Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 87

After The Fall of Saigon: A Retrospective

[This is a follow-up to the story I posted yesterday on the 43rd anniversary of the Fall of Saigon in 1975. )

After I and several dozen others were evacuated April 29th, 1975 from the hulking Military Assistance Command-Vietnam building at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut airbase I filed my final story from the U.S.S. Blue Ridge, the Amphibious Command & Control (LCC) ship of the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet.

[image error] Yates in Vietnam, 1975

The story eventually ran in the Chicago Tribune on May 4. I have attached a PDF copy of it below.

Our evacuation chopper, a Marine CH-53 Sea Stallion, landed us on the U.S.S. Denver a few miles off the coast of Vietnam. For part of the late afternoon after our arrival, I watched Navy crewmen shove one Bell UH-1 Huey helicopter after another off of Denver’s deck. Even though the Denver was an amphibious transport dock with room for several CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters so many South Vietnamese Air Force Huey’s were arriving that there was no room on the deck.

VNAF Huey is pushed over the side

When South Vietnamese pilots were waved off from landing on the deck, they flew a few hundred yards away from the ship, allowed their helicopters to hover in the air and then jumped into the ocean, the helicopter’s blades barely missing them as the choppers crashed into the sea.

[image error]  VNAF pilot jumps into the sea from his Huey

That afternoon I and several other correspondents who had arrived during the evacuation were transferred by helicopter to the Blue Ridge. I spent the first night after evacuation on the Blue Ridge gazing at a scarlet sun as it sank below a darkening Vietnamese horizon. It was then that it all hit me. The United States had not only lost the longest war in its history (at that time), we had been driven out with our tails between our legs.

It was a reprehensible and dishonorable departure made even worse by the fact that we had left so many loyal Vietnamese behind who, up until the last few minutes, believed that the Americans they had worked for and supported would help them escape their Communist enemies.

As it turned out, several hundred thousand of those steadfast Vietnamese wound up languishing and even dying in Communist “re-education camps”–a North Vietnamese euphemism for what the Nazi’s called Konzentrationslager.

A flood of emotions washed over me: shame, sorrow, guilt and finally anger at the way it all ended after so much sacrifice by so many. Some 58,000 Americans, of the 3.4 million who served in Vietnam, died there. Even more tragic were the 3.1 million Vietnamese, both civilian and military, who died between 1955 and 1975.

I recall U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin coming to an area of the Blue Ridge where a majority of journalists were ensconced. He was quickly surrounded by reporters demanding to know why the evacuation was not done earlier so more Vietnamese could have gotten out of the country. Why was the evacuation done in such a frantic and panic-stricken way?

Martin was not well. He had been suffering from pneumonia for several weeks, and he was weak and fatigued from the medication he had been taking. He was also a chain smoker and during conversations, was given to lingering coughing spells.

[image error] US Ambassador Graham Martin surrounded by reporters on USS Blue Ridge. (That’s the back of my head at Martin’s right shoulder) Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

None of his answers satisfied the reporters who surrounded him that day on the Blue Ridge. Of course, all of us knew what Ambassador Martin thought. For weeks, he had insisted that the Americans would not run away, that South Vietnam would not fall into chaos and terror, that the U.S. would stand by its South Vietnamese allies as long as necessary.

Of course, as reporters watched the North Vietnamese Army march inexorably south toward Saigon with little or no resistance we knew that what Martin was saying publicly did not match the unvarnished truth that proliferated in the U.S. Embassy.

“This war is done,” one of my intelligence sources told me in early April. “We need to be thinking about how we are going to get out of here.”

Getting out of Saigon seemed to be the last thing on Graham Martin’s mind, however.

On April 28, after the first rocket attacks on Saigon by the Communists in several years, Ambassador Martin took the unprecedented step of going on Saigon television to promise that America was not leaving Vietnam in the lurch.

“I, the American Ambassador, am not going to run away in the middle of the night. Any of you can come to my home and see for yourselves that I have not packed my bags. I give you my word,” he told the Vietnamese people.

Whether the Vietnamese people believed Martin or not was irrelevant. Less than 48 hours later Martin was aboard the U.S.S. Blue Ridge with the rest of us trying to make sense of what had happened.

“The situation just got away from us,” he told me. “It is a sad day for America, for South Vietnam. I did the best I could.”

“I guess we can be relieved that it’s all over now,” I said.

“I can’t…not with the way it ended,” replied Martin, whose foster son died in combat in Vietnam in 1965.

Martin, a career diplomat who succeeded Ellsworth Bunker as the last U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam in 1973, died in 1990.

That day aboard the U.S.S. Blue Ridge, Martin was a broken man. He had done what he thought best. In retrospect, which of course is always 20/20, he and the U.S. administration failed the South Vietnamese people.

Without a doubt, it could be argued that that failure began when the first U.S. Marines landed unopposed at Da Nang in 1965 and continued for the next eight years as successive administrations dithered and waged a war they never intended to win.

Sadly, it is a pattern that seems to have repeated itself since then in places like Iraq and Afghanistan where we expend precious treasure in blood and material only to depart before even a semblance of victory, hollow or otherwise.

As for me, I am thankful that I will never have to witness and report on such a pathetic, disgraceful and ignominious exodus ever again.

The link below will take you to a pdf of the final story I filed about the Fall of Saigon.

 The last days of Saigon, May 4, 1975

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remembering the Final 24 Hours in the Fall of Saigon

(NOTE: I make it a point to re-run this story every year on the anniversary of the Fall of Saigon–an event I covered for the Chicago Tribune in 1975. I hope you find it of interest) 

Forty-three years ago today I was in a place called Saigon as it fell to Communist North Vietnamese troops. It is a day I will never forget, mainly because I wasn’t sure if I would get out of Vietnam in one piece.

[image error] Ron Yates Covering Cambodia & Vietnam 1975

At the time, I was the Chicago Tribune’s Far Eastern Correspondent based in Tokyo and I had gone to South Vietnam and Cambodia to report on both countries two years after the spurious Paris Peace Accord was signed.

In my post today I am sharing with you my personal account of that harrowing, panic-filled 24-hour period between April 29-30, 1975 when a 10 year-long war that some have called America’s “lost crusade” came to a frantic and ignominious end.

During that frenzied final day 1,373 Americans, 5,680 Vietnamese and an exhausted and ailing American ambassador with the American flag folded under one arm and his pet poodle under the other would flee a land infamous for its coups d’état and its Byzantine cabals—a stunningly beautiful land of soaring green hills, lush forests, vast rubber plantations and fertile rice paddies that had become a political and military swamp for several American presidents.

[image error] Frantic Vietnamese Seeking a Way Out of Saigon (Ron Yates)

Most Americans have subsequently concluded that what was then the longest war in this nation’s history was also the first war America ever lost. In fact, however, as a former North Vietnamese colonel told me several years ago, one of the great ironies of Vietnam is that the American military was never defeated in any battle of consequence.

“You lost the war in the cities and villages of America, not on the battlefields of Vietnam,” Col. Ba Thang political commissar of the Saigon­ Gia Dinh Special Action Unit, told me. “We could never hope for a military victory against such a formidable foe. Our strategy was to survive, to make the war last so long that you Americans would eventually tire and go home. That is what happened. We divided you politically and sapped your will to fight a war in a country few Americans had ever heard of or cared about.”

Indeed, while the specter of Vietnam still haunts us today, in the 1960s and 1970s it divided the nation like nothing since the Civil War. In some ways, it continues to do so.

References to American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as America’s “new Vietnams” are consistently seen and heard in the news media. The phrase “no more Vietnams” adorns placards at nearly every demonstration against any U.S. military involvement and one even hears references to “the light at the end of the tunnel,” the phrase used in the 1960s by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to describe U.S. progress toward winning the war in Vietnam.

McNamara’s pet phrase was far from my mind 40 years ago when a barrage of 122 mm rockets slammed into Saigon. It was a little after 4 a.m. on April 29, 1975 when I was jolted awake in my second floor room of Saigon’s four-story French colonial-era Continental Palace Hotel. As I sat upright in my bed I realized it was oppressively hot and after the initial explosions, strangely quiet.

[image error] Continental Palace Hotel Ca. 1975 (Ron Yates)

Then I realized why. The ancient window air conditioner had stopped its moaning and coughing. There was no electricity. Apparently the North Vietnamese had hit one of Saigon’s power plants—a common occurrence during the past few weeks. I lit one of the dozen or so candles I always kept ready and looked up at the ceiling.

The gecko lizards had stopped chasing after mosquitoes and were retreating down the walls. Cockroaches the size of credit cards were scampering into the cracks of the ruby floor tiles. Even the rat that regularly patrolled my room was gone (I had named him General Giap, after the architect of North Vietnam’s military campaign).

I wondered if what I had heard had been thunder. April 28th had been a day of thunderstorms with lightning flashing over the city. Then, a few moments later the unmistakable metallic sound of a 122 mm rocket shrieked through the thick humid night air and exploded nearby. This time chunks of ancient plaster fell from the ceiling and the walls of the 100-year-old hotel shuddered.

