Pham Quyen spoke frankly about the topic which was still of considerable concern to him. Unlike a little earlier, Yong Kyu’s voice was calm when he replied. “The Korean government always gives top priority to the interests of Koreans who hold jobs and earn money. So, provided Miss Oh can obtain employment, her residence in Vietnam will automatically be recognized. In other words, once she has a job, the business of having her visa extended is for the Vietnamese, not us, to decide.”
“You almost fooled me. Employment here is no problem at all. I’ll have her hired at the provincial government office.”
“We didn’t intend to fool you. We just wanted to discuss this idea with you. Besides, if we had wanted to, it would not have been impossible to have her deported.”
They had resolved their differences and lowered their guards and were laughing and slapping each other on the back. Yong Kyu looked at his watch. It was time to call Pointer.
“Excuse me for a minute, please.”
“Calling the captain?” asked Toi.
“Yeah, I told him we were coming here. He’ll be waiting.”
“Give him the details later. Leave me out of this. I’m nothing more than your advisor.”
Yong Kyu stared piercingly at his sunglasses, then smirked. “You’re my partner. And you’re our source of information.”
Yong Kyu left the room. A good number of drinkers had gathered in the main room of the club. It was about half-full with white civilians, soldiers, and bar girls. Music blared. He went up to the bar and placed a call to the Dragon Palace Restaurant. In a few seconds the captain was on the line.
“It’s me, sir. I’m with Major Pham now. I think we should disregard the report, sir.”
“Why? The boss wants the details.”
“Give him a verbal report, sir. The Vietnamese business dealings are more important than that.”
“Can you connect with their dealing channels?”
“Just finished the negotiations.”
“Good. Take your time. I’ll get the details from you tomorrow morning at the hotel.”
When Yong Kyu got back to the room he saw that girls and liquor had arrived. One bottle of Johnnie Walker, two girls. One was in a tank top that clung like a swimsuit and a red miniskirt, and the other was wearing a black miniskirt and a polka-dotted blouse. The red miniskirt had wavy-permed hair cascading down her back and the black miniskirt had bobbed her hair very short.
Major Pham poured a drink for Yong Kyu, speaking in a friendly tone. “Drinks are on me. I like you.”
Yong Kyu found himself thinking back to a night he had spent at a campside village near Tam Ky during his days in the infantry. He had gone AWOL for one night. Guerrillas were attacking a guard bunker on the village’s edge. He was with a girl, writhing on her belly with a.45 in one hand. He remembered how the sweat covered her small brown body. She kept gesturing for Yong Kyu to put the gun away.
After finishing, he had walked over to the window naked with the pistol still in his hand. Bright red flares rose in the air, then fell. He pushed up the bamboo window frame and peered out into the night. Tracers were flashing across the sky in a continuous stream. The girl quietly came up behind him and stroked his hair. He took the gun and hid it in the folds of the jungle pants he had taken off. The girl tried again and again to say something in awkward English: “Much sleep, sleep. Sun come up. That’s OK.”
She lay down first on the bamboo bed and pulled him toward her. As he rested his head against her breasts, she wrapped her arms around his head and, patting gently, said “Sleep, sleep, that’s OK.”
He slept. The sun rose the next day. The midnight attack was all over. Villagers and troops were in the streets clearing away the corpses of dead guerrillas.
Yong Kyu had emptied his pockets for the girl. It must have been his whole month’s allowance. She grinned brightly, flashing her crooked teeth. Then she gave him a mound of red-bean rice cakes wrapped up in a banana leaf. He had flung them into a rice paddy from the back of a speeding truck. He visited Tam Ky once more after that. There was a barbed wire fence and a long traffic sign where the girl’s place had been. The campside village had evaporated, for the defensive front had pushed closer to the city and the Vietnamese forces had been replaced by the American army.
The girl in the red miniskirt sitting beside Yong Kyu said, “I’m Lou.”
“Where are you from?”
“Singapore.”
The other woman was Malaysian. Both were of Chinese descent.
“If you prefer, they also have a half-blooded French woman,” said Major Pham.
“Where’s your woman?”
“I like Dai Hans,” said Pham Quyen with a broad grin. “Miss Oh said she’d come here to meet you guys.”
“Should we buy them some Saigon Tea? But we have no tickets.”
Major Pham chuckled and said, “The Sports Club doesn’t sell tickets. Ladies and gentlemen prefer cash.”
15
Report Regarding Misconduct Committed in the Course of an Operation by Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Division
The geographical situation of Quang Ngai Province, encircled by a mountain shield and only ten miles inland, made it one of the best Viet Cong strongholds. As far back as the 16th century, the region had been a spawning ground for anti-government rebels. During the period of French rule on through the Second World War, these highlands had been a sanctuary for guerrillas.
At the time of the Geneva Accords of 1954, when the nation was partitioned along the seventeenth parallel into North Vietnam and South Vietnam, almost 90 percent of the ninety thousand Communist sympathizers who moved from south to north were from Quang Ngai. The NLF guerrilla units in this area had the reputation of being the most formidable fighters in the south. Their commanders were seasoned by extensive combat experience.
In order to purify the water for other fish, the Viet Cong were exterminated along with their suspected sympathizers. The Vietnamese government had designated the entire province of Quang Ngai as a “free-fire zone.” Artillery units were at liberty to deliver heavy “neutralization fire” wherever they wanted to.
In the spring of 1967 the Allied Forces commenced “Operation Oregon:” orchestrated search-and-destroy missions that killed 3300 Viet Cong captured 5000 suspected VC, and seized 800 weapons; and a troupe — code-named “Zippo” for the lighter — burned down all the houses in a free-fire zone that covered almost half the province. In September of 1967, operational command of forces in Quang Ngai was transferred to a newly organized unit called the “Americal Division.” The new unit was composed of the 196th Brigade that had participated in Operation Oregon, the 198th Brigade dispatched from Fort Hood, Texas, and the 11th Brigade from Hawaii.
The infantry forces in the Americal Division were mostly army newbies. They had received two hours of training on prisoner treatment. Due to cultural gaps and racism, the operations were at times counterproductive. Battalion J Commander had the nickname “Gook Killer” painted on his helicopter gunship, broadcasting his open disdain for the Vietnamese people. Every time a VC was killed, a triangular-shaped peasant’s hat was added to the side of the helicopter. Some of the gunship pilots who enjoyed air-to-ground attacks in free-fire zones took to calling their helicopters “Slope Hunters.”
A certain brigade commander, X, accepted bets on which unit would bag the ten-thousandth Viet Cong. It was said that the soldier who killed the ten-thousandth VC would be rewarded with a week’s vacation at the private retreat of the commanding general.
Among the officers who showed great valor in the 1967-68 period was Colonel George Patton III, son of the famous World War II tank commander. The motto of Colonel P’s 11th Armored Brigade stationed in the south of Quang Ngai was “Locate the Human Trash and Shoot Them.” The colonel reportedly sent out Christmas cards bearing color photographs of a heap of Viet Cong corpses. A minor scandal arose when the New York Times reported that Colonel P was seen at a farewell party carrying a polished skull, said to be of a Viet Cong, with a bullet hole over its left eye socket. The following is from a letter written by Major General R to a US congressman interviewed for the newspaper article: