have thought he was part-Thai, but of course the ethnic groups in this part of the wold rarely inter-marry. He assured me, using better-than-average english, that he was all Khmer with a blatant grope of his crotch. So, every population has its out-liers, and his height was not a problem, despite my preference (ordinarily) for smaller boy-toy types. I’d have gone with him even if he was ten feet tall: he was that handsome! We rode two-up to Oudong: he put his arms around me to hold on (the only safe way to ride two-up on a motorcycle) but was not above letting his hands wander, so it might be said we rode just “up” all the way. There is a long stairway up to the top of the Phnom, and there were many folks around. After the customary homage to Buddha, we chose a round-about path down the forested hill, and eventually found a warm clearing where we could lie on the leafy litter and enjoy each other as swarms of monkeys chattered in the canopy above. Having been kept in a state of anticipation all morning, the “event” when it arrived was extremely messy but satisfying. The guide really was “taller than most Khmers”—everywhere!

Somewhere in Cambodia

Banks of the Mekong, MC Mirror in Foreground.

Oudong, Cambodia

BACKSTORY: At the restaurant that night, the cook, evidently the “Director’s” wife, brought out a live turtle and showed it to me. He explained that she wished to prepare the beast for me, but I demurred. If she had just brought it to table prepared, I’d have eaten it, I expect, possibly without even knowing what it was. But I was unable to look the beast in the face and admit I could eat it. I settled for the usual beefsteak, which was delicious with the pile of watercress she always put under it.

Tuesday, 17 Sept: Trip to Kg. Thom uneventful. Rain in the afternoon. Kg. Thom, situated on the River Sen is about 2000 people. Pretty place, but I can’t see what keeps it going. Its chief claim to fame seems to be its zoo. Stayed at the Bungalow, where the rooms are too expensive and the mosquitoes fierce! Gekkos are fat here, though. No really good restaurant.

BACKSTORY: The zoo at K. T. was quite extensive, and I saw birds and beasts there I’d never seen before. I also saw a lot of town-folk and children visiting: as it was Tuesday, I surmised there was some local holiday, for otherwise the children would have been in school. Well off the beaten track here, I was the object of many stares—none unfriendly—there were literally dozens of handsome youngsters, any of which I would have entertained given the opportunity. Alas, the opportunity never arose. It pains me beyond measure to realize there were horrors that awaited them of which we all were oblivious at the time.

Wednesday, 18 Sept: Awoke early after a good sleep. Departed Kg. Thom about 6:30 am, without breakfast. Soon got into rain, which I more or less followed for about 2/3 of the way to Siem Reap. Stopped frequently to let the rain get ahead of me, but got into some heavy rain in spite of that. Arrived S R just before noon. Had soupe Cambodienne at a small restaurant, then checked into the Hotel de la Paix. Changed to dry clothes. Rain stopped, temperature up a little, and overcast. Went immediately to Angkor Wat, spent about 2-1/2 hrs there doing a quick tour. Then the circle trip, stopping only briefly at most of the temples. Back to the Hotel for dinner & then to the Grand Hotel for free movies.

I am peeling everywhere; my face is a mess & my nose has peeled so frequently I am amazed there is anything left of it!

(This entry continued on next blog page)

BACKSTORY: As I departed Kg. Thom early, I was suddenly aware of horrible screams of terror so powerful I had to pull over and wait as the pitiful sounds got closer. Around the corner came a fellow pedaling a beychek in the seat of which was a huge pig trussed in stout strips of split-bamboo. The pig was very unhappy, and probably on his way to slaughter.

Coming up: In and around Angkor. Stay tuned!

MONEY

I try to retain a few good examples of the local currency from the places I visit. The Cambodian bills were very lovely, printed in Germany, and featured numerous scenes for which the country is justly famous. I saw a good many of these places in actuality.

12 September 1968
Hello again~

Who would believe this trip? Amid threatening clouds, I left Kep (after a restful day there—swimming at 7:00 AM!!) bound for Bokor. As expected, I got into rain fairly soon, and to put the end at the beginning, I drove through rain all the way to Sihanoukville!

BACKSTORY: I met a young fellow in Kep who reminded me of why I enjoy formerly-french countries! He was completely unabashed about sex, and we had a fine romp. However, when I told him I planned to visit Bokor, he assured me I should not go there. Unfortunately, the language barrier made it difficult for me to know what his objections were. (There’s usually no language barrier where sex is concerned!)

The road to Bokor is unbelievable! It goes up 1000 meters in about 22 kilometers, hacked through dense jungle all the way (except along the top of the mountains, where it is quite bare). Wonderful switch-backs and so forth, about 12 feet wide and paved fairly well.

The Road to Bokor

See below for a much later photo of this “road”, when it had become just a cow-path!

The rain on the way up was not bad, and perhaps the jungle is at its best when wet. I stopped (both ways) many times to shut off the machine & listen to the marvelous sounds—and occasionally to inspect the various animals crossing the road: mostly bright pink land crabs, but some spectacular snakes & things, too. The sounds are like nothing I’ve ever heard (naturally) and while one itches to take up a machete & go in search of the sources, without a guide & so forth that’s hardly recommended! By the time I got to Bokor itself, the storm was a veritable blizzard, visibility less than 30 feet. But amidst all this, the Auberge Royale was open and I got a good hot meal (about 9:30 am). After a quick tour of the casino (doing a thriving business) I set forth once again, this time to Popokville, about 4 km away. The rain let up slightly for this leg of the trip for which I was thankful. Just as the road (paved about 1/2 way) petered out into a couple of muddy ruts, and I was going to turn back, I heard the roar of water & saw a “parking” sign a little further on. So I thrashed on through, there to find the famed falls of Popokville (I wonder if Todd made this same pilgrimage?). Now, with all the rain, there was lots of water. The river is about 1/2 the size of the Merced at high water; the falls are a couple of hundred feet, in several stages. Very spectacular, very wet, and in the jungle setting, truly wonderful. There was not another soul around, although there are nice little pathways, rickety bridges & so forth (a la mist-trail [in Yosemite]) which I poked around in (carefully!) for about 1/2 hr.

Recent shot of the he famed falls of Popokville

I found this picture on the net, taken many years after I was there. These visitors had better weather!

When the rain re-commenced, I remembered the road I had to traverse back to pavement, & decided to push on. Back down that wonderful road. More sounds, more animals, rain. Some views were blocked by clouds, but I got some good looks down to the delta & sea 2-3000 feet below. Alas, no pictures—too little light [and too wet].

The remainder of the trip was uneventful, but very wet. At times the road was nearly flooded. The rainfall varied from moderate to very heavy. My poncho leaked, and when I finally reached S-ville I was soaked through. My luggage leaked slightly (as you can see by the stains made by some carbon-paper I foolishly brought along!) but I had dry clothes when at last I found the center of S-ville and a hotel.

Sihanoukville may turn out to be the only disappointment of this trip. The weather has not helped—it has rained steadily through today and shows no sign of stopping: tres inclement! But the city itself is not much. It has recently been turned into a free port, but until the railway to the interior is finished I doubt this will make much difference. There are a couple of ships at anchor and the town is full of a sorry lot of French merchant seamen. There is a rather lurid “strip”, a couple of strings of shops, the inevitable central market and information center—and that’s about it! The setting, though, is splendid and the beaches extensive and inviting—given proper weather. I should imagine that in 5 or 10 years this could be another Riviera.

You will not believe what this trip is doing to my diet!! Every now and then I order the Plat du jour, not always knowing just what to expect. In Phnom Penh I got as an entré one night some sort of small fowl, roasted (whole, I discovered) with petit pois & sauce. I will never know what it was (too small for pigeon) but it was not bad. Today, here, I had “orderves” (fresh crab, paté fois gras, sliced ham, chick-peas & onions) followed by a dozen clams on the half-shell (I know you won’t believe it but I ate them all), followed by fresh diced pineapple & café au lait; all for 80 riels (about $1.50).

Assuming it is raining still in the morning, I’m heading for the interior again—Kirirom. The weather there should be better. This cuts two days off my planned stay in S-ville, but without being able to swim & sun on the beach, there’s really almost nothing else to do; besides, constant rain depresses me. Hence,

More later!!

Bruce

So much for my planned sun and swim on the beaches in Sihanoukville (formerly, Kampong Som). I’m not really a swimmer: I was more interested in seeing skimpy bathing-suits on the local guys! Of these, there were none, the weather being foul as mentioned. Indeed, it was off-season, and there was only one hotel in Kep that was anything like “open”, and that barely. No restaurant. But there was a restaurant open in the town, where I had the meal mentioned, and where I cruised up the trick also mentioned. In Sihanoukville, the seamen were mostly drunk and probably after girls, but the locals had locked up every youngster (with good reason: with the french and ME in town, none of them was safe)!

I’ve since learned that Bokor was built up by the French as a refuge from the heat of the dry season, Although one web-site says it was abandoned after WWII, it was going strong when I was there in 1968, and it was quite a sumptuous place. It was abandoned (and looted) soon after the K-R took over, and now stands derelict:

Bokor

Bokor

I understand that Bokor is now a nature preserve and is patrolled to prevent poaching, but it is likely a losing battle: development as some sort of resort seems inevitable. The grand old Auberge will unquestionably be demolished, along with the Catholic church in Bokor and perhaps a Royal Residence as well.

By the time this picture was taken (found on the web) the “road” to Bokor had been over-grown by the jungle:

Cows on the Road to Bokor Now

A later picture shows it as even worse, open only to dirt-bikes! There’s more here.

But, time marches on. And the next day I decided to visit Kirirom. Stay tuned!

PHNOM PENH

Angkor Travel Brochure

NOTE TO READERS

The look of this blog will change slightly: I’m out of Vietnam, I’m in Cambodia, and I have a camera. There will be more pictures than there have been so far.

My letters all along were distributed to family and friends: so there is very little in them about gay things. From here on, I will occasionally interrupt the narrative from letters to interject a “BACKSTORY”, which will include whatever I was did not put in my letter to start with. I’ll change the gay backstory text to blue, which seems appropriate! Other BACKSTORY entries will remain in black & white.

I had with me a tablet of very thin paper, suitable for air-mailing, and I wrote continuous letters until I was able to mail them. Hence, some letters were long, covering several days. And now, without a typewriter, I am long-handing letters again, so for this blog all will have to be keyed in. This will slow things down a bit!

BEFORE I BEGIN

You will see quickly that in late 1968 Cambodia was a very pleasant place. It went quickly to the top of my list of “places I want to go back to”. You’ll also learn that I eventually returned to the states just in time to see places in Cambodia I had visited big blown to smithereens when Tricky Dick Nixon ordered the Vietnam war into Cambodia. There followed the horrors of the Khmer Rouge: Cambodia has not even yet returned to the condition it was when I was there, which grieves me to this day.

ONE MORE THING

I am utterly appalled by the behavior of the right-wing nut-cases raising such a ruckus over President Obama’s proposals about our health-care system. Former President Carter put his finger on it yesterday: racism is alive and well in the USA. We can only hope this bunch of nuts represents too small a portion of our population to cause more than noisy trouble, but I fear the violent nature of the rhetoric is likely to send some fool over the edge.

Look at Those Prices!

Look at those prices! On the entire trip, I never paid more than $2.00US per night in any hotel!

Travel Brochure

ON WITH MY STORY!

Phnom Penh 05 September 1968

Dear everyone~

Despite nearly everyone’s saying it couldn’t be done, here I am at Phnom Penh, exhausted, but delighted. The motorcycle is still at the airport—there are some customs formalities to complete tomorrow in the morning, also have to get proper exit visa so I can go out (as planned) via Arranya Prathet to Thailand (3 weeks hence). So I took a bus into town, have a nice Hotel, had a couple of hours of daylight for a quick walking tour; had a leisurely & plentiful meal of pork sautee’d avec champignons et. al., (very good), and am shortly going to turn in for a well deserved rest. It’s been a long day! Met a chap from Holland who is going on to BK tomorrow—he’s just come from Angkor & says it’s lovely and very devoid of tourists (this is not the season; the rains are not really quite over yet).

