This is an excerpt from a short memoir I completed last year. A couple wished to record their meeting (and eventual fleeing) from Ho Chi Min City during the Vietnam War. The first chapter is told from the perspective of Phan, a Vietnamese girl who soon encounters her future husband Tom. An American living and working in Vietnam, the next chapter is told from his point of view. These preliminary chapters give a backstory of the events leading up to the couple's meeting and establish the foundations for the chaos that will follow.
Photo credits: Charley Sean
Chapter 1: Phan
I recall my father leaving, over and over again. He had been injured and regulated to a recruiter job on the Cambodian border, where I had seen him last. He had since resumed his characteristic disappearing. He could have moved somewhere else in the coming years, I suppose, since we did not receive much communication from him, not even letters or telegrams. He was always concerned about the family and the Vietcong finding us, so the ghostly nature of my father justified itself, even if I did not want it to. Serving in the South Vietnamese Army for three decades, he had collected status as an important figure, a sergeant major with valuable information. These figures are made of gold in wartime, when knowledge of the enemy means victory, and so my father avoided staying in one place for too long. We moved every year or so, our sense of suspicion and danger growing with every passing day, and our father left us sometimes, working this way and that. We traveled many places around the country: An Khê near the Vietcong territory; Tinh Bien where I had seen my father last, on that Cambodian border; Chau Doc near the border, too; there was also Giòng Lức, a small village where my grandmother had a rice patty farm, where we hid for a few summers when I was very little and not old enough to realize the unsolid ground underneath my shoes, or what the helicopters meant as they cut through the sky. I grew accustomed to living on an army base, or near one, and I learned to keep secrets close to my chest, since I could not tell anyone about my father or our whereabouts or anything, as if a shadow followed me around and pushed my lips together, tight, so that I could not speak. I was exhausted from this hiding, and I wanted more than anything to rid myself of the shadow, to settle somewhere safe, where my family could be united and stable, and where I could get an education.
I glimpsed this dream in that year, 1968, when we moved back to Chau Doc. I had not been there in some time, six years or so. On my last visit, I had helped my stepmother with her new child, and my new half-sibling, with their plump cheeks and tiny cries, and my father had worked on the base, living with us. So I had beautiful memories in that place. But Chau Doc now made me sad, because of my father’s absence, so that I had a mix of these beautiful and sad feelings on my return. I reveled in seeing my step-family again, the six of them—my stepmother and step-grandmother, as well as my half-brother and sister, plus two baby stepsiblings. They all greeted me at the door with a smile, as the little ones waddled towards me and gave me little hugs around my calf, even though I had not met them before. I felt as though I had a home, even for a moment, the one from my dreams, and a warmth sprang out from that familiar place.
They lived on the outskirts of the village, in a large, luxurious house on the Army base that was given to them as a result of my high-ranking father. It had been built by the French, in a time before the Vietnamese government, and its arched windows and stocky pillars were replicated in buildings all around the town. Every room in the house teemed with space, yet with my father gone, the walls shrunk and tightened when I entered them, smaller than they had been when I was a child. Yet I could not linger on this smallness for too long, since there were always chores to be done, and my young siblings always needed taken care of. Always, always chores. My family was very traditional, both here in Chau Doc and in all other places, and as the eldest, I was expected to help with the housework. With two additional children now, I did a lot of babysitting and playing, since my stepmother could barely take a breath without a tiny voice needing something. I also had the responsibility of drawing water from the river, about a half-mile away from the base, since the house had no tap. I lugged two heavy buckets, connected by a bamboo pole, to the river, and the weight dug itself in between my shoulder blades. Then I lugged them back to the house, poured them into the big collection pot we called the cái lu chứa nước. I made other trips to the river for laundry, another one of my responsibilities, in which I heaved bulky bags full of clothes to the shoreline, got on my knees, and scrubbed them with soap. When I finished, I used my tired arms and brought the bags home, hung the clothes up on the line. My step-grandmom helped me. As the evening sun sizzled on our skin, she told me of the food she had made for dinner, which would be ready soon. She had gone to the market and bought the freshest fish and vegetables that morning and every morning, since there were no refrigerators at this time. She cooked all our meals, kept us well-fed and happy as we could have been. In the nighttime, she talked sweet to the babies, and I listened with a close ear, wishing I was ignorant and innocent like the young ones. I wished to see my father again. I tried to shut him out of my mind and think positively, and I realized my gratitude for having found a nice home in Chau Doc, despite the chores. This gentle time would end, though, as all gentle times do.
