Do you all remember the monk who was chanting? It was a big fight! Brother Fanfan posted “The Fishy Book of the Vietnam War” for this purpose, but unfortunately it’s incomplete!
I was organizing my server hard drive a few days ago and found this article, still incomplete, but only slightly missing! Let’s see which one of you can fill it in.
The original article was GB, transcoded and posted on, so apologies to the original scanner, and please don’t blame Brother Vanity for being abrupt.
I. The French Paradise
II. Exchanges for the sale of spirit and flesh
iii. the scandal of general williams
IV. Inside the self-immolation of nuns and monks
V. Tyranny and revenge
VI. Saigon International Crime Transfer Station
VII. Cruel drug experiments
VIII. Aftermath
IX. What happened to the Vietnam mestizo
X. Fifth generation rulers
concordance
preamble
It is a bitter irony when, symbolized by a virtuous woman, we have the civilization, under many different guises, such as liberty, justice, etc., which has been painstakingly whitewashed by luxurious and elegant and famous personalities, but which treats women of flesh and blood with the utmost meanness and shamelessly violates their decency, chastity, and life.
Jason Hu (Taiwan foreign minister)
The Crimes of the French Colonial System
Calling Vietnamese women whores and monkeys is a common thing for the French.
Jason Hu (Taiwan foreign minister)
The Crimes of the French Colonial System
This book is about living things, most of which are not yet known. As a member of the U.S. military, Henry Moore accompanied “guerrilla warfare expert” Lansdale during the final stages of the Indochina War in 1954. As an American military officer, Henry Moore accompanied Colonel Lansdale, an “expert in guerrilla warfare,” from the Philippines to Vietnam in 1954 during the final stages of the Indochina War, and spent more than a decade there, where he became known as the “Vietcong” along with Hurrell, the interpreter for the U.S. Embassy at the time. He was known, along with Hurrell, then an interpreter at the U.S. Embassy, as the “Viet Cong. He returned to the United States before the fall of Saigon, but lost his left eye forever. He returned to Vietnam several times in 1979, 1982 and 1985 as a freelance journalist.
More than two decades of personal experience and deep inner reflection have given this book added relevance in the face of the current plethora of books and studies on the Vietnam War, which have been reduced to statistics.
There were many who thought it was a “dirty war” with no value, tens of thousands of American lives lost in those faraway tropical forests, and a lot of dollars and supplies poured into nothing, but in the end it had to be admitted that we lost the war.
American involvement in Vietnam was not primarily or mostly not a gradual, accidental descent into an unpredictable quagmire. It primarily illustrates why it was extremely important for the United States to keep communism from taking Vietnam by force.
The international backlash against the “loss” (of Vietnam) was the strongest and most obvious reason for them to make the case for Vietnam’s importance. Under the Truman administration, Indochina’s importance was measured in terms of Franco-American relations and Washington’s desire to re-establish France as a future center of European security. After the Cold War was at its height and after the fall of China, the French failure in Indochina was also seen as a failure of the containment policy. During the Eisenhower era, Indochina became a “testing ground” between the free world and communism and the basis for the famous “domino theory”, according to which the fall of Indochina would lead to a deterioration of American security throughout the planet.
In fact, none of the presidents, from Truman to Nixon, sought a military victory in Vietnam, nor were they actually fooled by the optimistic reports of progress, but their strategy was to “hang in there in the hope that their will to go on… would soften up the Communists.” What each president did was essentially the minimum that he thought he had to do to prevent the Communists from winning during his term of office. Part of the tragedy of Vietnam was that the compromises we were prepared to offer the presidents could never lead to a final end to the war.
Of course, the war had to end, and in fact it has, and it has marked our hearts deeply; but that does not mean that the whole war has disappeared, on the contrary, it is only a phase that we have experienced, which means that it can only mean the beginning of another war.
At this point, people tend to overlook the most fundamental problem: war is conducted by human beings, and if we leave human beings aside and study war, it will be at most a textual game of numerical counts. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people, politicians, military experts, arms dealers and so-called “pacifists”, were and still are consciously or unconsciously engaged in that kind of game-playing with their own different interests.
The reason why people don’t really get to the root of the substance of what they claim to be studying is that no one has ever really related it to human existence, or, to be more specific, hasn’t the intention to face up to the bad “nature” that insists on imposing its will on others, let alone trying to transform that “nature”. nature”, not to mention the efforts to transform that “nature”.
Henry B. Moore Moore analyzes the evolution of the specific culture, history, economy, traditions and morality of several ethnic groups throughout the Vietnam War from various perspectives with his own observations and a large number of vivid facts, the reasons why the French lost the land, the destruction of the Vietnamese feudal dynasty and the emergence of the confrontation between Ngo Dinh Yen and Ho Chi Minh, the involvement of the U.S., the scandals of General Samuel Williams, the Military Advisory Group which have not been disclosed so far, the inside story of the self-immolation of Buddhists and the shooting of President Ngo Dinh Yen, the war’s distortion of human nature, the cruel revenge and massacre, various heinous human beings. General Samuel Williams of the Military Advisory Group, the scandal that has not yet been disclosed, the inside story of the self-immolation of the Buddhists and the shooting of President Ngo Dinh Nhu, the war’s distortion of human nature, the cruelty of vengeance and massacres, all kinds of heinous human cruelty, the creation of the mestizo children of the Vietnam War and what happened to them, the truth of the Indo-Chinese refugee problem, and the evolution of the relations of the Vietcong government with China and the USSR, and so on. However, the true meaning of stopping war lies in our continual efforts to look at the human being himself, not at the surface of statistics, to categorically dismiss all the maniacs who utilize all kinds of crowning deceptions to carry out wars.
I. The French Paradise
South of the Tropic of Cancer, on the Indochinese peninsula, there is the long, narrow, tropical country of Viet Nam, which the French and the Americans have left behind with immense nostalgia and regret, which they both love and hate and which has made it difficult for past, present and future generations to talk about.
Vietnam is a land that was once a paradise for the French, and even the Americans, who once lived and prospered on it, and once fell and died on it. Perhaps, this is why we have been avoiding and at the same time pondering over it.
When we talk about this wonderful country here: we are not referring to its long history of more than 2,200 years, nor to its valuable and rich products or its vast rubber plantations of tropical forests, because in any case, the facts have shown that it is not a paradise of Eden, where wind, fire and smoke still prevail as they have done for centuries and millennia. Of course, this does not mean that Vietnam is a barren land, it has rich natural resources and countless products, producing a variety of tropical cash crops such as coffee, coconuts, rubber, sugarcane, etc., with valuable timber such as nanmu, mahogany, sandalwood, ebony, yu kuei, etc., a large number of minerals such as coal, iron, tin, aluminum, zinc, etc., and there are tigers, leopards, deer, elephants, rhinoceros, peacocks and other rare animals living. Rare animals and birds. However, all these are not enough to constitute the history of Vietnam. It is only when we witness the hard-working, stubborn Vietnamese people and their relationship with the whole world, which is both dependent and incompatible, that it is possible to create a certain image and concrete concept of this nation.
The people of Viet Nam, as a key issue of great importance, is because of its fundamental nature and guiding factors, without which any exploration of the so-called “Viet Nam question” would be fruitless. In addition, the exploration of the people of a nation should be based on and deepen the unique national identity and national traditions that the people have reflected to us, or have not reflected to us, understood or not understood, but objectively existed.
Modern statistics show that women make up well over half of the entire population of Viet Nam. In such a predominantly female country, ignoring or trivializing this objective reality will prove, and has already proved, to be absurd. It can even be said that if we repeatedly talk about “Asian modes of production and the quality of the nation” without considering the women’s issue as a key factor, it is impossible for us to have a minimum understanding of the entire social structure of Viet Nam.
If we dare to look back at the whole history of Vietnam without any prejudice or subjectivity, we will find that more than 20 million Vietnamese women, the overwhelming majority of the population, whether they seem to us to be headstrong or submissive, have played an unexpected and decisive role. As the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Mr. Le Dang, said in his book “Women’s Issues from a Class Perspective”, “Women are more nationalistic than anyone else, and the greatness and beauty of the Vietnamese nation belongs first and foremost to the Vietnamese women.” The French and the Americans fought two long wars with the Vietnamese on this narrow strip of land: one to preserve the last paradise of the colonizers; the other to keep as many non-communist regimes in Asia as possible. Although the French and the Americans left behind a great deal of blood and treasure for their respective purposes, they both left in a sorry state of despair, the fundamental reason being that they never realized the defenceless Vietnamese women who determined the entire fabric of society.
According to an ancient Vietnamese legend, their ancestors hatched from a hundred eggs laid by a bird called the “Ngoose”.
For more than two thousand years after the formation of the Vietnamese state, until the French made Vietnam a protectorate in 1882, it was almost always in the position of a foreign county of China. Therefore, both the past and the present Vietnamese culture have more or less retained the influence of traditional Chinese culture, and even Phan Phuy Chu, a famous Vietnamese patriot, called Vietnam a homogeneous country of Japan and China.
Since Vietnamese women, who constitute the majority of the population, have long constituted an important social factor, their role has been demonstrated by many events in the course of Viet Nam’s history, and Vietnamese women, who have suffered from it and who are full of the spirit of resistance, as the main force, have constantly demonstrated their national identity.
A great deal of historical material proves that both the French and the Americans made a huge mistake in their treatment of Vietnamese women, namely, in treating them as ignorant, lacking in brains, and not even worth considering. They themselves, or through Vietnamese rulers who were as ignorant as they were, subjected the notoriously hardy women to slavery, either openly or secretly.
Due to the special situation that there are more women than men in Vietnam, the polygamy system continued in Vietnam until after the mid-fifties of this century, and Vietnamese men regarded women as slaves and playthings subordinate to themselves, which is extremely rare in the world in terms of both their personal and physical destruction.
In ancient times, there was an Emperor Le Hoang Yip of Vietnam, who wanted women to rock the boat naked for fun when he traveled by boat; there was also a royal family called Dang Linh, who took many servants with him whenever he traveled, and when he encountered a woman with good looks, he would catch her on the spot, and immediately surrounded an open space with a cloth mantle, dragged the woman inside and raped her, and then cut off her ears and breasts and took them away with him. This kind of violence against women is also a very common phenomenon among Vietnamese civilians, such as stripping women of their clothes and then making them lie on the ground with a piece of banana stalk under their stomachs so that they can’t hide from the pain, and then beat them severely; and then there are cases of tying women naked to a raft made of banana stalks, inserting a sign with the word “crime” and putting it into the river, and so on. The most brutal of these is a type of torture called the “sin” sign, which is put into the river. One of the most cruel forms of torture is the “elephant stomping”.
The Frenchman, Della Bichler, described the situation of “elephant treading” in her book “The Present Situation of Central and Northern Ky”. The Frenchman, Della Bichalet, describes the “Elephant Trampling” in his book, “The Present Situation of Zhongqi and Beiqi”: “When the official in charge of the torture reads out the ‘crime’ of the woman to be tortured in public, the people lift up a board on the ground, revealing a pit just deep enough for a person to sit down, and then the ‘adulteress’ is led by an elephant over a head which has been passed through a white cloth and tied with her hands behind her back. The people lifted up a wooden board covering the ground, exposing a deep pit just big enough for a person to sit down, and brought the ‘adulteress’ with her eyes covered with a white cloth and her hands tied behind her back and put her into the pit, and then a specially-trained elephant led by the chief elephant stomped down into the pit until the ‘adulteress’ was pulverized to pieces. “
Due to the decline of the state, the Chinese rule over Vietnam after the middle of the 19th century was limited to the recognition of its subordinate status. At this time, the armies of the French Republic from Europe set foot on this land of green bamboo. For more than eighty years, Vietnam was a paradise for the arrogant French, who regarded the Vietnamese, especially Vietnamese women, as animals.
In his biography of Bacolod, Fuhr said, “If the French had been sincere in helping Bacolod (i.e., Vietnam), then at the end of the eighteenth century we could have created a system of protection in Vietnam without the need to use war later on.”
The French found that Vietnam, a resource-rich and densely populated agricultural country, was well enough equipped to be a source of raw materials and cheap labor for France to supply and dump its goods. The landless peasants, the bankrupt craftsmen, and the urban poor had to sell their last possessions of labor to the French, creating a new class of wage laborers. In this new labor class, Vietnamese women accounted for a large proportion.
In 1913, a book published in Paris, The People of Annam, said: “The women of Annam are very talented and they never refuse to do any difficult work.”
Vietnamese women’s labor efficiency was very high and they were able to master many skilled trades very quickly. The French at the time also believed that “Annamese women and children were surprisingly good at operating all kinds of sophisticated and complicated machines.”
However, despite the fact that women do the same work as men, they are paid far less than men.
The fundamental reason why the French were hated by the Vietnamese was that the French never regarded the Vietnamese as human beings like themselves. This is best demonstrated by the “standardized allocation” at the “Conference on the Study of Daily Wages for Workers” held in Hanoi in 1937 under the chairmanship of French Governor Dessart.
The conference concluded that “the average Annamese worker needs only 25 cents per day, of which 8 cents for rice, 4 cents for salt, 4 cents for vegetables, 3 cents for rent, 3 cents for medicines, 6 cents for clothes, and 1 cent for taxes.” From this, it is easy to see the attitude of the French towards the Vietnamese.