BACKSTORY: I checked into room 206 in the Hotel Mondial and took a short rest. When I went downstairs to the street to see what I could see, there was a clutch of cyclos and drivers at the curb. They crowded around vieing for my custom, and offering sight-seeing, girls, more sightseeing, more girls. But one chap sidled up and said quietly, “Would you like a girl—or a boy?” I agreed to take a ride in his cyclo, and once we were away from the crowd, it turned out the boy he had in mind was himself! We repaired to a small hotel of his choice, and had a wonderful romp! So, I had my first Cambodian within a few hours of arriving: he was not the last!

I am amused by a statement in a booklet I have before me that says, “Tourists of all nationalities except Chinese (mainland), Vietnamese, Thais and journalists can obtain visa . . .” Apparently they don’t like reporters! A very striking new University is along the route from airport to down-town; just beyond it is a clumpish big technical University built by the Soviets. It is unusual (for me) to see a Polish Embassy (I didn’t even see them in Europe!), but there is one, and Rumanian, and others as well. No American embassy, though—and I doubt I shall miss it a bit. Lots of English spoken here in PnhP, but I may get away from that later.

06 September 1968

The French have left behind throughout “Indo-China” a number of impressive monuments, not the least of which is a monumental bureaucracy that tends to put even us to shame! As a consequence, I still do not have my bike clear of “formalities”; I’m assured by the Australian Embassy however that we should be able to complete arrangements tomorrow morning sometime. Since the pressure is off, I can take all this philosophically; after all, I didn’t have to do it this way—I could have toured in the more conventional manner—hence there’s no one to blame for the delays but myself. But no matter—I got in a good deal of sight-seeing shuttling back & forth between the aerodrome, the Embassy and the Commissioner’s Office. The hang-up actually seems to be the requirement of a “caution”—actually an in-country co-signer who will assume responsibility if I fail to re-export the machine in the allotted time. Naturally, I know no one here who will undertake this, and (rightfully) the Embassy won’t do it either. But they’ve been most helpful—the Australians actually act in some capacities in lieu of an american embassy under a loose agreement we have with them—and I feel sure the matter can be cleared up tomorrow.

BACKSTORY: The real problem in dealing with the motorcycle was the language barrier: everyone thought I wanted to import the bike to Cambodia, which would have meant paying a hefty duty. I was unable to explain, my french and cambodian language skills being meager at best, that what I wanted to do was ride the bike in the country, and on out of it. Nevertheless, I was amused by the kind of forms the importers wanted to prepare: they had typewriters with carriages about 20 inches long, and huge sheets of paper to go into them! There were, of course, NO computers!

Hence, when 1:30 pm came along—everything stops then anyway—I took the more accepted “tour” of Phnom Penh, via “cyclo pousse”. When I get the bike I shall revisit all the spots for a more direct inspection.

I suspect PnhP is now rather like Saigon was in 1958 when Todd was there. It is, of course, much smaller than Sgn is now: about 600,000. Untouched by war in many years, it is hence much better kept, cleaner, & far less crowded. It is, among other things, much quieter: all the motorbikes have their silencers left in; thank goodness I brought with me the one for my machine, which otherwise would disrupt this place mightily. Since the Khmer are in general slightly stockier and larger than the Vietnamese, the Hondas popular here are the 65 & 90 cc models, though 125s are also around.

Another French institution that is universally found in the Extreme d’Orient is BGI (many americans call it British Gas Industries!). Actually, it is Brassieries et Glacieries de l’Indochine. Despite the limitation of the name, they are into all sorts of things—beer, soft-drinks, ice-cream, ice manufacture, etc.

This is the first city I have ever been in that is not plastered with “Beveté Coca Cola” signs. The signs are there, but they read “Drink Pepsi”!! I’m told that in the course of the falling-out with the USA, Coca Cola was somehow banned. How Pepsi slipped by I don’t know—the bottles all clearly say “bottled under license of Pepsi Corp, USA”. Ah, the mysterious East!

There are lots of new buildings, the most spectacular being the Unicversity mentioned earlier and the Olympic Stadii—there are at least two. A big bridge over the Tonle Sap looks like it might be new since Todd was here, but the “Phnom” seems to have been sinking, and a project is underway to shore it up by boring beneath it & putting in a new footing. The Royal Palace looks fascinating & I shall take the tour, tho’ possibly after I get back from Sihanoukville. My tentatively “planned” route is now:

9  Phnom Penh –> Kampot –> Kep . . . . . . . 195km

10   Kep

11   Kep –> Bokor –> Popokvil –> Sihanoukville . . . . . . . 100km

12, 13, 14: Sihanoukville

15  Sihanoukville –> Kirirom . . . . . . . 120km

16  Kirirom –> Phnom Penh . . . . . . . 125km

17  Phnom Penh –> Oudong –> Kampong Thom –> Siem Reap . . . . . . . 314km

18-24 Siem Reap & environs (Angkor, etc)

25 or 26 Siem Reap –> Poipet –> Bangkok . . . . . . . 420km

Subject to change! Will probably break the Siem Reap to Bangkok part into two parts, depending on availability of accommodations en-route. Divide the figures above by 1.6 to get miles, and the distances don’t seem so great—they aren’t!

Have to arise early tomorrow: life begins before dawn here, for some reason, and the Embassy opens at 7:30 am. Hence it is now time to get some sleep. Will add more tomorrow.

07.09.68

Got the bike today OK & toured the Palace—will get this in the mail & start a new letter soon.

Love to all~
Bruce

BACKSTORY: Once the folks at the Australian Embassy got clear in their mind what I wanted to do, they prepared a letter (in French) which I was to take to the Customs authorities at the aerodrome. Apparently the letter made clear to them what I wanted to do, because, after some delay filling out forms, they released the bike and told me I was free to visit any part of Cambodia I wanted: just to hand in the form at whatever point of departure I would use. Expecting the letter to do the trick, I had brought with me the bottle of gasoline procured in Vietnam and the silencer for the muffler. I installed the silencer, put gas in the tank, fired up the cycle and drove back into Phnom Penh. At night, the Mondial staff moved the bike inside the main entrance, not to protect it from thieves, but to keep the weather off of it!

This is the “Phnom” for Which the City is Named.

More letters soon!

Here is the last letter I wrote from Vietnam before departing. I was disillusioned, annoyed for having wasted nearly eight months with nothing to show for it. I was also itching to get on my way to Cambodia, where (at the time) peace prevailed.

Friday, 30 August 1968
Dear everyone~

After the last letter I wrote, I don’t think any of you will be surprised to learn that I finally resigned from PA&E. I just can’t face 11 months of wasting my time and the government’s money, no matter how much of the latter they might pay me. The lab program is a dead horse no matter how one views it, and any attempts to revive it (within the framework of PA&E) is an excercise in futility. The company is falling apart. More adverse publicity at home. A group of disgruntled former employees who went out in the course of the Qui Nhon debacle have formed a consortium of sorts to bring a lot of pressure from back home, as well as suits. There’s much talk of a stop-work injunction being sought. The whole affair stinks, and I’ve had all I can stand of it.

The deed is done, and plans are well along for the trip to Bangkok. The paperwork involved in getting out of VN is worse than that required to get in. Supposedly I will get my exit visa on Wednesday, and my ticket to Phnom Penh; I should get my Cambodian Visa on Thursday, and I’m booked to leave the same day on the 4 PM flite. This is cutting it pretty thin, but there is another flite Friday (no more ’till Teusday ff.) that I maybe can take if some hitch occurs on the Thursday one. Airlifting the bike is costing more than airlifting me—naturally, as it weighs more than I do. But the entire fare is less than 65 bucks for both of us, and the approx. 20 kilos of luggage I’m taking along. Am sending one large suitcase unaccompanied, as I think I mentioned before: that will cost about 12 bucks.

What with the transfer, my word to the post office a month ago, and other difficulties (not the least of which is that the PA&E mail room can’t seem to understand the difference between EMD and ECMD), I got a big wad of mail yesterday: a card from the folks in Canada, two letters from Todd (both written prior to one other later one that came straight through), the family letter from the southern branch, and two letters from Willie in Qui Nhon, the chap I roomed with through the Tet days in Jan & early February. I rather think there may be more letters from the folks wandering around somewhere.

I picked up a used Instamatic camera cheap. Just my sort of thing, no adjustments of any kind. A go/ no-go type light meter built in. Nothing fancy, but ought to provide some record of the trip. I have a tentative arrangement with a motorcycle enthusiast’s magazine in the states to publish an article on my trip, so you may eventually be able to “read all about it!” Of course they want some photos, too. Their most recent report of this sort was by a man & his wife who took a BMW with sidecar(!) from Brighton, England to Sydney, Australia. (Part of the way was by boat…)

The enclosed photos (please circulate) were taken this morning: I lashed on all my gear just to see how it looks and how the bike rides with it in place. I can’t even feel it there, and there is no effect on the handling. It takes me only a few minutes to drop it all off, buckle the saddlebags together and flop them over the grip, giving me a neat single-handle package to carry into hotels, etc. Fortunately, I learned the art (and the value!) of traveling light while in Europe. Better than half the weight of what I am taking is in tools, spare items, tire patching kit, etc. Having had the engine overhauled, I don’t expect much difficulty. but I’m ready for it. Oriental craftsmen, though hopelessly slow by our standards, are resourceful, and they can—and frequently do—manufacture parts that are not otherwise available. There are many pre-WWII motorcycles still in regularly use here, machines that parts are hard to find for even in Europe now I would guess. It is a paradise for seekers after vintage machines, though generally owners are reluctant to part with their venerable machines. Can’t say that I blame them—I’ve seen a number of large old bikes that I would enjoy having in my stable if I were permanently located somewhere.

But my Honda should take me nicely along to BK. It is light a enuf machine that it does not have to be “herded”, and so is not so fatiguing on the long runs, but is still heavy enuf to take me and my luggage without strain. I’m still running in the new parts, so the first 500 miles will be at under 40 mph, though 50 is altogether fast enuf under any circumstances for a conservative motorcyclist like myself. Needless to say, there is NO place where one can go that fast—or anywhere near it— in Saigon: if it were possible to get out into the VN countryside. though, it could be done.  There, the faster the better, because a fast target is harder to hit!

I have to spend many hours searching for trinkets to send along home. As I am sure Robb  can attest, there is really nothing available here though that is worth the cost or trouble. The little native art available is usually quite bulky, and nearly all the small stuff is either made in HK or Japan. In Cambodia, far away from this scene, the situation may well be different: I hope so!

This is the last of my letters to be routinely distributed: henceforth we will resort to the Xerox approach, through the good efforts of the folks. I am selling my typewriter, radio, linen, etc., to a friend tonite, and move to a hotel tomorrow AM in order to close down the apartment on the last day of the month. I believe you can send mail to me c/o American Express, Bangkok: but I would reserve that for essential items only, knowing that they are probably as disorganized there as in Europe. Better wait ’till I get there then send along whatever has come in one package (along with whatever has been returned from here).

Thus, if all goes well (and in the Orient one is never quite sure) the next communique should be from Phnom Penh!

The Demo[cratic Convention] debacle is all over, and the outcome was quite as predicted. Odd that both candidates chose running-mates that no one had ever HEARD of before. McCarthy’s failure, also quite predictable, is going to have repercussions long after the fact though. Given the current choice, and barring additional assassinations, I think I shall sit hi one out.

