Eyewitness (35 page)

How could I get out? Down the stairs and back out through the steel gate? No way. It was like making a decision not to attend your own wedding. Jim would just have to cover this on his own, at least until daylight. Gun-fire had hit cars in the grounds of the compound and I soon began to worry whether we were safe where we were. Even if the Viet Cong had no intention of entering this compound, those outside might be forced in, make a rush up the stairs and break into the flats for hostages. So I locked the plywood-and-cardboard front door and the bedroom door and the bathroom door, and the three of us sat on the floor between the bath and the toilet. This was to protect us from rockets or mortar explosions, although I knew the Viet Cong could get straight in if they wanted.

The flatmate was still upset. It wasn’t so much the gun-fire outside that worried her, she said, but the exploding rockets. I didn’t say anything, but the rockets only meant there were Viet Cong as far as 15 kilometres away. The gun-fire meant heavily armed men downstairs who could easily end up in this bathroom with us before the night was over … particularly as I had left the steel gate invitingly ajar.

My girlfriend was probably the least concerned: the main thing troubling her was that I looked like winning the argument about how the war was going, and in a rather convincing way. She sat with elbow on toilet seat and condemned the British Embassy people who had obviously not known what they’d been talking about.

We sat on the floor for the next few hours and talked and worried and tried to cheer each other up, but for most of the time we listened to the sounds of battle all over the city. A claymore mine blew up the Philippine ambassador’s house next door, a rocket exploded far away, bursts of gun-fire now very close, again further away. The fighting didn’t cease for a moment. As there was no way I could make it to the office in the dark, I tried to convince myself that Jim would realise it was impossible and not be cursing me for not coming.

When the fighting seemed to die down a bit at first light, I borrowed the keys to the Mini and crept down the stairs. I was worried that the first thing the Americans opposite would do when I gently pulled open the gate to drive the car out would be to open fire. Nervously I poked my head around the gate, which now had holes in it and, in order to impress upon them that I was not a Viet Cong, I held my long fairish hair out on both sides as far above my head as I could pull it in a part hands-up position, waved, and then gave them the thumbs-up sign. They were only across the road but they made no sign back. They just sat behind their rifles. To the right on my side of the road in the gutter were three dead Vietnamese in old workers’ shirts and shorts. They seemed to carry no equipment – something I’d noticed before about killed Viet Cong – not even ammunition. One of them was half out of a manhole.

I had to assume that the lack of fire meant I was OK. Getting into a civilian car and heading for the city centre in the midst of panic was not a good idea, I learned later, because the Viet Cong had launched their offensive in civilian cars. They’d done this to catch the Americans by surprise because there were always a few people who broke the curfew, particularly during a truce. I started the engine and headed for the office. The first thing I noticed was that I was the only one out driving on the normally crowded roads; but most worrying of all was that the guards who always sat in the little guard-boxes outside important buildings on the way were all absent.

It seemed everyone had melted away, and I began to realise the magnitude of what was happening. My imagination started up quickly. Would I drive around a corner and run into a battalion of Viet Cong – me with only a few days to go in Vietnam? As I approached the Presidential Palace, which I had to pass to reach the office from this direction, I came upon barbed-wire road blocks, Americans behind them with flak jackets and rifles pointed upwards from the waist, a sure sign that the safety catches were off.

Immediately I jumped out of the car so they could see who I was. ‘The VC are in town,’ they told me. ‘Get out.’ I tried a side-street and was amazed to find they hadn’t blocked that one too. Arriving outside the Reuter office, I knew I had now to face the most difficult task so far that day: to explain to Jim why I’d left him, on this of all nights, with no help. He was bound to go crook – and I couldn’t blame him.

He didn’t see me at first as I opened the grenade door which, for once, was closed: he was sitting well back in the office typing furiously. He looked up without a hint of recognition, as if I weren’t a colleague. I was hoping he would say ‘Is that you Hugh?’ but he just looked. ‘Listen Jim,’ I said, ‘there was just no way I could get here. I was pinned down all night at the compound.’

