Sunday, May 7, 1972
War Toll Soars, So Do Rumors
SAIGON (AP) --A funeral cortege with a horse-drawn hearse came down the broad boulevard by the U.S. Embassy Thursday, and at the busy intersection, met another headed out to the old French cemetery behind a rusting 1935 Citroen hearse.Each had a framed picture of a young man; almost a boy, in ARVN uniform, on top of the rosewood casket. In the lead of both processions was a drum and cymbal band, driving away the evil spirits with a clanging din, followed by a long line of sobbing mourners, on foot, strewing bits of paper, symbolic money, to ease the soul's journey to the other world.Then a line of family cars, battered blue mini-taxis, jeeps piled high with flowers and purple plastic funeral wreaths, and several trucks of soldiers. Taking up the rear, four roast suckling pigs rode in state on pedi-cabs for the after-burial banquet at the homes of the deceased.Over the din of the funeral bands, and all over Vietnam where the scene was endlessly repeated, came the high-pitched wail of the professional mourners. The war that never really went away had come home to the people again.In Saigon's teeming slums, in delta village and northern coastal town, in the highlands and along the canal banks, men with black arm bands and women with mourning ribbons at the collars of their swirling ao dais gave tragic testimony of the highest government casualty figures of the war: 1,000 dead a week, many more unaccounted for.The roads into and out of Hue were a clamorous confusion of war homeless on the move, armies trying to regroup, deserters mingling with the refugees, whole families going by in tank-like armored personnel carriers, merchants packing up and getting out, fleeing the memories of 1968 Tet and the 3,000 massacred by the enemy as much as the threat of the present.Day by deadly day, Kontum, the highlands capital, reduced itself to a shell-shocked ghost town, its vanishing population braving artillery barrages and sniper fire in the mountain passes to get south to Pleiku.In Saigon, the Rotary met as usual on the roof of the Caravelle Hotel, and the American Women's Association held its spring fashion show and luncheon, as scheduled, but the guards in front of the old French opera house, where the National Assembly meets, were in helmet and flak jackets again. And in the tree shaded square, where the statue of the Marine machine gun crew seems to advance menacingly on the assembly, soldiers on crutches and swathed in bandages were a more common sight than bar girls in thigh high skirts.Two drunken ranges, in jungle fatigues, barged into one of the better French restaurants and demanded the best of the menu for free, for services rendered or about to be rendered to the republic. Mooching war heroes, some waving weapons, were an increasing menace in the bars along Tu Do Street again.There was still sunshine and swimming at the Cercle Sportif, and tennis under the lights, but the war wasn't far away: Long lines of freighters far as the eye could see in the snaking Saigon River, helicopters beating over the palm trees and onto the lawn of the national palace, military convoys once again feeding the dense diesel smog along the Bien Hoa highway.By day, Saigon was its usual maddening roar of motor bikes and three-wheeled buses, born innocent of a muffler, but at 11 p.m. the curfew was strict and spooky, empty streets under a sky lit by occasional million-candle-power flares. And in the distance, double thump of out-going artillery, and the not so far off rolling rumble of a B52 strike, sounds that still make the dogs bark and the restless citizens wonder when the rockets will come.On the outskirts, in "rocket alley" near the ammo and warehouse complexes of Long Binh and the huge Bien Hoa Airbase, the last American ground troops, with the 1st U.S. Cavalry, manned the sand-bagged firebases with a commanding view of endless scrub jungle.Like "the last picture show," one of the last USO troupes in country boarded a helicopter to play at a firebase called Melanie, just a dozen miles from town in an area that a dozen years of war has never made secure.Food prices were climbing, due to hoarding and cut roads; brass candlesticks were back on the market, due to the increase in spent artillery shells and rumor ran faster than fact on every front.There were scare stories of a Honda-cavalry moving on Saigon, of deserters looting the markets and setting fires in Hue, of a dozen North Vietnamese army sapper squads waiting for the word to assassinate officials, seize the radio stations and spread confusion in the city, 130mm guns, with a range of 17 miles already moving into position on Highway 13, the main road north from the capital."War Toll Soars, So Do Rumors", by Hugh A. Mulligan, published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Sunday, May 7, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.