It is particularly unfortunate that the elections and associated falderal have overlooked the really best alternative here in VN. There might have been a time when I would have argued that communism is less of a threat than we seem to think, and that recent indications are that “varieties” of communism are cropping up, tending to reduce the world-domination threat. Czechoslovakia pretty well proves that this is naive (and it certainly shot McCarthy down in flames!).

The alternatives presented by the two parties seem to be: Dem’s will continue Pres J’s policies without substantial change, pressing for negotiations to solve the problems here. The Republicans are couching the SAME approach in slightly different terms, so there is really no alternative at all. McCarthy and followers, at the opposite extreme, advocate the pull-out and coalition bit. It is sad that (largely out of ignorance, I think) so few people see that there IS another alternative. Not a very pretty one, perhaps, but one that seems increasingly necessary in the light of current events.

The achilles heel of our VN policy since early in JFK’s career had been our policy of gradualism; a more misguided policy I cannot imagine. General Taylor (who seems to have been the author of it, and who sold first Kennedy then Johnson on its “merits”) ought to be hung for treason and a whole lot of other things. I don’t see how anyone can dispute the obvious fact that the ONLY deterrent that communism understands as such is superior FORCE—force that is ready at all times, and that is known to be in a position where any overt action will be met with an overwhelmingly superior reaction. The absurdity of the VN war has been that 30 billion bucks annually has not produced this force, because gradualism dictates that any enemy action is only MET, not STOPPED. Had this been our policy when we entered WWII, Hitler would probably now be Führer of america and much, much more. Because we dilute and twitter away our strength waiting for the enemy to engage us (at his whim and when he feels ready), our costs soar, the local economy bogs down, corruption flourishes, and all the other ills that have popped out of Gen Taylor’s Pandora’s Box labelled “Gradualism” bloom across the land.

I do not see ANY of the major (or minor) parties this year as understanding this point at all, and none of them have stepped forth with the only plan that can really end this thing. We do not have to escalate at all: we need only re-deploy (and effectively utilize) what is already here. It should begin in Paris with a clear ultimatum to Hanoi: withdraw at once from South VN and the demilitarized zone, or face massive, coordinated drives to eliminate them. And in Saigon, we must inform Pres. Thieu that from here on out, it is play for keeps, and if some South Vietnamese happen to get in our way, it’s too bad: the picnic is over. Either play it our way (having invited us in in the first place) or GO IT ALONE. But the crux lies in our repudiating the policy of gradualism: we MUST assert ourselves—and quickly—or go down in History ignominiously as a nation of masochists who bent over and BEGGED both the South and the North to “sock it to us”. There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why 30 billion dollars should not have ended this war a long time ago, except that it has been so miserably mis-spent. Unless we start spending it wisely, this will be a bottomless pit into which we will continue to pour billions—and lives—at an ever increasing (”gradually increasing”) rate: when at last our own economy breaks from the strain, communism will move in grinning, because it has gone all according to (their) plan.

If the foregoing diatribe sounds strong, it is mainly because I am not only appalled, I am ASHAMED by the way we have bungled this whole affair, and I would like as much as anyone else to see it ended. Both parties talk about ending the war “honorably”. But communism (understand that I use that word in a wide sense meaning present-day soviet-style communism) knows nothing—NOTHING— of “honor”, as we understand it. Berlin, Korea, Hungary, now Czechoslovakia, China, Yemen, all these countries and more show that honor is something that is meaningless to communism as it is presently constituted. Communism, once entrenched, has NEVER been successfully over-thrown. It will continue to expand just as fast as its economies allow—unless it encounters some obstacle: that obstacle will (can) only be a force (and economic strength to back it up) that is clearly superior, and which is KNOWN to be ready and willing to defend itself “offensively”. It worked in Cuba: that was before “gradualism” came to the fore.

The defense of gradualism really boils down to the question of nuclear weapons. The possession of, and WILLINGNESS TO USE, IF NECESSARY an arsenal of deployed nuclear weapons really obviates a large ground force. Gradualism is a way to keep the necessity for a ground force alive (thus perpetuating handsomely the “military-industrial complex” that Mr. Eisenhower spoke of). We should stand up now and say, Hell Yes we will use nuclear weapons (again)—if we feel it necessary. Just to prove the point we ought to set off a small-yield one right here in VN, in the remotest area we can. The second one could be right on Hanoi—except I feel certain there would be no need for it. I don’t think for the moment the communists are “chicken”—they’re just smart, and if they actually thought (better, knew for sure) that if they fooled with us we would wipe them out, they would pull in their horns and be quite happy with what they have now.

You will say I advocate escalation of the cold war. Precisely. A cold war does not kill people. A hot one (even if it is not a “declared” war, even if it is a “limited” war, or whatever euphemism one may choose) does kill people. IF we are so firmly committed to saving of human lives (as is so oft said) then we MUST embrace the cold-war approach. Certainly it is dangerous. Are we possibly afraid that we are not smart enough to take on the soviets verbally? Teddy was right: speak softly and carry a big stick—AND be ready and willing to use it. Bullies will invariably bow to this situation—it is human nature NOT to risk your neck if you KNOW you can’t win!

Well! Enough of that! I hope you are all well.

Later:

Folks:

There is not much to add, actually. We’ll be out of touch for a while, sort of: in fact I don’t really advocate writing until I reach BK. The Cambodian visa is good for only 3 weeks, but I imagine I will use it up. Plan to spend several days just lolligagging on the beach at Sihanoukville, trying to unwind from this altogether unhappy affair here. Then will spend most of the rest of my time in & around Siem Reap, near Angor, poking around among ruins, etc.

Pls circulate the enclosed photos. Keep track of Xerox charges, though I probably won’t be sending more than three or four letters from Cambodge. Will get a typewritier again as soon as I reach BK in order to prepare the MS for the magazine.

Love to all~
Bruce

_____________________

Can you tell I was “fed up”?

As for Sihanoukville, it was rainy and cold! But that’s far ahead. I have to get out of Vietnam, first. That tale is coming up soon.

From a fellow PA&E-er who was rotating out, I bought a larger motorcycle which I felt confident would be better for driving long distances. It was a Honda CB160 like the one shown below:

Honda CB160

_________________________

Sunday PM, 28 July 1968
Dear everyone~

Once again, two weeks have passed since I wrote—largely because there just hasn’t been anything worthwhile to write about. There still isn’t, actually. . .

The sixteenth of July came and went without incident (for some reason rumor had it that that was the day the VC would launch their next “thing”). The twentieth (anniversary of the Geneva Accords) did likewise, as have all the days since. There have been a few incidents of terrorism, mostly in Cho Lon. The VC apparently had counted on the Chinese contingent in SVN swinging to their cause, but the violence of their Tet and May 5 offensives brought about just the opposite result; hence the VC terrorists are directing their efforts to the Chinese in retaliation for the latters’ lack of support.

There was a fire in the JUSPAO (Joint U S Public Affairs Office) Building yesterday AM; the JUSPAO Office is adjacent to and actually a part of the Rex BOQ. Apparently the fire was caused by faulty wiring, not VC. It was a stubborn, smokey sort of fire (no flames), and it took a lot of doing to put it out. Damage from the fire was light, but damage by the fire-fighters was heavy.

Having spent a good deal of time getting the new CB160 Honda I picked up (used) running its best, I took a sort of shakedown ride tonight, taking a long circle trip around the city. The bike performed very well (it will be far better for my trip to Cambodia) (than the 50cc bike I had before), but of course I got into a drenching downpour just before I got back here! Soaked to the skin—but no matter, everything is dry again now!

My status with PA&E has changed—slightly. Since my job was eliminated from the FY 1969 manning table, Dan Smythe “surplused” me. He could have initiated a transfer to some other open job at LB, but since we haven’t really gotten along well the past 6 months, he decided to let CMO do it—hoping I suppose that I’ll wind up in some other installation. Saturday afternoon I went to CM0 to see what the prospects were, but got a long runaround and really didn’t learn anything. Guess I’ll just have to wait and see what action they decide to take, and if I don’t like it, I may resign. CMO, on the other hand, could decide that I am truly surplus, and terminate me (which I would prefer). However, there is a possibility that I could go into Entomology, and of course I could wind up just about anywhere in the country. One thing that mitigates against a successful transfer though is my equivalent GS13 rating: there’s a scarcity of “13 slots” in the manning table, because the Army tried their best to downgrade everyone this year. All this could take weeks—meanwhile I shall be trotting off to LB every day, there to sit and do nothing, until CM0 takes SOME sort of action. Incredible! But true.

That really is all the news there is: I hate to send one-page letters but there is no reason whatever to start another. So, love to all  hope you’re all well, as I am.

Luv~
Bruce

___________________

Anticipating the need for sending letters by international mail (rather than via APO), I tested the “system” by sending some letters written on stationery I swiped from the Caravelle Hotel:

Caravelle Hotel Stationary

(click to enlarge)

The part that’s hard to read is: “Shades of Wallace Wimple”, which refers to the salutation, “Hello, Folks”, which was WW’s jowly greeting to Fibber McGee and Molly: I’ve never forgotten it!

_________________________

Monday Noon, 6 August 1968
Dear Everyone~

Well, the die seems cast now. My final processing out awaits only the affirmative decision of the “front office”—this may take a day or two, and the final processing is likely to take several more days. All going well, I should be on my way to Phnom Penh around the 15th of this month.

I mentioned that Mr. Smythe at LB had surplused me; CMO promptly lost the paperwork, and I spent a week in limbo, enjoying Saigon and getting my bike into good shape for the forthcoming trip. Then last week, new papers were made up which I hand-carried to CMO to be sure they got there. For a while there was talk of reassigning me somewhere, but I balked at this on the basis that I have already spent six months away from my profession, and another year would be damaging to my career. This morning, all set for a big battle, I went to CMO and found that Personnel had sent my papers forward with the recommendation that for the best interests of the company and myself I should be surplused forthwith.

My position was awkward, in that had they recommended otherwise I meant to resign, which puts a black mark on one’s record and means a considerable financial loss: no leave pay, no repatriation-fund refund, and the price of my fare home. But by being surplused, I get fully paid, a “completed contract”, release to work for other overseas firms, and (tee hee!) a letter of recommendation.

Consequently, I will be leaving Vietnam with $5000 in the bank (I’ve NEVER had a larger balance!) and a plane ticket in the event I should ever need it. My tangible assets will consist of some clothing and my Honda, along with an assortment of tools and spare parts that I’m taking along.

I shall fly (with Honda) to Phnom Penh. It is only about 180 miles away, and I’d given much consideration to riding there. But security conditions at the present time simply do not allow for this—too many VC along the way—and there is nothing to see anyhow, to make taking the risk worthwhile. People in times past have gotten through, but the VC buildup was not nearly so heavy. Additionally, I’m told the “hiway” (No. 1) as far as Cu Chi is in dreadful condition, making progress slow and hazardous.

My itinerary for Cambodia is not firmly fixed. I have in mind several days in Phnom Penh, then go south to Sihanoukville, which is on the coast and is famed for beaches and food. Then back to Phnom Penh by a different route, and onward north and west eventually to Siem Reap, the only major city near Angor Wat. Depending on weather and other conditions, I hope to spend ten days or so in this vicinity: there are many other ruins in the general vicinity which might bear visiting, but roads are poor so will just have to play that part by ear. Then I hope to go on to Bangkok via the only hiway available. The Cambodian visa is good for three weeks, and I expect to use all of that; no visa at all is required for Americans entering Thailand. By the time I get there, I shall probably have a sore rump and will be ready to stay put for a while!