‘It’s been terrible Hugh,’ Jim said at last, and I realised more than ever what was upon us. Pringle was tired, exhilarated by the story, and also, if it were possible, scared. He had seen the Viet Cong running past the office as they launched their attacks on the palace and the American Embassy, both one short block either side of our office. He had seen the bullets bouncing off the footpath outside. He had had to telex the stories himself because the Vietnamese telex-operator in the office that night wouldn’t come out from under the stairs. And, to top it all, I had not been there during this night of need. ‘Get down to the American Embassy Hugh. The Viet Cong have got it,’ he said, and I headed for the door, pleased to be escaping but half scared at what might happen next. Pringle relented as I reached the grenade door, ‘Watch the sniper across the road Hugh.’ ‘This is a good way to start work on a Wednesday morning,’ I muttered, and set off out of the office the short distance to the besieged embassy.

I cut through the park opposite Reuters to get to the right side of the road. I could have been off for a stroll on a warm sunny morning under a clear blue sky, except for the echoing explosions and bursts of gun-fire. When I rounded the old red-brick cathedral the street outside the embassy looked like a movie set. There was an outdated black Citroen parked right outside with rows of bullet holes running in short bursts diagonally up the sides like in an Eliot Ness production; a Vietnamese was slumped at the wheel, dead. There was another shotup car further down the road and also an American military police jeep, its glass shattered by bullets. In the side of the high white masonry wall that surrounded the six-storey embassy building, a small hole had been blown as an easy entry into the fortress, hitherto believed impregnable.

There was no sign of the Vietnamese guards – their small sentryboxes outside were deserted. Opposite the embassy the street was lined with large trees – behind every one of which there was an American. Many were in pyjamas, sometimes blue flannelette pyjamas, which stuck out untidily from under flak jackets. Their wearers were aiming M-16s at their own embassy. The white front of the building was chopped up in three places where it had been hit by some sort of projectile.

Except for the sniper who was thought to be in a partially built building away to my right, being on the embassy side of the road was the safest place to be: all the buildings either had high brick walls or were built right on the footpath so anyone in the embassy couldn’t hit this position. And the American troops lining the road on the other side, including those lying under shot-up cars, would presumably stop anyone from coming out of the grounds to fire.

I crept down along the fence past MPs on the pavement reloading their rifles from tins of bullets. Nearby two of them lay dead, face down on the road. They had been shot when stopped by a Vietnamese who turned out to be a Viet Cong.

Despite all the soldiers and guns it was now very quiet in this street, as if the movie projectionist had turned off the sound. I wasn’t sure how far to go but I had to get as close as possible, absorb what was going on, and race back to the office and write a story. Against my wall right next to the embassy driveway a cluster of Americans were peeping around the corner, rifles raised from the elbow and held ready to fire. One of them turned to me and told me to get out of the area because there were Viet Cong everywhere, and snipers, and mines. A couple of officers I spoke to told me the Viet Cong were in the embassy building itself, though they didn’t know how many.

The Viet Cong had surprised the guards by arriving in civilian cars. A soldier told me that a Viet Cong had got the two MPs by stopping them after the curfew and asking for a smoke. I was up against the wall staring straight ahead at the bullet-riddled Citroen as sporadic firing again started from both sides.

One of the group of US soldiers I was with near the entrance, the biggest of them, picked up an M-60 30-calibre machine-gun and, firing from the hip, dashed through the entrance saying, ‘I’m going in to get those mother-fuckers.’ But he made it only two metres into the embassy grounds. After he’d fallen I could still see his boots on my side of the entrance – but I didn’t look around the post. Concentrated firing did not break out because the Americans had no targets to shoot at. Ironically, their embassy was too well set up as a fortress to be easily recaptured. No-one knew where the four Vietnamese national policemen were who were supposed to be guarding the building, but two of the three marine guards had been wounded and they had retreated to the top floor, fighting as they went.

More US soldiers fought their way in and soon dragged the dead fellow out by the ankles. For an hour he lay on the pavement while fighting went on around him. The Viet Cong were fighting on American soil, at the embassy, for the first time in the war. MPs told the reporters near the gate to clear out. ‘There are mines all around here,’ one said. The soldier said the Viet Cong were holding the first five floors of the building.

