The Ugly American (25 page)

"Stop the car, sergeant," the Senator said. "It's a helluva thing when we send an American officer over here and he's drunk in the middle of the day."

The Senator left the weapons-carrier and walked over to the table. The two officers looked up at him dully.

"Major, you are dressed in an American officer's uniform," the Senator said harshly. "What the hell are you doing drunk in the middle of the day?"

The American smiled quietly. He motioned for the Senator to leave. When the Senator did not move, the Major kicked a chair around and motioned for the Senator to sit down.

"Buddy, you look and sound like an American," the American said with a Texas accent. "Sit down and have a drink and shut your mouth. My name is Tex Wolchek and this is Major Monet, one-time terror of the French Foreign Legion, and now a hack. We're drunk."

The Senator sat down.

"Major, my name is Senator Brown and I'm here on an inspection trip," the Senator said coldly. "And I asked you a question and I want an answer. What are you doing here in the middle of the day?"

The two officers looked at the Senator, smiled, and then filled their glasses again.

"Senator, we are drunk and we are getting drunker," the Frenchman said in perfect English.

"Well, that's no secret," the Senator said. "But it's a damned disgrace. We send American officers over here to help you and then discover them boozing it up in cafes. You men don't seem to realize that we're in a helluva tough spot out here."

Tex Wolchek closed his eyes and smiled faintly.

"Senator, I'll give you five seconds to make a decision," Tex said, with his eyes still shut and his voice very soft. "Either you can have a drink with us and keep your mouth shut, or I'll kick your ass all the way back to that weapons-carrier."

For five stunned seconds the Senator sat still. In his youth he had been a tough man and a competent fighter, and for a moment he thought of accepting the Major's challenge. He was furious that an American officer should be seen drunk in the midst of the kind of crisis America faced in Indo-China. But the Senator was no fool. When Major Wolchek opened his eyes and began to stand, the Senator pushed back his chair and walked over to the weapons-carrier.

The moment he was back at the Embassy, the Senator sent for the ambassador. He described the two officers and gave the ambassador their names. The ambassador called in Major Cravath and they assured the Senator that proper disciplinary action would be taken against the two men. Much later the ambassador remarked to his staff that this episode marked the turning point in the Senator's visit. After it the Senator was much more amiable. And perhaps the extremely long walk he had taken the first day had somewhat diminished the Senator's energies for subsequent trips, because from then on he contented himself with explorations done exclusively in automobiles or weapons-carriers.

One day they took him to one of the outlying bunkers where the French were holding a line against the Communists. The bunker was a model of ingenuity and massive strength, and the Senator wondered how it was possible that such a strongly-defended outpost could be taken by the Communists. Major Cravath and a French general supplied quick answers. It could have been done in only two ways. First, through the use of overwhelming masses of men. "The Communists throw men away as easily as Americans discard cigarette butts," the French general said. "If they want to lose fifteen hundred men in a frontal attack on such a bunker, they can take it. But it is a price that they cannot afford forever."

"The second way in which the Communists could capture a bunker is if the bunker were underequipped with radio equipment, ammunition, guns and supplies." The Senator nodded grimly.

There were, of course, a few other things that the Major and the General did not mention. For one thing, they did not think it relevant that most of the bunkers that had been captured so far had in fact been captured by a single platoon of Communists who infiltrated the bunker position at night and dropped grenades through the slits into the bunker's central room. In theory, the bunker was invulnerable; and important people should not be burdened with exceptions to theories.

They also did not tell the Senator that two regiments of French troops were deployed in the jungle in front of the bunker to make sure that no Communist raid was made while the Senator was in this dangerous position.

That night the social pace of the visit picked up slightly. The wife of the assistant to the French Commissioner-General had asked Mrs. Brown to what she called a small French family dinner. It was a small French dinner, but it was not simple. Only the four of them were present; and they took over three hours to eat. Somewhere the assistant to the Commissioner-General had obtained several bottles of Senator Brown's favorite sour-mash whiskey. There were three kinds of wine with the dinner, and they finished up with champagne. Over cigars and cognac the assistant showed Senator Brown a stack of photographs that had been taken during the fighting around Dien Bien Phu. They were black-and-white enlargements, and they had been taken by experts. They were action shots of the battle.

The deeper they went into the pile of photographs, the more savage became the subject matter. There were pictures of Communist soldiers hung up on primitive barricades of bamboo spears, their eyes glassy in death. There were heaps of bodies waiting to be buried after the engagement. There were pictures of natives who had collaborated with the French and had had their hands chopped off by the Communists in revenge. There was an inside shot in a surgical bunker with a tier of six bunks; the photograph was so clear that the Senator could see the blood dripping from one bunk to another.

"What we need, of course, is really modern equipment out here," the assistant said. "Men cannot fight with bare hands alone."

The Senator was almost physically ill. He had never seen such brutality. His admiration for the French mounted steadily.

The next day the Senator asked to be flown into Hanoi where the battle over Dien Bien Phu was reaching a high pitch. They circled over the Delta; Major Cravath and a French paratroop general pointed out where the fighting was taking place. They landed outside of Hanoi, and were driven in black limousines into the city. For the last mile of the trip the road was lined with black North African troops standing at attention. Senator Brown was tired from the food and the exercise and the late hours; but this display brought the crossexaminer's tone back into his voice.

"Now, what the hell, Major Cravath," the Senator said. "All these troops are North Africans and that seems a damn silly piece of business. Why don't the French recruit soldiers from among the natives? This would save the cost of transporting North Africans here, and would give France the advantage of having citizens fighting for their own country."