That was not thunder. These were the first rockets to hit Saigon since April 27 when one slammed into the roof of the Majestic Hotel overlooking the Saigon River a few blocks away killing a hotel porter. Later that same morning another rocket smashed into Saigon’s bustling Ben Thanh Market killing more than a dozen people.

I jumped from bed, scampered barefoot over the cold crimson tiles to the small balcony overlooking Lam Son Square and threw open the French windows. Before me, looming in all its hulking alabaster majesty, was the old National Assembly Building and beyond it the high rise Caravelle Hotel. Both were intact.

To my right where Le Loi Street bisected Tu Do Street several members of the South Vietnamese home guard with red rosettes in their buttonholes identifying them as loyalists, were firing their ancient M-1 carbines. For the past several weeks home guard troops, who were mostly teenagers, had patrolled the streets by day and at night had slept on sidewalks wrapped in ponchos.

As I looked down at the home guard, bullets buzzed through the dank night air and ricocheted off nearby buildings. I ducked as several rounds slammed into the white façade of the hotel. During the past several months, I had gotten to know several of these home guard militia. Their job was to enforce Saigon’s nighttime curfew. I paid them to escort me after curfew to the Public Telephone and Telegraph Office so I could telex my stories back to the Chicago Tribune.

“What are you shooting at?” I yelled.

“V.C., beaucoup V.C.,” a 17-year-old named Nha shouted back.

“Where?”

“They everywhere…you better hide.” Then Nha, who was usually wasted on Vietnamese “33” beer by this time, shrieked with laughter. “Không quan trọng!” (It doesn’t matter). We kill all number ten V.C.”

Yeah, I remember thinking if you don’t kill everybody else in the city first. Nha lifted his rifle and fired several more rounds into the air. I had seen Nha in action with his M-1 carbine during our after curfew hikes to the PTT office. He often amused himself by blasting away at the giant rats that roamed Saigon’s deserted streets after the cyclos and ancient smoke-belching Renault taxis had stopped running for the night.

I retreated back into my room. In the distance, there were more heavy explosions—what sounded like 80 mm mortar rounds and 130mm heavy artillery hitting Tan Son Nhut, Saigon’s main airport some 7 miles away. The temperature was already approaching 90 degrees as I got dressed, and the sun wasn’t even up. I decided to forgo what would have been a cold shower. I needed to get downstairs to see what was going on.

Was this it? I can recall thinking. Is this the end? As it turned out, America’s ill-fated crusade in Vietnam was indeed over. And this was the way it would end: not with honor, as one president had suggested, but in ignominy and humiliation and chaos.

[image error] Terrifed Vietnamese Storm the U.S. Embassy in Saigon (AP)

Even though the city was now under a 24-hour curfew, for much of that final day some 20,000 terrified, shrieking Vietnamese—many of them former U.S. government employees—would surround the American Embassy, pleading with Marine guards to allow them inside the 10-foot walls so they could board the choppers that would take them to the armada of 44 American ships waiting off the Vietnamese coast.

Some would make it over the walls and onto the choppers. But only some. Most would be held at bay by U.S. soldiers—former allies—who pointed M-16s at them, cursed them, pounded their clawing fingers with rifle butts and threatened to blow their heads off.  I can still hear the voices of American embassy officials and their Vietnamese interpreters shouting: “Không ai sẽ bị tụt hậu!” (No one will be left behind) at the frantic throng outside the Embassy compound.

It was a scene that still saddens me today—one that made me ashamed to be an American, not because we were leaving in abject defeat but because we were betraying thousands if not millions of Vietnamese who believed our promises of a free and better Vietnam if they supported our policies.

I had arrived in Vietnam from my Tokyo base in January 1975, and with the exception of a few weeks spent in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in late February and early March, I had lived in Saigon at the Continental Palace.

The North Vietnamese push for Saigon began March 7 in Vietnam’s central highlands. Four days later, the provincial capital city of Ban Me Thuot, 180 miles north of Saigon fell. A few days after that, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu decided to adopt a plan of “strategic withdrawal,” which, in effect, conceded the northern half of South Vietnam to the Communists and precipitated one of the greatest routs in military history.

By early April, the North Vietnamese controlled almost 75 percent of the country and a palpable sense of doom enveloped Saigon. The city’s ubiquitous bars, famous for their “Saigon tea,” were mostly empty. Vendors selling “pho” and “”cà phê sữa”(beef noodle soup and “white” coffee), beggars, and hundreds of homeless children had all retreated from the streets.  While these were ominous signs, I knew the end was near when the Indian tailor on Tu Do Street where I had gotten shirts made and changed dollars into Vietnamese piastres, began producing North Vietnamese and Viet Cong flags instead of American and South Vietnamese banners.

“It’s the reality of the situation you see,” he told me matter-of-factly one afternoon.  “You do what you must to survive. You press chaps can leave, I cannot. Frankly, I am happy that this nasty affair is ending finally after so many terrible years.”

The official length of the war is generally conceded to have been eight years—from 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in the U.S. Marines, to 1973, when the Paris peace accord was signed. However, if you count the first advisers sent to Vietnam by Harry Truman in 1950, America’s involvement in S. E. Asia spanned three decades. During that time, about 3.1 million military personnel (including 7,200 women) served in Vietnam.

The human toll was staggering. By the time America’s active involvement in the war officially ended in 1973, it had claimed the lives of 58,183 American men and women. Another 304,000 Americans came home wounded, sometimes physically and sometimes mentally. One of every 10 soldiers who served in Vietnam was a casualty.

In addition, some 105 journalists died covering the war—more than in any other conflict in world history. Several are still missing.

Vietnam was nothing if not intense. For example, Pentagon figures show that the average infantryman in the Pacific theater in World War II saw about 40 days of actual combat in four years. In Vietnam the average infantryman saw about 240 days of combat in one year—a fact directly attributable to the helicopter, which allowed for much more rapid deployment of troops.

Then there are the MIAs—the 2,211 Americans still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, including 1,651 in Vietnam.

The dollar cost of the war: More than $165 billion—a figure which includes the loss of 3,689 fixed-wing aircraft, 4,857 helicopters and 15 million tons of ammunition.

[image error] Vietnamese Who Believed in American Policy Were Devastated When They Were Left Behind (Corbis)

In Vietnam the impact of America’s involvement in the war was even more conspicuous: 3 million Vietnamese killed, including 1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers; 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers; and 2 million civilians, according to Vietnam’s Ministry of Labor, War Invalids, and Social Affairs. More than 600,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops were wounded, while 500,000 South Vietnamese troops were wounded and 2 million civilians on both sides were crippled by mines, artillery fire, chemical defoliants, bombings and the general mayhem of war.

**********************************************************

In early April I had driven my rented jeep to a town called Phouc Hiep and found myself in the middle of a rice paddy along with a handful of other reporters when a fire fight broke out between ARVN (South Vietnamese) and North Vietnamese troops.

We broke into a wild run across a wide expanse of dry paddies toward a hamlet when we heard the telltale “thump” of a mortar shell being fired.

“Eat dirt,” someone yelled and we plunged en masse into a 3-foot deep irrigation ditch. Seconds later an earsplitting explosion sent huge chunks of dirt and rock flying through the air and on top of us. We were fully exposed in the middle of a 10-acre chain of rice paddies. The nearest cover was a small river about 300 yards away. We thought about making a dash for it, but small arms fire from both sides kept us pinned down. We remained there in the muddy ditch for what seemed like hours as bullets kicked up dirt all around us. In fact, the battle lasted only about 15 minutes.

[image error] Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

When the shooting subsided we scampered toward the river, zigging and zagging as we went. When we got there we paid some farmers who had taken cover along the river bank to ferry us to the other side in their wooden dugout canoes. Once, there we were met with the aftermath of the battle. The bodies of perhaps 15 NVA soldiers were strewn across a field. They had walked into an ambush.

[image error] Dead NVA soldier after battle of Phuoc Hiep (Ron Yates)

I was making a few notes and photographing the scene when several children from the nearby village emerged and began stripping the soldiers of any valuables they had—watches, rings, shoes. Others were amusing themselves by jumping back and forth over the wire cable that connected several anti-personnel claymore mines to a triggering device. One touch and the mines could have killed six or seven children and anybody else in standing within the effective killing range. When detonated a Claymore sends some 700 steel balls flying in a 60-degree horizontal arc at a height of 6 feet over a radius of 300 feet.

In Vietnam, I wrote in my notebook, the war and its instruments of destruction had become a deadly amusement park.

*********************************************************

On April 20, the provincial capital of Xuan Loc just 46 miles east of Saigon fell after holding out for several days against a tenacious siege by NVA troops. The fall of Xuan Loc was a signal for people to proclaim what quickly became Saigon’s epitaph: “La Guerre est fini; Saigon est fini; everything est fini.”

It also sped up the dynamic Saigon rumor mill. One rumor said that Catholics originally from the north would be sent on a death march along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Another rumor said that Viet Cong soldiers in Da Nang had ripped out the manicured fingernails of prostitutes, prompting a frenzy of fingernail cutting and polish removing among Saigon’s bar girls. Yet another rumor said that unmarried Catholic girls would be forced to marry North Vietnamese war invalids.

