We were probably driving not quite sure where to go. We must have been heading to Saigon when I saw this sign on the right that said Dalat. He had heard the name. It was an old French hill station far north of Saigon. It had a good reputation for being a nice place to go. It reminded me of stories from one of the old UK RAJ hill stations. Simla? Anyway my curiosity was piqued and I asked PB if she had been there and she said no. I turned right and we got out.

We were able to come to these decisions without any discussion, which was good. On the other hand, we didn’t know how far away it was. It certainly wasn’t close. We did not know what the road was like. I am not giving distances. He would have to check them on a map. I didn’t have a map then. Anyway, even with a map, it wouldn’t have been much better. A detailed military map was the last thing one wanted to be caught with and anything else was worse than useless. The conditions on some of the roads were dire and it was not uncommon to travel mile after mile in second gear. Traffic jams in Saigon were monstrous and in the countryside a blown up bridge could cause a bottleneck with traffic three lanes deep on either side and no way for any vehicle to pass to clear the bridge. Or for that matter, just a blown bridge and not a soul. Comparing a trip then with any distance that is marked on a map today has nothing to do with the reality of the situation.

What was perhaps surprising was the fact that the Vietnamese continued to hit the roads. His driving was gruesome. Driving licenses can be purchased. If you were a foreigner and had an accident, you were always wrong. You could, you had to buy the way out of any accident. I read that coach drivers were driving at high speed in the hope that if they fired a mine, its speed would carry the driver safely and only blow up the back of the bus. The accidents were horrendous. The Viet Cong put up roadblocks and took away those they considered an enemy. I remember reading that a French consul in the highlands broke down, was taken away on a passing bus, was taken away by the Viet Cong at a road blockade, and reportedly died in captivity. The French generally considered themselves above this war and therefore immune. It is possible that, having known war for twenty-five years, when I arrived in 1965, the Vietnamese had developed a certain doom.

I changed the license plates on my car and then we continued through an area of ​​rubber plantations. My official license plates began with an X denoting that I was part of the United States war effort. He always carried a spare set of ordinary, illegal Vietnamese. By the time we got to grassy hills, the fact that there was no traffic on the road had started to enter my somewhat lazy mind. He also knew by now what the absence of traffic meant. I hid my identity documents and threw away my X-numbered plates. The few villages that were there seemed to be devoid of activity. Once we passed a lonely Catholic priest on a motorcycle. The trail climbed steadily and we chatted a bit. PB was from Hanoi. They had also had a house in the country and were doing relatively well. His father, a nationalist, had been kidnapped by the Viet Minh one night and was never seen again. The family moved south after the division of Vietnam. There was an uncle, a colonel, who had been head of the province. I think all the provincial heads were military, possibly with one exception to try to show that the country wasn’t exactly a military dictatorship or something. He had been on the wrong side in one of the numerous coups. There was another tragedy in his life, but it is not my place to speak here. Each Vietnamese had their own share of war-related tragedies. His English was excellent and he had a delightful habit of mixing adverbs and adjectives.

We decided that he needed another identity. I suggested being a French Catholic priest. I was often mistaken for one in the province where I worked. PB pointed out that his presence did not give credit to that. I suggested being a press reporter. We declined, but then I would join an unknown news agency, get the necessary papers, and use that coverage in my spare time. I would also work as a freelancer. We decided that I should be a teacher. I would become one at a future date. Once when we were driving through the delta, I think near My Tho, and we had stopped to buy pineapple from a boy who was by the road and he had commented to me that I was English. He had a brother who was studying in England. I worked with, got paid, and had a lot of friends who were American, but alone in the field they were the last people I wanted to associate with. The road began to climb again and was still without traffic. Now we look towards the most beautiful green I have ever seen. Below us was wave after wave of every imaginable shadow, forest or jungle, I don’t remember, but it was absolutely charming. Any shadow of fear that we were suffering also disappeared. I think we saved it and pretended it wasn’t there. In any case, we were now engaged and it was too late to back down. At one point I saw the backs of the soldiers looking into the forest, and the sound of machine gun bursts, and then nothing. Then we come to a plateau with gentle hills covered with tea or coffee plantations. I should know which one, but this is written after an interval of forty years and while some of my memories are crystal clear, as if they happened yesterday, others are mixtures of colors and some are just gray.

