We were driving, probably not quite sure where to go. We must have been heading to Saigon when I saw this sign on the right that said Dalat. he had heard the name. It was an old French hill station far north of Saigon. It had a good reputation as a nice place to go. It brought to mind stories of one of the RAJ’s old British hill stations. Simla? Anyway, I was curious and asked PB if she had been there and she said no. I turned right and off we went.
We were able to come to these decisions without any discussion, which was good. On the other hand, we didn’t know how far it was. It certainly wasn’t close. We didn’t know what the trail was like. I’m not giving away. I would have to check them on a map. So I had no map. Anyway, even with a map, it wouldn’t have been much better. A detailed military map was the last thing one wanted to be caught with and anything else was worse than useless. Conditions on some of the roads were abysmal and it was not uncommon to travel mile after mile in second gear. Traffic jams in Saigon were monstrous and in the countryside, a blown up bridge could cause a bottleneck with three lanes of traffic on each side and no vehicle could pass to cross the bridge. Or, for that matter, just a blown-up bridge and not a soul around. Comparing a trip then with whatever distance is marked on a map today has nothing to do with the reality of the situation.
What was perhaps surprising was the fact that the Vietnamese continued to roam the roads. His driving style was attractive. Driver’s licenses can be purchased. If you were a foreigner and you had an accident, you were always wrong. You could, you had to buy your way out of any accident. I read that coach drivers would drive at high speed hoping that if they set off a mine, their speed would carry the driver safely and only blow up the back of the bus. The accidents were horrible. The Viet Cong set up roadblocks and took who they considered to be an enemy. I remember reading that a French consul in the highlands had his car break down, he got a ride from a passing bus, was stopped by the Viet Cong at a roadblock and reportedly died in captivity. The French generally considered themselves above this war and therefore immune. It is possible that having known war for twenty-five years when I arrived in 1965, the Vietnamese had developed a certain fatality.
I changed the license plates of my car and then we continued through an area of rubber plantations. My official license plates began with an X denoting that I was part of the US war effort. I always carried a spare set of ordinary, illegal Vietnamese. By the time we reached the rolling grassy hills, my somewhat lazy mind had begun to think that there was no traffic on the road. I also knew by now what no traffic meant. I hid my identity documents and threw away my plates with the number X. The few towns that were there seemed to be devoid of activity. Once we passed a lone Catholic priest on a motor scooter. The road climbed steadily and we talked for a bit. PB was from Hanoi. They had also had a house in the country and were doing relatively well. His father, a nationalist, had been taken away by the Viet Minh one night and never seen again. The family moved south after the division of Vietnam. There was an uncle, a colonel, who had been head of the province. I think all the province heads were military, possibly with one exception to try to show that the country wasn’t exactly a military dictatorship or something. He had been on the wrong side in one of the numerous coups. There was another tragedy in his life, but it is not for me to speak here. Every Vietnamese had their own share of war-related tragedies. His English was excellent, and he had a delightful habit of mixing adverbs and adjectives.
We decided that he needed another identity. I suggested being a French Catholic priest. I was often confused with someone from the province where he worked. PB pointed out that his presence did not give credence to that. I suggested being a press reporter. We rejected that, but later I would join an obscure news agency, obtain the necessary documents, and use that cover in my spare time. I would also work as a freelance. We agreed that I was a teacher. I was going to become one at some future date. Once, when we were driving through the delta, I think near My Tho, and we stopped to buy pineapple from a boy on the way, he remarked that I was English. He had a brother studying in England. I worked, got paid, and had a lot of friends who were American, but alone in the country they were the last people I wanted to associate with. The road started to climb again and there was still no traffic. Now we look at the most beautiful green I have ever seen. Below us was wave after wave of every shading imaginable, forest or jungle, I can’t remember, but it was utterly enchanting. Any shadow of fear we suffered from also disappeared. I think we put it away and pretended to ourselves that it wasn’t there. In any case, we were now compromised and it was too late to turn back. At one point I saw the backs of the soldiers looking into the forest, and the sound of machine gun bursts, and then nothing. We then come to a high plateau with gently rolling hills covered with tea or coffee plantations. I should know which one, but this is written after a gap of forty years, and while some of my memories are as sharp as yesterday, others are mixtures of colors, and some are just gray.
to ramble. The old plantations had been owned by the French. He was going to meet a Vietnamese woman whose family had one. I remember being given large bags of small, black, freshly roasted coffee beans gleaming with butter. Coffee in Vietnam was the Robusta variety. Very strong. It was usually drunk in small glasses with lots of sugar but no milk. I used to drink too much and my nerves suffered accordingly. Tea was drunk in large glasses, without sugar or milk, thank God. Outside of Saigon, at least, it used to be free and accompanied what one was eating. On the rare occasions I stopped somewhere just to get a glass, they always gave it to me, so I usually bought a small cake or something. However, the water was often of dubious quality and the tea was safer.