The rumors had one cumulative effect: they tended to support the growing belief that the end was near.

Since early April, several of us had pressed the U.S. Embassy for details of the evacuation—with no result. U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin, who died in 1990, was intent on not creating panic by discussing the possibility of an American exodus. Until the last day of the war, he had held out hope that a negotiated end of hostilities could be worked out. Indeed, two days before he had gone on Vietnamese television and announced: “I, the American Ambassador, am not going to run away in the middle of the night. Any of you can come to my home and see for yourselves that I have not packed my bags. I give you my word.”

Martin had, nevertheless, sanctioned a low-key evacuation of Vietnamese and Americans called Operation Talon Vise. During a two week period before April 30, Operation Talon Vise evacuated about 37,000 Vietnamese employees of the U.S. government and their families from Tan Son Nhut to Clark Air Base in the Philippines—far short of the several hundred thousand Vietnamese who had worked with the American military assistance command in some way and who ultimately would be consigned to horrific “re-education camps” by the communist conquerors, in some cases for 10 years or more.

In order to ensure that Talon Vise went smoothly, Martin authorized bribes to Saigon police so buses could move through checkpoints without a problem. He also allowed Vietnamese to be smuggled into the American Embassy through a hole cut into the wall of the adjacent French Embassy.

“What a perfect metaphor for this f…ked up place,” the late Hunter S. Thompson, who was covering the end of the war for Rolling Stone Magazine, told me one evening. We were having dinner at the My Canh floating restaurant on the Saigon River. “Lies, deceit, and betrayal. Hey, I think I have the name for my next book.” The “gonzo” journalist then took a long drag on a fat Buddha grass joint and asked if he could ride out with me to “the action” the next day.

I dreaded taking Thompson with me because he had a tendency to wander off. I always feared that I would return to Saigon and have to announce that Thompson was captured by the Viet Cong or had stepped on a mine. I didn’t want to be responsible for the death or capture of “Uncle Duke” the Doonesberry cartoon strip character modeled on Thompson.

“What a thought,” someone said one evening. “If Thompson gets captured he will get the whole North Vietnamese Army high and the war will be over tomorrow.”

As it turned out, Thompson left Saigon for Hong Kong long before the evacuation and Rolling Stone had to send in another reporter to cover the story. “This bull shit is going to last forever. I’ve got rigorous shopping to do,” he told me before he left for the airport.

Thompson’s assessment notwithstanding, Ambassador Martin did not want to be accused of cutting and running. Until the last few hours, he was convinced there could have been some negotiated, equitable settlement that would allow a smooth transition of power. It is possible today to forgive Martin for his muddled thinking—especially in light of the revelations contained in the book “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam” published in 1995 by one of the architects of America’s involvement in Vietnam, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

McNamara’s admission that he and others in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations knew the war was wrong—and even un-winnable—as far back as 1965 but decided to send Americans to fight and die there any way makes Martin’s diplomatic dithering seem acceptably innocuous.

Finally, on April 26 with 16 NVA army divisions converging on the capital from every direction, a special “evacuation code” was revealed by the U.S. Embassy that would alert us when an evacuation was imminent.

The code, which would be played over a local U.S.-operated FM station would be this: A short announcement that said “The temperature is 105 degrees and rising,” followed by the first eight bars of the song “White Christmas.”

I can recall sitting one evening on the “Continental Shelf”— the open air veranda of the Continental Palace Hotel (now glassed in and renamed Chez Guido) that overlooks Tu Do and Le Loi streets—when several Japanese correspondents came rushing up to my table.

[image error] On “The Shelf” at the Continental Saigon

“How does ‘White Christmas’ go?” they inquired anxiously. I hummed it for them. For the next few days Japanese and others not familiar with the old Bing Crosby Christmas, standard could be seen standing on Saigon street corners humming the song to one another.

It was one of those droll little moments that punctuated the larger agony of the war’s last few hours.

But that humor was all but forgotten as April 29 dawned and several of us huddled in the lobby of the Continental Hotel listening to the portable UHF receiver an embassy official had given the American press corps.

Over the tiny receiver, we could hear radio traffic between the U.S. Marine contingent charged with guarding the hulking complex of U.S. Defense Attache Office buildings near Tan Son Nhut Air Base called “Pentagon East.”

The radio crackled with a running commentary from the Marine unit assigned to the building as one artillery shell after another slammed into Tan Son Nhut and the American compound.

“The back end of the gym’s been hit!” a Marine shouted into his radio.

“Roger that, Whiskey Joe,” came the monotone reply from the embassy which was appropriately code named “Dodge City.”

“My god, control, we’ve got two Marine KIAs.”

“Where are the bodies?” asked the voice from the embassy.

“They’re right here. What should we do with them?”

Then there was a tremendous explosion, amplified by the small radio.

“Jesus, the ammo dump’s just been hit! All hell has broken loose out here!”

A few hours later, Operation Frequent Wind (the name given to the final evacuation) was ordered by President Gerald Ford and I paid one last visit to my room in the Continental Palace. I had stockpiled a couple of cases of American beer, soft drinks and a variety of PX junk food, along with a small library of pirated books.

I found Mr. Phan, one of the elderly hotel concierge staffers who slept in a small room on the second floor, sweeping my room as if nothing had happened. For almost two months Mr. Phan, who always appeared in clean white cotton pants and jacket, had cleaned my room, kept me in fresh bottled water and occasionally sprayed my room in a futile gesture at ridding it of roaches and other critters of the night.

I pressed a wad of Vietnamese piastres into his hand. Then it occurred to me that the money would be worthless in a few hours—indeed, as far as Saigon’s ubiquitous money changers were concerned, piastres had been worthless for the past two weeks.

I had about $500 in cash and I peeled off $300 and gave it to him.

“Here, this may come in handy, Mr. Phan,” I said. “And please take anything you want from my room,” I suggested he might want to get out of central Saigon and find a safe place until the fighting and artillery barrage stopped.

He smiled, bowed ever so slightly and announced:  “Thank you, but not to worry, I am V.C!”

Many of us had suspected for some time that a lot of the “boys,” as Mr. Phan and his co-workers at the Continental were called, were probably Viet Cong or V.C. sympathizers. One reason many journalists stayed at the old hotel was that we had heard that the owner paid “war taxes” to the Viet Cong so it would not be targeted for attack.

As we shook hands he looked up at me and said: “Why do you not stay. Everything will be OK here. Much better if you stay here.”

I explained that the Tribune had ordered me to leave and that I had a baby daughter I hadn’t seen for almost four months.

He nodded. “Yes, yes, maybe better you go now.”

It was the last time I would ever see Phan, who was in his 70s at the time. When I returned in 1985 for the 10th anniversary of the war’s end, the staff at the Continental Palace informed me he had passed away in 1982.

[image error] Tu Do Street, Saigon, 1975

By 10 a.m., a small army of American, European and Asian correspondents lugging typewriters, sound equipment, suitcases and shoulder bags left the Continental in a silent single file. We had been told to make our way to a point six blocks away near the Saigon River.

As we trudged down Tu Do Street, ARVN soldiers and home guard units watched our ragtag formation menacingly. In the distance, we could hear the constant explosion of artillery and mortar shells as they slammed into the city’s suburbs.

“You leave now?” Nha, the home guard soldier, asked me as we slogged toward the river. His M-1 carbine was slung over his back and for the first time since I had known him and his small squad of home guard soldiers, he seemed genuinely terrified of what the next few hours would bring.

“Yes, we leave now,” I said sheepishly. Then, for some reason, I said: “I’m sorry . . . sorry for all of this.”

“Không sao, nó không quan trọng!” (Never mind, it doesn’t matter), Nha said. “You come back someday.” He was right, of course. I would return in 1985 and again in 1995 to witness the 10th and 20th anniversaries of the fall of Saigon.

Finally, we arrived at our evacuation point: a spot facing a statue of Vietnam’s 6th Century military hero Tran Hung Dao. A helipad had been created atop a building, but the South Vietnamese navy had placed a 50-caliber machine gun on the top of a building next door. It was decided the machine gun might be used against departing U.S. choppers. So that evacuation point was abandoned.

I made my way to the U.S. Embassy thinking that might be an option for catching a chopper out. It was surrounded by thousands of furious Vietnamese demanding to be let inside the embassy compound. There was no way I was going to push my way through that mob.

I trudged down Hai Ba Trung Street. The temperature was already close to 100 degrees and my shirt was soaked through with perspiration. Eventually, I made my way to an alternate evacuation point—the University of Maryland’s Saigon Education Center. It was padlocked. I waited. Finally, at 12:20 p.m. two olive drab buses arrived and I climbed aboard along with about 60 other members of the Saigon press corps.

The two buses then began an aimless voyage through Saigon. Every few blocks the buses would stop and the Marine assigned to our bus would ask for instructions on his two-way radio.