I was finally able to go to school. Being a child in the military base, education was always something I had wanted but never gotten, its inaccessibility a symptom of this time in Vietnam when there were supposedly more important matters at hand. It was important not only to learn, but also to be around kids my age, and I met a few friends in my classes. My now-best friend was Thom, whose encouragement reminded me of my grandmom, her kind eyes that told me I could be more content than I was on the base. The time was gentle, yes, but I knew it would end, and this unhappiness lingered in the back of my mind. She saw my unhappiness and told me to follow her to Can Tho, where she and I could get jobs as typists. I didn’t have much experience typing, I said. Still, she told me to follow her. I considered it with scrutiny, obedient to my family as I was, but it troubled me that I had never experienced the world outside of housework or moving homes or my duties. I wanted to experience something unseen, unusual, and going off with my friend meant a hopeful leap into the unknown. Can Tho provided an opportunity, maybe even a way out of the cramped-ness I knew so well, had known for too long. That tight feeling had followed me throughout the years, and it seemed that maybe I might have a glimpse at a free life, where I could work on my own and have a place for myself in the world.
So I agreed to go. I would be a typist in Can Tho.
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After our bus ride, Thom and I checked the posted jobs in the newspaper. We were shocked to find that almost all of them were for English typists, not Vietnamese ones. Thinking I had made a mistake coming here, I didn’t know what to do. But relief washed over me when we found a listing for a company affiliated with the U.S. Military. They were hiring typists and offered courses in English, and we would have a job after all. I signed up, and Thom and I went to the military base for our first class. We sat down in a large office room, surrounded by windows that let in the clouds of an uncharted city’s sky. I was excited to start my journey. But another worry interrupted the excitement, as I looked at the desk in front of me. The typewriter didn’t have the Vietnamese alphabet. I had heard people speak English before, but I didn’t know how it was written. Untried as I was at this time, I hadn’t realized that English had a completely different alphabet, a combination of letters that were impossible to decipher then. Panic overtook me. My friend noticed and told me everything would be alright. We would learn English in time. We would work together to overcome this language barrier, a wall we would have to climb. I trusted Thom again, and we kept going.
The instructor spoke in Vietnamese, which was comforting, and mixed in English words when necessary, and we were given a Vietnamese to English dictionary so that we could translate, do our lessons. I flipped through it enough so that the papers were worn. It was my Bible. We did many exercises to practice vocabulary and sentences, and I had many wrong answers, despite the dictionary. It was very difficult for me, learning this dimension of language, but with my friend’s and the instructor’s help, my English progressed. After a month of classes, half of my answers on the exercises were right. I had picked up some words and could form common sentences, and I was proud of this. Still, I was frustrated that I couldn’t quite get the language right and struggled through the lessons. Day by day, I worked hard on my English and learned more words, practiced more sentences. Thom and I met two new friends, Thu and Dung, who faced these challenges with us, and we all studied together until the last day of the course, when we faced the certification test. My heart swelled with panic that I wouldn’t be able to pass and that the trip to Can Tho would be a failure. I turned in the paper to the instructor with a shaking hand, thinking I had all the wrong answers. But when the results came in the mail the next week, I found that I had passed. I had passed! Just barely, so that a couple more wrong responses would fail me, but it didn’t matter. I had passed! I remember holding the certificate in my hands that day like I would never let it go.
I worked at the U.S. base, improving my English all the time, and I sent money back to Chau Doc to support my family. At night, I wrote letters home and checked on my brothers and sisters and the rest of my family. During the day, I went back to the base and typed up English documents and reports. That job lasted for about a year, though, and soon Thom wanted to move on. Thu and Dung agreed with her and planned to make the journey, too. Thom told us there was high demand for typists in Saigon since the South Vietnamese government and American bases were stationed there. I had heard rumors about Saigon, its magnitude and its excitement. So I followed her again, and we took another bus ride, this one long enough that I dozed in and out.