Dobré, the manager of Bei Ky Cotton Yarn Company, said: “It is not easy to choose a hundred dogs. As for the laborers, I only need to stretch out one finger and there will be thousands of laborers of the same kind as you to replace you.” With this ideology at the forefront of their minds, the French behaved toward Vietnamese women not only economically, but more in terms of bullying them mentally and physically. Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam, wrote: “Everywhere, women were not safe from the tyrannical behavior of the invaders: in the street, at home, in the market or in the countryside, they encountered everywhere the brutality of the ruling lords, military officers, military policemen, customs officers, and station clerks.”
I was fortunate enough to come across a copy of the book “In the Land of Annam” by H. L. James in the library at Broccoli, and it was thus possible to compare the behavior of the French in this land with that of the government later supported by the Americans, for James in his book gives a more detailed account of some of the conditions of the French in Vietnam at that time.
Nam Dinh Textile Factory
Nam Dinh Textile Factory, one of the largest textile factories in North Ky (North Vietnam), was built in 1900, where the official working hours were fifteen hours a day. Due to the long working hours and continuous labor intensity, the female workers were exhausted and often had accidents of being run over by machines and killed or having their arms broken. In the view of the French, those women workers did not need any labor protection or welfare enjoyment at all. Of all the hardships they endured, the most intolerable were the special hardships of women: punishment, beatings, molestation and rape. Whenever they heard the name of the French foreman, Mr. Telesu, they would feel a chill down their spine.
In 1931, the journalist Rob reported on Mr. Telesu’s violent behavior.
“Nanding textile factory about a thousand female workers, there is a seventeen-year-old female workers named Bei Shi Wa, she works ten hours a day. One day, an unexpected thing happened: the factory lost a yarn ball, about five or six hundred grams, stolen by a fifteen-year-old female worker, Hai.
“In order not to be penalized, the women workers come to the factory fifteen minutes early. This was the best way to avoid having two or three cents deducted for being a minute late. People saw that Hai had been tied to a post from some time, and no one dared to ask, for fear of being suspected of being Hai’s accomplice.
“Suddenly, Mr. Telesu came and people ran in all directions. Why did they run? No one said anything or made any mistake, but they were just afraid that the foreman would suspect them of sympathizing with the sea. The one who ran the fastest was Bey’s Wa. The foreman saw it and shouted: ‘Little girl, come!’
“Beethoven crouched down, her thin hands covering her face, and the tall Mr. Telesu came over and kicked Beethoven in the stomach with the toe of his shoe. The little girl fell to the ground, convulsing, unable to move. When Mr. Telesu found her unconscious, he called for a rickshaw, asked for Bey’s address, and had her taken away…”
Sipu mining area
Women workers in the Sipu mines have accounted for more than 35 per cent of the total number of miners since 1941.
These women, dressed in straw, chewing blood-red betel nut in their mouths, pushed their carts with bent backs, their faces smeared with blackened soot. Their so-called clothes were only a knee-length grass girth resembling a skirt, and their inner bodies were naked. Some of the younger women had to wait a long time before they could put on a pair of thick cloth thongs that resembled panties. To bathe, women miners had to wait for a sunny day to undress and wash in a remote stream, during which time they had to soak in the water and wait for their clothes to dry.
Although they regarded them as slaves like monkeys, the French, who were far from their homeland, were well aware that they were also women, and they showed an extremely savage and primitive disposition towards the animal which in their minds was a mixture of monkey and woman.
Biele, the first manager of the Sipu mine, chose a dozen or so of the more beautiful girls among the female workers, had them rinsed and cleaned, and then took turns plucking their armpit hairs and beards and doing some chores for them every day. Of course, in addition to the above, the most important thing is to serve as a tool for Biehler to vent his animalistic desire, and this kind of venting does not have a human love component, on the contrary, there is only a kind of instinctive desire and the feeling of stroking an animal in his body.
In the Ongmen coal processing plant, the foreman, Libiso, ordered the workers to build a basement in the plant, boarded up on all sides, with mats on the floor, so that whenever he wanted to give vent to his animalistic desires, he would take one of the female workers at random to this basement to be raped, and those who resisted would be beaten to the point of being dismissed from their jobs, because he knew that both of these punishments would be feared by the female workers.
On one occasion, he encountered a strongly resisting, headstrong girl. At his order, four male miners carried her forcibly into the basement and held her hands and feet so that Libiso could give vent to his animalistic desires. Afterward, Libiso tied up the female worker’s limbs and then strangled her with thick rope. In the afternoon of the next day, the workers opened the door of the basement and found that the woman had suffocated to death. But what could the workers do? They carried the body out with their heads bowed and their faces grim, and the workshop returned to its former calm.
The guards of the mines were black mercenaries from the French colonies who, despite being discriminated against by the mine owners themselves, showed an extremely strong sense of superiority over the Vietnamese women. These black mercenaries often took advantage of the fact that the women workers were returning home from work or bathing in the creek to catch them and rape them. Once a dozen black mercenaries, with the connivance of the French police chief, Mr. Orpheus, caught a female worker bathing in a stream. After gang-raping her by the stream, they tied her hands behind her back with ropes and led her naked back to the mine, where they continued to torture her; finally, they threw the dying woman into a small bucket truck and slid her into the pit.
The black mercenaries also broke into the toilets during working hours and raped the female workers there. The black guards at the entrances and exits of the coal mines took advantage of the inspections to grope on the women workers almost every day. This daily humiliation provoked protests from the coal miners. They demanded, first, the use of female foremen to manage the women workers and, second, the establishment of separate toilets for the women workers. These two simple, uncontroversial demands were summarily rejected by the mine owners.
Beeler said as he left Vietnam, “I think I’ve tried to do everything for them that they need.”
In the spring of 1954, the French were faced with the challenge of either abandoning this paradise, so different from the other colonies, or fighting an angry Vietnamese to the death. The Vietnamese resistance that began in 1945 finally converged into a formidable military force that met the French Expeditionary Force head-on.
As early as early 1946, North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh had written eight letters to President Truman and the U.S. State Department asking for U.S. help in winning Vietnamese independence from French rule. But the U.S. paid no heed to the appeals of the Communist Viet Cong. After mainland China fell into the hands of the Chinese Communists, the Truman Administration moved to support Emperor Bao Dai and to provide military assistance to the French in dealing with the Communist Viet Cong. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had his aides draft a resolution asking Congress to authorize the commitment of U.S. troops to Indochina. Eisenhower twice made it clear to the French government that he intended to intervene with U.S. military force to prevent a French defeat in Indochina.
The American Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, described the difficult position of the American government to the ambassador in Paris. Marshall, in a file kept in the State Department, described to the Ambassador in Paris the difficult position of the United States Government: “We fully recognize the sovereignty of France, and we do not intend to show any sign of attempting to undermine it. At the same time, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that there is a duality in the question, and we have received information that the French do not understand the other side of the coin, but continue to have a very outdated colonial outlook on the methods in these areas.”
However, at that time, the U.S. clearly realized that if Indochina was controlled by the Communists, it could be expected that the neighboring countries, such as Thailand and Burma, would fall under the rule of the Communists. The rest of Southeast Asia would then be in grave danger.
Under the influence of the “domino theory” of the National Security Council of the United States, the U.S. finally resolved to engage in the Indochina War. American military advisers, led by Trapanet, began to cooperate with the French Expeditionary Force in Vietnam. Soon after, the two French and American staffs formulated the “Vulture Plan”, which included the use of tactical atomic bombs, while two American aircraft carriers were deployed to the Gulf of Tonkin.
Unfortunately, although the French Republic was on its last breath in this colony, it had always maintained a high degree of suspicion of the United States, and had done everything in its power to prevent American troops from operating in concert with the French Expeditionary Force.
Their feelings are well illustrated in the book “The End of Indochina” by General Navarre, former Commander-in-Chief of the French Commonwealth Forces in Indochina. He wrote: “The Americans helped us materially, but opposed us spiritually. On the one hand, they tried to utilize the French ‘fist’ as much as possible and considered it necessary in their anti-communist plans, while on the other hand, they carried out sabotage operations even to the detriment of our interests.”
France’s anxious, unrelenting attitude finally led to its crushing defeat at Dien Bien Phu, so that it had to sign the Geneva Accords and lose its colony in the Far East forever.
On June 1, 1954, I arrived in Saigon with Colonel Edward B. Lansdale. Before arriving in Saigon with Colonel Edward Lansdale, I had been an instructor at the Philippine Government’s Security Training Center at Fort McKinley, just outside Manila. It was a CIA-supported school for counter-subversion, counter-guerrilla warfare, and psychological warfare. We were a group of twelve American instructors who mainly taught unconventional warfare and counter-guerrilla activities with the objective of maximizing initiatives against subversive activities in various parts of South-East Asia.
Just as I was receiving orders to transfer to the Saipan training base near Guam and preparing to depart, another change order arrived at the Fort McKinley Security Training Center. The change of orders informed me that I was to be in Manila within twenty hours to accompany Raymond S. Magsaysay, Presidential Advisor to the President. Presidential Advisor Raymond Magsaysay, Colonel Edward Lansdale. Colonel Edward Lansdale, Presidential Advisor to Raymond Magsaysay, Senior Philippine Military Aide, Colonel Napoleon Baleriano, and three other officers. Colonel Napoleon Valeriano, Senior Military Aide of the Philippines, and three deputies under the name of M.A.A.G. (Military Assistance and Advisory Group) to Saigon to assist the Public Security and Police Departments of the Ngo Dinh Yen Government.
Colonel Edward Lansdale was thirty-six years old. Colonel Edward Lansdale was thirty-six years old and already a legend in his own right. He had assisted President Ramon Magsaysay in quelling the riots of the CCP-led civil disobedience elements. He had assisted President Raymond Magsaysay in quelling a riot by elements of the Communist Party of the Philippines-led civil disobedience, and was known as an expert in counter-guerrilla warfare. His subsequent activities in Vietnam in the 1950s were so extensive that he became known as the model for the protagonists of two novels about Asia, namely Graham Greene’s A Quiet American. The Quiet American by Graham Greene, and William Lederer and Eugene B. Lederer. Lederer and Eugene Burdick. William Lederer and Eugene Burdick co-wrote The Ugly American. He was thought to resemble Pillie in The Silent American or Colonel Hillandale in The Ugly American. He advocated the creation of a counter-insurgency force in Viet Nam rather than a conventional army.
At the time, one of Colonel Lansdale’s biggest concerns was getting his team members into Vietnam by August 11, because that date was the deadline for freezing the number of foreign military personnel under the Geneva Accords. As the date drew nearer, the Saigon military mission was in danger of having possibly only two personnel on the ground unless urgent action was taken.
I arrived in Saigon from the Philippines at 4 p.m. on June 1 with Colonel Lansdale, M.A.A.G., Chief of the Regiment, and others, escorted by SA-16s of the Thirteenth Air Force from Clark Air Force Base, USA. We brought with us extremely simple belongings, only our carry-on clothes and necessary documents, plus a borrowed typewriter.
We had a little trouble landing at the airport. It was raining heavily in Saigon and visibility was very poor, so we were all thrown out of our seats when we landed; when we got out of the cabin we found that the plane had skidded off the runway and one of the tires had exploded on landing.
Members of the CIA-affiliated M.A.A.G., headed by Colonel Lansdale, were greeted at the airport by Rob McTurtle, Chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, and John B. Kennedy, head of the Defense Department’s M.A.A.G. McTurtle and the head of the M.A.A.G. of the Ministry of Defense, Lieutenant General John Aldan. Lt. Gen. John Aldan, head of the M.A.A.G. under the Department of Defense, and Col. Colonel Jean Carbonell of the French High Command of Expeditionary Forces, Vietnamese Minister of Defense Le Ngoc Thanh, and Military Governor Nguyen Van Vi.
We arrived at the U.S. Embassy in eight cars, escorted by a heavily armed security force. Ambassador Sheehan hosted a banquet for us and announced the appointment of Colonel Lansdale as Assistant Air Attaché. He said that it would be inappropriate to have an immediate advisory meeting between American officers of the M.A.A.G. and Vietnamese officers, and suggested that all of our activities should take place after contacts between the U.S. and Vietnamese political leaders had been paved.
That night, we checked into a small, two-story French-owned building with a garden on the west side of the Border Market that Colonel Nguyen Van Vai had rented for us, and created a secret communications link with Washington through the radio station at the CIA’s Saigon station. Immediately after making contact with Deputy Director Cabell of the CIA, Colonel Lansdale called the team together to set up the mission. Since I was fluent in French, my specific assignment was to communicate as soon as possible with the French Expeditionary Force (FEF) through Colonel Jean Bonaire. Colonel Bonaire to connect as quickly as possible with the Catholic militia moving north and to work with Lucien Cornayen to recruit a team of Catholic militiamen. I also worked with Lt. Col. Lucien Cornayne to recruit a group of Vietnamese (later known as the “Binh” group). Before leaving, I went to the U.S. Embassy and asked the interpreter, Mr. Hurrell, to teach me the necessary Vietnamese language before accompanying Colonel Nguyen Van Vai to Tay Ninh to secure a group of Cao Dai armed forces known as the “Alliance”.
At 10:00 a.m. on June 17, 1954, our CW-4 military jeep, which had been traveling for more than an hour on Highway 22, had entered the zone of defense of the “Alliance” forces. In a small town called “Jambon”, we were checked by Cao Dai soldiers wearing French military uniforms and grenades on their belts. Colonel Nguyen Van Vai gave them a certificate.