We arrive at the civil airfield that serves Dalat. Very small. No sign of any activity or any aircraft. I would get used to, actually participate in, this Vietnamese custom of going to an airfield to catch a flight and sitting and waiting in hope, looking up at the sky for hours to see a plane. When no planes showed up that day, they would leave and come back the next day. The patience of the East. From here the path climbed steeply and the landscape changed again. One could have been in the Alps. The forest was now evergreen and there was a magnificent mountain on our left. Unknown to us, this was the most dangerous part of the trip and that mountain was full of Vietcong infested tunnels.
We reached Dalat. We hadn’t seen a single motor vehicle on the entire trip except for that lone Catholic priest. I will deal with this town later, when I want to get to know it much better. For us it was just a matter of finding a hotel, a quick walk, food and a bed. The city maintained a rather French air. With my beard I fit in easily. It was the only place in Vietnam where I was never exploited. There was no US presence at all. In all my visits there I never saw more than one or two Americans. I do not want to criticize the Americans in these articles. The problem was that apart from the fighting, there was often an unfortunate relationship between the two peoples, both seeing the other’s faults and never the qualities. There was a curfew at eight. It was a city that had seen its heyday years before. It now had the South Vietnamese military and police academies. It had the Convent of the Birds. It was known for its vegetables that were shipped by road to Saigon. His girls had a beautiful healthy glow on their cheeks. All this for later. We spent a rather restless night. There were continuous bursts of small arms fire everywhere. Will I ever speak of a happy one? There were many, but evidently not at the end of our excursions. We had to go back the next day. I only had two days off unless otherwise arranged, and since all my trips were unauthorized, I preferred not to talk about them.
The next morning I filled the car with gasoline, lit my pipe, and we started the return trip. It was a beautiful day, the air nice and cool, but there was not another car on the road. We went down what I would call the alpine part of the trip, past that towering mountain now on our right, to the small airfield. We then continue through the area of what must have been a high plateau of plantations. I took some pictures of PB, I still have them, at one point we stopped for her to buy meat, buffalo? We met a mountaineer, but we only had bills and the mountain only accepted coins. Descending through the beautiful green woods, PB slept next to me. I was rudely awakened when the car hit a pothole, I struggled to regain control, and then continued wide awake. It terrifies me to think what the outcome of even a minor accident would have been.
The ride was uneventful and we again passed rolling hills of tall grass. As we approached the rubber plantations, we stopped for a coke in a village. I have always found it the most refreshing drink on such occasions and it gives one the strength to carry on. Then, surprise, a South Vietnamese armored column approached from the south. The first vehicles we had seen in two days. I don’t know what the US advisers thought of me sitting calmly at a table with PB. They actually gave a friendlier smile. Maybe not for me. Driving, we were stopped two or three times at the rubber plantations by Regional Force soldiers who wanted to be rewarded for taking care of the road for us. I always kept a carton or two of cigarettes for that, and usually two or three packs would do. Arriving at Baria Saigon highway, PB wanted to go to Saigon, so I had to drive there and then back to Van Kiep. I think I must have driven a good eighteen hours during those two days. I could barely move a muscle when I got back.
Three days into our trip, the Viet Cong attacked the highway in six places and controlled it for five days. Some time later, two Decca co-workers who were driving a jeep from Phan Rang on the coast to Dalat went missing. In 1972 the British Vice-Consul, one Adrian, one of those very strange but nicest people, was at my home in Saigon and told me that he had been interviewing a Viet Cong defector who said he had been detained in a road blockade. road, taken prisoner and died in captivity. One was British and one American. On the other hand, in the same period, fourteen unarmed American civilian personnel in an American truck under, I believe, a Korean Army escort, were killed on the same road when their convoy was ambushed. One had to use one’s judgment whether to go armed or not, and if possible what means to use to travel. You should also pray not to have been born under a bad star.