I woke as the bus slowed and parked in the city center. Look, Thom said, as she pointed out the window in every direction. I leaned over our Thu and Dung, followed the erratic waves of the hand. The view was amazing when I first saw it, the biggest place in all South Vietnam. It was the capital, and you knew it when you got into the city. Wide colonial buildings gazed at us from each side of the bus, stories and stories of bricks and plaster. There were people everywhere, too, on cars and motorcycles and bikes and sit-lows. Businessmen walked the sidewalks in their best attire, suits and ties, and the women amazed me, their clothes like nothing I had ever seen. I was envious of them. They wore pearls and long dresses, and some wore belts and heels and sunglasses. They, along with the men, traveled to the merchants that lined the streets, and I could hear their advertising shouts coming through the bus window. They sold fresh food or beauty products or handmade crafts, along with whatever else you could want in the world. Everything and everyone was in Saigon. Now I was here too, with three friends to help me face it.
Like Thom had promised, the four of us got another job. Instead of typing, we worked on the American base in the commissary, the grocery store for the soldiers. We learned how to use the cash register and give change in American dollars, and these lessons challenged us at first, but slowly got easier as time progressed. We knew the people on the base and started talking with them to practice our English. Thu and Dung talked with some American men and agreed to go on dates with them, and we giggled about it the next day. I had created my own sort of family in this new city with these new friends of mine, and I liked where I worked. While I had enjoyed the typing, the commissary job’s location was much better, as we could leave the villages and enjoy the big city life. I remember the streetlights always shimmered, and it was never dark, even when the moon didn’t shine, and how the bars and the shops were open late at night. Crowds of people lined the sidewalks and smoked cigarettes, creating tiny clouds under the lamps. I had jumped around places in my childhood, and now I was finally able to stand still. I had made it somewhere.
Thu and Dung’s one date turned into many dates, so that their American boyfriends became American spouses. They stopped hanging around our friend-family as much, Thom and I left alone, since they now developed families of their own. We continued work at the commissary all the same, still giggling about the American boys as if their marriages were another fling. Yet adulthood crept up on us, and we realized that we were no longer girls, but independent women in a dangerous city, subject the world’s injustice. Eventually Thom’s mom got sick, and she returned to Can Tho. My best friend had left me. Now I had a great loneliness in this city, and I wondered how I would survive on my own.
Then, Dung invited me to a house party, and I knew I would not be lonely anymore.
Chapter 2: Tom
I was bursting with excitement in 1968, ready to start my adult life, when Scribner told me that aircraft repairmen were being contracted to Vietnam. His first name eluded me like most first names in the Air Force, and I thought it strange that we knew half each other’s names but were close enough to be brothers. I knew him without knowing him, I guess, and we talked a lot. One time he mentioned his cousin who worked overseas for the war, an electrician tinkering with American aircrafts over there. I don’t know why, but that really stuck with me. I had been in America my whole life, and I hadn’t really seen or known anything else. My imagination ran wild with adventure at the thought of this new country, inspiring that gut-tingling feeling you get when you hope to travel overseas for the first time. I wanted to experience things for myself, rather than reading it in a magazine or seeing it on TV, and these contracts were my ticket to do just that. It was something different, and to a young man, different is all there is. For those two years in the service, the thought of going to Vietnam lingered in the back of my mind, like an itch I needed to scratch.
I finished my time with the Air Force, and I sent an application to Lockheed Aircraft Service, a division of Lockheed Martin. The defense department had funded them and a lot of other companies, trying to get people to build and repair American aircraft for the war. The job posting was for a sheet metal mechanic, and I had done that sort of work in California, so I was qualified for the position, as much as I could have been at that age. I didn’t think I’d get the job. But to my surprise, I got accepted and hopped on a plane, and soon Saigon was right below the wings. I didn’t have to daydream about travelling anymore. I could touch the city, feel it.