I have arranged to sell my typewriter and radio to a friend before I go. This means that for the most part we shall once again have to rely on the Xerox machine. I will be traveling light for obvious reasons and hope to be able to ship ahead only my single large bag as unaccompanied baggage to Bangkok, where it will be held at the airport until my arrival. This is risky, but there will be only clothes in the bag, so if it “gets lost” I won’t be out a great deal. (There are three suits in that bag that have remained unpacked since January!) Shipping the radio and typewriter would be expensive and foolish, though, and I can get both cheaply in Bangkok, or wherever I settle down.

I might mention that in the back of my mind is the possibility that I sha’nt find work in Thailand, and may decide to go to Djakarta—I could even ride that distance on the Honda, though there is a train route that sure looks fascinating. There is a lot going on in Malaysia in oil exploration/development, and there ought to be a demand for chemists there.

Naturally, if I don’t find a job anywhere and the money runs out, then I’ll come on home and see what I can dredge up through Overseas Craftsmen’s Association, which I have joined—its a sort of personnel clearing-house, working both with large companies which hire overseas and with personnel who want to go overseas to get jobs for the latter and employees for the former. Good outfit—they do not have anything to do with PA&E!

That about brings you up to date—I should be able to get one more letters off before I go (hope the VC hold off on their next offensive for another week or so!). Also hope to get some packages of trinkets for everybody on their way sometime this week—though just what these will be I can’t be sure right now. Native VN crafts are not awfully lovely, to my way of thinking, and so much of it is actually made in HK or Japan that one has to be most careful!

I am in no way sad about leaving PA&E—and am not really sad about leaving VN either. I feel that unless we change our approach and policies RADICALLY and soon, our “involvement” is doomed to an ignominious failure. I still feel the only candidate on the scene who just MIGHT be able to bring about some of these changes is McCarthy, but just where his star sits at the moment is pretty hard to guess. Meanwhile, there is nothing for me to do but turn my back on this “bleak plain, where … ignorant armies clash by night”.

Luv to all~
Bruce

I outfitted the cycle with saddle-bags and a satchel I could easily strap to the luggage rack. I also fitted a left-hand throttle arrangement, expecting to need to relax my right (throttle) hand now and then. This device was a god-send, and a wonderful source of introductions to other cyclists who had never seen or thought of such a useful feature.

I tried to interest some other ex-pat cyclists I knew in going on the trip with me. They all said, “Oh, you’ll be robbed! You’ll be killed! It’s an idiotic thing to do!” I sent them all post-cards from Singapore nine weeks later. In retrospect, though, I’m glad I went alone: there were no arguments about where to go next, or when!

______________________

Sunday, 11 August 1968
Dear Everyone~

I forget who it was who said something about the best laid plans of mice and men. . . but in my case they have gone awry—at least for the moment.

My “die seems cast” letter was written Monday evening after I’d been told by “Out-Processing” that Personnel had sent a recommendation to the front office that I be surplused. They said to come back Tuesday afternoon to get the ball rolling.

But I underestimated the ability and willingness of the front office to make an already bad situation worse, and on Tuesday I was told that the front office had denied the surplus, allegedly on the grounds that the approximately $2500 involved might be disallowed (for reimbursement by the [US] govt), and that I would have to take another assignment. There followed three days of the most amazing “Micky Mouse” routine while Personnel tried to find an open slot that I could fill. For awhile it looked as though I might wind up as a Sanitation Supervisor, which with some stretching of the imagination is at least close to my field. But that failed because it would have meant a $35.00 cut in my salary: since the company is hanging me on the fine print in my contract (which allows them to assign me out of my classification), I hung them on some of the same fine print that bars them from reducing my salary under any circumstances. Hence, it became necessary to find a slot that carried the appropriate salary, and that turned out to be—of all things—a SUPPLY ADMINISTRATOR. This turns out to be nothing more than a dressed-up file clerk. When the Head of the Department asked me what I knew about Supply, I replied truthfully, “absolutely nothing”—to which he replied, “well, that never stopped PA&E from placing a person before.” His only other question to qualify me for the job was whether I could read and write English! Having set the standards THAT low, there was no basis on which I could refuse the position (giving the company thereby the right to fire me for cause). Although I had planned to resign at one time, I could not quite see why I should be forced to take the onus of that (and black mark on my record) just because I’d gotten caught in the cross-fire between CMO and Dan Smythe; and the more they shunted me around the less inclined I became to resign. So—for the moment—I am still on board, stuck in a freezing cold air-conditioned office all day at CMO, working 6 8-hr days/wk.

The matter is by no means concluded. A friend of mine in Contract Administration is close to the man who allegedly refused to approve the surplus, and the former has suggested a way by which it can be done and be fully allowed; he says he will talk to Mr. [redacted] and see if he can swing him around. If not, I may eventually resign under protest and hand the matter over to the NLRB and others to adjudicate. The most absurd part of it all is that not only is there a good case for the Army to disallow what I’ve already earned here—since it got absolutely no good whatever from my being here—; there is also an even better chance that my salary from this point forward also might be disallowed because I am working so FAR out of classification (on which the Army and the president of PA&E both frown)—a fact that seems to have escaped the attention  of Personnel entirely.

Then, too, there is the matter of these new “work agreements” coming up, and no one really knows what’s going to happen in that regard. PA&E has several thousand employees under contract identical to mine, yet, in negotiating the 1969FY R&U contract with the govt, they agreed to a number of limitations on their employees that are in conflict with the existing agreements. Thus, while my contract says I earn 3 days per month of annual leave, which can be accrued, and which can either be taken or worked at my option, the company has already promulgated a new regulation by which we are getting only 2 days per month, with the stipulation that a portion of it must be actually taken. Those who sign the new work agreements (which will be retroactive to the date they signed their current ones) will in effect be signing away a number of benefits, thus in effect voluntarily reducing their income.

One of the knottiest problems involved in the new work agreement hinges on the subject of Vietnamese income or other taxes. Our current contracts obligate the Company to pay any of these that might be levied (and of course the company recovers the funds from the [US] govt.). The new work agreements say nothing at all on the subject. Now, it is true that there are NO such taxes—at the present time, but the [VN] government could decide tomorrow that a tax such as the VN pay (about 37%) on the AMERICANS would be another marvelous way to wangle a whole lot of money out of the US—and without the protection of our own contracts, we would be obligated to pay this out of our own pockets, or quit. Needless to say, most people would do the latter!

So, it appears unlikely that many people (certainly not me) are going to go along with this new agreement deal. What the company is holding over our heads is that if we DON’T sign, they won’t offer us another contract when our current ones expire. Well, since most people are fed up with this outfit, they don’t intend to stay past their current tour anyhow, so no matter. There are already suits being filed about this thing, and many more can be expected: I hope it doesn’t come to my having to do the same. But some of the shenanigans that get pulled here are simply not to be believed—and a company operated like this one at home would fold up overnight!

You may have read about a couple of terrorist acts in Saigon a day or two ago—one of them a grenade tossed into a Cafe on Dr. Yersin Street. This is just past the circle at the end of Le Loi, not far from me. Such is the way of things here, though, that I knew nothing about it till I read the papers!

Luv to all~
Bruce

_________________________

The upshot of this re-assignment was that I went each day to a frigid office in a Quonset-hut at Tan Son Nhut. The office contained three desks, one of them mine, another occupied by a fellow whose job I could never determine, and one for a lovely Vietnamese Secretary. There was a telephone on my desk: I was supposed to answer it, but it never rang. Once each month a stack of papers arrived mysteriously: my job was to arrange them in a certain order and hand them to the gent at the other desk. I have no idea what he did with them!
Speaking of the Caravelle Hotel, I found this article from the LA Times:

Caravelle Hotel

In early May, Saigon’s historic Caravelle Hotel launches celebrations of its 50th anniversary with an appearance by Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent Peter Arnett. Though best known as a CNN reporter in Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War, Arnett covered the Vietnam conflict before that, filing some 3,000 dispatches from the Caravelle from 1962 to 1975 for the Associated Press.

He was not alone. During and after the war, the Caravelle was ground zero for the foreign press corps, including David Halberstam, Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer. VIPs like Richard Nixon, Bob Hope and Pierre Cardin also stayed there and drank in its fabled rooftop Saigon Saigon Bar, as did the cast and crew of the 2002 film “The Quiet American,” starring Michael Caine.

The hotel opened in 1959. After the fall of Saigon in 1975 it was renamed the Doc Lap (or Independence) Hotel. In 1998 a 24-story tower was added, bringing modern conveniences like a landscaped pool and fitness center to the historic site.”

That’s the National Assembly Building well-lit in the foreground: when I last saw it there was rocket damage! It is difficult to see whether any part of the original Caravelle was saved.

National Assembly Building, Saigon 1968

My situation with PA&E was tenuous at best. The saga continues on the next page.

August 29, 2009

As the last scion of the Kennedy family is being laid to rest, it seems appropriate that I have reached the point in my narrative where the news of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination reached us in Vietnam.

Sunday
9 June 1968

Dear Family~

Needless to say, the news here much of this week has been largely concerned with the sad events in Los Angeles, et. seq., and has tended to overshadow the local news. The local news is getting stale anyhow, as the VC continue to shell Saigon night after night. Nothing has come in as close to me as the two on the 19th of May.

Early in the week, the news centered on the unfortunate accident in Cho Lon, where a US Helicopter-fired rocket misfired and killed six high officers of the national police, and wounded several others, including the (now former) Mayor of Saigon. The first reports were that this was a VC shell that had hit; investigation indicated shortly however that this was not so, and close examination of the shell fragments, and investigation of the pilots involved, eventually revealed beyond doubt that it was one of our own “strays”. It was not a unique sort of accident, of course, but the reaction has been pretty unfavorable.

Word of the Los Angeles debacle reached us at Long Binh late in the afternoon Wednesday, First reports were hopelessly confused, but by evening it was clear to me that a miracle would be required for Bobby to survive. I stayed at home (with a cold) on Thursday. I awoke late in the afternoon as a BBC broadcast was coming to a close, and the announcer stated that the foregoing program had been prepared before the unfortunate death of Senator Kennedy: this was my first confirmation of what I knew was to be. I tuned to VOA, which was playing dirges, so I had to wait until the local 5 PM news to get the details.

All of the applicable descriptive adjectives have long since been used to describe this latest turn of events. Over here, where violence is daily bread, the impact has not been nearly so great as I’m sure it was at home. The Vietnamese have been very cool towards Kennedy anyway, so other than the official condolences, not much beyond the facts have been forthcoming in the papers. Thursday morning the funeral cortege for the VN officers mentioned earlier passed my balcony, and I felt very sure then that before the day was over I would hear of the necessity for a similar event in Washington.

Now, of course, it is all over but the shouting. That is, this particular episode is over—but I predict there will be much more violence along the same lines before the next election at home. All the weeping and wailing  and gnashing of teeth about the “upsurge of violence” in the US seems to me to miss the point completely. There in nothing new about it. American history, from the war for independence onward is not noticeably less violent than the history of other countries. What bothers me is the fact that murder, homicide and so forth is often tacitly, if not openly condoned in some circumstances, while acts that are substantively the same are condemned in other circumstances. Where was the great hue and cry when shooting or lynching Negroes was even more commonplace than it is today? Where was the period of “official mourning” for the twelve children killed in the bombing of a Birmingham church? The cortege and pompous burial for Medger Evers?

I certainly agree with President Johnson and the many others that seem to have concluded that there is something wrong with america today—something that finds its expression in assassinations, riots, and so forth. But I think I’d disagree with many about the causes of the wrongness. The American Ethic has too long denied the essential humanness of all people, and the people within its borders particularly. Organized religion has for centuries been promulgating a body of doctrine that simply fails to take into account the fact that humans are, first and foremost, humans. much of this doctrine found its way into our federal structure (the colonisation of america was initiated, after all, by a persecuted religious sect which proceeded to become as adept at persecution as those who drove then from England): the constitution is shot through with examples of pseudo-religious beliefs translated into a formula for government. And through the years, a vast body of legend has been built into american history that grants to the american people something very close to actual divinity. So powerfully imbued have we become with our feelings of God-given superiority that we have even undertaken to export the commodity.

