This was in one of the most crowded slums in the Saigon outskirts, and the glimpse of this man, who was the wrong size for the place—his ungainliness emphasizing his height over all the others—made me inquire about him later. Dial told me he was probably a deserter, one of about two hundred who remain in the country, mainly in the Saigon area. Some are heroin addicts, some work at legitimate jobs and have Vietnamese wives, and some are thugs—much of the breaking and entering in Saigon is attributable to the criminally versatile deserters: they know what to take at the PX; they can steal cars
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