I landed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, just north of the city. The Lockheed office was a close cab ride away, and the engineers processed me and sent me on to Camp Eagle, where I would be stationed. So I would not see much of the illustrious Saigon after all, not that year, and Lockheed would fly me to my new home. Camp Eagle was in the northern part of South Vietnam, what we now call central Vietnam. This was a time of the imaginary line, the 17th parallel, which divided the two countries, and I was close to that line, about thirty miles from it and between the cities of Phu Bai and Hue. Moods were tense and precarious, everyone on edge or denying the edge existed. Soldiers or mechanics either thought we were close to war erupting south of the parallel or not close at all. Nobody was ever right, but speculation reigned supreme. I speculated, too, and I figured that we were pretty safe here. But sometimes, during the eerie silent nights in my bunk, I heard what sounded like gunfire, only to eagerly shrug it off as a dream or my jumpy imagination. There was always the possibility that something might happen, and that when it did, I would hear the planes’ engines rev, and then I would know for sure. If I didn’t hear those engines, I could go back to sleep. At least, I could make an attempt, on that cheap, firm mattress the Army had supplied. I might as well have slept on the floor.
The first three months of the contract, I lived on that cheap mattress, crammed in a tent with the other Lockheed guys. I got pretty close with them, since you had to be, and we got along fine. Then we got moved into these little shacks called “hooches,” plywood and screen-wire boxes that the Navy Seabees had built for us. They were nicer than the tents, I suppose, since we had more space to ourselves and ever-so-slightly-improved insulation, so that I didn’t sweat quite as much in my fatigues. The hooches weren’t designed for luxury, but they were somewhere to sleep. As long as Lockheed was paying us, we wouldn’t fuss about it.
The repairs were tough but rewarding. We were always outside, the sun beating down on us, and the heat exhausted me. I thought it funny that Vietnam stayed more humid than a South Carolina summer, that this place had a density to the air I didn’t think was possible. I could’ve wrung out my sweaty clothes by noon. Still, I enjoyed the work and the aircraft. Mainly I worked on Army helicopters, but sometimes some fixed winged aircraft, since the U.S. had so much variety in their arsenal. The famous Huey was a frequent friend of mine, its long green spine and wide body making it beautiful target for enemy forces. Hangars filled, too, with the CH-47 Chinook, another wide aircraft used for cargo or troop relocation that got frequently damaged. There were others like the AH-1 Cobra, a zippier version of the Huey from Bell helicopter; the OH-6 Cayuse, whose bubbly windows also resembled the Huey; and the OH-58, with its flat, angular sides that contrasted the others. All of these needed new sheet metal, whether the damage was from battle or a crash landing. Or sometimes an older aircraft had rusted or gotten too brittle, and we changed them out, too, the other repairmen and me. Sometimes the day filled with routine checkups and maintenance. Whatever the plane needed, we wrote up reports and kept records of everything. We stopped in the evenings and went out to a bar for a drink and then went back to Camp Eagle. I wrote letters in my bunk, to my family and friends back home, and I told them about the job or the war or whatever happened that day. There was always a lot that happened.
War happened, but it seemed far away, in the northern jungles miles away from the city. Still, you could feel the pressure under the sun, and crowds of G.I. men walked on the base stiffly, their chests tight and swelling. It was clear that tensions were rising, even thirty miles from the DMZ, where that divisive parallel heated up by the day. Folks were getting restless. Camp Eagle took incoming rockets at times, mortar-like projectiles, and they shifted the ground underneath my boots. I wrote to a friend and said that if warheads ever did crash into Camp Eagle, they wouldn’t be postmarked “For G.I.’s only.” They’d be addressed: “To whom it may concern.” Rockets did not discriminate.
Defense contractors’ main source of danger was petty theft and name calling. We were Yankees, rich Americans, and we were treated in that vein. After a night out at a bar with a frequent congregation of Americans, you had to be careful and know where you were. Cowboys rode up and down that street, groups of young Vietnamese men who flew by on Honda motorcycles and snatched jewelry off pedestrians to make a quick buck. You got your watch snatched once, and after that, you made sure to tuck the watch into your coat pocket. At least, that’s what I tried to do. Sometimes I forgot.
I remember one time, when I was in between jobs, I left base for a walk around town, as I sometimes did. A little boy came up to me, as if he would ask me for some ice cream or an American dollar. Before I could say anything, he had snagged my watch and started sprinting down the asphalt, his young legs kicking up dust. I ran after him for a while before giving up. Out of breath, I started laughing. He could have it.