Future historians may well record the 1960s as a decade in which america finally realized that the credibility gap between its facade of liberty and equality and justice and pacifism and the edifice of actuality became so wide that the entire structure collapsed. Examples of our duplicity in the world today are myriad, and all the world is beginning to take notice. Lately, even large segments of our own population have been taking notice too. Everywhere our “Do as we say, not as we do” approach is being rejected—quite appropriately, I think. Our future as a nation, or as a world power, hangs now in a delicate balance, and it remains to be seen whether we will really pull in our horns, gird ourselves, admit our mistakes, and set about to bring into reality the “american dream”—which is still no more than a dream—or whether we will close our eyes once again to the oppression, inequality, injustice and belligerence that have brought us to our current sorry state.

There is no change in the work status, and none is looked for. PA&E may try to pull some hanky-panky again this year about our employee contracts, which will give me precisely the “out” I need: but if they don’t do this, I shall certainly resign before too long, unless the situation changes radically with the award of the new parent contract with the Army July 1.

I’ve been investigating the proposed trip through Cambodia. The Vice Consul here points out the necessity of being very careful on such a trip, since we are not diplomatically represented there, but explains that there is nothing she can do to prevent the trip. Tourist Visas to Cambodia are issued through the Australian Embassy here, and I haven’t had the chance to see them yet. Ordinarily, Thailand requires no visa, but it may be that one would be required for persons entering Thailand from Caniodia, so I shall have to contact the Thai Embassy as well. The plan is still very hazy and no dates are set. Having my Cambodian friend along as a guide should prevent any major mistakes that might conceivably involve me with authorities. Air Vietnam has regular flights to Phnom Penh.

As I start this third page, I realise there isn’t much to add to what I’ve put into the previous two.

The weather is getting consistently wetter, with storms just about every day. Rob can now testify to the wetness of our rains, and to the lightning accompanying! I mentioned earlier that I finally succombed to a Vietnamese cold, and find it remarkably similar to the US variety (though this may be an imported cold for all I know!) It is about over now.

Mail was delayed this week, and I didn’t go to LB Saturday—went to CM0 instead—so I suspect letters will be waiting for me Monday AM. My last letter from Dad was 5/26, containing the copy for Rob (he got it OK).

That’s about 30 for this week: as usual, I hope this letter finds you all well.

Love,

Bruce

It was slowly dawning on me that I was involved in a boondoggle, and the likelihood was great I would not complete my contract. I began to formulate a plan to ride my motorcycle from Saigon to Phnom Penh: the main reason for doing so was to get to and see the Temple complex at Angkor. I had seen all the pictures in old issues of the National Geographic, and had seen the pictures my brother Todd had brought back when he visited the temples in 1958. I wanted to see this for myself, and in Saigon was only a few hundred kilometers away from them.

I was also becoming critical of our lack of progress in the war itself. Within a few weeks of my arrival, I came to the conclusion we should never have gotten mixed up in this business at all: but it seemed to me that now that we were there, we should identify our objectives and then get on with the job. With the VC close enough to shell Saigon daily, I felt we were not actually getting anywhere: we should either “shit, or get off the pot!”

IF this sounds familiar, think “Iraq” or “Afghanistan”!

Wednesday,
12 June 1968

Dear Everyone~

I don’t generally write during the week, but I suppose you’ve all been hearing the reports of the VC shelling of downtown Saigon, and may be worried about me.

The curfew hours were changed Sunday to 2100 to 0600 in precincts 1, 2, and 3: I am in 2. Consequently, somewhat more people were about at 6:15 Monday morning than normally. I was not among them, however, since our bus schedule had not yet been changed, and I was more or less asleep (the alarm had rung at 6) when the first rocket hit. It was the one that landed in front of City Hall, and the nearest [to me] of all: none of the rockets in this barrage actually came as close as the two mortars that hit on May 19. But the 122 mm rockets are a bit bigger, and do much more damage…

I got up and went out on the balcony, where at first I could not identify the peculiar whistling sound I heard. It wasn’t long before I realized it was rockets overhead, so I went back inside! All 25 of them arrived in a space of about ten minutes. As one does these days here, I calmly set about shaving and within a half hour after it was over was in the Rex having breakfast.

The rocket that landed near the Rex set two cars afire, demolishing both, ignited gas pumps in front of a garage, and blew out windows for a large area around. The one that landed against the Indian Consulate on Tu Do did a lot more damage, and killed two old women asleep in the adjacent doorway. Two others landed nearby that one, but hit nothing of consequence.

Five rockets landed across Cong Ly Street from the SE corner of the palace grounds, doing heavy damage to three large residences. One of these had every tile of the entire roof blown clear off, leaving all the wood and concrete structural members intact—a curious thing. About 6 landed near the intersection of Gia Long and Le Van Duyet, and it was there that a large number of people were killed and injured.

For some reason our bus didn’t come that morning, so I walked around in the afternoon to see the destruction brought on by this attack. Not very pleasant, though one should always bear in mind that vast areas of North Vietnam must look far worse by now.

The reaction here is almost universally one of puzzlement as to why we don’t retaliate by breaking off the Paris talks and/or bombing Hanoi. It’s a good question, for which I have no better answer than anyone else. There’s been a good deal of wry commenting on Westy’s parting remark about the shellings being “militarily insignificant”, a remark that to my way of thinking indicates the distance that separates the military mind from a reasonable mind.

The very day that [Robert]  Kennedy was shot, I had spent the morning composing a letter to Senator McCarthy, indicating why I was supporting his candidacy and suggesting some areas that seem to me to need attention in the years ahead. I have never sent the letter (I planned to polish it up a bit first), but now I think I shall have to re-write it altogether.

Dad’s remark in his last letter to the effect that I seem to be getting a bit more hawkish is true enough—though I hadn’t realized it showed that much. I realized myself how my thinking had changed when I completed the aforementioned letter to Senator McCarthy, and found I had advocated bringing the war to a rapid conclusion through massive strikes at all strategic targets in the North that we have so assiduously protected so far. I see only two alternatives to this, however: 1) the whole sad affair will drag on and on and on and on, no one really winning or losing anything, as is essentially the case so far, except billions of dollars and thousands of people… or 2) the pull-out. Now, the pull-out of itself is not such a bad idea, though the alterations in world-wide alignments that would result might be quite startling; but a pull-out here would almost certainly see a repeat performance of the whole mess on some other soil.

If one accepts the inevitability of a direct confrontation with either Russia or China, it seems to me prudent to get it over with before either has a chance to build up further towards it. The question is, if we were to attempt to bring Hanoi to its knees ( and I don;t really doubt we could do it smartly and quickly if we put our mind to it), would either China or Russia interfere at this time? I think that a close study of History would reveal that neither country in this case would risk a world-wide conflict—at this time—in support of what is essentially an insignificant country like NVN. Ho Chi Minh has been walking a tight-rope between Peking and Moscow for some time, and not entirely pleasing either one. Taking into account growing animosity between Mao and Kosygan at the present time, I don’t believe either would rally to Hanoi’s side strongly—at this time. I keep saying at this time because I think timing is important here. Whichever power succeeds in making the largest propaganda victory out of continuing to hold the US at bay in Asia may ultimately turn out to be the winner in this part of the world: if we are really serious about containing BOTH the Chinese and the Soviet influence within present borders, then we should by all means get on with it, and sheer military superiority is (either now or later) going to be the only way we can succeed. The history of “negotiations” with the Communist countries does not indicate any degree of optimism is justified in that method of containing Communism: even a casual look at Korea or the Middle East will confirm this.

Of course, if one has serious reservations, as I do, about the necessity or desirability of keeping Asia entirely free of communism, the foregoing argument is invalidated, and a pull-out here is the only answer. One of the more-or-less rhetorical questions I put to Sen. McCarthy was, “Does our paranoid fear of communism really square with the fact that millions of people are better off today under it than they were under some previous from of government?”

Recent events in the US strongly reinforce my belief that McCarthy may be the best choice we have. I was glad to hear today that some Senator has been pointing his finger at such american traditions as war toys, horror movies, shoot-em-up TV programs and the like. He overlooked the fact that we have maintained HUGE armies throughout our period of existence, thus training virtually every man in the arts of war for nearly two centuries. The effect of this I think is important.

If I fill up this page, there won’t be anything to report this weekend, so I’ll close this now and get to bed: our bus is running earlier now, so I have to go to bed earlier, too.

Love to all~

Bruce

Forty years later, we all know what happened to Senator McCarthy!

More letters to follow. . .

Estimates at the time suggested there were at least 3 million Honda 50cc motorbikes in Saigon when I was there. They were small, reliable, and good in the basically flat city. It was not unusual to see a family of five riding on one together: Daddy driving, two tykes parked on the gas tank, Mama riding side-saddle behind Daddy with an infant in her arms. Accidents were surprisingly few: everyone drove defensively, and it was a great place for me to hone my MC driving skills. There were hundreds of little repair shops all over town where a machine that refused to run could be diagnosed and fixed. There were also numerous shops selling accessories and parts. In the photo below of Dai Lo Le-Loy, the double-row of parked motorcycles in the foreground was typical. There are too many to count. There was no licensing system: some folks put numbers on their bikes just to distinguish them from the literally hundred of identical ones. I’d have to say, the Japanese did very well during the war in Vietnam!

The building opposite the Rex is the Caravelle Hotel

___________________________

Friday, Apres-midi, 10 May 1968
Dear everyone~

Got to work uneventfully yesterday, and Long Binh was quiet all day. Many Vietnamese workers affected by curfews unable to get to work, so things were dull at the post. I’m now involved in compiling procurement lists for the projected lab, which is purely make-work, inasmuch as no one knows whether there will BE a new lab or not; but I have to do something to pass the time.

I bought a Honda [Motorcycle] from a fellow at LB who is leaving, and brought it into Saigon on the back of a pick-up last night. The driver dropped me and the bike at the intersection of Bien Hoa Xa Lo and Chi Lang, and I motored into Saigon proper from there. It (the Honda) is really a marvelous invention, just the ticket for getting ’round in a city like this, although in heavy traffic it’s a bit hair-raising at times. I don’t really expect to use it much, except as a passenger behind my Number One Vietnamese friend, who is much more familiar with operating one of these gadgets than I!

Just as I pulled into the alley beside my building, there were several very loud explosions not far away: I have never learned whether they were VC rockets, or whether they were our own, but in any event “an enemy of unknown size and force” had been spotted along the point where Precinct 4 borders Precinct 2 (mine), and helicopter gun-ships were giving them a bad time. This continued sporadically until about 2100hrs, when the enemy “broke contact”, meaning they slipped off their uniforms and became civilians again! The remainder of the night was quiet, except I understand TSN AFB got hit again.

And, I had a group of visitors during the night, for when I got upstairs to my apartment I found Number One friend had custody for the night of six charming children whose mama-san had had to go to My Tho for a couple of days. So we all shared the place: these kids live about a block from the bridge in Cho Lon where there has been heavy fighting with VC, and of course with the curfew on, had no place to go. They were lucky at that: there was a group of about fifty refugees sleeping under a marquee on Le-Loi opposite my building all night.

So, Tino, Mercy, Daravith, Lucia, Rico and Bariyano, all of whom speak Vietnamese, Cambodian, some French and some English, and of course Nguyen and myself had a pleasant evening learning about each other; (I taught them how to count from 1 to 10 in German!). About 2100, when the noise of battle died down somewhat, all six of them stretched out on the floor on a large bath-towel, tossed a sheet over themselves, and weren’t heard from again until 0700 this AM!

