Highways to a War (62 page)

Voices from all sides echoed her. “Right.” “It’s kaput.” “All over.”

“Fallen?” Mike sounded disbelieving, and glared from one to the other of the surrounding faces: I can’t really describe his expression in any other way.

Barbara glanced at him briefly. She’d begun to write in her notebook, and her expression was impatient. “See for yourself. Our embassy’s pulling out today,” she said. “I’d say that amounts to the same thing, wouldn’t you? You’ll have to excuse me, Mike—I’m in kind of a rush.” She scribbled, hunched over the counter.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned and found Ed Carter, who’d just come in from outside. He was an AP correspondent we’d drunk with quite often in the old days: a tall, fleshy, unexcitable man from Ohio, with a thatch of brown hair going gray. “Disaster time, Harvey,” he said. “You guys better come with me.”

He held open the little swinging door in the counter and ushered us into the main office, where the staff writers sat at their desks. We followed him to the frosted glass box of the telex room, where the big old teleprinter machines chattered and hummed. Here Ed halted, and pushed a teletype sheet into my hand.

“Tuck it away,” he said. “The U.S. Government’s asked us to put an embargo on this until eleven o‘clock, for safety reasons. So I’m putting an embargo on you, Harvey, OK? This is from our stringer in Phnom Penh. The U.S. Embassy started pulling out an hour ago. They took all our people, the acting President, and a few other lucky Cambodian nationals. The Prime Minister and the cabinet didn’t go: they’ve stayed to negotiate with the Khmer Rouge. Poor bastards: imagine what kind of negotiation that will be.”

I began to read the story, while Langford simply stared at Ed. His eyes were very bright, and there were red patches in his cheeks; his chest rose and fell rapidly. He looked angry: almost accusing. He seemed to be holding in check some sort of fury.

Ed didn’t seem to notice. “The Marine helicopters started lifting everyone out at nine o‘clock,” he was saying. His voice seemed unnaturally placid, but then it always did: he was that sort of American. “So it’s already over,” he said. “Bye-bye to our Cambodian allies; hello Khmer Rouge.”

Mike spoke for the first time. “Are the Khmer Rouge into the city yet?” He was standing on the balls of his feet, his hands open, like a footballer about to go onto the field.

“Not yet,” Ed said. “It’s apparently pretty quiet right now. Weird, in fact, according to our Cambodian stringer. Most of the population don’t even know yet that the embassy’s gone.”

Without speaking again, Mike turned, and began to move off. I took his arm, and asked him where he was going.

“To make sure we’re still on that Air Cambodge flight,” he said.

“To Phnom Penh?” Ed said. He grinned faintly. “No more flights, old buddy. All civilian flights are finished.”

“Military flights?” Mike said.

“No,” Ed said. “The airlift’s over. It’s all
over,
man, just like it’ll soon be over here. No one’s running the airport any more—and the Khmer Rouge over the river were shooting at the Marine helicopters when they lifted off.”

He suddenly looked hard at Langford over the tops of his glasses.

“Jesus, Mike, I just remembered: you’ve got an apartment there, right? All your goods. That’s tough, man. You’re lucky you’re out, though: look at it that way. Now all you’ve gotta do is get out of Saigon.”

But Mike had already turned away, and was heading out of the office at a run.

Ed stared after him, pulling at his lower lip. His eyes had a faraway expression, and I imagined he was contemplating Langford’s crisis. But when he spoke, I realized he’d already stopped thinking about Mike.

“Those poor sons of bitches,” he said. “We sure sold them down the Mekong, didn’t we?”

When we found ourselves locked out of Cambodia, Mike and I had nothing except one change of clothes each, and our cameras; and Mike had that small tape recorder he took everywhere. Whatever we’d left in Phnom Penh was gone forever.

In my case this wasn’t much: I only had a few extra clothes in a room in the Hotel Royal. All my important possessions were now in Bangkok, where Lu Ying and I had our apartment. We’d been married for nearly two years, and I moved all the time between Bangkok, Phnom Penh and Saigon. But since Phnom Penh had been his home, Mike had lost everything: his personal possessions, furniture and art collection. There’d be no hope of seeing any of those things again, with the Khmer Rouge in power.