A fierce-looking, bearded officer stared at me for a long time, then suddenly grabbed my hand and said: “oi cha oi!” (Vietnamese for surprise) He ordered the soldiers to bring us a few coconuts and food, and then talked to us very cordially. Half an hour later, accompanied by the officer, we departed for Tay Ninh, the headquarters of the Union.
“The leader of the Alliance, General Chung Sai Ming, is a military man with sunken cheeks and an imposing figure. He met us in the lobby of a pale yellow former French official’s palatial residence. The conversation was conducted in French so that I could keep abreast of General Chung’s attitude and react to it. During the conversation I found out that General Tay Sai Minh was a strong nationalist with unquenchable xenophobic feelings and racial hatred against the French and the “Viet Cong” (he believed that communism in “Vietnam” was also related to France), and advocated that “Eradicate them completely from Vietnam.” To confirm his determination, we were led to the headquarters of the “Union” to see the French prisoners who had been reduced to slavery.
In the open space in the backyard of the headquarters, a dozen or so Frenchmen in shackles, bare-chested, were digging a large square-shaped pit, surrounded by several loaded Vietnamese soldiers supervising in the shade. Large drops of sweat fell from the heads of those Frenchmen into the earth, and the iron shackles on their feet clanked. General Tay Sai Minh told us that he was going to build a strong command post here to serve as a bulwark against attacks from other sects.
The talks with General Tay Sai Minh soon bore fruit when he asked us to provide radios and weapons for his force of 3,000 soldiers, which would go north to fight the Viet Cong under the name of the “Alliance”. In fact, due to the signing of the Geneva Convention, the plan for the Alliance to go north was soon put on hold. To show his enthusiasm, General Tay Sai Minh entertained us with a banquet of tiger meat, kept us overnight in the luxurious headquarters building, and escorted us back to Saigon the next day.
On the morning of June 18, we left Xining City, escorted by twenty Gaodai soldiers on bicycles, and traveled slowly in a southeasterly direction. At this time, there was a heavy fog under the sky, and the humid air blew making one feel a little stuffy. Gradually, the fog condensed into a white barrier in front of us, and a few feet away it turned into a vast expanse, so we had to stop traveling and get off the bus to a nearby rubber plantation to rest and wait for the fog to dissipate.
The owner of this rubber plantation is named Chan Suk, about forty years old, wearing a wide black silk coat and pants. He told us that the rubber plantation operated by his grandfather was once forcibly purchased by the French Red Earth Company, and the money that should have been paid in five years was unilaterally replaced by a piece of poorly ridged rubber plantation located in the gray soil zone by the French, and his grandfather was forced to sign the contract. The gray soil rubber plantation was only 50 hectares in size and had a very low yield. Outraged, his grandfather joined hands with several Vietnamese rubber plantation owners to appeal to the court, but the appeal was easily rejected. In 1953, Tran Thuy, along with Cao Dai Kieu’s troops, returned to the area and reclaimed the rubber plantation from the French.
“Now I employ more than 140 rubber cutters.” He pointed to the rubber forest and said to me in French, “And I bought a truck. This is no longer a Frenchman’s paradise.” He laughed and whistled with his hands, and many of the missionaries dropped their tools and ran inside.
Chen Suke excitedly told us about his rubber plantation. It was still very foggy and we could only see the pale gray edge of the rubber forest. I asked Chan-suk to show us around his rubber plantation and the workers having breakfast. Without any hesitation, Chan-suk smiled and agreed to our request, pulling up his noisy seven-year-old son to accompany us towards the rubber forest. However, before we reached the edge of the rubber forest, his son suddenly pressed his stomach and cried loudly, Chan-suk laughed awkwardly, told us that his son had dysentery, asked his assistant to accompany us to the rubber forest, and then carried his son on his back to go away.
About two hundred yards or so into the rubber forest, we came to the front of a low hut, the mess room where breakfast was cooked for the workers. But strangely enough, instead of sitting on the benches set up by the empty workers in front of the hut to eat their breakfast, the workers gathered to the west of the hut to watch something.
They looked happy and kept shouting, “Co hai, co hai!” or “Co con gai!”
“What do they mean by shouting?” I asked the assistant.
He shook his head and told me: co hai means big girl, while the northerners say co con gai. “It seems that there are many northerners among the rubber cutters here.” He said.
“What are they doing around there now?”
Although I guessed from what they were shouting that they were probably doing something ridiculous, I couldn’t believe that they were really engaging in the kind of group sex that Colonel Carbonell had told me that the Vietnamese often did in broad daylight, not to mention the fact that many of the women workers were shouting, “Cohai!
The assistant said he wasn’t sure what was going on. “Perhaps,” he said, “the workers were playing a game of some kind.”
Curious, we pushed our way into the crowd and peered inside. We saw that the workers were gathered in the middle of the circle, and three panicked white women were being forced to undress by several Vietnamese workers armed with rubber cutters, one of them, about thirty-five years old, had a knife mark on her face, and blood was still flowing. Terrified by the shouts of the workers, their frightened eyes stared at the knives in their hands and they couldn’t stop begging for mercy in trembling voices. The workers, who obviously did not understand French, laughed instead.
“What’s going on here?” Colonel Nguyen Van Duy asked curiously.
“They are captives that the ‘Alliance’ forces just took from Lunin.” The assistant said. “A week ago, the French army was beaten by the people to Cambodia, and General Zheng Shiming sent the recaptured French soldiers to do hard labor, and distributed the women to us as servants, and these French women were sent here to cook for the workers. The workers hate the French so much that they want to make fun of them. A day ago they were about to tease them, but the boss stopped them. I’m afraid they’re going to suffer this time.”
By this time, the fat, middle-aged Frenchwoman had fearfully taken off her skirt, and many Vietnamese rushed over to humiliate her, some lifting her huge, heavy breasts or touching her lower body, others using a rope to measure the size of her stomach, and one Vietnamese woman worker, laughing, pulling up her pants and comparing them to the legs of the poor, naked Frenchwoman who stood there being watched as a rare animal… Suddenly, the worker with the knife grabbed her by the hair and made her bend forward, then shoved his hand down her bottom from behind for the other workers to see. There were shouts of amazement and laughter from the workers, and a dozen more workers crowded over to take turns experimenting on her body in the same way, with even a Vietnamese woman worker putting her hand inside. Unable to bear the pain, the Frenchwoman moaned and leaned forward, but was grabbed by a couple of Vietnamese.
At this point, two other French women were stripped and pushed into the middle of the circle. They both looked young and appeared to be family members of French civil servants. As they struggled strongly, several Vietnamese twisted their arms back and forced them to accept this barbaric humiliation. When I saw this, I felt very indignant and wanted to go over to the workers to stop them from doing what they were doing. But I was stopped by Colonel Nguyen Van Vai. “You will be taken for a Frenchman.” He said quietly. “In the past, when the French trashed Vietnamese women, the people hated them. This is not too much to ask now.”
“Please help us!” A French girl saw me and made a miserable plea. Her arms were twisted backwards behind her back, her head almost touching the ground, and a Vietnamese was thrusting his hand hard into her lower body. At this moment, I could no longer control my emotions, and I broke away from Colonel Nguyen Van Vai’s hand and rushed forward, swung my fist and knocked down the Vietnamese who was trying to reach all the way into the French girl’s lower body, and grabbed the heads of the two Vietnamese who were twisting her arms backward and slammed their heads together, and they fell silently, and the French girl who had been let go fell to the ground as well. Just as I was about to rush toward the Vietnamese who were twisting the other French girl and looking at me in shock, I was suddenly attacked in the head with a wooden stick.
I lost consciousness at once, but when I came to my senses, I was tied tightly to a rubber tree with a rope by the Vietnamese. As I struggled to open my eyes, I felt a sharp pain in my head, and at the same time felt cold blood dripping from the corner of my forehead, blurring my vision in one eye. By then the fog seemed to have lessened, and I saw that Colonel Nguyen Van Vai was also bound to a rubber tree, while the assistant had run off somewhere. The furious workers surrounded us, waving rubber cutters in their hands, looking like they wanted to kill us. Colonel Nguyen Van Vai kept shouting at them in Vietnamese, as if explaining to them: “Chinh thi nguo My!” he repeated.
Later I learned that Colonel Nguyen Van Vai, in order not to kill the rubber cutters as if I were a Frenchman whom they hated, had tried hard to explain to them that I had come from the United States to help them defeat the French, and that this was the reason why they did not lay hands on me at once. At that moment the assistant arrived with Tran Suu Kyi and twenty soldiers who were escorting us, and dispersed the workers.
“Don’t you sympathize with those French bitches!” Tran Suu said in French, hatefully pointing the cane in his hand at the three French women who were naked and huddled on the ground. “You can’t think of the suffering we’ve endured, back in the day over seventy Vietnamese girls on this rubber plantation were all trashed by the French, even ten year old girls and pregnant women on the verge of labor. If anyone objected, they were either beaten or killed. It’s different now, and we’re just going to deal with them the way they dealt with us, no matter who it is, so they can suffer what we suffered.”
He told us what happened to his half-sister, Hyun.
On August 15, 1949, his sister Hyun, who was only twenty-two years old, participated in a work stoppage campaign to demand that the owner of the French plantation improve the working conditions and pay allowances according to the local climate, and lay down on the road with six other women workers to prevent the owner’s vehicles from entering the plantation, and on August 19, the owner of the plantation mobilized the French army to crack down and arrested Hyun and the six other women workers. They were taken to the French military camp and tortured with rape and whipping. The French soldiers dipped their beaten and bloodied bodies into a pool of salt water, then tied them up naked and placed them in the hot August sun. After three days of torture, Hyun and the six other girls were taken back to the rubber plantation by the French soldiers.
“Early that morning I brought a sum of money to the French stud farm owner and asked him to step in and release my sister.”
My father was too sick to go there himself, so he asked me to accompany my stepmother to the plantation,” recalled Chan. Around 8:00 in the morning, more than 100 French soldiers escorted Hyun and six other girls along the main road towards the rubber plantation. The French soldiers were kicking them as they walked. I saw that they were very weak, their faces were covered with whip marks, and it was very difficult for them to walk. When we reached the gate leading to the entrance of the plantation, one girl fainted on the ground, and the French soldiers rushed to her, tied her hands and feet together behind her back, and then put a stick through her and carried her upside down into the plantation. The French soldiers gathered all the workers into a clearing, forced them at gunpoint to dig seven waist-deep pits, and then placed several of the girls in the pits, bound behind their backs to wooden stakes, filled them with earth up to just below their breasts, and declared that they were going to kill them. My stepmother and I rushed to the owner of the seed farm, but by the time we returned to the clearing together, we found that both of Hyun’s breasts had been cut off by the French soldiers with a bayonet. At gunpoint, we didn’t dare to resist, so we had to pack up Hyun’s body in silence. At that moment, the French soldiers tore the blouses of the other six girls who were half buried in the earth and slowly roasted their breasts with lit branches until they screamed and died. All the Vietnamese present hid their hatred in their hearts and waited, and now the time for revenge has come.” He laughed easily.
That experience in the tiger’s mouth made me extremely cautious in my subsequent encounters with the Vietnamese civilian population, as well as recognizing the extent of the nation’s hatred of the French and how the Viet Cong were able to easily defeat the much more powerful French Expeditionary Forces, even though at the time I had little understanding of their overly vindictive mentality. It wasn’t until a few years later, when we Americans (from the President to the soldiers) were aroused to the same intensity of emotion and the same, if not more brutal, retaliation against the women and children of Vietnam in the same manner, that I came to appreciate what those rubber cutters were feeling at the time.
The fog had lifted and the rubber forest was clearly visible. I took one last look at the three French women who had been hoisted up into the trees by the rubber cutters, and then followed Colonel Nguyen Van Vai into the jeep. As we drove a few hundred yards, the shrill, desperate hissing of the women came from the rubber forest, and I couldn’t help but sigh.
I later learned from my Vietnamese colleagues that since 1945, this practice of venting hatred on captured French women had been widespread in the rural and mountainous areas of the center and north, and that it often inspired the French army to retaliate with mass killings. On one occasion, the Vietnamese lured the fifteen-year-old daughter of a French merchant into the countryside to rape her in the central city of Minh Kham. The French girl was taken from place to place and tortured in every way, and by the time the French army had tracked her to a place called Jao Noi Yukou, seventy-eight kilometers away from Minh Kham, she had been mutilated by the Vietnamese in a hut by the side of the main road. The French were furious, and on their way back to Minh Kham, they arrested a few Vietnamese women in every village they came across, and finally killed more than 70 Vietnamese women who had brought them back to Minh Kham, and buried them next to the river where the French girl had been subjected to “cross-breeding”, and erected a plaque there as a punishment for the Vietnamese, who were carrying out reprisals for the assassination.
However, the determination of the Vietnamese forced the French to retreat step by step and eventually drove their expeditionary force back to Europe, leaving the families of the increasingly isolated French traders to atone for their sins. Despite the best efforts of many high-ranking officials who had already joined the French (e.g. General Tran Van Dung, etc.) and who were pro-French (e.g. Generals Yang Minh Minh, Tran Thanh Khiem, etc.) to shelter them, the French traders in the North did everything they could to get out of that part of the world as soon as possible.