At one point during the evening, I brought out my photo album and was showing them my papa-san, brothers, niece, nephews, etc. I sure had to laugh when we got to Jeffrey: one of the kids pointed to him and said, with, I understand, absolute accuracy, “beaucoup kilo”! The oldest of these kids was, as best I can gather, about twelve, and could not have weighed in at more than 50 lbs (but this is not abnormal—people are just small over here!)

Everyone left about 0800 to see if they can get home. I decided to stay here myself—work is so unrewarding that ANY excuse will do. The morning I spent cleaning up the Honda (Model 50CL) and making a few adjustments on it.

Friday again, 2000h

Having nothing else to do, I had planned to sit down and try to evoke the mood of this place again, but I had no more than typed the time and date when I noticed the arrival of several truckloads of police in front of the block across the street. The group of about a hundred was pretty evenly divided between ARVN and Saigon Security Police, and there were a few american advisors on hand. They proceeded to make a thorough and systematic search of the entire block, and in the end took away about two score civilians, mostly women: I assume they were prostitutes, not VC. Apparently this was just a random search, not done because of any intelligence that VC were there, but just as part of routine. I expect sometime they will search this block similarly.

So it is now 2130 hours, and quiet again, except that every half hour or so our jets are bombing an area about a mile and a half from here, which makes a hell of a racket just when everything gets nice and quiet. The area is in precinct 4, across the Saigon Canal from Precinct 2, the principal downtown section where I live.

Except for these loud blasts, and occasional bursts of mini-gun fire, about all that is to be heard is the too-loud sound-track of the cinema atop the Rex BOQ, and the quiet swish of tires on moist pavement as a security vehicle cruises by: it rained hard for an hour this afternoon about 5, creating the temporary flooding that lasts such a remarkably short time, and rained again about 7:30, very hard, but for only about 5 minutes! A brief electrical display accompanied that rapidly passing storm.

On the street itself, one sees an occasional wandering child: there are countless homeless and parent-less children who somehow manage to  survive (the mild climate is a blessing!) from hand to mouth, who sleep in the doorways at night and do goodness knows what during the day. Many beg, but many also earn a sort of existence shining shoes and doing odd jobs that come along, such as washing motorbikes and cars, repairing flat tires, selling coke-bottles full of gas to hapless passers by who didn’t make it to the gas-station, and so forth. There are, too, a few wandering cats and dogs, and the sharp-eyed will detect an occasional large rat poking around here and there.

This is the closest thing to the eve of the Paris talks, and there’s been a lot of speculation to the effect that a major push on the palace, or on the American Embassy, may be attempted. The latter is much more heavily guarded now, you may be sure, than it was when the VC succeeded in gaining temporary entrance to it during Tet! The palace is similarly guarded, though of course both buildings are vulnerable to rockets and mortars, assuming the VC can manage to launch any without being detected in the process: there are numerous spotter planes quietly circling about overhead, usually without marker lights: these are either very small piper-cub-like gadgets that can fly slowly and quietly, or ti ti helicopters that can do likewise. They can spot the flash of a rocket launch even in an area well lit with flares, and direct a strike at the spot within minutes. Flares light the entire city perimeter at night, assisting this surveillance work, and casting, an eery glow over everything from this vantage point.

Close to 2200 now, no more paper, and bedtime. I’ll add to this later and mail it Sunday, I expect.

Except that like almost ALL the others in Vietnam mine was red, this is the closest photo I could find of a Honda 50CL like the one I bought there.

this is the closest photo I could find of a Honda 50CL like the one I bought

__________________________

Sunday, 12 May 1968
Dear everyone~

Things are quieting down somewhat, though whether the current offensive is over or just awaiting reinforcements no one knows. The only really annoying thing about this situation is being right in the middle of it and knowing so little about what is going on! The single most worthless institution over here that I’ve found is the Armed Forces Vietnam Network—AFVN: two nights ago, I had just turned the volume up to hear above the din of a nearly battle that “quiet has returned to Saigon”.

I mentioned a while back C A [redacted], the gent I got to know on the trip over and with whom I was billeted through the Tet carryings-on. He’s stationed at Qui Nhon, and I repeat below a couple of excerpts from his latest letter to me, dated 29 April:

“An Khe is like Dodge City. A chap named [redacted], youngish, got drunk in a civilian club at An Khe and had a fight with the Asst Installation Manager, who beat him up. He went to the Manager’s quarters, and the manager beat him up some more. Next day, he was in the Area office with one arm in a cast, a black eye, and various abrasions and contusions. After the fight, he went and got a shot-gun to take after the Asst Manager, who in turn got his M-16. Fortunately, there was no further action.

“Civilians in the Qui Nhon area are being armed. That includes TCNs as well as U S civilians. Everyone gets either a .45 automatic or an M-14. Most are taking the M-14, for one of two reasons: 1, they already have a pistol or 2, they couldn’t hit a building or those inside it with a pistol. Jim [Redacted] and I shudder at the possible consequences. Qui Nhon is like Tombstone, Arizona, last century. Some of the military are worried, too: what if a Korean killed a Philipino, or vice versa, in a Qui Nhon bar, with an issued weapon?

“I don’t know if I wrote you what happened here on 30 Jan. On 29 Jan, the night before our three U S civilians employees of PA&E were killed on the main street in downtown Qui Nhon on their way to work, the following entry was made in the (PA&E) duty officer’s log book:

‘9:00 PM – City of Qui Nhon blacked out under Martial Law. Police say heavy VC infiltration and possible insurrection.’

That was 29 Jan, the night before the men were killed. Nothing at all was broadcast over AF Radio, QN. Next morning, our civilians had no way of knowing anything was amiss. There was gun-fire in downtown QN, but they had been hearing giant firecrackers for a week and thought it was just more celebration of Tet. The three were on their way to work and followed the same route they’d taken for more than a year. They were completely unaware anything was wrong: there is no warning system here for people not on a military base.”

The situation described above is little different in Saigon. For myself, I always look out on the street before going abroad to see if other americans are moving about, and then go directly to the Rex for b’fast, in the course of which all sorts of gossip, most of it unreliable, can be heard. Any serious hazards are usually posted on the daily bulletin board in the lobby. As for the radio, as a warning device it is useless, and except for one or two “entertainment” programs, it is equally useless: I like Joe Allison’s Country music program at 5 AM, and Sunday nites they have tapes of the Mormon Tabernacle Program. Otherwise, I listen mostly to Tokyo and Malaysia.

My “family” did not return Friday night, but Number One friend showed up Saturday and explained that all was well: mama-san had gotten back from My Tho (the highway was temporarily blocked); she sent word she was grateful for my hospitality to her children, who, as I said before, were a lot of fun and who showed their own appreciation before leaving by cleaning the apartment thoroughly AND doing up some laundry for me!

The name situation here is confusing. Just about everybody’s family name is Nguyen—it is as common as Smith in the US, Yi in Korea, or Yung in China. There is usually a Van or Thi next, which is meaningless except the Van is for men and the Thi is for women, and then the given or first name i. e., Tai or Hung or the like. However, in addressing another person, where we generally use the family name except in cases of familiarity, the Vietnamese do it the other way around, using the given name virtually all the time. Hence Ong ( = mister, pronounced approximately “aum”) Tai, or Ong Hung (the correct pronunciation for Hung is not renderable in english, but is approximately “howng”). For people of importance, “Thuong” is used in place of Ong, and it means approximately “Sir”, but still is coupled with the given name.

The universal greeting is “Chao” (Chow), coupled with any one of a large number of definitives, such as Ong (cf. above), Co (young woman), Ba (older or married woman), Em (children), Anh (brother) and so forth and so on. Learning all of them gets to be a problem at times, and to use the wrong one is quite embarrassing to the person addressed. Boys are ti ti (i.e., small or young) until they are 16 (the definitive is Cao, pronounced Gow), and are men thereafter (Ong again!). Girls are ti ti until they are 18 or married, whichever transpires first, and thereafter are addressed as Ba: it is not easy to tell if a girl less than 18 is married or not, so one can easily use the wrong form of address, to which the girls are particularly sensitive! (It is very desirable to be in a position to be addressed as Ba, for some reason).

My friend, Ong Hung, is outside polishing up the Honda: later we will go to the PX on it, since the military buses have not resumed their routes. I think we will both go to the Rex cook-out for steaks tonight, and then all too soon the brief Sunday respite will be over and another dull week will commence. Although hired as a chemist, I haven’t run a single test of any kind yet! Cest la Vie. . .

Love to all~
Bruce

After three and a half months in Vietnam, I had accomplished absolutely nothing I could point to and say, “I did that”!

I was not alone! I recall a chap at LB who was supposed to be in charge of creating water points for the Army. It seems that somewhere up-country someone at a  U S base had found a well: they asked PA&E to secure and install a pump so water from the well could be used. To determine what size of pump was required, we had to know at a minimum how deep the well was, and where the water-level was. In its simplest form, this means tying a stone to a length of rope and dropping it down until it stopped. Pulling the rope back up would reveal the depth, and the amount of wet rope would reveal the water level. Since our man had no means of getting up-country, he sent requests through “channels” to have the measurements made. He had a file a few inches thick of the various orders working their way up the chain of command and back again, yet no one had actually issued the order to measure the well! Meanwhile the brass were bitching about not having any water…

Now, 40 years later, I wonder if things in Iraq are as fucked-up as they were in Vietnam. I’m quite sure the answer is yes.

More letters to come!

Dad’s tiny hen-scratch indicates this was my 17th letter.

24 March 1968
Dear Everyone~

I realised last night that it has been over a week since I wrote to anyone. Time flies along here, and each day is so much like the others that it is hard to keep track of them. The week was eventful, in a way—at least there were things to talk about, and occasionally, work to do.

There was a fellow that came over in our group who was also assigned to Long Binh, as an Entomologist.  Fred XXXXX was his name. He had a good thing going there, lived in Thu Duc, somewhat nearer [to Long Binh] than Saigon, was supposedly working “7 10s” (i.e., 7 ten hour days/wk), and so forth. For a couple of weeks he would occasionally talk about wanting to go home (Louisville, KY), but we all just figured he had a touch of homesickness, and kidded him along. Tuesday last, he told me he was going to drive his truck into Sgn and stay here at the Loc Bldg to get a good hot bath and quiet night’s airconditioned sleep: since I figured this was just what he needed, I went along for the ride (the truck is much more commodious than the bus!). When I woke up the next AM, there was a note under my door, and the truck was gone. He had taken off early and gone to Tan Son Nhut, somehow bought his own ticket home, and somehow gotten his exit visa, and, well, just took off! That left me to get out to TSN and pick up the truck and drive it back to the motor pool at LB, and it fell to me to break the news to Dandy Dan Smythe—he took it suxprisingly well, all considered!

I’ve been spending a good deal of time this past week working as a refrigeration mechanic. If CMO ever learns (and you can bet they will!) that their GS13 Chemist is grubbing around a bunch of beat-up worn-out reefers, ice-machines, and air-conditioners, there’s going to be a flap! But at least it gives me something to do besides sit around with my finger in my ear in the meanwhile.

You recall I was dickering, on an insurance policy before I left. They were supposed to write and let me know whether or not I could get the Double Indemnity without a war-clause, and some other details. Instead, they issued the policy for straight 21000 dollars, no DI (no war clause, tho) and no waiver of premium. The cost was nearly $500/yr (for some reason it is very expensive to convert from group to individual policy), which I consider to be much too high. So I politely sent it back and asked for a refund on the unused portion (two months) of the premium I’d paid. So, I have only the 10000 dollar Workmen’s Comp policy through the company in case anything happens—but that ought to be enough for now.