He’d taken only one precaution against what had happened. Some months before, when he’d realized that the Lon Nol Government had little hope of surviving, he’d given me a small bag full of his personal papers, tapes and photographs, asking that Lu Ying and I keep them safe for him in the Bangkok apartment. So that’s why those things have survived. Nothing else has.

Much worse than all this was the fact that he couldn’t find out what had happened to Ly Keang. He didn’t know whether she was still in the city, or had escaped across the border. And no phone call or message came from her to the Hotel Continental, as he kept hoping would happen.

The first thing we did when we realized our situation was to go off to Mr. Minh the tailor to get some new clothes made. He and his assistants finished them in forty-eight hours: I think it was his last order, poor Mr. Minh. He was quite old now, and very bent. The next day he closed the shop forever, and disappeared. So many people were fleeing like Mr. Minh, using any means they could. But Mike and I had decided to stay on in Saigon, and wait for the arrival of the North Vietnamese Army.

Most of our colleagues in the media thought we were mad to do this: they told us we’d be shot or jailed when the Communists arrived, and they believed we’d change our minds at the last minute. But we felt fairly confident that the North Vietnamese would treat us correctly. We remembered Captain Danh; and I said that the sort of people who had returned my Rolex watch to me when I was a prisoner would not fail to honor our neutrality as war photographers. Mike agreed.

But despite the fact that the NVA divisions were getting closer every day, all Mike was thinking of was Cambodia. He stayed in Saigon not to cover the Communist victory, but because here he was close to the Cambodian border. He and I remained at the Continental, and in those first few days his whole attention was concentrated on getting back into Phnom Penh. He tried to find somebody who would fly him there—but nobody would do it. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was trying to get through to Ly Keang on the phone—at her uncle’s house, or at her newspaper. But the telephone lines to Phnom Penh, which had always been bad, now seemed permanently out of order. Nor could he get through to Aubrey Hardwick, who’d been staying in Phnom Penh at the home of a friend of his: a French diplomat. The French embassy’s number didn’t answer either.

I now felt more sorry for Mike than I can say. He looked sick, and hardly ate: his mind was all the time on Ly Keang. He also worried about Lay Vora and Bopha and the children: they’d become like his own family. He’d lost his whole life in twenty-four hours—and he feared that he’d lost Ly Keang as well. He wouldn’t believe it, but he feared it. He blamed himself for leaving her, and he was angry with himself—even though none of us had believed that Phnom Penh would fall in those few days.

I could only imagine his pain and frustration, not share it. Not to be able to act drove him crazy; and wherever he turned, he was blocked. Then, on April 17th, the Khmer Rouge finally marched into Phnom Penh, and sealed the country.

This was no ordinary regime: that was clear straightaway. The foreign journalists who had stayed were eventually allowed to leave—but after that, no one could get in or out. The border was closed, and all communications with the outside world were stopped. No telephones; no post; no foreign embassies; no flights operating except between Cambodia and China. We were as cut off from Cambodia now as though it had been a country on the moon.

 

 

By Monday the 28th, there were sixteen North Vietnamese divisions around Saigon, some of them only eight kilometers away.

Tan Son Nhut airport was being rocketed, and although many South Vietnamese pilots went on fighting, going up in gunships to hit the Communist positions, others now fought each other for the possession of planes. They made their escape in these, flying them out to Thailand.

There were thunderstorms that day, I remember: the noise mingling with the sound of shelling. Mike and I moved about the city, getting pictures and film. Restaurants and shops were still open, but thousands of people were streaming out to the airport in cars, lorries and on foot, still hoping that they could somehow get on planes.

The Army of South Vietnam continued to defend the city’s perimeter. It had fought with great bravery in these last stages, but now it was falling into panic. The South had put all its hopes on the military aid promised by the Americans: now the news had come through that there would be no more aid. The last shipment of artillery had been sent, and there were no shells. The Government and the ARVN troops knew now that there was nothing more to hope for.