“What’s this, the Graham Martin sightseeing excursion?” someone asked.

The UHF radio in the Marine’s hand crackled. It was “Dodge City” again.

“We’re in trouble here!” a voice said. “There are 20,000 people at the front gate of the embassy. It’s getting hostile.”

“What should I do with my bus?” our Marine driver shouted into his radio.

“Looks like Tan Son Nhut’s your only option,” came the reply. “Don’t come here!”

[image error] Tan Son Nhut Airport Saigon, 1975

“Roger that,” the Marine said. Then, turning to the 60 people jammed on the bus, he said. “Looks like we’re going to the airport.” In the distance, we could hear the explosion of rockets and mortar shells slamming into Tan Son Nhut.

As the bus approached the main gate of the air base we could see black pillars of smoke rising from the runway. Then Vietnamese guards at the gate began firing their M-16s in our direction. We dove for the floor.

Our Marine escort, code-named “Wagonmaster,” yelled into his radio for instructions. “This looks bad. What should we do? What is the situation at MACV HQ?”

”It ain’t good,” the radio crackled. “We are taking lots of mortar and artillery fire. Bust through the gate if necessary and then drive like hell.” The radio crackled and as an afterthought, a voice said: “Good luck.”

I seriously considered getting off the bus and walking the 7 or 8 miles back to the city. Before I could, the driver moved the bus back some 100 yards from the gate.

“This is it,” he yelled. “Keep low. We’re busting through the gate!” He stomped on the accelerator and the bus lurched forward. As we bore down on the gate at about 60 mph, we expected the guards to start shooting. Instead, they inexplicably backed off and opened the gates seconds before the lumbering vehicle would have rammed through them.

Off to one side a downed Huey helicopter, one skid broken off, lay on its side with its motor running and its tail rotor still spinning.

We watched a Vietnamese C-119 transport plane somehow lift off from the cratered runway and we applauded the pilot’s skill. Our applause turned to horror seconds later when a heat-seeking missile streaked skyward, slammed into the transport and sent it plummeting toward what looked like the Cholon section of Saigon.

As we pulled up to the MACV HQ compound, a 122 mm rocket punched into the Air America terminal just across the road, showering us with debris.

[image error] MACV HQ, Tan Son Nhut 1975

I was in the back of the bus trying frantically to get the locked emergency rear door open when another artillery shell exploded a few hundred feet away, pelting the area with shrapnel and breaking several windows in the bus. By this point I was on my back kicking with all my strength at the door.

Finally, I managed to kick the door open. I slid down to the ground and waited for a few minutes using the bus as cover. Most of the press corps had already made it into the building. I took a deep breath, then began my sprint over some 50 feet of open ground to the DAO building. Another rocket slammed into the road a few yards behind me. I dove to the ground and flattened myself on the hot concrete. I could hear razor-sharp metal shrapnel slicing through the air behind me. A few seconds later I pulled myself up and scuttled like a crab toward the door.

Once inside we crouched along interior hallways and waited. A couple of hours went by. Several Marines handed out paper tags and told us to write our names and next of kin on them and attach them to our clothing.

“These are for you, not your luggage,” they said. I knew what they were. I had seen them before—attached to the bodies of battle casualties.

Outside a constant deluge of rockets, mortars and artillery shells rained on Tan Son Nhut and the DAO compound. I closed my eyes and actually managed a few minutes of sleep between explosions.

It was almost 6 p.m., some 14 hours since the final bombardment of Saigon had begun. I was exhausted. I was sure every ounce of adrenalin in my body was used up. I thought about the C-119 I had watched get knocked out the sky by a SAM-7 missile and began to wonder if I had made the right choice. Maybe I should stay. After all, during one of the Saturday briefings at the Viet Cong compound at Tan Son Nhut, which was established as part of the 1973 Peace Accords, Col. Ba had told me all correspondents would be treated as “guests” by the conquering North Vietnamese Army.

“We are not barbarians like the Khmer Rouge,” Col. Ba said, referring to the news of the carnage in Phnom Penh that was beginning to filter into Saigon. “Just remain in your hotel room and someone will come for you. Those who earn an honest living will be welcome.”

Of course, I had not remained in my hotel room. I was inside the DAO compound, more than 7 miles from the Continental Palace Hotel. How would I get back to the city center? Catch a ride on an NVA T-54 tank? Hardly.

The shelling outside intensified. The huge DAO building trembled as one artillery shell after another slammed the compound. I was on the verge of getting up and hoofing it back to central Saigon when a Marine captain walked into the corridor and bellowed:

“OK, this is it! We’re moving out! Di di mao…Go, go, go!”

We spilled out of the DAO building. Two Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion heavy helicopters were waiting on a tennis court about 300 feet away, their blades whooshing slowly in the hot sticky air. After what seemed an eternity I and about 80 others scrambled up the rear loading ramp hunkered on the floor and canvas bench seats. Seconds later the loadmaster raised the ramp and we lifted off.

[image error] Evacuation from “Pentagon East” April 29, 1975

We flew low at first, then the pilot put the helicopter into a steady climb. I stood up and looked down at Saigon over door gunner’s shoulder. The city looked bizarrely peaceful and idyllic with the Saigon River meandering through the city and toward the South China Sea some 50 miles away.

Forty minutes later we were landing on the deck of the USS Denver, a Landing Platform Dock about 35 miles off the coast of Vung Tau.

For the next several hours we watched one helicopter after another arrive. Some unauthorized South Vietnamese army helicopters were allowed to land and then were pushed over the side into the sea.

[image error] Pushing HUEY’s From the USS Denver into Ocean During Evacuation

Eventually, with the ship’s decks filled, Vietnamese pilots were no longer allowed to land, so they would fly their Hueys to within 100 yards of the ship, open the doors and jump into the sea along with their passengers. The chopper would remain in flight for a few moments and then pitch into the ocean-sometimes dangerously close to those swimming toward our ship.

At 4:58 a.m. April 30, Ambassador Martin closed down the embassy, destroyed its communications equipment and climbed aboard a helicopter on the embassy roof.

The helicopter pilot sent a message to the fleet: “Lady Ace Zero Nine, Code Two is aboard.” Lady Ace Zero Nine was the chopper’s own call sign; “Code Two” was the designation for an ambassador.

At 7:52 a.m., the last chopper lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy, carrying out the small detachment of Marines who had guarded the embassy compound and engaged terrified Vietnamese in a running floor-by-floor holding action throughout April 29 and early April 30.

As the last Huey lifted off, the pilot radioed the final official U.S. message from Saigon:  “Swift-Two-Two is airborne with 11 passengers. Ground security force is aboard.”

Then, the radio crackled again: “Bye, bye Vietnam,” a voice said. “Bye, bye for now.”

Aboard the USS Denver, several of us looked at one another in stunned silence. The longest war of the 20th Century was finally over. Our emotions ran the gamut: relief, guilt, anger, disgust, joy, sadness—depending on who you were and what country you were from.

“So this is what the light at the end of the tunnel looks like,” I said to no one in particular.

I then went below decks to write my final story of America’s war in Vietnam. Only it wasn’t.

I am still writing the final story 43 years later. You just read it.

 

(The link below is a special NBC report on the Fall of Saigon done several years ago. It is long but worth viewing for the context it provides)

http://digital.films.com/play/8MW33T

 

Join me Monday & Tuesday for my retrospective on the final 24 hours of Saigon

(NOTE: This Monday and Tuesday I invite you to join me as I relive the last 24 frantic hours in Saigon as it fell to Communist North Vietnamese troops on April 29-30, 1975–an event I covered for the Chicago Tribune in 1975. I hope you will join me) 

Forty-three years ago today I was in a place called Saigon as it fell to Communist North Vietnamese troops. It is a day I will never forget, mainly because I wasn’t sure if I would get out of Vietnam in one piece.

[image error] Ron Yates Covering Cambodia & Vietnam 1975

At the time, I was the Chicago Tribune’s Far Eastern Correspondent based in Tokyo and I had gone to South Vietnam and Cambodia to report on both countries two years after the spurious Paris Peace Accord was signed.

In my post tomorrow I will share with you my personal account of that harrowing, panic-filled 24-hour period between April 29-30, 1975 when a 10 year-long war that some have called America’s “lost crusade” came to a frantic and ignominious end.

(Continued tomorrow & Tuesday)

COMING SOON! “The Lost Years of Billy Battles” (Book 3 of the Finding Billy Battles Trilolgy)

Where in the world is Billy Battles?

As Book Three of the Finding Billy Battles trilogy begins we know where Billy is. He is in Chicago with his wife, the former Baroness Katharina von Schreiber living a sedate and comfortable life after years of adventure and tragedy. That changes with a single telephone call that yanks Billy and Katharina back into a life of havoc and peril.

Persuaded by a powerful old friend to go undercover for the U.S. government the two find themselves in Mexico during the height of the violent 1910-1920 revolution. There they encounter assorted German spies, Mexican revolutionaries, devious political operatives, and other malefactors. Caught in the middle of the 1914 American invasion of Veracruz, they must find a way out while keeping their real identities secret.

