From the pier they turned off the beach road and walked the whole way, passing through a street packed with stores. They reached the end of Le Loi market, only one alley away from the old market district. Amidst the shouting of the people and the great variety of merchandise on sale, the smell of death seemed to have completely vanished from the city.
19
General Westmoreland decided that the only way to suppress the communist guerrillas was to expel all communists from the phoenix hamlets and establish free-fire zones everywhere else. Warnings had been coming from the operations headquarters. With the combat situation getting hotter, circumstances were pressing the peasants to discard the lukewarm attitude of neutrality they had thus far maintained and to make a decision.
They too were finding it increasingly obvious that to survive in these circumstances they were going to have to choose one side or the other. In the past, the farmers had three options to make a living: in accordance with their natural instincts they could stay put on the land where their ancestors were buried; they could move to zones under secure government control; or they could join the National Liberation Front. From now on, however, those who tried to stay on their land would encounter increasing peril.
The Viet Cong did not even know how to dress wounds properly, but those who moved into the zones of government control would receive food, shelter, and personal safety as well as jobs, along with the hope of returning home after a successful conclusion of the war. The alternative was to join the NLF. But the Front made hollow promises. They could not hold on to the territory they occupied for very long. B-52 strikes would get worse, the Viet Cong would raise the taxes, their young sons would be drafted at gunpoint, and labor would be demanded for transporting supplies. In present circumstances, the tide of battle on the ground was turning gradually in favor of the enemy.
In the conference room of the provincial government office, a monthly meeting of the US — Vietnam Joint Committee was underway. The joint committee was an organization first set up in conjunction with the strategic hamlets initiative in the early 1960s, and it was now being restructured and expanded to administer the phoenix hamlets project. For this resettlement plan the Vietnamese government had inaugurated a “Developmental Revolution Committee,” and the chairman of this committee was none other than General Liam, the military governor of Quang Nam Province.
Present in the room were Major Pham Quyen, acting on behalf of the chairman, AID representatives assigned to Da Nang, an American military advisor for Quang Nam Province, the mayor of Hoi An (also vice-chairman of the Developmental Revolution Committee), the commander of the ARVN Second Division stationed at Da Nang, the chiefs of the agriculture and education sections of the provincial administration, and, up from Saigon as advisors, a Filipino specialist in community development and a young man from the International Support Corps.
The air conditioner was buzzing, but it did not impede their discussions. The thick curtains were drawn on the windows of the conference room that normally looked down on the streets. From inside it was hard to imagine where in the world they might be. The soundproofing was so good that no street noise at all penetrated the conference room. Standing at the front of the room was a huge map of East Asia along with a large chart written in both Vietnamese and English. Nearly a hundred tasks were listed on the chart, in each case with specifications showing the details of the task for each site — such-and-such village in such-and-such province — with budgets and monthly timetables for distribution of supplies. Just now the US military advisor was emphasizing once more the strategic importance of the phoenix hamlet project, reiterating the announcements by the headquarters of the US forces in Saigon. However, the mayor of Hoi An was not convinced and spoke bluntly.
“As for the search-and-destroy operations commenced by General Westmoreland, our commanders on the front have presented some criticisms. In fact, ever since the Tet Offensive, our general staff have also taken the view that, due to the general problems of such operations, it is a very doubtful way to achieve a decisive victory. We would like to believe that the new operational strategy of newly appointed General Abrams will bear our reservations in mind. I’ve long thought that the headquarters policy on designation of free-fire zones was a very dangerous approach. Could it be that headquarters has given up hope of winning the loyalty of the Vietnamese peasantry?
“It is practically the same as giving up the entire highlands region of central Vietnam to the NLF and the North Vietnamese. It is a development of deep significance, meaning, in effect, that from now on nobody can be neutral. What you’re saying is, you will take no responsibility for whatever happens to people who have not moved into the hamlets or into our zones of control. What you’re saying is, those villages that had joined with the NLF in the past can and will be annihilated.”
The chief of the agricultural section in the local government was an ARVN major on reserve status and senior to Pham Quyen. He cautiously supported the comments of the mayor of Hoi An.
“All of this is, of course, a by-product of the agonizing war we have been through. We’ve witnessed the wretched fate of many farmers who’ve been deprived of their land and livelihood by the establishment of free-fire zones. If you go up in a helicopter and cross the metal fences at the boundary of the division defense zone, then you’ll see the parade of refugees slowly creeping along under the hot sun. No one knows where they come from and they themselves don’t know where they’re going. The old men have pots and pans on their backs, or a couple of chickens, their entire property, and the children ride in rickety wooden carts, many of them already sick. On the outskirts of all the cities, Da Nang included, tens of thousands of refugees have swarmed in, making slums of shacks on a giant scale, and they keep on growing, too.
“The Americans have provided these refugees with vast quantities of relief supplies and have tried to find jobs for them, but they couldn’t possibly have understood the various problems presented for these Vietnamese people by such transplantation. Putting aside the two most important things, carrying on permanent family life and worshiping one’s ancestors, they think of their own villages as an entire world in microcosm and their worlds are lost.”
As usual, Pham Quyen found himself cast in a sort of master-of-ceremonies role, and he felt a need to move in a direction different from their pessimistic, impractical pleas.
“Our Developmental Revolution Committee and the US — Vietnam Joint Committee are anti-war organizations founded basically to fulfill the hopes of the Vietnamese people to be free from hunger and terror. In other words, furthering self-reliance and realizing peace have been the permanent goals of the projects of our organization. So, our goal is not to expand but to end the fighting. If, as in the past, our enterprise exists and is seen merely as a derivative part of a strategy to achieve military goals, then it is bound to fail. Hence, I would very much like to focus on the fact that this self-reliance project must take the lead on all policy fronts, and the military operations policies need to be supportive of our enterprise.
“Earlier, the advisor reminded us of the characteristic intensity of headquarters’ operations in the run-up to the Tet Offensive, and we now hope that experience would help us to stabilize our project so it can take root and be transformed into a process of securing strongholds that one by one can be expanded. In that respect, General Liam, our committee chairman, upon receiving the report I submitted on the deficiencies in the old strategic hamlet project and the causes of its failure, instructed us to carry out an organizational reconstruction and recruitment of new personnel in the course of planning the phoenix hamlets project. Consequently, I hope this meeting will be devoted in large part to the differences between the strategic hamlet and the phoenix hamlet projects that are expected to improve the prospects for the new initiative. We each can voice our opinions, beginning with the divisional commander, here, please.”