The end came the next day: on Tuesday the 29th. That morning, the U.S. embassy began its evacuation. Americans in Saigon had been told to listen for a coded message on U.S. Armed Forces Radio as the signal that evacuation had begun; it would come every fifteen minutes, followed by Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.” When this was heard, all the remaining foreign media offices began packing up—in the Eden Building, the Caravelle Hotel and elsewhere. The Telenews staff had gone the week before, taking their equipment to Bangkok, abandoning the office, and leaving me the keys. London was happy for me to cover since I chose to do it, I was told, but Telenews took no responsibility for me.

Despite the rocketing of Tan Son Nhut, Marine helicopters were being sent there from the U.S. fleet off the coast to ferry out all remaining American citizens in Saigon. They were also to take Vietnamese who worked for American agencies. But fixed-wing aircraft could no longer fly because the bombardment had closed down the airport, and this meant that fewer Vietnamese could now be taken out than the Americans had planned. The people in the city knew this, and panic grew. The Americans had told Western correspondents that places would be found for them on the choppers; special buses were picking their people up from prearranged points around the city, and journalists were told to go to these points. Only a very small number of journalists and photographers decided to stay, as Mike and I were doing.

We had made our base in the deserted Telenews office in the Eden Building. The AP office was on the floor above, and at around 11 A.M., after we’d loaded and checked our cameras, we decided to look in there and say goodbye.

Nobody had much time to speak to us. The scene was frantic, like an out-of-control schoolroom. Phones were ringing and not being answered, an American voice was coming over a radio, and all over the room people were emptying desks and files and stuffing things into bags, moving very fast. Most of them were sweating a lot; some were laughing and joking; some looked pale and scared.

One of them glanced up at us from an airways bag he was packing: he was a staff writer with a blond mustache, whose name I’ve forgotten. You guys coming? he said. Better move your asses.

No, we said, we were staying.

And we gave him some film to take out and deliver for us. He did it, too, and Telenews were very happy with what I sent; it was shown in a great number of countries.

You’re lunatics, he said. Crazy as Ed Carter. You’re gonna die.

In the middle of the jerking and hurrying and shouting figures, Ed was sitting at his desk with his feet up, reading a newspaper. Ed was always very calm.

We went over to him, and he looked up over his glasses. I figured somebody should be around to welcome General Giap, he said. You guys gonna keep me company? I’ve got transport.

And he held up a bunch of keys.

The correspondents going out on the choppers had only been allowed to take one bag each; they had to leave everything else. One AP staff writer had been forced to leave a beautiful Ford Mustang, and he’d given the keys to Ed, with instructions that Ed was eventually to sell the car and send the money, if the Communists spared his life. So we went out to the man’s house and picked up his Mustang, and drove in it around the city.

The crowds in the streets were huge, surging everywhere. Everyone carried bags or children. Many were running in a sort of hysteria: but I don’t think they knew any longer where they were running to. I saw one little gray-haired man in a white canvas hat, a small suitcase in one hand, who was actually running in circles, in the middle of Nguyen Hue: I think he’d lost his wits. The White Mice had now disappeared, and we realized there was no law and order any more: no one was in charge of the city. There was supposed to be a curfew, but that meant nothing now. It was like a crazy carnival: but not a carnival of happiness.

The American buses for Tan Son Nhut were moving about the city to their special pickup points, collecting their passengers; and the people in the streets were following these buses in tens of thousands, begging and screaming to be let on. They saw the buses as their last hope, and they were right. The drivers were fighting them off when they opened the doors, not always successfully. Most of the windows were protected with heavy-duty mesh, but some people got in through sliding windows at the back; others pushed their babies in. Cars stood abandoned, keys still hanging in the dashboards: if you wanted a car, you just had to steal one. In many side streets, we saw ARVN uniforms lying - in the gutter; the soldiers were changing into civilian clothes, and melting into the crowd. Looting had begun: people were breaking into rich villas, and the streets were getting dangerous. Many now hated the Americans for deserting them, and as we went by, and they saw the white faces of Mike and Ed Carter, they shouted: Go home, Yankees. The Saigon Cowboys were out on their Honda motor scooters, looking for what they could steal. We also saw people who did nothing; who stood crying on the pavements like lost children.