[image error]

 

Later on, disaster strikes. It is a tragedy Billy is all too familiar with and one that will send him plummeting into a chasm of despair and agony. Then, Billy vanishes leaving family and friends to wonder what happened to him. Where is he? Is he dead or alive? What provoked his disappearance? In Book 3 of the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy, those questions are answered, and the mystery behind Billy’s disappearance is ultimately revealed.

Look for The Lost Years of Billy Battles in May online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads and wherever fine books are sold.

 

Q & A with Novel PASTimes (Part 2)

I was recently interviewed online by NovelPASTimes, a blog for Historical Fiction Lovers. Here is Part Two.



What would you like readers to gain from reading your book(s)?

Because the Finding Billy Battles trilogy is historical fiction and is set in the 19th and 2oth Centuries, I would like readers to get a sense of the time and place of the story. I would like them to have an appreciation of the way people lived, how they thought, and how they dealt with both adversity and triumph in a very different era. Finally, I would like readers to finish my book and think to themselves: “Damn, I didn’t want that story to end!”

All historical fiction is, I think, a mixture of truth and story. Accuracy is beyond our reach since we have to imagine conversations and thoughts, but as novelists, we struggle to present an authentic, believable past whether or not our characters ever existed. When you talk about the Billy Battles novels being “faction,” do you have something more specific in mind?

That’s tricky. I call my work “Faction,” because it is both fact and fiction. Some of the events in the book–especially those dealing with real people, did happen. Was my character directly involved in them? No. However, members of my family were native Kansans, and some of the experiences I write about did happen. Of course, I have woven some of my own experiences into the storyline also. I think it is essential to weave as many of your own experiences as you can into the storyline. That gives the story a ring of truth or credibility if you will. Novelists ask readers to suspend belief when it comes to things their characters do, but if you are writing historical fiction especially, you must be faithful to the time and place in which the story takes place.

What caused you to make that shift away from journalism to a mix of fact and fiction?

It wasn’t a sudden shift. I always knew I wanted to write novels, but as a foreign correspondent I just never found the time. Then, in 1997 I left the Chicago Tribune to write a corporate biography of Japan’s Kikkoman Corp (the soy sauce maker which also happens to be Japan’s oldest continuously operating company dating back to 1630). When that was finished, I was offered a full, tenured professorship at the University of Illinois teaching journalism. A couple of years later I was made the Dean of the College of Media—so once again, no time to write my novels. Finally, in 2010, I left the university, moved to California and began my novel-writing career.

Thanks for joining us here on Favorite PASTimes. Do you have any final words for readers or writers?

 Yes!  For Readers : Please DON’T STOP READING! Those of us who love telling stories need you. And when you read a book, don’t be shy. Write a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, etc. and let us know what you liked and didn’t like about a book. I value the reviews I get from Amazon Verified Purchase customers more than I do from professional or editorial reviewers. After all, customers spent money on the book and that gives them the right to tell the author what they think.

For Writers: Please Keep Writing. The world needs good storytellers today more than ever. I know that many who write are frustrated by letters of rejection from agents and publishers. Don’t be discouraged. If you can’t get a book before the reading public going the traditional publishing route, consider self or indie publishing. Publish on Demand (POD) books are everywhere these days and so are e-books. Writers today don’t have to consider a rejection letter the last word in their aspiration to publish. You have options to reach readers that didn’t exist 10 or even five years ago.
[image error]

Having said that, I must be honest. Many self-published books are not well done. The writing may be poor quality; the covers are often inferior, and the proofreading and editing are shoddy. Frankly, some books should never have made it off the printing press or into an e-file. However, there are enough gems coming from self-published authors to offset the marginal efforts.

 My advice to beginners: Give yourself time to learn the craft of writing. How do you do that? Read, read, read. If you want to write well, read well. Learn from the best; imitate (and I don’t mean plagiarize). Listen to the words! You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on writing seminars, conferences, etc. Gifted writing can’t be taught. It must be learned. And we learn from doing it; from experience.

To be a good writer you need to be confident in your ability to use the tools of the craft: research, vocabulary, grammar, style, plot, pacing, and story. A confident writer is typically a good writer. We gain confidence by being successful in our work–no matter what work we do. We also learn from failure. Why was a book rejected 40 times? Why isn’t it selling on Amazon or Goodreads or Barnes and Noble? There must be a reason. Find out what it is and learn from it. Then go back to work and make the book better.




[image error]


Pearl S. Buck



And remember: Writing is a discipline that you can learn at any age. Unlike ballet or basketball or modeling, writing is not something that if you missed doing at 16, 18 or 20, you could never do again. You are NEVER too old to begin writing!

I recall interviewing Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck once. It was late fall, 1971, and at the time she was living in Vermont. We were talking on the phone, and suddenly she began describing her backyard and what she said was the first snow of the season.”You should see this, Ron. From my office window, I am watching a leisurely shower of white crystals floating, drifting, and landing softly onto a carpet of jade. I wish you could see it.”

“I do,” I said. “Thanks for showing me.”

I never forgot that conversation with the first American female Nobel laureate. She was 79 and still writing.

Finally, writing–as difficult as it is–should also be fun. When you turn a beautiful phrase or create a vivid scene, you should feel a little flutter in your heart, a shiver in your soul. If you do, that means you have struck an evocative chord with your writing. Nothing is more rewarding than that!  

Write On!

 

Q & A with Novel PASTimes (Part 1)

I was recently interviewed online by NovelPASTimes [http://www.novelpastimes.com], a blog for Historical Fiction Lovers.  Here is Part One.
 
Tell us a little about what you write.
I write both fiction and non-fiction. Currently, my books fall into the historical-fiction/action adventure categories. My previous books have been journalism textbooks, a corporate biography of Japan’s Kikkoman Corporation and a compilation of columns I wrote while covering Japan.
 
My writing for the past few years has been devoted to historical fiction. “Finding Billy Battles” was the first in a trilogy of novels about William Fitzroy Raglan Battles, his early days in 19th Century Kansas and his eventual journeys and adventures in the Far East, Latin America and Europe. Subsequently, I have added Books #2 & #3 to the series. Book #3 will be available and live on Amazon in late May.
 
Now that I have finished Book #3 in the trilogy, I plan to write a book about Iva Toguri, otherwise known as “Tokyo Rose.” This is a special project for me because I knew Iva very well and when I was a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune based in Tokyo in the 1970s, I wrote a series of stories about her that helped her receive a presidential pardon. Her conviction for treason in 1949 was based on perjured testimony by two men who confessed to me that they had been forced to lie at her trial. I won’t go into the story now, but suffice it to say it was one of worst miscarriages of justice in our history. The book will allow Iva to tell her story in her own words. 

After that, I will probably spend time writing my adventures as a foreign correspondent in Asia and Latin America.
 
Are you a full-time writer or do you hold a day job? 
Writing is my day job. I have been a full-time writer since graduating from the University of Kansas and joining the Chicago Tribune in 1969. I have written thousands of newspaper, magazine and opinion columns from more than 65 different countries. As a dean and professor at the University of Illinois, I wrote textbooks, newspaper columns, and articles in various magazines and journals.
[image error]
 
What is the biggest challenge/obstacle you face in protecting your writing time?
The biggest obstacle in protecting my writing time is Southern California. The weather here is almost always beautiful and sunny. The fact that I live in the Southern California wine country just north of San Diego doesn’t help either. The temptation to get out of the house, go to the beach or enjoy a long leisurely lunch at one of the nearby wineries is sometimes too great to ignore.
 
What historical time periods interest you the most and how have you immersed yourself in a particular period or epoch?
Growing up in rural Kansas I was always fascinated by the state’s 19th Century history. Kansas was a pivotal state before the Civil War because it entered the union as a free state and was populated–especially in the Northeast–by abolitionists. 
 
Kansas was a terminus for the Underground Railroad. After the Civil War, it became about as wild and violent as any state in the union. Cattle drives from Texas, wild cow towns, outlaws, legendary lawmen and fraudsters of every stripe gave the state a wicked reputation. At the same time, the 19th Century in America was a time of fantastic growth, invention, progress, and expansion. 
 
For some, such as Native Americans, this growth was not a pleasant experience, and in some cases, it was quite deadly. For others, the possibilities seemed limitless. Prosperity seemed restricted only by one’s determination and effort.
 
Introduce us briefly to the main characters in your most recent book.
William Fitzroy Raglan Battles  is the main character in the book. His father is killed during the Civil War, so he is reared by his mother, Hannelore, a second-generation German-American woman who has to be both mother and father to her only son. It is a tall order, but Billy grows up correctly and is seemingly on the right path. His mother, a hardy and resilient woman, makes a decent living as a dressmaker in Lawrence, Kansas. An ardent believer in the value of a good education, she insists that Billy attend the newly minted University of Kansas in Lawrence. She is a powerful influence in his life, as are several other people he meets along the way.
 