Just today, I got two checks from the IRS, both out of Ogden. One was for some adjustment on 1965 Income Tax, and the other was the 118 dollars they had “applied to outstanding tax bills”: obviously, Ogden has caught up with the fact I don’t HAVE any outstanding bills, even if San Francisco hasn’t. There has been absolutely no word whatever from SF—not even any acknowledgement of my four (so far) letters. So, directly I finish this, I’ve got to get out some asbestos paper and get another one off to SF. I’ve already undertaken to establish a bank account out of the country (probably Nassau)—and there will probably be some paperwork involved in that that will have to come through for your signature, as it should also be a joint account. I’ll keep the one in SF as the one to which PA&E can send my checks, and just transfer money by check to whatever account I open up elsewhere. In a way I hate to have to go through all this: but if the Government feels entitled to attach bank accounts at will, I will simply have to take the necessary steps to protect myself. I am advised by a PA&E lawyer, incidently, that since the account was a joint one, and they made no attempt to distinguish what money was there was mine or yours, that a Federal Court suit could slap their wrists quite hard. I’m sure it won’t come to that. Taking the money out of the US can be a bit risky, I suppose, but then, it’s risky to leave it there, too, when it can be taken away without so much as a howdydoo. As to my—as you put it—”annoyance” over this thing, it amounts to something more than that: the fact is I’m maddernell about it. And as for catching flies with honey, what’s the point of that when you’re dealing with WASPS?

Enclosed is a recent photo  one of the guys here at the hotel was fooling around with a Polaroid the other day—and the clipping is one possible answer to the recent Newsweek editorial—an editorial with which I agree in the main, except that it stopped short of the mark. More on that later when I get around to my first encyclical!

Love to all—

Bruce

________________

I was a trifle more complicit in Fred’s departure than I let on in this letter. Fred was a nice fellow, but very much out of his element. He wound up in Nam as an entomologist because he had worked with a pest-control company at home. He was newly divorced. Although he and I had nothing whatsoever in common, I saw a lot of him because he got his supplies from stocks at LB Post: he often stopped in to my office to “shoot the breeze”. However, it rapidly became apparent he was losing his mind, and I was quite sure if he did NOT get out of the country, he was gonna go nuts. He was deathly afraid of Dandy Dan, as were many guys there, so he didn’t dare approach him with the notion he wanted to break his contract and be sent home. I facilitated his departure by assisting him to get his exit visa: how he got a plane ticket I never found out!

I actually dropped him off at Tan Son Nhut and then drove the truck to LB and covered with the little fib about Fred’s abandoning the truck. Unfortunately, the last thing he handed me as we set off that morning was some sort of revolver with six shells chambered. He knew if he was found with it on the plane he’d be in “heap big trouble”, so handed the gun off to me, thereby instantly putting my job in peril. I cleared the damn thing and stashed it in the bottom of a suitcase, figuring I’d develop a plan to be rid of it somehow. I did manage to get rid of it, and at the appropriate time I’ll reveal how.

Mention of the refrigeration work requires explanation. In a new contract proposal, PA&E wanted to take over maintenance of all such equipment on the large number of 500-man mess-halls on Long Binh Post: these were scattered all over the place, and each one had ten to fifteen pieces of refrigeration devices. It became necessary to compile a list of these, so the company could have some idea of how big the job was, how to price it, and how many people might be needed. They went about his by ordering up a “density report”. That’s a bit of army jargon for just such a list of equipment. All hands were pressed into service, visiting each mess-hall, listing the equipment present, condition, serial numbers and so forth. I generally went along with a chap who had come over in our group named Bob; he’d had been a refrigerator repairman back home. Bob was one of the few truly competent people I met while in VN: he could listen to a machine and instantly diagnose whether it was operating correctly or not, and if not, tell you exactly what was wrong with it. He was also a very pleasant chap, laid back, entertaining. The job, and eventually Dandy Dan, got to him, though, and a few weeks on he broke contract and went home.

Meanwhile, letters from home were arriving fairly regularly, and these often contained clippings and questions. So, six days on, I wrote as follows:

30 March, 1968
Dear Everybody~

Dad’s last letter, mailed your-time Monday, reached me my-time Thursday, as he predicted. I hadn’t known anything about the trip to Portland in advance, but am certainly glad you are getting around OK after your set-back at Christmastime. I’ve started this letter this evening, but expect I may not finish it until sometime tomorrow.

I about dropped my teeth when your articles enclosed in the last letter fluttered to the floor, and, as I picked them up, W R  Hearst’s face popped out: I can recall the time when Hearst papers weren’t even allowed in the house, along with funnybooks and such. Ah, well, times do change.

Going back a few letters, you asked what the military situation here is, and after some sleuthing, I’ve uncovered most of it. Like all Gaul, the US involvement here is quartered into three halves. There is, in the first place, MACV (Military Assistance Command-Vietnam); this is the advisory group which has many men in the field with the various (and numerous) ARVN units, at all levels. Whether any real assistance takes place one cannot really tell. Then, there is USARV (United States Army-Vietnam), with all of its jillions of subdivisions and so forth. This, of course, is where the bulk of our fighting forces are to be found, along with lesser numbers of Navy, Marine, and Air Force units. Then there is (directly under USARV) the First Logistical Command, which directs all of the logistics of the entire operation, and for whom PA&E and the other US Companies here work. Then, there is USAID (United States Assistance for International Development), which I have mentioned in previous letters. And then there is the Free World Forces which have to be coordinated into the picture in various ways (most of them come more or less directly under the command of USARV). Now if this seems likely to be a confusing situation, consider the fact that in addition to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), there are at least six other local organisations of militiamen, more or less armed, who enter the picture at various levels from nationwide down to hamlet level. Consider the fact, too, (alluded to by Dad’s last letter) that ALL of these organisations are to various extents infiltrated by VC and by NLF sympathizers.

Now, depending on the location, there are two basic situations that can occur in the midst of all this. One is the sort of thing going on in the North, around Khe Sanh and Hue, where a more-or-less constant state of siege exists, which enables the local commanders to take some initiative in attempting to locate and eliminate the enemy. But in the south, the situation is very different. Even on the highly touted Search and Destroy missions, the American forces ARE NOT ALLOWED TO INITIATE any action, but must wait until “engaged” by the enemy (that is, the VC must fire the first shot). Once begun, the engagement will last as long as the enemy returns fire, or until he is wiped out. Now, the ARVN units also conduct S&D missions, and are under no restrictions, so that it has often happened that US and ARVN units, through a failure of communication of intentions, have engaged each other! It further happens, and quite frequently, that US reconnaissance locates, in one way or another, a group of VC: let’s say in a small hamlet they have taken over a pagoda and have intimidated the local people by a few well-placed bullets. Further suppose that recon learns positively that there are four emplaced mortars within the pagoda compound, poised for shots at some nearby target. This info can all be transmitted to ARVN if any are nearby and  they can go in and try to root out the enemy. On the other hand, if the US Army brass decides they can do the job better, the permission of the ARVN Commander, and a host of other people, often right down to the hamlet chief, must first be obtained, by which time the enemy has long since learned they have been detected, and has departed. All too frequently, when permission is at last received, we go in and blow up an empty pagoda, and half the rest of the town along with it: the dead may well be counted as VC—but where their politicil affiliations (if any) truly lay no one can say. Then, too, there are the snafus that seemingly occur in every stupid war, such as bombing our own units or known friendly villages and that sort of thing. You won’t often hear about these in the US, but these snafus occur quite regularly.

The Newsweek article “The Agony of Khe Sanh” was pretty badly received here: at least one reaction I have already sent home. The most frequent argument against it has not to do with the facts, but with the interweaving of fact and editorializing in such a way that the editors’ opinions seem to emerge as fact. We must face the fact that the article was, in the main, propaganda. But there were few errors of fact in what was reported as such, and the magazine freely admits the rest was a position it felt compelled to take. The letters to the editor in the front of the same issue were revealing—in that they were all from Vietnam and all were chastising the magazine. Newsweek is one of the few US magazines that has had one of its reporters kicked out by the Saigon Government, which may also cast some light on the matter. For myself, I can find little to argue with in the article, except their disregard of the Geneva Agreement (1954), and one other thing:

Among the most puzzling aspects of the feedback from the States that we get here is the Press’s canonization of General Giap. Disregarding the politics involved, I find it dismaying that he should be regarded as “brilliant”, masterful, etc  for he has used tactics over and over again that cannot be justified on any grounds that I can think of. His takeover in Hue was accompanied by bloodletting among the civilians there on a par with similar debacles in Cuba, Hungary, and even Germany at various times: at other times, these tactics have been decried and denounced on every front, yet here, General Giap emerges as some sort of a Master Tactician who has outsmarted the US at every turn and managed to keep the offensive throughout. It doesn’t add up, in my book…

What may not have been very clear before Tet, however, is certainly painfully apparent now in these days following it. Hearst’s article and others in the states have called attention to the fact that is now overwhelmingly clear, namely, that for all the billions we have poured down this rathole, we have little or nothing to show for it. The enemy’s forces and will have not been markedly reduced; the South VNese are not markedly better-off than previously; we have not created a solid middle-class citizenry; we have not raised to power a popular and strong government; we have not won the affection or support of the majority of the South VNese; and we certainly have not “won” the war.

I for one, am appalled by President Johnson’s fixation on plodding on with this whole affair. There are times when stubborness is an asset, and times when flexibility pays off: of the latter, I see no evidence in Johnson during the last few months. Determination is one thing, but fanaticism is something else again. Time and again, he has been assured by various people of position and note that this-or-that action would open up avenues to the negotiating table, and he has turned a deaf ear to them all. Indeed, every time a new approach is made, he has escalated not only the war, but his demands for conditions on the negotiations. All this is in line with his hope for bringing the enemy to his knees to cry “uncle” before he gives an inch: but if he cannot see that this policy is a complete and utter failure, then he is both blind and very ill advised, and not only he, but all of those surrounding him should be swept out of office at the first opportunity. Among the most sensible alternatives I’ve seen, but by no means the only one, is Rep. Clausen’s detailed by Hearst in the clipping Dad sent. At least this proposal takes cognizance of the fact that all of asia should be considered as a whole, not as a separate series of staging-areas for a succession of wars against communism; it also takes into account what Mr. Johnson and friends seem totally unable to grasp, which is that the world-wide rising tide is one of Nationalism, NOT Communism (this is even becoming evident now in the so-called Soviet-Bloc nations). If we had any sense at all we would climb on to the bandwagon (just as some nations did when WE were fighting for our own independence) instead of trying to scuttle it.

As to stateside politics, the situation is not a very happy one. Rocky’s decision not to run actively has been very quickly forgotten, and the possibility of his being “drafted” is not overlooked, though unless the Nixon campaign hits some deep sand-traps, it seems unlikely anyone would want to draft Rockefeller. Kennedy’s decision, on the other hand, came as a surprise to no one, but he has been quite roundly criticised for trying to pull the rug out from under McCarthy. It seems to me that K reckons he can count on McCarthy votes coming his way at the convention if he can split the first vote badly enough to keep McCarthy out. Personnaly, I hope McCarthy can pull a rabbit out of his sleeve and get the nomination—but it will be a tough thing to accomplish. McCarthy is getting some criticism here for his own devotion to the Vietnam question to the exclusion of everything else; on the other hand, many feel that if he can succeed in solving the Vietnam thing some way, the rest will more or less automatically come along. We’ll have to gamble on it, I think. The forthcoming summer, which is almost bound to be long and very hot, may, of course, change the political climate before November. I would not take any bet that Wallace won’t win!

Three pages of this sort of thing ought to do for now: I’m hungry, and dinner is about to be served upstairs—Vietnamese. I constantly surprise myself by ordering and enjoying the local concoctions. Needless to say, I have lost NO weight over here!

