‘You meet the nicest people on a Honda.’
‘Ha-ha.’
I went into the office and found what I needed — I also put my camera in my bag (a Paxette, a 35 mm miniature, a solid little thing) — and taped a piece of card with BAO written on it in black marker on one leg shield and CHI on the other. John kick-started the motor and I climbed on the small pillion behind him. There was an aluminium handhold between the seats but I felt safer with my arms around him.
‘You don’t mind if I do this?’ I asked.
‘I don’t mind.’
We set off and I hugged myself against his damp sweaty shirt. It was cheap cotton and had a pattern of red clipper ships in full sail on it. I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling like a teenager again. It was proving to be the strangest day, with my emotions veering around from soft and silly to cynical and uncaring; and my sense of adult responsibility seemingly switched off — what was I doing on this bike with Oberkamp heading off to Highway 22? It was as if I was in some hallucinatory state.
John seemed to know where we were going. He had a street map folded up in a pocket that he consulted from time to time, pulling into the side of the road for a few seconds to get his bearings. We took back roads to avoid the traffic jams at Tan Son Nhut airport and finally pulled on to Highway 22 about four or five kilometres north of the city limits. I was very pleased to see it was busy — military and civilian vehicles going in both directions. ‘Highway’ was something of a misnomer, though: a two-lane strip of potholed tarmac with wide dusty verges heading through a scrubby landscape and the occasional grove of coconut palms. It was a hot and hazy day — I wished I’d brought a hat.
But half an hour up the road we were the only vehicle moving. I tapped John on the back and he pulled in.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked
I pointed to my right where, about two miles away, a converted Dakota known as a ‘Spooky’ was flying in a tight pylon turn. Then there came a noise like a chainsaw as its Gatling gun opened up from its position in the gaping side door.
‘There’s a problem,’ I said. ‘Where’s all the traffic? What’s the Spooky shooting at?’
‘They’re just mopping up. I checked with CIB,1 I told you. We’re heading west. All the trouble’s in the north.’
Then, as if to back up his reassurances two cars sped down the road towards us.
‘See? We’re only fifteen minutes away, I reckon.’
‘OK, let’s go.’
After about another mile the vegetation became sparser and over to the left I saw a flat expanse of semi-dried-out lake come into view, that had drained away or been half-evaporated by the heat. Parked on the near shore were three US Army personnel carriers, their crew sitting in the shade cast by their high sides. I was pleased to see them, made John stop and took a few photographs and gave them a wave as we puttered off. One of the soldiers jumped to his feet and shouted something at us, making crossing motions with his hands, but he was quickly lost to sight as we turned a corner. I tapped John on the back and he brought the Super Cub to a halt, once again.
‘Those GIs,’ I said. ‘They were telling us not to go on.’
‘We’re almost fucking there!’ he protested, pointing.
Up ahead, I could see a wooden shack by the roadside, roofed with palm leaves and with some rickety market stalls set out in front of it on the verge, ready to trade with passing vehicles — except there was no produce laid out.
I slipped off the bike and stepped into the middle of the road, looking up and down the shimmering tarmac. All traffic had disappeared and we were quite alone on Highway 22 again. Far in the distance the Spooky was banking into its pylon turn, looking for targets. I shaded my eyes, feeling the sweat trickle down my spine, listening.
‘Come on, Amory!’ John shouted and just at that moment I saw something move in the roadside shack.
The first shots hit the tarmac about ten feet in front of me. I felt the sting of bitumen chips hit my forearms and as I turned and ran heard the flat firecracker noise of several AK-47s open up and sensed the burn and tug of something hitting my right calf muscle. We ran into the undergrowth and crouched down. The Super Cub lay incongruously on its side. A bullet pinged off its front fork and tall puffs of dust erupted around it.
I looked down at my right leg. My chinos had a tear at the calf and blood was spreading. I rolled the trouser up and saw a neat three-inch furrow torn along the surface of the muscle. I felt no pain.
John pulled off his shirt and ripped off a sleeve — with remarkable ease — and bound it round the wound, knotting it tightly. The gunmen in the shack were now spraying the undergrowth, randomly searching for us. We were safe for the moment if we kept our heads down. Then I heard the roar of engines from the APCs from the lake, heading up the road towards us at full speed. The firing stopped and I raised my head to see three people run from the roadside shack and pelt into the scrub, just before the palm-frond roof was shredded into a thousand swirling pieces as the.50 calibre machine gun on the lead APC hosed the building. Some internal structure must have shattered because the whole shack half-collapsed with a creak and what sounded like a sigh and a thick cloud of dust rolled across the road. We stepped out of the undergrowth, hands up, just in case, as the lead APC lurched to a halt and its commander, sitting in the turret with the machine gun, began to swear at us colourfully.
I had my little war wound — that was now beginning to throb. And, now we were safe, John pulled on his one-sleeved shirt, righted the Super Cub and declared his intent to drive on to Vinh Hoa.
‘Are you completely insane?’ I yelled at him.
APCs by the parched lake. Highway 22, Saigon, 1968.
He hugged me, kissed me quickly on the lips to halt my protestations and said, ‘I’ll be back tonight. I’ll come to your place. I’ll bring Queenie.’
‘No, John, don’t go,’ I said, angrily and grabbed his arm. But I released it when I saw the look in his eye. Mad, unreachable.
‘I don’t advise it, sir,’ the lieutenant commanding the APC squadron said, dryly.
‘I’m a journalist,’ John said. ‘I’ll be safe. Don’t worry.’
‘Oh yeah. One of those fuckin’ crazy journalists. You’ll be fine, man. Go for it.’
His men laughed.
John climbed on to his bike, started it, smiled, gave me a thumbs-up and motored off down the road, flinging out a final wave as he dwindled away into the wobbling heat haze.
I waited in for him that night, but he never came. The next day he was posted as missing in action — villagers in Vinh Hoa said he’d been taken prisoner by a cadre of retreating Viet Cong, no doubt the ones who’d fired at us from the roadside shack. I wasn’t too worried: journalists were quite frequently captured but usually well treated and released after a few days, the reasoning being that they would speak favourably about their captors — good propaganda.
A week went by, and there was no sign of John Oberkamp and his Honda Super Cub.
Two weeks later I had a letter from his mother, Mrs Grace Oberkamp, from Sydney. John had written to her about her forthcoming grandchild and had given her my address, for some reason. It seemed to me a strange precaution, as if he had a prescient worry about what might happen to him. I was suffering from retrospective worry, also, recalling that moment alone on Highway 22 just before the shooting started. If those VC had been better shots I would have been cut down there and then, I was now realising. Annie and Blythe orphaned. I felt sick — genuinely shaken up — but these thoughts and images haunted me in the days after John disappeared. I could close my eyes and see myself fall, feel the bullets hit.