I crept back to the office, keeping close to the wall, to start helping Pringle compete with the other news organisations: the Viet Cong were in the American Embassy; the Americans were behind every tree fighting to get their fortress back; there were still some Americans alive inside; a soldier tried to storm his own embassy with a machinegun. And it wasn’t even breakfast time.

By now Dinh had managed to make it to the office – a very hazardous thing for a Vietnamese to do with fighting going on all over the city and the Americans ready to shoot any Vietnamese not in ARVN uniform. This was lucky for me because Pringle was still upset that I had not arrived during the night. Dinh smiled at Jim and shook his head and said: ‘No. No, Jim, he cannot to do.’ Dinh had had to pass the British compound to get to the office, so he was able to tell Jim about the dead bodies outside the units.

After writing my story Dinh and I both returned to the embassy battle. But when we reached the edge of it an American soldier yelled at Dinh, ‘OK Charlie,’ and swung his rifle round at him. I’d been expecting danger from the Viet Cong, and I was speechless. It was left to the quick-thinking Dinh to shout, ‘I not Viet Cong, I number one anticommunist.’ The American put his gun down, but Dinh said later he could see the perplexed look on his face. ‘For how he really know? Cannot.’

We crept back tree by tree and then along the wall and, just as we got to the embassy, some of the brave American soldiers who had fought their way into the grounds were bringing out a captured guerrilla. Four desperate Americans had their rifles pointed into his back. As he walked right past me, his hands in the air, I saw his look of defiance, and then the contorted looks on the faces of the four Americans. An officer yelled at them not to shoot, to keep him a prisoner. I too was worried one of them would pull a trigger. Their angry faces showed how they felt at seeing not only their first Viet Cong, but also the first of the Viet Cong to capture part of America.

Shortly after that a helicopter landed on the roof of the embassy and troops began to fight their way down through the building to others who were now fighting their way through the front door. The helicopter was driven off by rifle fire at first but at the second attempt there appeared to be little Viet Cong resistance – they were probably low on ammunition by now, and demoralised by the fact that the three marines had managed to hold the top floor.

Dinh and I rushed back to the office where I typed everything we had seen for a world we imagined was hungry for news of the shock attack. When we got back to the embassy the 19 Viet Cong in the suicide squad inside had been killed or captured.

It was now mid-morning. Dinh pulled me aside and pointed to two dead Viet Cong lying near us. He remarked that beneath their black clothes were ordinary white shirts, and they both wore jewellery. ‘Not Viet Cong peasants. Saigon underground man,’ said Dinh, who believed these two were local people who had awaited the call to fight for the Viet Cong in the offensive. ‘Not communist Viet Cong man, communist underground man show way,’ said Dinh. Everyone else in Saigon at that time believed that all of these Viet Cong had come in from the jungle, but Dinh didn’t think so. And I believed Dinh now – as I should have done the night before.

Many journalists had come and gone during the battle but now there were quite a few near the embassy. The emblematic seal of the embassy had been shot up by the Viet Cong and lay at the foot of the entrance. The ten-centimetre thick timber doors had holes in them from anti-tank rocket fire and, inside, the floor was covered in blood and debris. The reporters stood around, more cynical than ever, wondering what the American military brass would say now. Clearly the light had gone out at the end of the tunnel.

Around the country, in almost all the cities and towns in South Vietnam, numerous other battles were being fought. Elsewhere in Saigon, the Viet Cong were in a factory, in a graveyard, in a central city building, in Cholon, and at the racetrack. But the battle for the embassy was the damaging blow to the already wilting American war effort. Even Dinh said, almost in disbelief, ‘The VC capture Pentagon East.’

It was, in fact, such a psychological defeat that the American PR machine immediately went into action. They rang our office to deny our story that the Viet Cong had been in their embassy. I said I had been there myself. I described to the spokesman how the Viet Cong were firing from within the building and that the embassy had been fired upon by the Americans themselves because they could not get in the front gate. He seemed taken aback. Later they changed their story to say that the Viet Cong had got into the building ‘but not into the precincts which were the actual embassy’, their stance degenerating into semantic niceties. But people around the world, and particularly the Americans, saw the pictures, and read the stories about how the Viet Cong were in the fortified US Embassy and they were shocked, appalled: for years they had been hearing that the military situation was getting better and better every month.