Love to all …
Bruce

PS:

I just had the most interesting  and unlikely-sounding dinner. I understand there are several variations on it, but the essential combination of ingredients is cauliflower and shrimps! In this case, the shrimps were pounded in a mortar to make a paste, (seasoned, no doubt), and the paste was sort of wrapped around individual flowerettes of cauliflower, then rolled in breadcrumbs or meal, and the whole rapidly deep-fried. Delicious!

I understand it is also served simply as boiled cauliflower and shrimps prepared in more conventional fashion: one take a bite of each and combine them at the table.

Imagine eating like this—with my picky ways of savoring each item individually at home. The essence of Vietnamese cooking is precisely in the exotic combinations of ingredients, frequently 15-20 individual items in a single concoction. But it really comes out very good.

There is also a very interesting local fruit here, called a Vu Sua, which I am told is to be had in the states under the name of Paw-Paw, though I’ve never seen them there. The things are ugly round green things, with a peculiar milky white juice and what appears to be very stringy insides: but the entire interior (except for the black seeds) is very sweet, with a taste that combines the essence of strawberries and cantaloupe melon and comes up with something unique. Fine eating, but currently out of season and not too easy to get. Mangoes, of course, abound, but I’m not as fond of them as of the Vu Suas.

Cheers, & Bon Appetit!

___________________

All my life I’ve been one of the least adventuresome of eaters—of food, at any rate. I’ve always been a “meat and potatoes” guy, and prefer to consume all of each item on the plate before moving on to the next: I like to savor the flavor of each item individually, rather than mix them all up. Desiring to continue eating this way meant I took most meals in a BOQ or mess-hall. But I did break out now and then and eat things the Vietnamese ate, and generally found it palatable. On my subsequent motorcycle trip around the Gulf of Tonkin, the food problem became acute, but more on that as the narrative continues.

There will be more photos as my tale unfolds, though as mentioned elsewhere, I rarely carried a camera while working in Vietnam.

Stay tuned for more adventures.

BEFORE I CONTINUE:

REGARDING XE, NEE BLACKWATER

I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog that PA&E might be considered a progenitor of the likes of Blackwater. It begins to look as if Blackwater was worse—a great deal worse—than PA&E was, or even thought it might have been.

Don’t get me wrong: an open-ended “cost + 10″ contract was  an invitation to steal, and many in the company DID. It was a situation rife for manipulation, and the firm abounded with manipulators. In my experience, for that company in that time, one could re-write the old adage: ”there’s a fresh apple in any barrel of rotten ones”: I did in fact meet and work with a few Americans over there who knew their stuff, were willing  to work hard, and who earned their keep. Most of those I met were a motley collection of drunks, lounge-lizards and misfits. On the other hand, I was never close to any of the top brass in PA&E: I expect there was a lot of hanky-panky going on I never saw.

But it begins to look as if Blackwater in Iraq has taken the “cost + 10″ concept to new depths. Allegations by two former employees, in sworn affidavits, accuse the company’s former CEO, Erik Prince, of arranging prostitutes (including children), deliberate murder, gun-running, cover-ups, lying and other horrors. Prince appears to be badly misnamed and up to his ears in complicity, and comes across as a far-right wing-nut out to kill as many “rag-heads” as he could. The Company has been denied permission to continue in Iraq, although it is pretty clear some of its operatives are still there.

I wonder how long it will be before some real charges are brought against this malevolent “sumbitch”, Prince. Sadly, Blackwater (now re-named Xe) remains is Iraq, and no doubt has its eyes on Afghanistan.

There’s more information here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Worldwide

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/08/07/iraq.blackwater.xe/

and many other places on the web.

SPEAKING OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN. . .

Here is my next letter from Vietnam, written 41 years ago. I was struck, transcribing it, that it could be re-written today substituting “Iraq” for Vietnam, and it would be as true now as it was then.

AM – Monday, 26 February 1968
Dear Everyone~

The Long Binh bus failed to appear this morning, so after waiting until nearly 9 [since first-light, around 5], I walked back to the Loc Bldg and am writing this letter. I’ve been here just one month tomorrow, and can certainly claim no great accomplishment as yet. That’s the rule here, though, not the exception.

With painful slowness, Saigon is returning to something of a pre-Tet normalcy. Final figures on PA&E’s losses amounted to only 7 dead Americans, 8 Koreans and a few Vietnamese. Earlier reports of as many as 20-30 Americans killed resulted from interruptions of communications—a number of people were unable to report in any way, and were listed as MIA for a while. Open-market food & other prices have suddenly dropped back to something near 15-20% above pre-Tet, rather than the 100-200% that prevailed a couple of days ago. The dusk-to-dawn curfew affects only the bars, for the most part, and allows most other businesses to carry on pretty much as before.

The complexity of the American position here is beginning to come to the surface. President Johnson cannot be blamed rightfully for getting us involved; depending on one’s individual view, he may or may not be correct in his handling of affairs here. But on one point at least he can be strongly and rightfully criticized: for not telling us at home what’s going on. The “credibility gap” is wider than most people imagine. [I had received clippings from the States].

And regardless of who is to blame for it, Vietnam at the present time represents a colossal failure for America. We have not “won the hearts and minds” of the people here—our heavy-handed civilian population—the ugly Americans—have assured that. Neither have we succeeded in arousing any significant degree of nationalism—certainly nothing to compare with NVN & the VC. We have not brought a strong or popular central government, and needless to say we have not won the war by any means. But what are some of the reasons for these failures?

For one thing, we are still a “military assistance command”, largely devoted to providing support, materiel and training for ARVN. Remember, though, that it’s been 15 years or more (since Korea) that the commanders here saw any actual combat—and most of them did just that—they SAW it; they watched it, but didn’t participate in it. Even those combat veterans from Korea here now saw action in very different terrain, in very different circumstances, and, most significantly, in an offensive war (I use the term in its tactical sense!).

Vietnam represents the first time we’ve been on the defensive, and our military machinery is just not geared for it. It is demoralizing to the troops, particularly, to know where the enemy is and what he’s doing and how to stop him, but have to wait for the enemy to “make contact” before anything can be done. With some exceptions, any offensive against the VC must be cleared with VN authorities before it can proceed—and by the time clearance is obtained (and often it is denied) the VC have vanished—usually leaving behind some destructive memento for any unwary person to fall into.

The news today says that U Thant assures Pres. J. that if we stop bombing in the North (one of the areas where we have a fairly free hand), Hanoi will begin to negotiate in “a few days”. Johnson has replied—with some logic one has to admit, if not actual justification—that he must have first some assurance the NV will not use the “few days” to re-trench. Communist treachery is well known; North Vietnamese treachery is equally documented (if you want to distinguish between the two), most recently by the Tet debacle amidst their own truce declaration. Under these circumstances, both sides feel obliged to carry on “business as usual” until some other approach can be found.

There is a lot of sentiment here that our best approach at this point should be to seize the offensive and obliterate NVN, even if this requires the use of “Nukes”. Our reluctance to do this is frequently interpreted here as a) weakness b) softness on Communism c) actual collaboration with the communists (to prolong the war & boost our economy) and, least often, d) fear that such an action would lead directly to armed conflict with Russia or (worse) China. Thus, we are damned if we do and damned of we don’t, a dilemma we have somehow got ourselves into and from which extrication seems very remote.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the government we have pretty much single-handedly created, now that it is created, wants to govern in its own way (not necessarily an unreasonable desire, it seems to me)—and most particularly wants no truck with a coalition type set up with anybody (such as the NLF, or—God Forbid—with the NVN government).

Our Ambassador, Mr. Bunker, is one of the most thoroughly disliked Americans over here. The press gives lavish coverage to the afternoon Teas he has with the ladies, and otherwise ignores his presence whenever possible. His credentials as a statesman are questionable at best (he’s a good businessman, has made a fortune, etc; but he’s not here on “business” of that sort). Westmoreland is well enough liked, but his hands are so well tied that he’s not as effective as he should be.

The USAID program, which administers the various “pacification” attempts, is a colossal failure on every count. Not to mention the internal boon-doggling that amounts to millions of dollars, their usual approach has been to build schools, precinct stations and hospitals in the small towns—on a give-away basis; these structures have cost millions, and for a few hundred dollars worth of dynamite the VC have systematically destroyed them, or frightened the residents out of using them. The point that seems to be beyond anyone’s real appreciation is that in the provinces, political allegiance goes automatically to whoever provides the greatest protection against getting killed or losing one’s crops. Politics is a concept beyond the grasp of most of the provincial bourgeoisie, whose only desire is to be left alone to live their lives unmolested. It is essentially a feudal system in which the town Chief settles all disputes, collects taxes, and gives some measure of protection. If he is supported by the VC, we wipe out the whole town with the argument (albeit a non-sequitur) that they’re all VC. Admittedly, the VC do the same exact thing if the town Chief goes along with us. But the failure to protect the lives and property of millions of South Vietnamese during this last offensive has been a bitter pill for a lot of people to swallow, and is resulting in a lot of shifting allegiances. The final outcome, of course, has yet to happen.

What is the way out of this quick-sand? If we summarily withdraw, mutual assistance pacts all over the world will be torn up by the hundreds, and a global re-allignment of allegiances would result—almost certainly to Russia and China’s benefit. If we bring Hanoi to the conference table, the result  almost certainly will be another “Pueblo crisis” off the waters of North Vietnam fifteen years from now. If we obliterate NVN (especially if we use Nukes) can we ever again call ourselves the world’s peacemakers?

I still am inclined to feel that the honorable way out is through the Geneva Convention of 1954, to which we have never paid more than lip-service, but which still contains a workable formula for the reunification of Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh would be elected—and not very long later he would die, as he soon must in any event, for he is both old and unwell. The crux of this is still the question of whether Ho’s power stems from fervent nationalism of fervent communism; it is hard to imagine VC suicide-squads being ready to die a certain, violent death for the sake of a concept such as communism—a concept both “foreign” in the sense of being alien—and foreign in the sense that it goes against established traditions. But suicide-squads willing to die for their country? What is so strange in this? We ourselves have used this gambit from 1776 on, and technological superiority is all that has made it a successful gambit in the past. Our refusal to recognize our own Nationalism for what it is blinds us to the possibility that others may feel as fervently—and as righteously—about their country as we do about ours. It is sheer stupidity to become involved against nationalistic trends—ask any Frenchman (or, for that matter, Englishman) and  he will have to agree, if only because he has been forced to in recent years.The sun is about to set on the U.S. empire, too, and it is high time we realized it.

That’s how it looks after a month here—it will be interesting to see if the next months change this view in any significant way.

The weather continues perfect as far as I am concerned—warm, sunny, consistent from day to day, and thoroughly enjoyable. Haven’t had even the suggestion of a cold since I got here!

Cheers—
Bruce

A typical street scene in 1968 Saigon

Note the relative size of the Army tractor and the little Peugeot taxi! This is probably Tu Do Street, which was one-way, but the bicyclist is going in the wrong direction, and risks being wiped out by a deuce-and-a half at any moment. I did not carry a camera with me most of the time in Vietnam: there were still folks there who objected to having their photo taken, and one risked a confrontation over a random snap-shot. I did have a camera though: a Kodak Instamatic, and I used it much more when I departed Vietnam on my motor-cycle trip.

The Kodad Instamatic

The camera was later stolen in Bangkok, but I managed to get it back! Unfortunately, rather than have films developed  along the way, I accumulated the rolls and had them all done when I got back to the states. This led to some film deterioration (that will be seen here in future images), but for the most part I got decent pictures of my adventures.

Stay tuned for more letters, and remember you can discuss these adventures with me at [email protected]