Under these circumstances, I took on one of the most dangerous tasks at the time, namely, to disguise myself as a French businessman in Hanoi and direct the activities of the Binh group, taking advantage of the fact that I could speak French.
The “Binh” paramilitary group was headed by Lieutenant Colonel Lucien Cornayan. Lieutenant Colonel Cornell was in charge of a group of thirteen Vietnamese, organized through a normal “Northern Taiwanese-Vietnamese” loyal to the Bao Dai government. They had been landed in Haiphong by Admiral Sabine’s Task Force 98 of the United States Navy long before I arrived in Hanoi, and the Taiwan-based civilian airline operated by General Chennault had earlier smuggled weapons into Haiphong from Saigon for the Binh group.
In mid-September 1954, I arrived in Hanoi on a C-41 aircraft of the Civil Aviation Transportation Company (CATC), which was transporting French refugees.
Hanoi was in the midst of a frenzied period, filled with refugees who had no place to stay, housing and food were very expensive, and people’s nerves were getting more and more tense, and the sound of cold gunfire could be heard every night. As the Lansdale group’s diary report on the paramilitary group’s activities in June 1954-August 1955 says, “It brought back memories of the bitter days of our pioneering work.”
For the reason that the Vietnamese people, most of whom were Buddhist, were great believers in divination and astrology, and often used them as a guide in marriage, in naming their children, and even in their daily lives, I suggested to Colonel Lansdale that Lieutenant Phillip utilize astrology in his propaganda for psychological warfare. Under his specific charge, a patriot by the name of Cho Dinh produced an almanac, and a number of other prominent Vietnamese astrologers produced prophetic almanacs. The almanac made dire predictions about the leadership and activities of the Viet Minh, while the new Government of Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Yen spoke of auspicious omens and predicted reunification in the South.
The almanacs were flown to Hai Phong and then sent to the northern towns for sale or smuggled into the VC area. I was very pleased to see Vietnamese civilians clamoring for the almanacs, and the number of refugees rose sharply, both those living in the cities and those from the countryside pouring into Hanoi and Hai Phong, eager to escape to the south. This situation helped the activities of the “Binh” group so much that it took less than three days for them to become ordinary citizens, ostensibly engaged in daily civil activities, and I took advantage of this favorable situation to hide the weapons and equipment supplied to the “Binh” group in the North, which was not yet under the control of the Viet Cong. I took advantage of this favorable opportunity to hide the weapons and equipment supplied to the “Binh” group in areas of the north not yet controlled by the Viet Minh, and the next step was to make the best possible use of the long-standing hatred of the Vietnamese for China to create even greater turmoil, in order to weaken the influence of the Viet Minh, which was growing stronger under the wing of the Communist Party of China.
In close cooperation with the Chief of the U.S. Information Service, George B. In close cooperation with Herschel, new campaigns were quickly developed to conduct psychological warfare against the VC forces and the Hanoi government, i.e., to deepen the Vietnamese fear of a Chinese occupation under VC rule. Many Vietnamese, including those in the VC, harbored a fear of the brutality of the Chinese Nationalist forces during their surrender into Vietnam in 1945, which was still fresh in their minds. At that time, the Army’s First Front, led by Chinese Nationalist General Lu Han, moved into North Vietnam to accept the surrender of Japanese troops, categorically refusing to fly the French flag at the Governor General’s Palace in Hanoi, citing the Potsdam Proclamation as the reason, which led to forceful clashes between Chinese troops and the French army and the pro-French militia in Tokyo.
The belligerent General Tran Thu Hoa warned Salang, the French commander in North Vietnam, that “…[if] there is a conflict between France and Vietnam, Chinese officers and soldiers will certainly fight on the side of Vietnam.” On Chan’s orders, the commander of the 60th Army of the Chinese Nationalist Party ordered the 130th Division to “clear” the French troops that had landed at Haiphong. Since most of the Tokyo militia sided with the French during the battle, the 130th Division quickly swept through Kien An, Kien Shui and Tu Shan, south of Haiphong, after defeating the French Far East Fleet. Whenever they arrived at a village, they killed all the men, gathered the women together and raped them, and then buried them alive, burned them, disemboweled them, and took cruel revenge on them. This kind of inhumane behavior made many Vietnamese fearful of China, especially when the Chinese army handed over to the French in 1946, which aroused the resentment of the Vietnamese as if they had been betrayed.
Based on this psychological foundation, we craft a creepy rumor based on a chance event.
That fortuitous event occurred on July 7, 1959, the day Ngo Dinh Yen had just returned to Saigon from the United States, when the French had withdrawn from the Catholic provinces of Phay Yen and Nam Dinh in the Gulf of Tonkin area, and the Vietnamese Catholic militia had moved north in large numbers to Hanoi and Hai Phong to ask for guns and artillery to fight against the Viet Cong: they were angry at the French for leaving them alone. It was at this point that two American officers stopped the women militia from attacking the French troops guarding the warehouses with grenades.
The women militiamen said that they had not eaten for three days. Arrangements were made for them to be fed by Chinese businessmen in Haiphong. However, one of the Chinese businessmen anaesthetized the five female militia members who had been placed in his house with drugs mixed with the food, put them in heavy shackles and sent them to a secret underground shelter inside his house, where they took turns to be raped and tortured. Immediately after obtaining this information, the Coastal Defense Section of the Binh Group sent someone to Hanoi to contact me, and a new black psychological warfare plan was formed.
On 23 September, when eight armed members of the Binh team and I arrived at Hai Phong from Hanoi, it was nightfall, and led by one of the Viet Nam police officers who had fought our way there, we quickly arrived at Nam Chau Gate and surrounded the Chinese businessman’s house. In just a few minutes, the Binh team easily disarmed the two bodyguards of the Chinese businessman and tied them up together with the Chinese businessman. Since the Chinese businessman did not speak French or Vietnamese, the interrogation was carried out by a Viet Minh policeman who knew Chinese. After having half of his ear cut off with a dagger, the fat Chinese businessman, who had begun to lose his hair, immediately pointed out the exit of the secret passage behind the Buddhist elephant and handed over the key.
We entered the letterbox of the underground bomb shelter and opened the heavy iron door to the damp, musty-smelling holding area for the female militia.
It was a cave with four walls made of boulders, the walls were covered with lashings and there was some water on the floor; for some unknown reason an iron pipe was installed between the two walls on one side, which was about one meter above the ground, and the three female militiamen, who were wearing only their pants, knelt on the ground, with their hands tied to the iron pipe and with some feces on their bodies. When they were taken down from the iron pipe, they were unable to move their arms because, in addition to the rapes and assaults they had been subjected to, the Chinese businessmen had kept them tied to the iron pipe in that way, which had in fact crippled their arms; the other two women militiamen suffered even more miserably, as the Chinese businessmen had cut their hamstrings in order to prevent them from escaping.
Fortunately, they miraculously survived, despite being disheveled, thin and weak, and subjected to all kinds of torture. They said that, in addition to being raped by the Chinese businessman, they were subjected to abuse by two bodyguards, and that they spent more than two months practically starving because the Chinese businessman gave them only a pot of rice and a small bucket of cold water every day.
Upon hearing about the atrocities committed by the Chinese businessman, the members of the “Ping” group were so enraged that they killed the Chinese businessman and his two bodyguards immediately.
We took the five women militiamen back to Hanoi according to a pre-established plan, told them that the Chinese businessman was a special agent of the Chinese forces, and accordingly spread the rumor, which we had carefully fabricated, that a Chinese regiment in the area of the Gulf of Tonkin had acted against a Vietnamese-controlled village, and that the Chinese had raped all the girls in the village.
After consideration, the rumor was spread by soldiers of the Vietnamese Psychological Warfare Company in Hanoi who put on civilian clothes. Without a word, the soldiers of that company were instructed to put on civilian clothes and go on a mission, but did not come back, having defected to the VC.
A few weeks later, people in Tokyo Bay talked about the misbehavior of Chinese divisions in Viet Cong-controlled areas. Upon investigation, it turned out to be the same rumors that had been spread earlier, and the Vietnamese themselves added to them by adding such gory fabrications as how Chinese soldiers had hung stripped Vietnamese girls upside down from tree branches as targets, how the Chinese had cut open pregnant women’s bellies with slashing knives, or gang-raped Vietnamese girls as young as seven years old to death, and how they had burned captured female militiamen in Tokyo alive.
This unintended propaganda had a great effect. In order to increase the credibility of the rumors, members of the “Binh” team took five female militiamen to the refugees and showed them their disabled arms and legs. As a result, the position of the Viet Minh was quickly shaken among the people, and even within the Viet Minh, there were people who believed that only Ngo Dinh Yen was a true patriot, especially those living in the rural and mountainous areas who, upon hearing this rumor, left their homes and joined the refugees in large numbers. The French expatriates, who were already in a state of panic, raced to get on a special French transport to pick them up.
This unintended propaganda had a great effect. In order to increase the credibility of the rumors, members of the “Binh” team took five female militiamen to the refugees and showed them their disabled arms and legs. As a result, the position of the Viet Minh was quickly shaken among the people, and even within the Viet Minh, there were people who believed that only Ngo Dinh Yen was a true patriot, especially those living in the rural and mountainous areas who, upon hearing this rumor, left their homes and joined the refugees in large numbers. French expatriates, who were already in a state of panic, fled to the south on French planes specially designed to transport them.
The success of this psychological operation allowed Colonel Lansdale’s first step in the plan to go smoothly, and the activities of the “Binh” group immediately shifted to the second phase: the creation of Viet Cong leaflets and the destruction of as many installations as possible in North Vietnam.
With the assistance of Capt. Arundel, the Binh team produced a leaflet under the name of the Viet Cong Resistance Committee. Among other things, the leaflet called for Southern VC coming north on Polish and Russian ships to take shelter under the decks to avoid air and submarine attacks, and for warm clothing to be prepared in keeping with a verbal rumor that VC were being sent to China as laborers to build railroads. Moreover, the rumor was transformed to include the intimidation of female VC, saying that under a secret aid agreement with China, the VC had selected 500,000 young, attractive women between the ages of 10 and 25 to be sent to China in batches, and that China had sent 250,000 troops to help the VC in its military occupation of North Vietnam.
At the same time, another leaflet with fabricated signatures caused even more panic, which was distributed by a second paramilitary group, code-named “Home” (i.e., Colonel Nguyen Van Vai). The leaflet with the fabricated VC signature instructed people in the Tokyo area on how to behave when the VC took over Hanoi at the beginning of October, and talked about items such as property, currency reform, and a three-day vacation for workers after the takeover. The day after the leaflets were distributed, the number of people coming to the Refugee Registration Office asking to leave tripled (mostly French and Chinese businessmen who were planning to stay). Two days later, the VC currency (dong) had dropped by half. The Viet Minh denounced the leaflets on the radio: they looked very much like the real thing, and even the vast majority of the average Viet Minh member thought that the denunciation on the radio must have been an additional French ruse.
Psychological warfare attacks in Hanoi have had other consequences.
“The Binh team secured a senior officer of the Hanoi Police Department as a member of the team so that any arrested team members could be released from prison. He assisted the Binh team in its successful efforts to sabotage tram lines and defile oil reserves.
The efforts to secure this senior security official of the Viet Nam League, named Vu Tuong Sinh, were carried out in close cooperation with Mr. Apil Duson of the Hanoi branch of the Oriental Methodist Bank. This was done in close cooperation with Mr. Apil Duson of the Hanoi branch of the Oriental Methodist Bank.
In early October 1954, at dusk, I went with a member of the “Ping” group in the rain to Mr. Apier Juniper’s house in Félix du Pont. Mr. Apierre Toussaint’s apartment at 37 Rue Félix Faure, a French-style house with windows. Mr. Apier Juniper’s apartment at 37 rue de la Folle, a three-story gray building with French-style windows and iron grills.
The door was opened by a balding old Vietnamese man who spoke perfect French. When I handed over Mr. Apier Juniper’s business card, he immediately took us to a luxurious living room. When I handed him the card of Mr. Appierre Toussaint, he immediately took us to a luxurious living room. There, we were surprised to meet the French spy, Major Jacques Talleydan. Major Talleydan. During the conversation, Mr. Apier-Thouzon told us that Jacques Talleydan was a French spy. Mr. Apier-Thouzon told us that Major Jacques Talleydan had been instructed to do so. Mr. Apier Juncker told us that Major Jacques Tallidan had been instructed to transfer the French spy network in Hanoi to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Since the last French troops would leave Hanoi on October 9, Major Jacques Talleydan had no time left. Major Jacques Tallidan did not have time to make specific arrangements, but simply handed over to us the files of the members of the network and the contact codes and passwords.
Back at my home, I analyzed the files of the French spies one by one, focusing on Vu Tuong Sinh, a senior security officer of the Hanoi Police Department. Vu Tuong Thanh was 42 years old, and his grandfather, Vu Hong Thanh, was a “pro-Chinese”
（Former President of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party (of the Chinese Nationalist Government); Vuong Thuy Sinh participated in the Vietnamese coalition government in 1947, and since then has been working in the security sector and also as a French spy.
However, when I and the members of the Ping team approached Mr. Wu Tuan Shan, I was almost completely disheartened by his appearance.
We met the ex-French spy in a maiden singing house across the street from the New Asia Restaurant. He was lying on a bamboo bed in a single room with French girls giving him a massage and two blue and white striped cloths in a brass water basin under the bed. Apparently he had been there for a long time and was savoring tastes unimaginable to the average Vietnamese. He sat up from the bed in a bit of surprise when he saw me pull out the brass plaque for contact.