To ramble. The old plantations had been owned by the French. I was going to meet a Vietnamese woman whose family had one. I remember being given large bags of small, black, freshly roasted coffee beans, glistening with butter. The coffee in Vietnam was the Robusta variety. Very strong. In general, it was taken in small glasses with a lot of sugar but without milk. I used to drink too much and my nerves suffered as a result. The tea was drunk in large glasses, without sugar or milk, thank God. Outside of Saigon, at least, it used to be free and accompanied what you ate. On the rare occasions I would stop somewhere just to have a glass, they always gave it to me, so I usually bought a small cake or something like that. Still, the water used to be of questionable quality and the tea was safer.

We arrived at the civil airfield that serves Dalat. Very small. There are no signs of activity or airplanes. I was going to get used to, indeed to participate, in this Vietnamese habit of going to an airfield to catch a flight and sitting and waiting hopefully, staring up at the sky for hours to see a plane. When no planes showed up that day, they left and came back the next day. The patience of the East. From here, the path climbed steeply and the landscape changed again. One could have been in the Alps. The forest was now evergreen and there was a magnificent mountain to our left. Unknowingly, this was the most dangerous part of the trip and that mountain was full of tunnels infested with the Vietcong.

We arrived in Dalat. We hadn’t seen a single motorized vehicle on the entire trip, except for that lone Catholic priest. I will deal with this city later, when I get to know it much better. For us it was just a matter of finding a hotel, a quick walk, food and a bed. The city maintained a fairly French air. With my beard I fit in easily. It was the only place in Vietnam where I was never exploited. There was no US presence at all. In all my visits there, I never saw more than one or two Americans. I don’t want to criticize Americans in these articles. The problem was, apart from the struggle, that there was often an unfortunate relationship between the two peoples, who saw the defects of the other and never the qualities. There was a curfew at eight o’clock. It was a city that had seen its heyday years before. Now he had the South Vietnamese military and police academies. It had the Convent of the Birds. He was known for his vegetables that were shipped by road to Saigon. The girls had a beautiful healthy glow on their cheeks. All this for later. We had a rather restless night. There were continuous bursts of small arms fire everywhere. Will I ever talk about the happy ones? There were many, but obviously not at the end of our excursions. We had to go back the next day. I only had two days off unless otherwise agreed, and since all my trips were not authorized, I preferred not to talk about them.

The next morning I filled the car with gasoline, lit my pipe, and we began the return journey. It was a beautiful day, the air was cool and pleasant, but there was no other car on the road. We descended what I would call the alpine part of the trip, past that towering mountain that is now on our right, to the small airfield. We then continued through the area of ​​what must have been a plantation plateau. I took some photos of PB, I still have them, at one point we stopped so he could buy some meat, buffalo? of a mountain woman we met, but we only had bills and the mountain man only accepted coins. Descending through the beautiful green forests, PB slept next to me. I myself woke up brutally when the car hit a pothole, struggled to regain control, and then remained wide awake. It scares me to think of what would have been the result of a minor accident.

The journey was uneventful and we again passed through rolling hills of tall grass. As we approach the rubber plantations we stop to have a coca cola in some town. It has always seemed the most refreshing drink on such occasions and gives one the strength to carry on. Then, surprise, a column of South Vietnamese armor approached from the south. The first vehicles we had seen in two days. I don’t know what the US advisers thought about my sitting quietly at a table with PB. In fact, they gave him a most friendly smile. Maybe not for me. Continuing on, we were stopped two or three times in the rubber plantations by soldiers of the Regional Force who wanted to be rewarded for protecting our way. He always kept a box or two of cigarettes for that and usually two or three packs would be enough. Arriving on the road from Baria Saigon, PB wanted to go to Saigon, so I had to drive there and then go back to Van Kiep. I think I must have driven a good eighteen hours during those two days. I could barely move a muscle when I got back.

Three days after our trip, the Viet Cong attacked the road in six places and controlled it for five days. Sometime later, two fellow Decca employees who were driving in a jeep from Phan Rang on the coast to Dalat disappeared. In 1972, the British Vice Consul, one Adrian, one of those very rare but nicer people, was at my home in Saigon and told me that he had been interviewing a Viet Cong defector who said they had been detained in a blockade of road, taken prisoner and died in captivity. One was British and one American. On the other hand, in the same period fourteen members of the unarmed American civilian personnel in a low American truck I believe the Korean army escort all died on the same road when their convoy was ambushed. You had to use your own judgment to know whether or not you were armed and, if possible, what means to use to travel. You should also pray that you were not born under an unfortunate star.