Saigon revisited

It greets you walking out of the air conditioned new airport complex like an old friend -- still nearly 80 degrees Fahrenheit at 7:30 in the evening; a wet blanket of warm, moist air that that reminds you of a sauna bath, combined with a thick concoction of air pollution that is hazardous to one's health.. The pollution is another quality of the city that has not changed but only grown worse. It's a mark of free enterprise vitality despite its Communist leadership.

Hordes of scooters -- 5 million by one estimate or one for every two residents -- foul the air and create a cacophony of sounds that vibrates inside the eardrums as our van weaves slowly out of the airport headed for our downtown hotel.

My wife, Catherine and I, have just traveled 17-and-a-half hours, with a single stop in Hong Kong to get here. That's a far cry from my first trip in 1966 when it took 25 hours and six stops to get to Saigon. Before I landed the events I experienced in those two years seemed long ago, but once back in a place where it all happened, it seemed like only yesterday.

Moving slowly through the traffic, I am astounded by the commercial change in the city. Entire glass structures light up the night with huge, blinking neon signs advertising everything from high end Canon cameras to Gucci shoes, and mid sized Japanese, European and American autos. It was another huge change from 40 years ago when there were barely any street lights on major streets and Saigon was constantly the victim of power outages.

As we made our way slowly downtown, our Vietnamese driver asked me when I was here before. I told him and he laughed. "I was a NCO with the South Vietnamese Army in Pleiku," Then he added with a smile. `We supported the U.S. 4th Infantry Division.

The man, whom I will only identify by the first name, Thanh, served one month in an reeducation camp after the war ended in 1975. Thanh's more serious penalty was being ordered to live far from his family in Quang Ngai Province for nearly 10 years. I wanted to ask him how he liked his life under Communist control, but due to the recent crackdown on dissidents and human rights activists throughout the country, I knew what his answer would be: economy great, politics "numbah 10."

In l987, with the introduction of "Doi Moi," economic controls were loosened, free enterprise encouraged, and those who were banished from Ho Chi Minh City to the countryside were allowed to return. Since then, Vietnam has become one of the most rapidly developing countries in Asia but politically it remains a rigidly controlled nation in terms of speech and human rights.

Earlier today, we visited the War Remnants Museum a few blocks from our hotel. The courtyard was ringed with abandoned U.S. tanks, helicopters and self propelled 155 artillery as well as Armored Personnel carriers -- all of which brought back memories both good and bad.

But inside the museum, a banner over the door into one room told me all I wanted to know about the contents. The banner read: "Historic Truths about the American war." It was anything but the truth. Propaganda -- pure and simple. Photographs of so called atrocities committed by American soldiers and Marines.

In fact, many of the photographs of GIs in combat took me back to the battles I covered in those years in places like Hill 881, Mutter's Ridge and Con Thien. Photographs taken by close friends who died there covering the fighting, Photographers like Dana Stone who disappeared in Cambodia and was reportedly executed by the Khmer /Rouge and Bob Ellison who died going into Khe Sanh to take some Marines beer and cigars in repayment for their hospitality during the Tet offensive.

All of sudden I wanted to be anywhere but there. We made out way back to the hotel and decided on a nightcap on the rooftop bar of the Caravelle Hotel. I remembered how during the war we journalists would sometimes gather at day's end for a beer. But our conversations would always be interrupted by the streaks of red and green tracer machine gun bullets lighting up the sky as the Viet Cong attacked another hamlet, pushing relentlessly closer to Saigon and an outcome never seriously in doubt.

"What do you remember most about that time?" my wife asked me.

"The surreal aspect of watching those firefights from the rooftop 40 years ago, now replaced by the red, blue and pink neon selling fancy watches and jewelry to light up the Saigon night," I said.

"Is this what 56,000 American soldiers and Marines died for?" I wondered aloud.

Robert Stokes, a Westport resident, covered the war in Vietnam for nearly two years in l967 and l968, first as a freelance journalist, and then as permanent staff for Newsweek magazine He later joined Life magazine, where he served as an associate editor and covered the Attica State Prison riot in 1971. In 1980, Dell published Stokes' first novel, Walking Wounded, which was based on his war experiences.