“Mr. Juniper asked us to come to you.” I told him in French. “They have something very important they want to talk to you alone.”
He thought briefly and dismissed the French girl.
“I’m sorry I had to come here to bother you.” I sat down in a chair opposite the bamboo bed and said in a tone that was not without mockery. “Because I thought an official of the VC should be in his office at this time of night and not be present on such an embarrassing occasion.”
To be honest, from the moment I met Wutong Sun, I began to have doubts about the ability and reliability of the spies led by Major Jacques Talleydan. From the moment I met Vu Tuong Thanh, I began to have doubts about the competence and reliability of the spies led by Major Jacques Talleyrand. I could not find in this senior security official of the Viet Cong the least basis for recognition; I was very disappointed that the man in front of me had the appearance of a typical Vietnamese bureaucrat. Since arriving in Vietnam, I have met many very sincere patriots, but also a lot of Vietnamese with French aristocratic looks, who are not so much engaged in a war with the French as in an “agreement” with them.
“I’m happy to work for you.” Wutong Sun said this after listening to my introduction. “I have worked well with the French for some time in the past, but I am very sorry that they are going to leave me now.”
It was the first time since I entered Vietnam that I had heard a Vietnamese, and a high official of the Viet Minh League at that, so plainly express his friendship for the French; for months there had seemed to be a hatred of the French everywhere in Vietnam, and even Nguyen Vinh Thuy, the Emperor of the Bao Dai, had expressed his dislike of the French in public.
“If Communist China occupies Vietnam,” he continued, “then it will launch an invasion of all of Southeast Asia, and its diaspora will rise up in response. Vietnam is for the Vietnamese, and no one should want it!” He made a gesture of determination with his hand, “Every Vietnamese should rise up to resist the invasion, to defend their country, and to defend women and children from falling into communist hands.” He looked impassioned and couldn’t stop talking.
“You’re probably worried that you won’t be able to come here and smoke opium and whore yourself out anymore.” I thought to myself, but out of consideration for the current situation, I spoke words of encouragement. He actively offered to flee the VC and join the war against the VC; I explained to him that it was just as important for him to stay within the VC and that he could still work and accept higher pay as before, only secretly engaging in sabotage. He accepted some of this reluctantly.
In mid-October, four members of the “Binh” group were captured by VC security officers who had already occupied the Hanoi Printing Factory and taken to the Hanoi Police Station when they attempted to enter the factory in order to sabotage the modern printing equipment there. After being held for a few hours, the members were released by Vuong Thanh. In the following dozens of days, Vu Tung Sinh also released the arrested Binh group and opponents of the VC on several occasions.
As we entered November, I received instructions from Colonel Lansdale to prepare for the withdrawal of the “Ping” team to the South, and we guarded the house day and night, began destroying all documents and other items that might cause trouble, and distributed automatic weapons and hand grenades to all members of the team in case of special circumstances that might be encountered as they dispersed back to the South after completing their mission. Special circumstances.
However, at the very last moment when we were ready to retreat, Vu Tuan Thanh suddenly and privately decided to personally help us to distribute the remaining leaflets. As a result, the police found him, tracked his car through the streets of Hanoi, which were deserted in the morning, and finally shot at him and caught him. He was the only member of the Binh team to be arrested and was imprisoned as a French agent.
The other members of the “Binh” group returned to Saigon as scheduled without incident.
On November 6, I arrived at Jialing Airport in the car of a French banker and boarded a plane of the Civil Aviation Transportation Company (CATA) to pick up the French nationals.
However, there was an unpleasant episode after this: a member of the “Binh” group, who was armed, was arrested after a misunderstanding and a shoot-out with Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Yen’s troops on a train in Toulon (Da Nang). He was handcuffed and interrogated together with a leper, and both were beaten bloody with a stick. The police told him that he would also suffer from leprosy and then locked them together in a very small cell. Upon learning of this incident, Lieutenant Colonel Konain of the Saigon Military Mission immediately tried to contact the police to rescue him.
While I was in Hanoi, there was an attempted coup d’état in Saigon led by the Army Chief of Staff, General Nguyen Van Sinh. General Nguyen Van Sinh was a close friend of Colonel Lansdale’s from the Philippines back in 1952. Also involved in the coup were Lieutenant Colonel Linh, who led the commando unit of the Vietnamese Army, Captain Gia of the staff, and Lieutenant Huu Tung Minh, the officer in charge of the Army radio station, all of whom were arrested on September 9 by order of Minister of National Defense Le Nguyen Thanh. They went to Paris in quick succession after General Nguyen Van Sinh left for Paris on November 29th.
II. Exchanges for the sale of spirit and flesh
The name “Human Market” was given to me by Defense, a member of the “Howe” paramilitary group.
On November 23, 1954, at 10:30 a.m., just after I returned from Haiphong, I led the “Ho”
The group’s twenty-one Vietnamese operatives and two cooks, dressed as hard laborers, boarded a truck near the Temple of Khanh in Saigon.
It was an unusually hot day in Saigon that day, the sun burned everywhere, and the flow of people through the streets, interspersed with the honking of automobile horns and the sharp, harsh sound of brakes, added to the tiresome atmosphere. However, for the sake of the secrecy of the operation, I had to disguise myself as a Frenchman and take the Vietnamese agents with me to stand on top of the trucks in the open air.
The operation, conducted by Colonel Lansdale himself, was conducted under the strictest of secrecy. The night before, I had met with Lieutenant Andrews, who had been responsible for drawing up the plan of action, and it was only then that I learned that I had been given the task of escorting 21 Vietnamese operatives of the “Hau” paramilitary group to a secret training base on the island of Bugsukki, not far from North Kalimantan.
The truck is moving and we’re going to pass through downtown and then drive to the Saigon terminal.
Leaving downtown Saigon was not so easy, the car was like walking on a jagged tooth, the bumps were dizzying.
Thousands of cars, motorcycles, pedicabs, tricycles, and three-wheeled horse-drawn carriages loaded with passengers were crammed into the dusty streets, and pedestrians were scurrying between trucks and jeeps, causing the drivers to have to brake sharply over and over again, and after about half an hour had passed, we had finally arrived at the edge of the city, which was a great relief to me.
The truck driver’s name was Defense, a young man close to my age and one of the panelists. At this point he muttered something and then spat hard out the window. “We’re driving toward the embankment now.” He said to me in English.
I wondered. How could a truck driver speak such fluent English?
“You’re from Hanoi?” I deliberately switched to French. Most people in this land, which the French had ruled for more than eighty years, knew the language.
“Yes.” He replied still in English, obviously not wanting to use the language of the country they had defeated.
“I was born in Hong Kong.” He added.
“So why did you come to Saigon?” I asked.
“Why? My father opened a textile factory in Hanoi.” He spat hard out the car window again. “Before the French could leave, the Viet Cong destroyed my family’s factory.”
How could the VC sabotage the factory it was to receive? I thought he was wrong.
“It’s the VC that did it.” It was as if he could see the puzzled look on my face. “The reason is that I went on a mission that caused them to hold a grudge as a way to get back at my father.”
Defense told me that his father had been an executive member of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party and had drafted the verdict that sentenced French Governor Basquiat to death. After the failure of the An Pho riot, his father fled with his family to Yunnan, China, and later returned to Hanoi to open a textile factory. Defense joined the Vietnamese National Party (VNP) when he was eighteen years old, at a time when the relationship between the VNP and the Vietnamese National Party (VNP) and the Vietnamese Revolutionary Alliance (VRA) had broken down, with accusations against each other mounting. On one occasion, Nguyen Hai Tri, the leader of the KMT, ordered Phuong to assassinate a “defector” with close ties to the Viet Cong. In the discipline of the KMT, there was no public expulsion except for internal criticism and warnings. The death penalty was imposed on all defectors.
Defense carried out the mission, which led to the VC’s decision to punish his father.
“Do you still want to go back to Hanoi?” I asked.
“Definitely go back!” He said with great confidence. “After the election, I’m going back to Hanoi.”
The truck continued to drive forward, the hot, dry air blowing irritatingly through the windows.
“That’s the human market up ahead.” He said to me with one hand on the steering wheel and the other pointing to a few buildings not far ahead.
“A human market?” I heard the name for the first time and got the creeps. It reminded me of the rows of disemboweled pigs on hooks in the racks of a slaughterhouse.
“You still sell human flesh here?” I asked.
“Of course I have.” He said as if nothing had happened. “The French started that human market before the Japanese got here.”
He looked at me and realized that I had misunderstood the meaning of “human flesh”.
“You don’t know that the human market as it’s called here is a brothel, the French gave it that name. Almost all the Saigon prostitutes go there, and there are hundreds of girls to choose from.”
“Do you go there often?” I asked.
“That’s not a place for Vietnamese men to go. The owner is French, and the man standing guard at the door is also French.”
He pointed out of the car window and said, “Look, that’s the human market.”
I looked out the window and saw a large barracks-like yard on the right side of the road, fronted by a couple of two-story white buildings, with two huge French initials “R.A.” (Rlegie Alcool Hotel) on one sign and La Boucherie (the butcher’s store) on the other. There were many hawkers selling cigarettes, candies, mosquito repellent, and other things, and dozens of trucks, jeeps, cars, and motorcycles parked in front of the buildings. I didn’t see any Frenchmen standing guard, but noticed that there were many Vietnamese among the people coming in and out as well.
“The Vietnamese didn’t used to come here.” Defense pulled out a cigarette with his free hand, then deftly rubbed the match on the driver’s side. “Now the Vietnamese who visit the meat market are all Yankees, just like me.”
He told me about the mass exodus of northerners from Hanoi in July of that year aboard Civil Air Transport C-46s.
He said: “Many Northerners left Hanoi at that time to come to the South, but most stayed behind, while tens of thousands of Southern Viet Cong also ran to the North at that time. Saigon was in a state of chaos, with robberies taking place everywhere, and even Prince Bao Loc’s daughter was gang-raped by a mob in the countryside. The French signed a contract with Ngo Chee Sze (referring to Ngo Dinh Yen) to send the refugees to Saigon by civil air transport companies. So a large number of refugees sat at the airfield day and night waiting to be picked up and transported, and some Viet Minh elements mixed in with the refugees incited and persuaded them from time to time, with the result that many more stayed behind.”
On the way, the defense kept telling me about it, and it was 12 o’clock by the time we reached the pier.
Major Fred Allen met me there. I was met there by Lieutenant Commander Fred Allen, who was in charge of the operation. I had the members of the team and the cooks mingle with the refugees and board a United States Navy ship that was waiting there, and then I said goodbye to Allen and boarded that ship as well. In this way, the members of the “Howe” paramilitary team left Saigon unnoticed and unnoticed.
On the Philippine island of Bug Huank, members of the “Ho” paramilitary group underwent several months of clandestine training. At the end of their training, the members of “Ho” were sent by the U.S. Air Force to a transshipment station. A few days later (April 16) Allen gave the order to land. I put them on a U.S. warship bound for Haiphong and returned to Saigon, where the Viet Cong took over on May 16, and the group was then in direct contact with Arundel.
By the time I returned to Saigon it was well into the rainy season and the temperature had dropped a bit, yet as soon as the sun came out the place was immediately sweltering everywhere. During this period, Colonel Lansdale was active. At the request of Army Chief of Staff General Nguyen Phuong Thinh’s “favorite concubine,” Lansdale started a small English language training course for the mistresses of important Vietnamese government personnel at the time, and then instructed President Magsaysay’s top military aide, whom he had brought with him from the Philippines, to begin training a battalion of Ngo Dinh Yen’s Presidential Guard. In the spring of 1955, at the beginning of the sectarian crisis, he was involved in the creation of a covert cell at the CIA Saigon station dedicated to dealing with the Binh Kheon sect. …while, comparatively speaking, Major Allen and we had a lot of free time as a result.
As young officers, Edward B. Capt. Bain, Lt. Andrews and I all went out on the streets from time to time to hang out.
“Hal, where is that human market you were talking about?” Capt. Bain asked me one day.
“Why, do you want to go there and find an old companion?”
“Major Allen is the exception, of course.”
He nudged toward Alan’s backpack in the outer room where he was fixing his hair in a small mirror, and we all laughed.
Major Allen was then madly in love with Mrs. Long, a beautiful young Vietnamese woman, despite being the mistress of an anti-American French civilian.
Mrs. Long is the publisher of the Nouvelle Nouvelle, and her French lover often makes anti-American statements in her paper. But in spite of this, Allen helped her by keeping her paper from being closed by the government. At Allen’s urging, Mrs. Long published a series of articles written by Cho Dinh about Vietnamese patriotism and against the communist Viet Cong’s Thomas B. Paine-style series of articles. The circulation of the paper was greatly increased by the spread of these articles among influential Vietnamese, which made it clear to Mrs. Long that it would undoubtedly be to her advantage to follow Major Allen’s advice as to the content of her paper’s editorials. Soon the beautiful Vietnamese woman fell into Allen’s arms and was hitting it off with him.
Our move to the human market was made with Major Allen on our backs, while Lansdale was busy setting up the activities of that anti-Hirakawa Cult riot group, traveling between Saigon, Bien Hoa, and Gia Dinh.
One afternoon in mid-May 1955, we caught a black cab at the Border City Market taxi stand.