"Well, sir, the Vietnamese just don't make very good soldiers," Major Cravath said. "Their way of life just doesn't make them susceptible to discipline, and if you give them a burp gun or a carbine they'll sell it or take off with it into the hills."

The Senator's eyes narrowed.

"Well, if the French can't recruit natives, who the hell are the Communists using as troops?" Brown asked.

It was a question that Major Cravath had thought about once or twice, but had never been able to answer satisfactorily. He turned to the French general, who shrugged.

"Most of the real soldiers in the Communist troops fighting out on the Delta are Chinese," the general said. "They're better fighters than the Vietnamese. Also, the Communists shoot natives if they don't fight well. France, sir, is a civilized country and would not permit herself such barbarity."

"Listen, General, I'd like to talk to some prisoners you've taken," the Senator said. "As soon as we've gone to this damned reception that we're having at Hanoi, I want to go to a prisoners' stockade." He felt sure that if he could talk face to face to a Communist he could find out why the natives would fight for the Communists but not for the French.

Senator Brown never made it to the prisoners' stockade. At the Maison France in Hanoi, where a band and honor guard met them, they at once sat down to a huge lunch and an intensive discussion on the military situation on the Delta. A French major rapidly exhibited maps, blown-up photographs, intelligence summaries, and other information on the situation. The lunch was heavy, and they were served two kinds of wine which their host pointed out proudly was precisely the kind of wine that was issued to the troops in the field. Despite the fact that there was elegant linen on the table and crystal glasses to hold the wine, he observed, perhaps the Senator could sense some of the urgency of the situation. The Senator nodded. When the major showed the last page of his exhibit, it was a graph which illustrated the number of tanks, airplanes, weapons-carriers, and miscellaneous equipment which would allow France to drive the Communists from the Delta.

After lunch they set out for the prisoners' stockade. They drove two miles toward the outskirts of Hanoi; then the French general announced they'd have to walk the rest of the way. They started out on a path that ran between rice paddies, but the path very quickly became pockmarked with mortar-shell holes and finally disappeared almost completely. In a few minutes, to his surprise, the Senator found himself walking in mud high above his ankles, but he was not in the least deterred. His legs did ache a bit, but he said to himself he could stand up as well as the next person. A half-hour later he wasn't so sure. The mud seemed now to have the density of lead, and his legs were painful beyond belief. When the French general suggested a rest, he sat down gratefully on a heap of rocks. Going in the opposite direction was a steady stream of native refugees fleeing toward Hanoi. Dr. Barre had replaced Major Cravath on this venture, and the Senator asked Dr. Barre to interrogate one of the natives.

"Ask that little old lady there with the pile of laundry on her head why she's running away from the Communists," the Senator asked, pointing at a tiny woman who was trotting through the mud.

Dr. Barre talked quickly to the woman. For a few moments she just shook her head; then Dr. Barre gave her a cigarette, and lit it. The woman took a few deep drags on the cigarette and began to talk in a voice heavy with venom. When she had finished talking, and put her bundle back on her head, Dr. Barre watched her trot away and spent a few seconds organizing his thoughts. Then he turned to the Senator.

"Senator, she says it's safer in the city. She says that the French will take care of her while the Communists would probably slaughter her. She says she would rather leave the Delta forever than live there under Communism," Dr. Barre said.

What the woman had actually said was that the French and the Communists were both dogs. The Communists had cruelly slaughtered her eldest son six months before. The French, just as cruelly, had burned down her hut to open a firing lane through her village. Then, she had commented bitterly, the French had abandoned the village without even fighting. She was going to Hanoi because there was food there and there was also the promise of shelter. It was that simple.

The Senator did not insist that they go on to the prisoners' stockade. Instead they walked slowly back toward Hanoi. They were back in the city in time for the Senator to shower and get ready for a large banquet given by the Commissioner-General of Hanoi. Early the next morning they flew back to Saigon.

The next day was crowded by inspections of ammunition dumps, training camps, and diplomatic installations. That night there was a cocktail party and then a banquet. At both of these functions there were French journalists, government officials, military officers, and important businessmen, all of whom spoke frankly and openly to the Senator, and all of whom agreed in what they said. The Senator went to bed exhausted and aware that he had eaten and drunk too much; but in the morning he started again.

A week later the Senator and his party left Saigon. It had been a worthwhile visit, the Senator said to his staff. He now had a clear and firsthand picture of the situation.

Just as the Senator was on the edge of falling asleep in his seat on the plane, one of his political reflexes functioned, and his eyes opened with a start. He had just realized that in all of the time in both Saigon and Hanoi, he had talked to only two natives, and to only three military officers below the rank of general—two of them had been drunk. For a moment he distrusted all his impressions of the visit. But then fatigue and a well-served lunch overtook him, and the Senator fell asleep.

The President of the United States Senate rapped for order, and the commotion on the floor of the Senate subsided.

"The Senator from New Mexico still has the floor, Senator Brown," the President said sternly. "If he wishes to yield, he will have to yield time from his own speech."

Senator Corona was angry, but he was also anxious not to antagonize Senator Brown.

"Mr. President, I shall yield two minutes to Senator Brown when I have talked one more moment," Senator Corona said. "I have one more point to make, and it is this: we have poured four billion dollars into the French Government of Indo-China, and they have succeeded only in losing Dien Bien Phu and the entire Delta. I ask you, gentlemen, how long are we to continue to pour the taxpayers' money down an Asian rat-hole?"

Senator Corona was no fool. He knew that Senator Brown had some sort of ammunition. Suddenly, and without any firm notion of what he was about, Senator Corona decided to fortify his argument.