Farewell Uncle Ho 8
This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.
Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.
Farewell, Uncle Ho
by Dennis Milholland
questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu
Chapter 80 (Tues., July 11)
After we changed flight crew, including our steward, and an hour's worth of refueling, we flew out of Elmendorf AFB, where it hadn't been as chilly as I thought it would have been, and it had felt good to walk around outside. Gerry finally bought his Zippo without engraving in their small BX. Although I thought something with Elmendorf, Alaska on it would have been cool and kept everyone guessing, it was, after all, his choice.
About seven and a half hours later, we touched down at Yokota AFB near Tokyo. Oddly, the weather there was as sweltering as it had been in Washington. It was pouring down rain. Our mad dash to the waiting room was hampered by the slightly slick metal stairs. I wondered what it was going to be like in Saigon.
We got back on the plane, and we let our uniforms dry a little, but Gerry and I put on our field jackets to keep from catching cold from the air conditioning in the plane. Gerry's jacket still had the slight flavor of rattlesnake to it.
There was no telling what time it was. The only thing of which I was certain was that it was the middle of the night. We'd just dozed off again, when the steward woke us for dinner. We were fifteen hours out of Washington and had already eaten five times. So, Gerry and I declined and decided to sleep until breakfast.
***
We'd just gotten seated in row ten, following breakfast, when we buckled up for landing at Saigon's international airport, which also served as a military air base. According to the probably outdated map, which Earl had given us, Tan Son Nhut airport was northwest of downtown. The flight from Yokota AFB had lasted just about six hours.
Leaning over Gerry to look out the window and to let him tickle my tits, the view was of fluffy white and grey clouds interspersed with patches of sunshine, not what I would have expected during the rainy season. Each time the plane banked in the holding pattern, out of the range of artillery, we saw a luscious green landscape of rice paddies and forests. The bare spots, like roads and bare fields, were a red-brown, and there was a river or rivers, couldn't tell if there were more than one, winding, snaking through the countryside, seemingly in all directions.
The entire scene looked peaceful, until we saw several flashes off in the distance. I squeezed Gerry's thigh. "It'd be nice if that's not aimed at us."
Gerry chuckled tensely. "Let's hope that it isn't."
The aircraft made one last bank to the right and went into what seemed to be a nosedive. My stomach felt as if it were somewhere other than where it should have been. My balls had crept up into my abdomen. Gerry's grip on my hand, upon which his had been resting, became almost painful. Our landing speed after touchdown was much faster than the previous two had been. And the reverse thrust made us almost levitate. There were four distinct thuds as the duffel bags fell from the seats to the floor. The general and the major were much too concentrated on being cool as to look back to see what had happened. The steward in his jump seat, flying backwards, did give it a glance, however.
"Welcome to Tan Son Nhut, Gentlemen," The steward's voice was pleasantly soft, telling us that he was used to this kind of shit. Or he was fucking good at faking calmness. "where the local time is 0900 hours. It is partly cloudy, and the temperature in Saigon is 26 degrees Celsius or 79 degrees Fahrenheit with a prospect of rain around lunchtime." There was no hoping that we'd enjoyed the flight, and no hoping to see us again aboard a MAC hop.
***
Standing at the top of the portable stairs, the brilliant glare of sunshine, filtering through smog, made me squint. The air was warm, not hot, as a matter of fact, it was cooler than it had been on Sunday on Staten Island. The smell was the peculiar kerosene fumes, particular to airports.
Gerry and I followed the two officers through MP customs and to the exchange window. Since I was fairly rested and thought that I could avoid fucking up and wake enough to talk my way out of it, should I get caught, I decided to exchange only one hundred dollars, seventy into MPCs, or military payment certificates, and thirty into dong, then keep the remaining four hundred in trusted, green cash and the five hundred in travelers checks to myself.
Since I'd been told several times that it was illegal to have green backs in country, I figured that there was probably a profitable reason for this. Consequently, I couldn't see any rationale in giving these profits to the Chase Manhattan Bank, 'your friend in Saigon', since the Rockefellers had enough, and I was determined to get the handsome black-market reward rather than letting them have it.
My French father had taught me years back never to use a money clip. That was only for showoffs and constituted an invitation for someone to try, at least, to take it away from whomever was flashing the wad. >From my days of shopping at the flea market in Paris, my two Moroccan buddies had taught me that fine art of haggling and it was always wiser to carry two wallets, one with only a certain amount of shopping money in it and to keep the other, proper wallet, out of sight.
Of course, I had, long ago, imparted this wisdom onto Gerry, along with that of the immense power of Baksheesh, which always meant a tip, a charitable gift, or a political bribe, none of which were ever considered morally improper. What I considered morally reprehensible, however, was corporations like American Express and Chase Manhattan making millions off the control of currency in an impoverished country at my expense. So, Gerry and I exchanged a hundred dollars, which provided us with a proper exchange slip to show any bureaucrat, who wished to see one. And the rest of our pay advance for our planned leave, stayed in-pocket.