The cab driver, a thin, middle-aged Vietnamese man, spoke only a few words of broken English; however, when I said “La Boucherie” in French, he smiled wryly, threw a cigarette butt so hot it burned his fingers out the window, and turned the car around and drove straight toward the embankment.
Located on the highway connecting the Saigon embankment, the human market was nominally a taxi and refreshment station, but in reality it was a large brothel run by the coach company.
This French brothel is so different from those around the world that it reminds us of the slave markets in Egypt centuries ago, or the black slave auction houses in Texas before 1965: one, black mercenaries sitting stonily at the door, handing out contraceptives to everyone who enters; two, three hundred Vietnamese women standing in the open courtyard, to be chosen by the buyers as if they were livestock; even their clothes being ripped off to watch. Two to three hundred Vietnamese women stood in the open yard, to be selected by the buyers as if inspecting livestock, and even to have their clothes ripped off for viewing. Among them were married women in their thirties and young Vietnamese girls in their teens. They are not like the prostitutes in other countries who pester the customers, but silently like exhibits in the window stand in their respective positions for people to appreciate and select, only when the customers come to them, only to show the characteristic smile of Vietnamese girls. The hot weather makes them sweaty, emitting a smell of powder and sweat.
As I passed a girl in a white silk three-woman dress and wide black pants, she softly greeted me in English.
This is a slender girl, not more than twenty years old, snow-white tight-fitting three women’s clothes make her breasts look extraordinarily plump and fleshy; her long black hair is neat and clean, hanging down to her waist; her facial features are clear and standardized, with typical Vietnamese women’s characteristics: slightly rumbled cheekbones, rounded chin, and slightly pouting lips, which make her look like a spoiled and always a little upset big child.
She did not smile at me at once, as the other girls had done, but only looked at me with her dark eyes, which moved me not to join Bain and Andrews in fondling her body with abandon.
“Hal, this is fresh meat!” Capt. Bain shouted at me as she slapped her rounded buttocks with her hand.
The girl obviously guessed his words and frowned slightly.
“Even if you picked it out for you.” I said.
I felt very fond of that girl. I don’t know what it was, but I was surprised to see Captain Bain groping all over her, and I was even ashamed of myself for standing with them.
This did not mean that I was a “good boy” who blushed at the sight of a girl. My coworkers were impressed by my time with the Filipina in Manila and by my time with the two tanned Pampanga girls at the training base. Until we entered Vietnam, Bain was still saying, “It’s time for this guy to have a change of scenery.”
However, at this time, a strong desire for exclusivity surged uncontrollably into my heart, as if the Vietnamese girl was my mistress for many years.
Bane and Andrews laughed and walked away to pick out another girl.
“What’s your name?” I asked her in French.
Hearing me speak French, she seemed much more lively, and she told me her name was Le Thi Xuan in her Vietnamese-sounding but understandable French. “I am very happy to meet you here today.” She said.
She came over to me and skillfully took me by the arm and led me towards one of the old boarded up buildings. She looked like a bad boy who had bought a bar of chocolate and skipped school, which caused a slightly compassionate thought to pass through my mind.
The concierge, an older Vietnamese man in his fifties, not very tall, wearing a pair of wobbly no-over glasses, showed his teeth and giggled at us. He led us first to the shower, a very small room with holes in the floor. A very large rat, all gray and fat as a sloth sat in the corner. When we walked in, it stared at us intently for a moment before waddling into a dark hole.
Two wooden buckets filled with cool water sat on the floor near the door, with a long-handled spoon across the top for us to rinse off.
“Took off my clothes and took a shower.” Haru said simply, already unbuttoning her blouse.
I undressed and stood in the middle of the room. Haru first poured the water over my body with a spoon, then took a bar of neutralized soap and rubbed it all over me, then rinsed the soap suds down with cool water. Finally, she stood in front of me and handed me the long-handled spoon.
“Please help me rinse off, I’m drenched in sweat.” She said, pulling her hair back over it with her hands.
She stood motionless in the middle of the room while I showered her, which allowed me to admire her well-proportioned torso as I splashed water on her.
Chun has that typical Vietnamese female body type: a long waistline, a slim, elastic waist and low, wide hips. This body type allows the average Vietnamese woman to give birth to more than five children in her lifetime, with many Vietnamese girls starting to give birth in their teens, whereas we white women cannot, and black women struggle to do so.
Half an hour later, we arrived at a designated room.
It was a place of about ten square meters, with old cardboard boxes with patches nailed flat to the holes in the walls, and a picture showing two hands clasped in friendship, with the words “A Gift from America!” written on one side of the picture in English and Vietnamese. But half of that picture was already covered by a fine green mold.
Chun walked over to the bed and undressed first for and then quickly undressed herself and got into the mosquito net with its very tight outlets. I could no longer restrain my sexual urges, and in one fell swoop I pressed her underneath my body… After a long time, I was exhausted and laying on top of her soft body. Perhaps because she had stood too long in the human market, Chun seemed to be asleep at this point with her eyes closed, and her arms, which had been tightly wrapped around my waist, slipped helplessly onto the bed.
Everything calmed down.
“Are you asleep?” I asked, gently stroking her plump shoulders.
She opened her eyes slightly for a moment, then closed them again. “Just stay like that for a while.” She murmured.
Gradually, I also felt tired and fell asleep without realizing it.
I don’t know how long it was, but we were awakened by an urgent knock on the door.
“Hal, are you there?” It was Bane’s voice.
“This bastard thing!” I cursed hatefully in my heart and did not answer, still hugging Chun lying in the mosquito net.
Suddenly, the door slammed open. Captain Bain, Andrews, the old concierge, and a Vietnamese policeman burst in looking nervous.
Bain made me look ugly. Nonetheless, I was filled with gratitude when I remembered the tense look on his and Andrews’ faces, as they had waited outside for three hours, thinking I was in some kind of trouble.
Right now, it was Major Allen’s turn to taunt me. Ever since I met Haru that day, I had been thinking about her and went to the human market to spend several more soulful nights with her. Whenever I parted ways with her, I always had a sense of recklessness.
“Am I in love with that Vietnamese whore?” I kept asking myself with apprehension in my mind.
In subsequent encounters, I politely asked for her home address, but she skillfully avoided it, and she refused to even tell me her actual age. Once, in a cold drink store, she told me that her father had worked at the Kofa cigarette factory on the embankment and that he had been blinded in an accidental (but she thought probably Antifa-inspired) fire. In addition, she told me a few fragments of her personal experience, but nothing more. I by no means wished to express my personal opinion of the line of work in which she was then engaged, but merely said to her, inquiringly, that I might well have offered a girl of my liking a better occupation, such as in a government agency or in the supply department, etc., but she always smiled and expressed her gratitude, and never took it up.
It had been raining for months, and the air was damp everywhere. During this period of time, Chun and I often stayed in the boarded-up building of the human market, listening to the monotonous sound made by the rain pounding on the boards. I gradually came to feel that although Haru sometimes had a very pained expression and even cried out in a shrill voice, she did not resent my occasional roughness; she often gently stroked my hair with her hands after making love, trying to straighten them, or both kissed my body with burning lips, while a soft look came into her eyes.
Like the other girls standing in the human market, Chun could only speak a few words of English that had been circulating among the prostitutes, which gave me a great opportunity to teach. Soon she could basically understand some of my simple sentences, although she was not yet able to carry on a conversation using English.
“You should learn Vietnamese.” She suddenly suggested once after we had a difficult conversation with English gestures, “It would do you good.”
In fact, from the moment I entered Vietnam, almost everyone tried to teach me Vietnamese. As much as I wanted to learn the language, I failed in my several attempts. Vietnamese is a very difficult language to learn, both the pronunciation and the grammar always confuse me, and its huge number of synonyms is comparable to English.
Haru was a particularly enthusiastic teacher, but the bad thing was that I couldn’t understand a word she was saying, like a deaf person, yet she thought I could. Her black eyes sparkled with excitement, and she used to shout, “An com!” with her lips pressed violently to my ear. It was a way of informing the family half a mile away, especially if they were blocked by something, which was often the case with the Vietnamese.
Soon Chun found me a Vietnamese textbook and a Vietnamese-English dictionary. Although the Vietnamese language uses the Roman alphabet, the pronunciation of many of the letters is not related to the English language: o is pronounced as ur, d is pronounced as z, and nh is pronounced as ng for some reason… When I couldn’t tell how to pronounce the letters, I had to force myself to memorize them in whole phrases, which was a very effective method.
On rainy days, the rooms on the plank floor of the human market are always filled with Vietnamese girls. They talked animatedly about the latest rumors in Saigon, with occasional glimpses of frustration. I was soon able to understand much of what they were saying and even talk to them. They giggled cheekily and surveyed my body, making that a topic of conversation as well. “How many kilos does he weigh anyway?” A girl in a light yellow sleeveless short top said teasingly, purposely looking at Haru with wide eyes as if she was surprised.
I understood what she was saying, went over to her, grabbed the girl, who was only up to my breasts, and lifted her up as if she were a child, then gently put her down on the bed. She went pale with fear, thinking I was going to punish her.
“I’m sorry.” I told her in my less-than-skilled Vietnamese, “I don’t know how much I weigh myself because Americans don’t use kilograms, but another way of measuring. I weigh as much as two sticks plus five posts plus a beam.”
They giggled and seemed satisfied with the answer.
I gradually realized that there was no hatred between the prostitutes of the human market and the Americans as there was elsewhere. On the contrary, friendliness toward American soldiers was not just an honor for them, but a consistent attitude for all. They looked down on the Vietnamese and had a reckless and contemptuous attitude toward their own culture. However, it was a great sin that the rash and arrogant American soldiers treated the townspeople rudely and had little respect for the village elders.
Yet people keep asking fruitlessly, “Why do the Americans want this small, pathetic country? Don’t they already have the richest land on earth?”
None of the Vietnamese believe this. For themselves, Vietnam is the seat of God and therefore the most fertile and attractive; based on this realization, they believe that the whole world is closely watching and yearning for this land. Even well-educated Vietnamese I have met believe in this theory of the Vietcong.
The Thais and Cambodians stubbornly and pretentiously believe that their land is fertile, their women are the most beautiful, their food is incomparable, and their art, music, history and traditions are unparalleled. All the governments of the earth, representing different races, radiate jealousy and are unconsciously plotting plans to make themselves supersede others. I believe that the West is very afraid of this deep-rooted consciousness of China, Vietnam and other Eastern countries.
I have found that the Vietnamese even develop a sense of pride, which they call nationalism, when they see American soldiers hanging out on the streets with Vietnamese girls. Even among the senior officials of the Vietnamese government, with the exception of the respected and incorruptible Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Yen, almost all of them (especially those of the Vietnamese aristocracy) sought, to a greater or lesser extent, this spiritual fulfillment that balanced their illusory arrogance.
The low social status of Vietnamese women has accentuated their commoditization and they can be sold to buyers at a certain price like livestock and agricultural tools. If only women’s flesh is sold in the human meat market, the whole woman can be sold in the Border Market. Although the police have made several severe attempts to outlaw this “indecent” trade, the inescapable “debtor” of hunger compels people to go there to sell their last possessions: women.
On the riverbank of the border town, about 500 meters long, there is a black market specializing in the trade of human beings, mostly women and children who are incapable of working. Most of them are refugees from the North or from the “reclaimed land area” who have fled back to Saigon without land or housing, and their parents or husbands have resorted to this only, but cruel, way to enable their families to survive.
Refugee women from the North are even more frightened by the Government’s policy of “cleaning up the city”, and even their presence in the human market is forbidden by the police. In order to avoid being sent to the “new economic zone” to reclaim land, they preferred to stay in Saigon as slaves.
On July 14, 1955, Freedom newspaper reported that 50 women refugees from the North who had been forcibly sent to the “Reclamation Zone” had all died of starvation in the mountains, leaving the remaining refugees in Saigon in a state of extreme shock. The price of an adult girl in the border market had dropped from 6,000 South Vietnamese dollars to about 1,000 to 2,000 dollars, or less than half of an average worker’s monthly salary.
It is hard for an American to imagine the poverty in Vietnam at that time. The National Revolution wrote: “Workers’ wages are like a train station, the station is always standing still, but the rapidly rising cost of living is like a speeding train.” Even for those workers and soldiers who managed to get by, their wages were increasingly threatened, with many receiving one paycheck in three to six months and only one-third of their wages in cash, with the rest being paid in U.S. aid butter, milk, flour and cloth, as well as in “construction lotteries”. Debt evasion and bankruptcy were increasingly common among the middle class; thousands of people engaged in textiles, construction, handicrafts, ceramics, transportation, fishmongery, etc., were also in unprecedented difficulties, and a large portion of them were forced to go out of business. In addition, the terrible policy of “land reform”, which deprived millions of peasants of their land and led to an exodus to the cities, added to the horror of the crisis.
“Hal, it looks to me like you’ve taken a liking to that girl at the human market?” Captain Bain asked in a mocking tone with a smile as he picked up the picture of Chun that I had just picked up from the photo studio.
Falling in love with a Vietnamese whore is a fact that I have never admitted, and I would rather deceive myself into thinking that I was only interested in Chun’s voluptuous and seductive flesh, just like many American officers stationed in Saigon, who were living in concubinage with Vietnamese women for the sole purpose of spicing up a dull, boring, and sometimes risky life.