There is Luther Longley, an African-American former army scout who Billy and his mother meet at Ft. Dodge in 1866. He escorts them the 300 miles to Lawrence and winds up being a close friend to both Billy and his mother. There is Horace Hawes, publisher and Editor of the Lawrence Union newspaper who takes Billy with him to start a new paper in Dodge City. 
[image error]
 
There is Ben Minot, a typesetter and former Northern Army Sharpshooter, who still carries a mini ball in his body from the war and a load of antipathy toward The Confederacy. There is Signore DiFranco, the Italian political exile Billy meets in Dodge City. There is Mallie McNab, the girl Billy meets, falls in love with, marries and with whom he hopes to live out his life. There is Charley Higgins, Billy’s first cousin, who sometimes treads just south of the law, but who is also Billy’s most devoted compañero de armas.
 
Then there is the Bledsoe family– notably Nate Bledsoe, who blames Billy for the deaths of his mother and brother and who swears vengeance. Book one of the trilogy ends with Billy meeting the widow Katharina von Schreiber, a mysterious baroness who in Book #2 propels Billy into a series of misadventures and dubious situations.
 
What drew you to write this story?
I was intrigued with the idea of a 19th Century Kansas boy forced to deal with a string of tragedies and misadventures who eventually makes his way to the Far East in search of himself. How would he handle himself in such strange places as French Indochina, the Spanish-controlled Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.?
 
I spent most of my career as a foreign correspondent in Asia, and I often wondered what it would have been like to have been in that part of the world in the 19th Century. This book gives me (and my readers) an opportunity to find out.
 
What are you working on now?
I have just finished Book #3 of the trilogy–The Lost Years of Billy Battles. It picks up Billy’s life in 1914 in Chicago where he is working as an assistant managing editor for a newspaper and enjoying a rather sedate life. Then, one morning the telephone rings and Billy is suddenly thrust back into a life of peril and adventure in Mexico during its revolution, and as the world is on the verge of World War I. In places like Veracruz, Billy comes into conflict with German spies and a passel of shady characters. Later he meets up with some old friends from his days in Kansas, joins the U.S. Army’s hunt for Pancho Villa, and eventually winds up back in French Indochina and the Philippines. Events conspire to embroil him in a variety of disputes, conflicts, and struggles–events with which a Kansas sand cutter is hardly equipped to deal. How will he do? You will have to read Book #3 to find out!
 
A reader once asked me this question, and I thought it was a good one. Is there ever a time when you feel like your work is truly finished and complete?
I don’t know if that ever happens. I do know that at some point, YOU MUST LET IT GO! Writing a book is a bit like rearing a child. Eventually, after you have imbued the child with as much of your worldly experience and wisdom as he or she can grasp and absorb you have to allow your creation to encounter the world. It’s the same with books. 
 
Writers can fiddle with plots, characters, endings, and beginnings ad nauseam and never feel the book is ever finished. My advice. JUST FINISH THE DAMNED BOOK! Get over it and get the book out into the public domain. Readers will let you know if you have finished the book–and if they like it.
 
If you could be a character from your favorite historical novel, who would you be?
Woodrow Call from Lonesome Dove OR John Blackthorne from Shogun.
[image error]
 
What is the most significant misconception the general public has about authors?
I don’t know if those who do not write for a living understand just how difficult writing is. Many believe that writers work from inspiration and that the words merely leap onto the page (or into the computer). In fact, while inspiration is a beautiful thing, it is not what makes a good writer or book. Writing requires significant research, whether fiction or non-fiction. It needs a facility for organization and a keen sense of plot, pacing, and story. 
 
I don’t believe writers are “born.” They evolve as a result of significant experience in the craft. Finally, not all writers are brooding, intractable alcoholics or unbearable misanthropes who feel their creations contain irrevocable and definitive truths that most of humanity is too stupid to comprehend. In fact, most successful writers are excellent storytellers, and they like nothing more than to have their stories read by as many people as possible–even if those stories don’t always possess immutable truths. 
 
Ernest Hemingway once said: “Hell, there’s nothing hard about writing. You just sit at your typewriter and bleed.” 

END OF PART ONE. READ PART TWO TOMORROW  

 

Judging America’s past by 21st century standards

I am going to get a little political today. So bear with me.

We are living at a time when it is fashionable to vilify the founders of our nation because a handful of myopic and narrow-minded chuckleheads have resolved to apply 21st-century values to the 18th and 19th centuries.

I contend, however, that we need to take a step back and scrutinize people like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson through lenses that are not tainted by today’s intolerant and narcissistic rhetoric. To view Jefferson as anything less than an intellectual titan is ridiculous.

As John Kennedy remarked during a White House dinner for an elite gathering of the brightest minds in the nation, “This is perhaps an assembly of the greatest intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House, with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

It is manifestly ludicrous for gaggles of ignorant, history-challenged dunderheads—some of whom hold public office or who appear on today’s pervasive cable television shows —to set themselves up as omniscient judges of appropriate comportment when looking back at more than 250 years of American history.

Did Thomas Jefferson own slaves? Yes. Did he have an affair with one of them and father a child with her? Yes.

Does that mean that the extraordinarily brilliant man who wrote the Declaration of Independence; who was our first Secretary of State; who founded the University of Virginia; who served as our third President; and who negotiated the Louisiana Purchase and doubled the size of our country, should have his name and likeness scrubbed from history in an intolerant political purge more appropriate to totalitarian regimes like North Korea, China, or the former Soviet Union?

[image error] Thomas Jefferson 

I grant you that by any measure the very existence of slavery in an era when Americans were engaged in a revolution and fighting for freedom from oppression remains a paradox. Most of us understand that. Does that mean that in the 21st century we condone it? Hardly.

Yet Democratic parties in four states have recently removed the names of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson from their annual fundraising dinners. Democratic parties in five other states are considering a similar step.

Critics of these two men argue that any party that seeks to identify itself with equality and diversity should not be yoked to the slave-holding Jefferson or the Native American-persecuting Jackson.

Those who seek to expel Jefferson and Jackson from the public discourse believe historical figures should be held to the same standards of conduct we employ today. How myopic and imprudent is that?

They regard slavery and the forced relocation of indigenous peoples as so monstrous and odious that anyone responsible for them, regardless of the era in which they lived, should be scorned and condemned and have their statues and other memorials ripped down from public spaces.

Here is a little lesson for today’s faultless arbiters of bygone appositeness: Like it or not, slavery was as much a part of the flawed fabric of early America as the horrendous exploitation of child labor or the frenzied and foolhardy persecution and murder of “witches” in New England.

I suggest, therefore, that there is much to be gained from maintaining a balanced sense of respect and gratitude for the accomplishments of our imperfect ancestors. Despite their shortcomings, men such as Jefferson and Jackson deserve our unremitting respect. Their achievements are impossible for any rational person to ignore.

Jackson, for instance, founded the precursor of today’s Democratic Party. He was a military hero who served two terms as the nation’s seventh president. He dismantled the national bank, overcame an effort by South Carolina to nullify federal law, secured Florida from the Spanish, and paid off the national debt.

[image error] Andrew Jackson

Yes, Jackson was also a slave owner, and he forced Indian tribes from their lands, thereby precipitating the pitiless “trail of tears.”

But like all of us, Jefferson, Jackson, and our other forefathers were human beings infused with the faults, imperfections, and deficiencies that all human beings possess. It is simple for the holier than thou crowd of today to look back and scorn the behavior and standards of conduct that were commonplace in our imperfect history. They are our nation’s most vociferous Monday-morning quarterbacks, and they are adept at second-guessing every indiscretion, every blunder in our history.

What we are witnessing today is an implicit and undeniable public stoning of men and women from the past who are not here to defend themselves or their actions. They have been dragged into the public square and condemned by sycophants of the PC thought police who have taken it upon themselves to cleanse American history of its imperfections.

Of course, there is danger in a methodology that says we must wipe away the sins of our past. As the philosopher and novelist George Santayana once said:  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I would also remind those pretentious paragons of righteousness of this rebuke by Jesus Christ: “Let him who is without sin among you, be the first to cast a stone.”

 

 

Been There, Going Again Blog Tour

Today, ForeignCorrespondent is pleased to host Day 3 of Stephen Geez’s Been There, Going Again Blog Tour. Stephen is a fine writer and author as you will see when you read his short essay below. It is taken from his book Been There, Noted That: Essays in Tribute to Life, which has just been re-issued and is available on  Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. I highly recommend that you check out Stephen’s book and don’t forget to read the essay that follows!

Greetings, stalwarts! Welcome to the third stop on my 4WillsPublishing Blog Tour celebrating the re-issue of my memoir-shorts, Been There, Noted That: Essays in Tribute to Life. It has an updated cover, new graphics, new book trailer, and now a first-ever jacketed hardcover edition. The book’s ruminations range from light and humorous to heartbreakingly poignant, but all spring from my own experiences. Thanks for visiting, trying this sample, and commenting!

Something I Need[image error]

Essay by Stephen Geez

It was something I just needed to have.