When I saw the general and major carrying their billfolds the American way, I intervened. "Uh, Sirs, you might want to carry your billfolds in your front rather than in your hip pockets."
"Whatever for?" The general reacted, as if I were hassling him.
Since I had seen him exchange next to seven hundred dollars, I would have thought he could have been grateful. "As a precaution against pickpockets."
"That's not an issue, Specialist." He grumbled and buttoned his thick wallet into the back pocket of his jungle fatigues and pulled down the shirttail over the bulge. Gerry squeezed my arm, telling me to let it go and hummed quietly the first bars of Big Spender under his breath.
***
We were escorted to the conference room, where we waited for little more than an hour. Disgusted, the major, at the general's behest, decided to see what was going on. And, after several phone calls, he found the answer.
There had never been a NATO delegation to talk with Mr. McNamara's staff. The Secretary of Defense was, in fact, in-country, but no one knew anything about high-ranking German and Belgian officers.
This was my introduction to one major aspect of the Army. The conference had been SNAFU'd. The acronym meant: Situation Normal - All Fucked Up. And, at that moment, there were no truer words. Besides I still couldn't understand what interest NATO would have in Vietnam, since this was SEATO's neck of the woods.
The general pounded the table with his fist. "Damn it!" Of course, he forewent any deference to a reigning deity, since that would have been himself.
Therefore, in the process of damning it, his cousin, the major, a lesser deity on Mount Olympus, sprang into action and ordered the escort, a second lieutenant to work a minor miracle and get them to the Rex.
So, there we stood, alone. Luckily, the major had given us our pads of orders before we'd gone through MP customs, so we, at least, had those. But we saw no possibility of transportation, other than the two, olive-drab, Chevy Impalas waiting for brass, and I wasn't about to ask either for a lift.
Gerry pointed and laughed. "Ready for fun, travel, and adventure?" I had to laugh, since he obviously meant this literally, rather than the normal code for FTA, or Fuck the Army.
Down the road about five hundred meters, almost hidden in a humid bank of blue-grey smog, coming from jet fumes, diesel trucks, busses and two-stroke cars and motorbikes, there was a line of about ten, of what looked to be a type of '50s Renault Dauphine, of which the bodies, below the windows, were painted dark blue, and the parts above the windows and the roofs were cream. On the doors was the vehicle's registration number, such as TAXI 6214.
We walked up to the group of drivers, standing in a tight group, smoking, chattering, watching us cautiously. From their appearance, at least two could have been Hoa, or ethnic Chinese. The looks they were giving me, approaching them in a Yankee jungle uniform and humping a duffel bag, varied from outright hatred to amused amazement, as I asked in Cantonese if any of them understood me.
A skinny, short man, who was standing off to one side of the group, maybe in his late twenties, who appeared to be of Sino-Vietnamese mix, started jumping up and down, laughing and motioned us over to his cab. Since Gerry and I were operating solely on first-come-first-serve basis, he would be the one to drive us into town.
Gerry was sitting in the back with our duffels and his carry-on. I was in the front with my carry-on on my lap. Talking of a tight fit, we could just as well have added a water buffalo in the back on poor Gerry's lap.
"Did you just get in?" The driver's accent and pronunciation told me that he'd grown up bilingually, since he spoke Cantonese carefully, deliberately, sort of the way I did.
"Less than two hours ago." I was watching him closely; he, of course, knew this. He was driving much too carefully, as if he were on his best behavior. "My buddy and I are moving to Saigon."
Glancing at my uniform, he giggled. "Doesn't look as if you had much of a choice." Going around the traffic circle outside the airport for the second time. He looked at me questioningly. "Where to?" He switched on the meter.
I was impressed, since he'd given us almost a kilometer of free ride. "Sorry, Lê Loi, uh, number 11-23." He looked slightly troubled, when I gave him the address. "Is there a problem?"
"That's a building, where only French live." He seemed to know what he was talking about, so I kept the fact of my own nationality to myself. "Have you been invited?" He wondered, picking up speed.
"We have, of sorts." But then again I wasn't sure if June had mentioned that I'm half Chinese. I know that I didn't, and Yvette wouldn't have been able to tell by my name. "Is there a problem with race in Saigon?"
"Beaucoup." This was the first bit of Saigonese slang, that had slipped into his Chinese. "Since the French officially left, the Vietnamese have become very racist, intolerant and want everyone else out. The Catholic Diem outlawed gambling and prostitution, not really because he thought it was immoral. No, it was to make life hard for the Chinese, who controlled gambling, prostitution, and opium.
"But still, the Chinese are refusing to sell their businesses to the Vietnamese, so they still have control of the economy, including the opium trade. And the French, who are still here, are able to tolerate the Chinese just slightly more than the Vietnamese. And you'll see, my friend, you'll fit in just as poorly as I do."
And at that, the tiny dark blue and cream taxi zipped right past the behemoth of olive-drab Chevy, stuck in traffic because of its size. I thought of saluting the red-faced general, pompously perched on the back seat. And I might have, had my right hand not been stuck beneath my carry-on, and between my right knee and the dashboard.