At that time, Saigon was home to tens of thousands of prostitutes, who were encountered wherever they went.After mid-1955, the siege of the human flesh market extended to the entire downtown area of the Saigon Causeway. Although they sold their bodies at the cheapest price, the terrible leprosy made many American officers and soldiers deterred, rather using violence to vent their pent-up sexual desire on those rural women in the sweeps, rather than having fun in the city. Even so, there are still Americans leaking on the situation of that terrible disease.
The Chessboard District, a civilian settlement not far from the center of Saigon, was inhabited by one tenth of Saigon’s population, and it was generally assumed that girls from civilians did not suffer from sexually transmitted diseases. Captain Bain used to get one or two girls from there to spend the night at our station. Over time, we nicknamed him “Cowboy”. He didn’t care and sometimes even had sex with a Vietnamese girl in front of us.
One afternoon in March 1956, Capt. Bain brought back four little Vietnamese girls selling betel nut.
“What are you doing here?” Lt. Andrews asked him, putting down the cards in his hand, “This isn’t your allotment.”
I looked up and agreed that Captain Bain had gone too far. The oldest of the four Vietnamese girls was no more than fifteen years old, all wearing bucket hats and wide black clothes, and each carrying a bamboo basket of betel nut. They obviously didn’t understand English and stood awkwardly by the door.
Almost all of the American officers in Saigon at the time went on to screw Vietnamese women, and that sort of thing had become so commonplace that even Col. Lansdale was unavoidable. What could be done? At that time, none of us brought their families to this dangerous country, when the hunger and thirst, only to patronize the human market and other places, over time, many Americans on the short Vietnamese girls on a special kind of fetish, as if they were originally the natural match for the Americans. Avril said: “If you do not get a few Vietnamese women, then you have not been to Vietnam as a country.”
Capt. Bain, a Cuban who had returned from war in Africa, had screwed at least a hundred Vietnamese girls. He went out at all hours of the day and night to get laid, and collected nude photographs of the women he screwed in a thick photo album. Once I was looking for razor blades to look through his photo album, which was loaded with hundreds of photos, with detailed descriptions of names, ages, heights and family members. The youngest was only eight years old, the oldest was forty-four years old, and there were also three pregnant women with bulging bellies in his photo album.
“That little thing,” Captain Bain said wistfully when I asked him if he had really screwed the eight-year-old Vietnamese girl, “I did, and her mother charged me five dollars for it. Her mother had insisted on selling her to me, telling me she was twelve years old and ripping off her daughter’s clothes with her own hands, claiming that in a few months she would grow up to be a big girl. Those liars! I said I would try it on her first, and her mother hesitated for a moment and led me to her home, a ramshackle house on the edge of a canal. It was too much work to screw a little thing, and suddenly she stopped listening to her mother, struggled desperately, and bit me on the hand, and finally her mother came running in and helped me to hold her down on the bed with me, and I ended up with blood all over my hands and body, and those pictures were taken at her house before screwing her.”
Captain Bain said it so easily, as if recounting that he had merely whipped his neighbor’s livestock and lost a few dollars.
“Don’t be such a prude.” Capt. Bain raked over the four little Vietnamese girls selling betel nut. “It’s the weekend, even the women are free, to hell with Major Allen!”
It was at this time that something unexpected happened. The four little Vietnamese girls suddenly broke away from Capt. Bain’s hand and threw down their baskets and ran toward the door.
It turned out that when they accompanied Captain Bain to our station, they did not know what they were going to do and thought that he was taking them to the United States Army station to sell betel nut. Since they did not speak English, they did not understand what we were saying until Captain Bain stripped them of their clothes, and then they understood and turned around and fled.
Captain Bain cursed in anger and chased after them to catch them, but only caught two, the other two little girls having escaped.
“Cun mang!” (Help!) the two captured little girls screamed shrilly.
However, no one came to their rescue, and such calls would not have been responded to in Saigon at that time, all would have pretended not to hear them and would not even have lifted their heads. The well-dressed Vietnamese woman had cried out as she was pulled toward the jeep by three American soldiers and a Vietnamese near the Capitol Cemetery, and there was no reaction from the surrounding police, soldiers, clerks, and vendors, except for a few ragged beggars who watched the moving scene with interest until the jeep sped away in a cloud of dust with the hunted Vietnamese woman in it. “She won’t be killed.” A policeman told me.
Yes, since no one was going to be killed, there was no need to cry out for help. The two little girls realized that there was no more screaming, and they fearfully stripped off their clothes. They stood there, not knowing what was going to happen to them, and looked at our faces with fearful eyes.
The two little girls looked awful, their hair dirty and disheveled, their sweat washing the dust from their faces, and their bodies pitifully thin. They shielded their lower bellies with their small, black, slimy hands, as if they felt it was shameful to expose that part of their bodies.
“None of us are interested, stud cow.” Andrews said to Captain Bain, “You’d better take them downstairs to the restroom and fuck them, throw them in there when you’re done, and throw in a few bucks.”
“Piggish!” Captain Bain cursed, angrily making a ball of the two little girls’ clothes and wrapping them up, leading them out of the room.
Not long afterward, it was the rainy season again, and everywhere became wet. One day, Lt. Col. Lt. Col. Cornyn came to our quarters. Since Colonel Lansdale had been recalled by the White House, Lt. Col. Cornyn was temporarily in charge of the Saigon military mission.
“This guy in the paper is you, isn’t it?” Lt. Col. Cornayne tossed a copy of Democracy, which had a large circulation in Saigon at the time, into Capt. Bain’s hand.
Captain Bain inexplicably picked up the paper.
The paper carried a picture of Capt. Bain half-naked in a room in our quarters, looking funny. Since Democracy was in Vietnamese, Capt. Bain handed it to me, the only American in the military delegation who knew Vietnamese.
The news was written with a big “?” The headline was replaced by a big “?” sign and read: “It is reported that Capt. Edward Bain, an officer of the U.S. Military Mission, brought four Vietnamese girls selling betel nut to his residence on the 25th of this month. It is reported that Captain Edward Bain, an officer of the U.S. Military Mission, brought four Vietnamese girls selling betel nut to his residence on the 25th of this month, violently raped one of them, twelve-year-old Huynh Thi Yueh Moth, and another, fifteen-year-old girl named Phuong, several times, and after forcing them to take photographs of them, savagely assaulted them. The two girls were released the next morning and are still sick.
It is also known that Foreign Minister Vu Van Do has protested to the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam about the incident, yet the Special Police Headquarters has detained the victim and witnesses on charges of disturbing the peace. It will be interesting to see if this act of rape will end up like the hijacking and gang-rape of Tran Thi Hinh, a female nurse at Zo Lai Hospital, by U.S. troops last month. But with sources claiming that Capt. Bain has a book of photographs documenting his rape of Vietnamese women as proof, I fear the government will no longer be able to turn a deaf ear to this as ‘universal suffrage’ approaches.”
“Where’s your photo book?” Lt. Col. Cornayne asked. “I don’t intend to see any more of your disgusting scandal in tomorrow’s paper. Give it to me to take away now!”
Captain Bain did not answer. After a moment, he pulled his grease-stained marching bag from the mosquito net.
Suddenly, he looked up and stared at Lt. Col. Cornayne. “You stinking piece of shit!” He bared his teeth and cursed. “Some son of a bitch stole the photo book.”
I realized things were getting serious. “Will you put it somewhere else?” I asked. “Like a safe or something?”
“There’s only one place that thing stays, and that’s here!” He shouted, pointing to the marching bag, “Can he run and hide it in the safe by himself?”
Lt. Col. Cornayne, obviously nervous, helped Capt. Bain get the contents of his marching pouch out, yet there was nothing but a few of Capt. Bain’s sour-smelling clothes, a few rolls of film, and a wooden knife that Capt. Bain had brought back from Africa.
The photo book is missing.
That is not a trivial matter. Hundreds of naked Vietnamese women in a photo album could be labeled as rape victims, and the fact that there were several girls with their hands tied up could be misleading, even if they were prostitutes. If Lt. Col. Cornyn had known about the records written under the photographs and the fact that there was an eight year old girl and three pregnant women in them, he would have given Capt. Bain a good thrashing.
“You dirty, stinking Cuban swine!” Lt. Col. Cornayne grabbed Capt. Bain by the shirt and cursed, “I’ll have you fucking castrated in no time, asshole!”
Captain Bain tried to break free, but Lieutenant Colonel Cornayne’s strong hand was against his throat. “Let go of me!” Captain Bain yelled hoarsely, “It’s not the American seed that’s been put in them anyway, so it’s too late for you to say anything.”
I suddenly remembered a Vietnamese woman. “All shut up.” It took me a lot of effort to pull them apart.
“It looks like someone stole that photo book.” I said. “Now the first thing we need to do is analyze this thing and then decide what to do.”
“Get the photo book back no matter what!” Lt. Col. Cornayne gasped.
Capt. Bain stole a glance up at Lt. Col. Cornayne, then closed his eyes again with a feigned composure.
“Was it stolen by those bashful bitches of yours?” Lt. Col. Cornayne asked.
Captain Bain, still with his eyes closed, did not answer.
I told Lieutenant-Colonel Cornayne that Captain Bain was sick, suffering from it, and had not left his quarters for many days.
It was only at this point that Lt. Col. Cornayne noticed that the table held penicillin ointment.
Yes, how could the photo book have disappeared when, since discovering he had syphilis, Captain Bain was so depressed that he stayed in his room for long periods of time and never screwed any more Vietnamese women? Our attention drifted to Major Allen’s beautiful mistress, Mrs. Long, publisher of the Nouvelle Nouvelle and the Democrat.
Mrs. Long, 32, was the widow of a wealthy Vietnamese aristocrat, and almost all the American officers in Saigon at the time knew this beauty, who spoke fluent English and French. She always wore a tight-fitting cheongsam called aaodaai with southern Vietnamese ethnic characteristics, her long black hair was pulled back into a big bun on her head, her figure was voluptuous and attractive, and her thick, slightly sad lips often spat out some witty words that made Major Allen fall in love with her. Because of her special relationship with Major Allen, she was often in and out of our quarters. A few days before it happened, I had seen her sitting on Captain Bain’s bed, laughing, and carrying in her arms the purse made of snakeskin, which she never left without.
“The likelihood of her stealing the photo is very high.” Lt. Col. Cornayne said. “Recently, Democracy and Nouvelle Nouvelle have published a number of anti-American statements concerning high-ranking Vietnamese government officials and the U.S. military delegation, so it’s obviously not the kind of over-the-top xenophobic outbursts that you’d find in the average newspaper. But because of her ambiguous relationship with some government officials, we must be cautious until we have proof.”
“If it’s proven that she had something to do with this, what steps will we take?” I asked.
“Even then, we must find a way to harmonize with the Vietnamese government.” Lt. Col. Cornayne replied. “The current situation in Saigon has not yet stabilized, rumors about elections are growing, and Vietcong elements are still staging marches please . Also, the split within the government has not been bridged. Therefore in any case, we must never intervene directly, but only investigate through the Vietnamese government or police department under favorable circumstances.”
In fact, there were many pro-French elements and arrogant nationalists within the Vietnamese government at the time, and there were frequent frictions with pro-American officials led by Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Yen, and coup attempts were very frequent, so the Americans were in a very difficult position.
“Why don’t you arrest her at once?” Captain Bain said angrily, making a picking gesture with his wooden knife. “She’ll continue to spread rumors. I’ll have her arrested and skinned!”
Major Allen tried to get a last-minute ride with his Vietnamese mistress, who helped Mrs. Long get on the Saigon to Hue train. However, as soon as Mrs. Long stepped out of the station she was escorted to the Hue City Police Station by the Special Police who were already waiting there.
Presiding over this secret arrest was Wu Tingru’s subordinate, Chen Jinxuan, director of the secret intelligence agency. In fact, when Lt. Col. Conine approached Ngo a few days ago, he did not say anything about Mrs. Long’s recent anti-American rhetoric, but only asked for Ngo’s assistance in locating the photo album that Captain Bain had dropped, because if it fell into the hands of the Vietcong, much of the content of the album could be distorted and propagandized, which would have an adverse effect on the upcoming election. What prompted Ngo Dinh Ru to order the arrest of Mrs. Long has never been clarified, but it turns out that the arrest was planned well before the theft of the photo album.
On April 12, 1956, Major Allen finally obtained the approval of Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Yen through the help of Minister of National Defense Le Ngoc Thanh and Minister of Information Tran Dinh Thanh Thanh to bail Mrs. Long out of prison. The next day, I accompanied Major Allen to Hue City.
In Hue, we met with Ngo Dinh Chieu, the Central Administrator, the brother of Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Yen, who told us that Mrs. Long had admitted that she was working for the Viet Cong and that, in conjunction with the “universal suffrage”, she had engaged in a series of propaganda activities to tarnish the image of Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Yen, including the collection of information on United States military personnel. As a result, Ngo Dinh Chieu said she could not be released on bail unless she issued a statement of remorse when the situation calmed down. However, after a request from Major Allen, Ngo Dinh Hoang granted us permission to visit Mrs. Long at the Hue police station.
At 4 p.m., Mrs. Long was escorted to the interview room by two policemen and as soon as she saw Major Allen she threw herself into his arms and cried. She had obviously lost a lot of weight and was still wearing a light yellow cheongsam, her hair had been broken up in a bun and her long dark hair fell down to cover a black and purple whip mark on her cheek.