Barely twelve at the time, I had just embarked on the whole junior-high experience in an era of long-long hair and hippie regalia: bell bottoms, wide belts with oversized buckles, message t-shirts, fringed vests, medallions, floppy hats, head bands, sandals and earth shoes, rock-band patches, roach-clip necklaces, beaded bracelets (guys, too), and gaudy finger rings featuring new-age symbols. (Okay, mood rings colored our world briefly, too—until we came to our senses.)

On a weekend when Uncle Bob and Aunt Doris drove up to stay with us a few days, I rode my bike to Kmart to look for rings akin to the styles several of the cooler guys had been sporting at school. I did find a nice selection, metallic designs fastened to variously shaped wood backings, but they proved a bit costly for someone my age, even with my short list of obligations not yet including mortgage payments, groceries, and car insurance. I saw no point in shopping around since Kmart would have as good a deal as anyone, this being an era of competition by price, quality, and brands as opposed to predatory loss-leading, exclusive contracting, and importing from some communist powerhouse building its economy largely on theft of technology and intellectual property rights.

So I gave up on the notion of sporting my own fingerware until I saw my friend Dave hanging out at the playground near his house. He showed me a boxful of the same kind of rings, several different styles, priced to move well below retail. Seems he had a secret wholesale source he declined to reveal. Well, did I want one or not?

Of course, I did.

Intent on joining the ranks of the cool-fingered, pleased with providence for the opportunity to afford some stylin’ gear, I went home to gather my funds. Remember, a ring was something I just needed to have.

Uncle Bob noticed I’d undertaken a mission, and that piqued his curiosity.

One of Bob’s many characteristics I still recall fondly more than twenty-five years since losing him is that he paid attention. He always showed interest, asked questions, offered opinions, and respected whatever outlandish nonsense I felt compelled to say. He quickly grew so fascinated by the notion of symbol rings for guys that he urged me into his Caddie for a trip to Kmart to see them for himself.

He did seem impressed by the rings, though now it seems the only thing he could like about such silly contrivances would be my interest in them.

He made me an offer on the spot: Pick any one I liked, and he would buy it for me, my only obligation being to wash his Caddie later that day. Yes, I could wear my ring home.

I would have come out way ahead on that deal, the ring costing more than a car wash would be worth, especially since his car didn’t even need a wash. I passed, though—graciously, gratefully. I couldn’t see him spending so much of his hard-earned cash doing me a favor when I had an easier deal and a better way to get a ring on my own.

However, Bob had figured out something I was still missing, and he didn’t want to let it go.

He wondered if Dave’s selection included every design. Well, no, but he did have two I liked. Bob wondered if Kmart’s selection included any I liked even better than Dave’s. Well . . . sure. Dave didn’t have the one with the wood backing cut into the shape of a star. Still, for the price, Dave did offer some I liked plenty.

Satisfied, Bob herded me toward the exit. Then during the drive home, he made me another offer: If I would refuse to settle for any less than the star-backed ring, he would wait until I checked to see if Dave could get it for me. If Dave couldn’t, Bob would buy it himself from Kmart and sell it to me for Dave’s price, no car-wash required. Well, okay, sure. After all, it was something I just needed to have.

Dave came by my house that afternoon with the box of rings. Disappointed I’d settled on a different design, he pitched me for several minutes, even offering to lower the price on my alternate choice. Finally, he relented and agreed to bring me the star one in a day or two.

And that’s when I figured out his supply chain.

Okay, it didn’t dawn on me as fast as Bob might have hoped, but it’s a sure bet he knew I would figure it out eventually.

Now, much as I’d like to say my first impulse was to do the right thing, I can’t. I fooled myself into thinking Dave somehow deserved the business. Look at all the effort he’d put into the sale, even offering in-home shopping and custom procurement.

Well, Bob didn’t see it that way. Not even close.

I argued that I wasn’t the one shoplifting and that Dave was doing it with or without my purchase anyway.

The whole doing-it-anyway notion didn’t fly at all. Dave didn’t have a boxful of rings because he wanted them for himself. He acquired those rings with the intention of selling them for cash, an illicit business model that works only if people are willing to buy. Bob didn’t see much difference between stealing and having someone else steal for me. Finally, it made sense to me that there really is no difference between doing wrong and being the reason someone else does wrong.

Actually, Bob pointed out, the latter is even worse. You buy stolen goods, you’re a thief. You buy them from a friend, you’re a thief and a bad friend.

Seriously: What kind of person looks the other way when a friend is messing up? What kind of person encourages a friend to shoplift? What kind of person pays a friend to steal?

Okay, it took me twelve-odd years to come to that realization. Even so, I find it galling to think how many adults never figure it out. Just this morning I listened to a guy explaining why it’s okay to purchase bootlegs of pirated movies from his friend, then sell them over the internet. I’d like to see him run that one by Uncle Bob.

Too many decades have passed since the ring episode, but I do like to think I’ve spent those years encouraging my friends to do right, to look out for themselves, to find honor in all of us looking out for each other.

I did call Dave back right away and cancel my order, then strongly suggested he find a better hustle. He wound up getting busted a few weeks later, probably snagging a ring for some guy who grew up to buy bootlegs of pirated videos for selling over the internet.

Although my enthusiasm for sporting the star-backed ring had waned, Bob insisted on taking me back to Kmart and buying it for me, no obligation. I volunteered to wash his car anyway, and not because it needed a scrub . . .

It was something I just needed to do.

*     *     *

[image error]

Author Bio: Writer, editor, publisher, TV producer, music composer, entrepreneur and more, Stephen Geez has long honed a keen eye for the foibles of human nature. His writing since taking undergrad and grad degrees at Michigan includes novels and short stories in various genres from literary to mystical adventure, non-fiction covering academic to how-to, commercial arts spanning corporate training to consumer advertising, and web-based content including the collections at StephenGeez.com and GeezWriter.com. Easing gingerly into his second half-century, he can’t hop, skip, or jump like the old days, but he never stops noticing and taking notes.

 

Trailer URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw_mo5wtTMI

 

Amazon URL: https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Noted-That-Observations/dp/1947867148/ref=sr_1_1_twi_har_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1521337201&sr=8-1&keywords=been+there%2C+noted+that

 

Barnes & Noble URL: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/been-there-noted-that-stephen-geez/1113808078?ean=9781947867147

 

Prizes up for grabs…   (Visit the 4WillsPublishing website for more details!)

*For each day: 1 hardcover edition of Been There, Note That.

*During the entire tour:$25 Amazon card.

 

This tour sponsored by 4WillsPublishing.wordpress.com .

 

 

Flashman–Victorian England’s foremost rotter would have made a great foreign correspondent

Today I am re-posting a column that appeared a while back in The Economist. Written by an unnamed foreign correspondent, it takes a sardonic and self-effacing view of foreign correspondents by suggesting that Victorian England’s foremost rotter would have made a great journalist. As with all satire, there may be more truth here than we hacks care to admit. Enjoy. (Ron Yates)

From The Economist, Dec 24, 2016

REBELS had captured the dam that supplied electricity to Kinshasa and turned off the lights in the Congolese capital. Now they were marching on the city. Panic reigned. Pro-government thugs were going around lynching suspected rebel spies. Some they hacked to death. One they tossed off a bridge and shot as he bobbed in the river.

A city under siege, full of power-drunk kids with Kalashnikovs, is no place to be. Your correspondent was there and feeling frightened. Which reminded him of one of the great cowards of English literature. He asked himself: in this situation, what would Flashman do?

For readers who have not yet met him, Flashman was the villain of “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”, a pious novel about life at a British boarding school published in 1857. The author, Thomas Hughes, portrayed him as a bully who roasted small boys over open fires but ran away sniveling from anyone bigger than him.

A century later, a Scottish journalist called George MacDonald Fraser wondered what happened to Flashman after he was expelled from school. He answered his own question with a series of wickedly comical historical novels. In Fraser’s telling, the adult Flashman was every bit as horrible as the schoolboy, but through sheer luck and sleazy charm became one of the most decorated heroes of the Victorian era: Brigadier-General Sir Harry Flashman, VC, KCB, Legion of Honour, San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth (4th class), etc.

His career took off when, having joined the army because the uniform attracted women, Flashman found himself besieged in a fort in Afghanistan. He feigned sickness to avoid fighting. When all the other defenders were killed or wounded, he grabbed the British flag and, pleading for mercy, offered it to the Afghan warriors surging over the walls.

Just then a big explosion marked the arrival of a British relief force. Flashman was found unconscious, draped in the flag and surrounded by dead Afghans. Everyone assumed he was defending the colours, not surrendering them, and he won the first of many medals.

Morally, it would be hard to find a worse role model. Over the course of 12 books, Flashman bullied underlings, betrayed friends, cheated on his wife Elspeth and stabbed in the back anyone who blocked his escape route. Yet there is much that this fictional Victorian rotter can teach modern reporters. Though he was leery of journalists (“tricky villains, especially if they work for the Times”), he would have made an outstanding one.