I completed the six-month contract at Camp Eagle and transferred to work in Qui Nhon, so I could live downtown and not on an Army base. During my six years in Vietnam, I lived in many places: up north in Quang Tri, a border town even closer to the DMZ than Camp Eagle, or down South in the Mekong Delta, around Can Tho. There were many places in between: Camp Eagle, for one, Anson, Tuy Hoa, Cu Chi, Vung tau, Ban Me Thuot, Chu hai , Saigon, of course, and Bien Hoa. Some of these contracts only gave me a glimpse of the cities, a few months or so, and others were longer, sometimes a year or more, so that I settled down a little before heading onto the next spot. Nevertheless, I felt disjointed at this time. I split into many parts of the world at once, but it was exciting to my young mind to see all these things, people and cultures unknown to me.
Lockheed was just one of the companies I worked for. After Camp Eagle, I had various jobs with the Naval Helicopter Association, otherwise known as the NHA, and sometime later I worked with Federal Electric Corp (FEC), and even later, Lear Siegler INCL (LSI). Lockheed and NHA leased me out to the coastal town of Qui Nhon. There, the war crept unusually close to me.
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I had been stationed there a few months, with the goal of completing repairs for the Air Force, who had an airfield in town. It was a coastal city nestled in the highlands, picturesque in the March bloom. I had rented a studio apartment there, if it could be called that. It was a little room I had rented in a house owned and lived in by a South Vietnamese Lieutenant and his family. Rumors swirled that tensions had risen towards the eastern coast, Qui Nhon being much further from the 17th parallel than Camp Eagle. Like every South Vietnamese city in these days, it looked to be a target for invasion, the third largest city in the country and, consequently, its steady supply of munitions shipments. So I figured it wasn’t advisable to go out at night, and I opted to stay in my room.
I quickly discovered that the walls might as well have been uninsulated, and I could feel the spring heat seeping in through the windows. I switched the ceiling fan to full blast and laid flat on my sweaty bed. The heat still clogged up the room, and I couldn’t sleep through the night. I dozed in and out. Until around two or three in the morning, I heard a noise. A loud boom echoed in the distance, close enough to the house that I felt the room shake. I sat up. I heard the wind roar, a wailing that didn’t seem natural to me, and I soon found out that it wasn’t wind at all. In seconds, the crash of shattering glass filled the room, and I took cover on the floor beside my bed. The roaring stopped, and everything settled into an eerie silence. I stood and looked at the damage. Glass covered the bland tile and the sheets that I’d been laying on. Something had blown the windows in. It had to be an explosion. But I wasn’t sure if Qui Nhon was under siege or not, or what side was attacking, or if I was in any real danger. I peaked my head out of the blank space where my window used to be, hoping to see any sign of what was going on, but there was nothing, no booms or soldiers to speak of. Not knowing what else to do, I cleaned up the glass off the floor and put clean sheets on the bed. I stared at the ceiling, still sweating. I didn’t sleep after that.
I would only find out the next morning that the Vietcong had blown up a U.S. ammunitions cache a few miles from the house.
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In January of 1973, I was living Saigon for a change. I hung out with a lot of Army people there, since Tan Son Nhut was only a stone’s throw from downtown. I heard news of the war from some of them. The Paris Peace Accords had been signed, to the disapproval of Americans back home and overseas. President Nixon used the term “peace with honor” to describe our retreat, and I wrote home to my parents in Abbeville, South Carolina that there was no peace nor honor in this agreement. It was a sad time for Americans and Vietnamese alike, whose countries were in a state of disarray, all because of this war. With the U.S. troops trickling out of the South, I wrote my parents that North Vietnam would take over within two years. It turned out my guess would be almost correct, off by only three months. But that would come much, much later, when the air began to feel even denser, like a heavy sweatsuit.
For the time being, I enjoyed Saigon. One of my G.I. buddies had a house in the colonial district, the massive ones with two stories or more, and he invited me to a party there. He’d invited a bunch of people, Americans and Vietnamese and anyone else who wanted to join, and he said I’d meet a lot of new faces. I said it sounded like a good time and that I’d be there. I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t expect to meet the one person that would change my life forever.
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