She whimpered and told Major Allen in English that it was horrible there, and was warned not to tell us about the torture, and that even her clothes had been changed for her at this meeting to hide her injuries.
“Take me away at once!” She pleaded, “I can’t stand it any longer.”
“Where is Captain Bain’s photo book?” I asked eagerly. It was vital, no matter what Mrs. Long had done for the VC, to wander if Captain Bain’s photo book hadn’t been transferred to them yet, there was still a way.”
“I deposited it with Mr. Wu Yuge, editor-in-chief of the Democracy Newspaper.”
“So Mr. Wuyukaku has seen it too?” Major Allen asked anxiously. He knew that the matter had developed into something very serious. “Is Mr. Vu Nguyen Cuong working for the Viet Cong as well?”
“Mr. Vu Nguyen Khe has no relationship with the Viet Cong at all,” Mrs. Long pushed away Major Allen’s hand that was gripping her left arm as it touched her bruises. “Actually, I can’t say that I have anything to do with the VC, except that a few months ago I received some propaganda from Le Cuong, a southern cadre of the VC. I didn’t know why they sent me those things. Later, the person who sent me the stuff was caught by government intelligence and told that story, and the police decided that I was in charge of VC propaganda in Saigon.”
“Did you tell the police that the photo album was with Mr. Wuyukaku?”
“Yes, I have said that.”
“Why did you tell them about the photo book!”
“Why?” Mrs. Long repeated with tears in her eyes. “They always beat me. If I didn’t have no choice, I wouldn’t have implicated Mr. Wu Yuge. You can’t imagine how barbaric those policemen are; they’ll do anything. I wish to get out of there at once, and you must take me away, or I shall have to go and kneel again to-night.”
A policeman was sitting behind us during the conversation, who knew no English at all, and was impatiently tapping his keys on his chair. Major Allen told Mrs. Long that had she not confessed to those things so early, she would have been released on bail already. But because she had messed things up, Prime Minister Ng Ting Yan’s approval was lost.
Finally, Colonel Allen consoled her by saying that he would go at once and take up the matter with the police department, so that she would be treated as well as possible, and that he would wait until he could find a way to guarantee her release from prison.
Mrs. Long was obviously extremely fearful of returning to her cell, and she defiantly hugged Major Allen, pleading for her to be taken away no matter what, even kneeling down to the ground and begging. Major Allen had no choice but to call Ngo Dinh Chuan to contact him, and the matter was pushed back and forth between Ngo Dinh Chuan and Tran Kim Xuan until late in the evening, when Ngo Dinh Chuan impatiently informed Major Allen that the case was a matter for the Vietnamese Intelligence Service, and that he would ask the Americans not to interfere, and that as far as the release of Mrs. Long on bail was concerned, it would be absolutely out of the question. So we went to the chief of the Hue police department and asked him to take “special care” of Mrs. Long.
The chief of the Hue City Police Department did not admit to torturing Mrs. Long at all. “She confessed on her own.” He affirmed. “Even though she is a major Viet Cong criminal, the government is prepared to forgive her. You don’t have to listen to the rumors spread by some people; we would never use torture instruments for interrogation when dealing with a prestigious woman like Mrs. Long.”
It seemed pointless to stay in Hue any longer, so we took the train that night to get back to Saigon.
“I have never kept a photo album for anyone.” Wu Yuge said forcefully to Chen Jinxuan. “As for that Mrs. Long you are talking about, she is not familiar with me. Wandering if she insists that the photo book is with me, then please just ask her to show the evidence.”
“Actually, the evidence is already there.” Chen Jinxuan picked up a copy of the April 2 issue of Democracy. “Can you explain where you got this message and photo from?” Wu Yuge arrogantly pushed the newspaper aside.
“As a newspaper, I am obliged to maintain the confidentiality of the source of the information, and the question is whether it is true. If the problem is with the fact that the defender made it up, I’m responsible for that. May I ask if that article is true?”
“Of course there are questions…” said Chen Jin Xuan, suddenly stopping, realizing that something was hidden behind Wu Yuge’s gaze on him.
“That photo book must be with him.” After Wu Yuge left, Chen Jinxuan said to me. “His tone was very firm, indicating that he had the whole picture. Therefore I did not talk about it too much further.”
I agreed with him and was very worried that Wu Yuge would make copies of the photographs, which would be beyond our control. In order to prevent that from happening, Chen Jinxuan immediately asked Wu Tingcoward to arrange for the arrest of Wu Yuge and the Democracy Newspaper.
Surveillance is conducted to prevent the release of photographic reproductions.
In the days that followed, Chen Jinxuan used all sorts of methods to persuade Wu Yuge to hand over the photo albums and to promise sizable financial support for the Democracy Newspaper in the future, but they were all rejected by Wu Yuge.
Vu Ngoc Khe, a very prestigious person in Saigon, formed a social force with democracy leader Phan Quang Thanh, MP Van Bucket and Nguyen Van Thuot, because he could not be treated in the same way as Mrs. Long was treated at a time when factional struggles in the government (especially between pro-French factions within the army and the U.S. generals) were very intense.
Nevertheless, Chen Jinxuan decided to put pressure on Wu Yuge. He hired twenty northern refugees to storm the newspaper office of Democracy one morning, destroying electrical appliances, tables, chairs, doors, windows, and telephones. This incident provoked a reaction from Wu Yuge, who immediately, together with the directors and editors-in-chief of several other newspapers, approached the Minister of Information, Chen Zhengcheng, to intervene, as one of the refugees had provided them with evidence that the newspaper vandals had been instructed by the special police department and were receiving a stipend. At the behest of Wu Tingru, Chen Jinxuan secretly dispatched men to prepare for the assassination of Wu Yuge.
Just when things were getting worse, an unexpected incident gave us renewed hope. Vu Ngoc Khe’s 17-year-old daughter was kidnapped by a triad organization in Causeway Bay as a con tin (meat ticket) for a ransom of up to 850,000 South Korean dollars.
Vu Thi Quang, 17, an actress with the Saigon Improved Theatre Company, was forcibly taken away by four armed bandits while riding in a car.
The bandits were obviously very clear about their objective, and on the afternoon of the day when Vu Thi Kuan was abducted, they delivered a ransom note to the newspaper office of the Democracy Newspaper, ordering Vu Yuk Kok to pay the ransom within five days. Eyewitnesses on the spot testified that the kidnapping was carried out by a triad organization called the Tiandi Association on the Causeway Coast.
Vu Ngoc was well aware of the fate that would befall his daughter if he did not pay the ransom by the deadline. He did not report it to the police, even though the high ransom amount left him at a loss.
After a Vietnamese agent provided this information to the CIA Saigon Station, Lt. Col. Cornayne immediately set up a rescue operation with all U.S. and Vietnamese agents at the Saigon Station. In order that the operation would not fail. While maintaining strict confidentiality with the police department, Lt. Col. Cornyn had prepared $850,000 in South Vietnamese currency to pay the ransom on behalf of Vu Ngoc Khe in the unlikely event that there was no result within five days.
“Keep that girl safe no matter what!” Lieutenant Colonel Cornayne emphasized. “If the operation is unsure, don’t reveal our purpose for the time being, and also, as soon as we are discovered by the police side as a result, change it to a general intelligence gathering operation to avoid their involvement.”
Even so, our work progressed at an unusually slow pace. Saigon was then in a period of great confusion. The former French army converted troops, pro-U.S. government troops, police forces, armed civilian guerrillas, sectarian forces and the Tokyo militia withdrawn from the north were all clustered separately around the Saigon embankment, and even the two streets were divided into different defense zones. These conditions were extremely convenient for triad organizations. In fact, there were many triad members in the government and the military.
Four days have passed and we still haven’t gotten any news about the kidnapped girl. It seems that the only way out is for us to hand over the ransom to the kidnappers.
However, when I put the ransom of 850,000 South Vietnamese dollars in front of Vu Ngoc Khe, accompanied by a Vietnamese agent, he pushed the money aside in a contemptuous manner. “We don’t know each other.” He said, “I can’t accept this money.”
“Mr. Wu Yuge,” I said to him solemnly, “we have all the information to prove that you cannot pay this high ransom. Tomorrow is the last day of the deadline, so I hope you will accept this help from a sincere friend to get your daughter out of danger as soon as possible.”
Hearing my words, Wu Yuge felt very annoyed, he slapped the table and shouted at me: “How did you know about my daughter’s kidnapping? Who gave you the right to investigate my property? If you really are ‘sincere friends’ as you just said, then just let the group of people who told you the news release my daughter back!”
Vu Ngoc Khe is one of the strong nationalists I have encountered since entering Vietnam. They were wary of all foreigners and always thought that help from abroad was ill-intentioned. This sentiment was expressed so strongly by Ngo Dinh Yen and Huu Dinh Minh, who were so defensive even of their allies at all times, that later leaders remained xenophobic until their allies finally broke with them.
Knowing that no result would be achieved by continuing the conversation with Vu Ngoc Loan, I said goodbye to him with the Vietnamese agent and walked out of the newspaper office of the Democracy Newspaper. At that time we were in a very sorry state. All the editors and journalists present looked at us derisively, as if we had been sent by the kidnappers, in response to Vu Ngoc Gue’s assertive attitude.
“You don’t have to curry favor with them like this.” On the way back to the compound, the Vietnamese agent said indignantly. “If half of that money had been used just to hire the gang organization, the photos would have been recovered long ago.”
I told him that we were helping Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Nhan to maintain social order and clean up the armed gangs, so it was obviously not appropriate to hire triad members to work for us at this time; moreover, the triad members had complicated backgrounds, and many of them had already been used by the Vietcong in their terrorist activities, so hiring them might leak out the truth.
The Vietnamese special agent seemed to be very dissatisfied with what I said, and he stopped talking with a grunt. Later, I learned that he had joined a triad organization called the “Thanh Linh Gang” and that the leader of the gang was a senior official in the Government of Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Yen at the time.
On the afternoon of May 9, 1956, the Saigon police engaged in a gun battle with armed triad bandits on Norodom Street, in which two policemen and one bandit were killed and many others on both sides were wounded.
The armed bandits had been ambushed by the police while demanding ransom. Unable to pay such a large ransom, Vu Ngoc finally reported his daughter’s abduction to the police. He took a briefcase containing a manuscript and met with triad members on Norodom Street, demanding to see his daughter before handing over the money.
A white refrigerated car parked at the corner of the street drove up, and through the half-open door, the daughter, who was sitting with the bandits, was seen. Just then, however, the gun of an impudent policeman went off, and the bandits got into the car and fled. Wu Yuge drags one of the bandits down, snatches his gun and throws it into the distance, but he himself is knocked unconscious by the bandits.
In the end the bandit was killed by the police, but the refrigerated truck escaped with Wu Yuge’s daughter.
This incident made our rescue plan all but impossible. Two days later, early one morning, people found Wu Shijuan’s body in front of Wu Yuge’s house. Her body had been poked more than a hundred holes with a dagger by the bandits, obviously done in a mad desire for revenge. From the scene, it appeared that Vu Thi Kuen had been killed in the vicinity of her house, as there were many bloodstains on the ground despite the fact that it had begun to rain before dawn.
Just when we were at a loss, Director Chen Jinxuan called to inform us that the photo album had been found.
“Mrs. Long didn’t give the photo book to Wu Yuge at all.” Chan Kim Statement told us. “She hid the photographs in the house of a French foreman at the Rochville factory on the Causeway before we arrested her. After Major Allen’s hopes of bailing her out were dashed, she finally revealed the name of her lover.”
A few days later, the Saigon Morning Post published a story about armed bandits attacking the Rochville factory and killing the French foreman on duty with an automatic rifle.
It all passed quickly, as did much of what happened in Saigon right then, and no one even remembers that incident. Shortly after that, Capt. Bain also left Vietnam and he was sent to the Congo. I never saw him again or heard anything about him until after the war.
Mrs. Long was not released, and in July 1956 she was transferred from Hue City Police Station to Gia Dinh Prison and later to Phu Ly Concentration Camp in Tu Long Mu Province, 33 kilometers north of Saigon. She sent two messages to Major Allen asking him to try to get her a pardon, but Major Allen’s efforts were never successful. Wu Tingru, a government adviser who held real power at the time, had always refrained from American meddling in his affairs. “I don’t care to be told what I should do now!” He told Major Allen nonchalantly, easily refusing his request.
In December 1958, a gruesome massacre was reported from the Furley concentration camp. More than 6,000 political prisoners held there were said to have been gassed, and more than 1,000 of them had died.
Large numbers of people flocked to Toulon Moum province, demanding to visit and treat those political prisoners who had been spared in the Fourie concentration camp.
In Saigon, for weeks on end, there were many tragic processions of women and children in mourning clothes marching through the streets demanding that the Government release their relatives.
Major Allen’s request to visit Mrs. Long at the Phu Ly concentration camp was denied. It was not until a month later that he was notified by the Vietnamese Police Department that Mrs. Long had died of malaria and that her body had been claimed by her family.
As indignant as Major Allen was at this lie, there was ultimately nothing he could do about it. For all the officials of the Wuttingyan government had begun to ignore the advice of the Americans that they were going to run that country in their own way, and that the Americans simply didn’t understand what was going on in that country.
There was no doubt that their old-fashioned dictatorship was no longer suitable for Vietnam, newly freed from the colonies of the French government, but by the time the stubborn bureaucrats understood this it was too late, and they finally failed under the powerful offensive of the North Vietnamese Communists.