The Man from Saigon. Marti Leimbach
the sampans she saw along canals. Long, primitive boats whose name literally means “three planks”. She’d seen them stocked with fish, fruit, paddled by families, by children even, in their black pajama trousers, their broad conical hats. She read the note, then carefully, silently, pressed it back into quarters, then eighths. Meanwhile, the lieutenant colonel was still talking. I don’t have time, he emphasized, the US military does not have time, to educate unprepared girl reporters—
It was that expression “girl reporters” that did it. It lit something inside her she didn’t quite understand. She found herself interrupting the lieutenant colonel, then rising up despite how nervous she was, despite the crowded hot room, her face dotted with perspiration, the spectacle of it all. She stood, craning her neck to look taller and focusing her gaze directly at the man who glared down at her from his theater of maps. Her dress was ridiculous; she decided on the spot never to wear such a dress again. Even so, she stood, balancing herself on the back of the chair in front, holding the note, which she hoped the lieutenant colonel could not see, in the clenched fingers of her right hand. Are you talking about a sampan? she said, as forcefully as she could. It came out loud enough to hear, not a scornful question, not a challenge, but a genuine enquiry delivered with the assurance of one who will be able to evaluate the answer. When you say WBLC, do you really mean sampan?
It was as though a bubble of air between herself and the lieutenant colonel had been punctured, as though she were standing right up next to him, balancing on her toes, stretching her entire, compact frame up to meet the gaze of this large man. She was no longer afraid; she was no longer an observer. She felt herself finally to be among the press. There was a beat of silence between them, then the lieutenant colonel dropped his chin, blinking as though suddenly awakened from a dream.
A few chuckles, a reporter from AP laughing loudly, then a voice from the crowd, Son’s voice, the first time she would hear it, his heavy Vietnamese accent in which she could detect distinctly Anglican vowels, his light, slightly nasal tone. Can we have confirmation that a WBLC is a sampan, sir?
The colonel stayed his position, breathing purposely in, then out, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. After a moment he let out a sigh, turning his face so that the projector etched out the line of the Demilitarized Zone across his left cheek. His pointer, which he had dropped during the exchange with the female reporter, with Susan, he now retrieved from the floor. When he spoke, it was to the map screen. Yes, that is correct, he said, finishing the matter.
Thank you, sir! came Son’s voice from somewhere across the room. She did not know who was speaking. But Son had noticed her from the start, even that first week. He never admitted this, but later she pieced it together. Marc, of course, had not been at the briefing. She met him the following week, after deciding she’d better get out of Saigon and see the war for herself.
It was on a battlefield. Marc came on a convoy out of Cam Lo, riding in the open bed of a truck with his cameraman, Locke, and a dozen marines. They smoked and talked to the soldiers and looked out over the landscape shimmering with the day’s heat. Never in all the time they pitched over the bumpy roads did he think there would be a women ahead; but she had travelled out the day before and was about to beat him to a story.
They arrived at the base of a hill where a row of bodies, faces blackened as though burnt, waited to be taken back in those same trucks, a captain yelling for more bodybags and ponchos, men in gas masks working the duty. He didn’t see her yet, not her or any other journalists. He got out his notebook, his recording equipment. Locke trained his camera on the bodies stacked to their right, only briefly of course so as not to be seen doing so. The smell of the bodies was revolting. Marc kept himself from looking and held his breath as much as he could until they went up the hill on foot, out to the camp. They were brought to the observation post. No bodies here, just miles of dusty, red dirt, low-lying shrubs, rubble and artillery and sandbags and men in foxholes.
There was sporadic fire, plenty of incoming but none of it that close. Then an onslaught of artillery. He didn’t know when the serious shelling began, but it did, like a storm gathering and settling upon them, ceaseless and consuming. They dived into an open bunker, marines beside them curled up around the edges of the pit, their faces pressed against the shallow walls, their legs and arms seized up beneath them. They could not have gotten any smaller. Locke tried to work the camera, getting as much footage as he could. Occasionally, they became brave; moving cautiously over the dusty grounds standing at the rims of foxholes, desperate to get some good pictures, but equally ready to dive underground as the storm of firing continued. There had been explosions all morning, coming every thirty seconds, every fifteen, landing at first some distance off and now much closer. They thought they were up here doing a story about the morale of marines, asking them how they felt about being there, Con Thien, the meat grinder, the graveyard, three featureless hills right up against the Demilitarized Zone. But the incoming was so heavy there was hardly enough time between explosions to get even a quick on-camera.
The marines were extraordinary. After so many days and weeks of fighting they seemed to know how close a shell was by the sound of it, and would remain on their feet longer than he would dare to. He tried to be that brave but the rockets came cracking out of the sky—no sooner was he standing up than he was flat on his front again. He felt suspended in time, as in a dream when you cannot quite get your limbs to move. They needed the footage and surely this battle was something they ought to record, but they couldn’t get much. He would see Locke rolling film across the hills where the explosions followed a line of men in defensive positions, then both Locke and the camera would disappear. He clutched the microphone, trying to record some natural sound, but no sooner had he made the effort than he found himself once more on his face.
Something happened. The earth itself seemed to tip and now he was on his hands and knees, the tape recorder covered in dust, the microphone, the wires, sprawled out on the dirt. He didn’t know where Locke was; calling out would be useless. There was constant firing in both directions, the ground lifting up beneath him. Someone grabbed his shoulder and threw him into a bunker. It was Locke. He could tell because the camera knocked him in the face. They’d been up there less than an hour, maybe much less, but he did not know, and would not be able to recall.
No light, the earth shaking, artillery shrieking above. He was aware of other people in the bunker, of the walls of sandbags, the dry earth pressing around them with every blast, red dust showering down from the sandbags over their heads, raining on his shoulders. On the floor, hugging his knees, neck bent, arms over his head, hands over his ears, he told himself that unless they got a direct hit, they’d survive. His cheek swelled, the place where the camera had hit him. He was missing his eyeglasses and then he realized he had them in his hand.
The bunker was only a few feet high, not much wider, hot. He felt the sweat on his back, his chest, running down his face. Another explosion, this one so close he called out, the sound rushing from his lungs as though forced out by the blast, his heart screaming inside his chest. He recalled reading an account by a survivor of the Ia Drang massacre, a soldier whose company had nearly been wiped out. The soldier had told how when his buddies were hit in the belly or chest, they let out a terrible scream and they kept on screaming, until they were hoarse, until the blood filled their mouths, until they died. He wished he hadn’t read that account, which had been in the Saturday Evening Post. He thought of it now; he didn’t know why. The noise was so loud, so penetrating, it seemed to alter the way his body worked. During the blasts he saw bright orange and red behind his eyelids, felt his skeleton acutely within the soft tissue of his muscles. Strange bits of information hung around the edges of his thoughts. Body counts from other battles, a line from a childhood prayer, a drive toward silence, the need for which was reaching desperation point. He was alternately blinded by darkness, then by light. Nothing happening now, not one thing, was natural.
He heard the metallic click of a cigarette lighter; a flame illuminated the bunker. He opened his eyes. Across from him, not ten inches from his face, was a woman. Her helmet was lopsided, the hair hanging beneath its rim coated in dirt, scratches across her cheek. Her eyes were open and glassy. He didn’t know her. Didn’t know why she was in the bunker or the base, or in the country itself. The world had receded to this one, small place, and here she was before him. The sergeant