Flashman’s first instinct was for self-preservation. This is a useful (and underrated) trait for journalists. Had he been stuck in Kinshasa in August 1998, Flashman would have headed for the best-guarded hotel and hung out in the bar by the swimming pool. That is what your correspondent did, and it proved an excellent policy. The beer was refreshing, the brochettes de boeuf delicious and the conversation highly informative. All the power brokers, spies, moneymen and diplomats passed through. By listening to them, your correspondent gleaned a fuller picture of what was going on than if he had ventured out to the front line, which would have involved a lot of hiding in ditches and trying unsuccessfully to figure out who was shooting at whom.

[image error]

Hang back from the shooting, and you often get a better view. During the Crimean war of 1853-6 Flashman used all his wiles to hang back, describing the campaign with colour and precision from safe hilltops. Unfortunately for him, he was then caught up in the most foolhardy maneuver of the entire war.

His horse bolted towards the Russian cannons, causing Flashman unwillingly to race out ahead of the Charge of the Light Brigade. British newspapers interpreted this as “Flash Harry” up to his usual heroics.

Your correspondent has never galloped into a Valley of Death, but he has occasionally blundered into sticky situations. Once during the civil war in the Ivory Coast, he ran into a rebel roadblock—a heap of branches and a broken fridge with a cow’s skull on top. The youngsters manning it were stripped to the waist, armed with rocket-propelled grenade-launchers and drunk at 10.30 in the morning.

Flashman, faced with superior firepower in unsteady hands, would have smiled, made himself pleasant to his captors and tried to buy time. That is what your correspondent did, swigging Kou Tou Kou (a fiery spirit distilled from palm wine) out of a shared plastic jerry can. Eventually, he was rescued by a French army officer, who persuaded the rebels that journalists are not spies.

Modern reporters use all sorts of methods to stay safe. They hire fixers. They go on “hostile environments” courses. They send back a barrage of WhatsApp messages describing where they are. None of this is as effective as Flashman’s nose for danger and intense desire to avoid it. Nor can any course teach his genius for getting out of it. Which is probably just as well: throwing one’s lover off the back of a sled to lighten its load and escape pursuing Cossacks is hardly cricket.

Flashman also immersed himself in the local culture. He picked up foreign languages absurdly quickly. By the end of a long career, he was fluent in nine and could rub along in another dozen. He never learned much in a classroom—Latin and Greek bored him senseless. Rather, he learned by listening to native speakers and catching the rhythm and feel of their dialect.

Usually, he did this in bed. Tall, handsome and effusively whiskered, Flashman was successful with women from a wide variety of cultures. Not all ended up hating him. On one occasion, to pass the time in a dungeon in Gwalior in India, he tried to count his conquests and arrived at a figure of 478. That was in 1857 when he was only 35; he lived to 93.

Speaking multiple languages often saved his skin. Locked up during the Second Opium War, he was the only British prisoner who understood that their Chinese jailer planned to execute one of them. Asked to translate, he lied that the jailer planned to send one of them with a message to the British and French forces besieging the town. Eager for freedom, a soldier who was blackmailing Flashman pushed to the front—and was conveniently beheaded.

In some ways being a scoundrel made Flashman a better reporter

A good foreign correspondent networks with powerful people, the better to understand the motives behind important policies. Flashman rubbed shoulders with Wellington, Lincoln, and Bismarck (though Bismarck loathed him and tried to have him killed). His accounts add fistfuls of spice to the historical record.

Indeed, the Flashman Papers can be useful background reading during reporting trips. It was thanks to Flashman that your correspondent understood, when visiting the Summer Palace in Beijing, the scale, and scandal of its destruction by British troops in 1860. When covering a flood in Madagascar, he could find no better short history of the island than Flashman’s Malagasy adventures. And Flashman would have chuckled to learn that lotharios are now known there as bananes flambés, after a popular dessert.

The Flashman Papers purport to be written by Flashman himself—the secret, honest memoir of a garlanded rogue, discovered in a Leicestershire saleroom in 1965 and “edited” by Fraser, with helpful historical footnotes. The books are so well researched that, to naïve readers, they can appear genuine. When “Flashman” was first published in America, about a third of the 40-odd reviewers took it at face value. One called it “the most important discovery since the Boswell papers”. Fraser laughed till it hurt.

Strenuous research (Fraser was a keen amateur historian) and dollops of first-hand observation (he was an energetic traveler, too) are the raw materials of great journalism. To this Fraser added a crackling prose style and a gift for storytelling. As an observer, Flashman was often caustic but never blinded by the pieties of his age. He believed neither in the civilizing mission of the British Empire nor in the myth of the noble savage. So whether he was observing Englishmen, Sikhs or Zulus, he recognized fools, heroes, and charlatans for what they were.

In some ways being a scoundrel made Flashman a better reporter. Many modern correspondents tend to preach. This quickly becomes tedious. Journalists who profess outrage at every minor politician’s off-colour remark soon run out of words to describe real outrages.

Flashman did not have this problem. He was callous and made no effort to pretend otherwise. This made his prose more convincing, for he let the facts speak for themselves. On the rare occasions when he was moved to make a moral judgment, the effect is electrifying. One such instance occurred when he was press-ganged onto a slave ship, where he saw Africans branded, chained and crammed below decks.

“The crying and moaning and whimpering blended into a miserable anthem that I’ll never forget, with the clanking of the chains and the rustle of hundreds of incessantly stirring bodies, and the horrible smell of musk and foulness and burned flesh. My stomach doesn’t turn easy, but I was sickened…when you’ve looked into the hold of a new-laden slaver for the first time, you know what hell is like.”

He admitted that, if someone had approached him in his London club and offered him £20,000 to authorize a shipment of slaves, he would have taken the money. Out of sight, out of mind: this was also the attitude of many of his respectable contemporaries to buying slave-made sugar or cotton. Fraser did not need to remind readers that Flashman—a sociopath—was in this respect little worse than millions of 19th-century British tea-drinkers.

Laptop, flak jacket, condoms

Being a foreign correspondent is the most enjoyable job there is. The men and women who are lucky enough to do it today travel the world, meet new people, sample exotic new dishes and grapple with new ideas. Even when it is uncomfortable, it can be exciting. To make the most of a posting, journalists must be open to new experiences and skilled at seeking them out. It helps to have a fat expense account.

Flashman sometimes had no money at all, but made up for it with resourcefulness. When fleeing from angry gun-toting slave-owners in New Orleans, he crept into the French Quarter and inveigled his way into a luxurious brothel by seducing the madam, who fell in love with him and asked her butler to ply him with fine wine and Cajun delicacies.

Your correspondent had a more austere time in the Big Easy in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina. At one point he too had to beat a tactical retreat from an angry gun-toting homeowner. Alas, with all the hotels in town closed by floodwater, the only place to sleep was in a cramped, sweaty caravan with half a dozen other hacks, some of whom snored.

Whenever your correspondent visits a place where the ultimate cad once trod—Harper’s Ferry, Isandlwana, even west London—the relevant passage from the Flashman Papers comes easily to mind. Such memorability sets a standard that journalists rarely match. Most of his own work, he knows, is written in haste and soon forgotten.

As he writes this, he is about to head for Afghanistan, where Flashman earned his first laurels. In his luggage will be the first “Flashman” on his iPad. And at the first whiff of danger, he will bolt.

This article appeared in the Christmas Specials section of the print edition of The Economist under the headline “The cad as correspondent.”

 

ALL ABOUT THE #RRBC SPONSORS BLOG HOP!

Today, ForeignCorrespondent is pleased to participate in the Rave Reviews Book Club Sponsors Blog Hop in support of author Jan Sikes, and her book “Til’ Death Do Us Part.” Read on. 

[image error]

Welcome to the first ever ALL ABOUT THE SPONSORS BLOG HOP!  These kind members of the RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB (RRBC) donated their support during the 2017 conference, in the way of gift card and Kindle e-book donations for our Gift Basket Raffle. They supported us, and now we are showing our support of them by pushing their book(s).  
 
We ask that you pick up a copy of the title listed and after reading it, leave a review.  There are several books on tour today, so please visit the  HOP’S main page  to follow along.  
 
Also, for every comment that you leave along this tour, including on the  HOP’S main page , your name will be entered into a drawing for an Amazon gift card to be awarded at the end of the tour!

Book:

​ TIL’ DEATH DO US PART
​
Blurb: 

Veteran Texas musician, Luke Stone, has cheated death more times then he cares to remember. He’s been everything from a simple farm boy to a rowdy roughneck, a singing star to a convict and finally a husband and father whose goals consisted of building a home and raising a family…which he did.

Now, with a chance for a second music career, he knows the sand in his hourglass is running thin. His anchor in life and true love, Darlina, stands at his side determined to help make the dream a reality. But, his aging body is sabotaging every effort, and the only thing that keeps him going is sheer willpower and the love he has for Darlina.

When faced with being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, Luke draws on every resource to continue to function and contribute to their home and society.

This is a story of inspiration, endurance and most of all undying love. When Luke and Darlina face life-altering situations that would destroy a lesser man and woman, they draw on each other’s strength and determination to face them.

Will fate allow Luke to sing his last song?

Click here for more about Author:  JAN SIKES

This blog hop sponsored by 4WillsPublishing