PERICO'S GARROTE, AND OTHER STORIES

     This chapter if one of 14 from the section "Rus Rus," from my memoir Rattlesnake Dreams. The whole section tells of 8 days in southern Honduras and northern Nicaragua during January 1985. Five of us were representing North American Indian tribes. Our identities are told below. The trip was paid for by Maco Stewart, a Texas oilman who wanted to gather support among North American Indians for the Reagan Administration's war against the Sandinistas then in power in Nicaragua. Three North American mercenaries accompanied us. They were employed by Stewart.

     The afternoon grew darker and rainier. We landed near dark close to the place where the first canoe's motor had broken its shear pin the morning before. We trudged through the rain until well after dark, slipping in the mud and cursing like any ragtag, worn-out army in history.
     We came upon a Miskito refugee camp. It may have been Karas Ankan, but I'm not sure. Darkskinned people squatted in pole-and-thatch huts, their faces and skin illuminated only by cooking fires. They stared at us as we passed. Blue smoke hung in the air between the huts. Just as I was having a feeling that it was all too familiar, Shooter, who had been walking behind me, said in my ear, "Ain't this a flashback?" (He was one of the mercenaries hired by Stewart. I learned later that his real name was Joe Adams, and that he was from St. Louis. That is, unless "Joe Adams" was another pseudonym.) As we talked during that week, he also said he was an ex Marine (as am I), and had been in Viet Nam late in the war. It was a strange week for me, being a journalist reporting on a war that I personally opposed, yet having so much history that I shared, at least on the surface, with one of the mercenaries who worked for "the other side."
    
11. Perico's Garrote, and other stories

     The next morning we washed clothes, and ourselves, in the creek near camp, and sat around recovering from the day before. Mike Hunt had brought a frisbee, and got a game going in the clear area between the tents. A man came, a muscular and very military- and authoritative-looking caucasian in neat camouflage fatigues, who stayed on the opposite side of the clearing from us and talked with Flaco and Shooter and Perico, always standing so that one of their bodies blocked our view of him. Their conversation seemed intensely focused.
     I took out my camera and started taking photos of the intertribal frisbee game, then used that as a cover to aim the camera through their game and snap photos of the group of mercenaries. They were too far away. I changed to my longest lens, a 100mm, and shot again. I never got anything but the back of the head of the newcomer, and Perico never turned anything but his back in our direction. Maco Stewart noticed what I was doing, and paid closer attention when I changed to the longer lens. I pretended to be delighted with the action shots I was getting of the frisbee game. By the time Stewart started to hover near me, it was too late. I had what turned out to be, after it was enlarged, a recognizable photo of Flaco. But I did not get a decent shot of the military-looking visitor, which I desperately wanted.

     In later years I’ve wondered if it was Oliver North – Flaco was mentioned in the notebooks that North was forced to surrender during the Iran-Contra investigations, and I have seen a reference to Rus Rus in something that North wrote – but I don’t know whether he was the stranger in camp that day. This man’s physical bearing, his uniform, and the way he wore it presented, to me, a clear impression of someone who was not a mercenary. I pegged him as active duty U.S. military, and a field grade officer at that. His bearing in the presence of the mercenaries was clearly that of someone who had authority over them. And their bearing toward him reflected, to my eye, obeisance to that authority.
     We went out to another refugee camp, where the people had been established longer than those at Lasa Tinghni, but not so long as those at Awas Bila or Karas Ankan. The interviews were so obviously canned, with the subjects being visibly and audibly goaded by armed men standing behind them, that I didn't even take notes.

     We were back in our tent at the TEA camp by noon, sacked out, still tired from the day before. Gary Fife was playing country music tapes on his interview recorder. Just after a song about "tryin' to love two women," he said, "I got another tape in there, by a friend of mine. It's called ‘Custer Died for Your Sins.'" Flaco, standing just outside the tent, laughed along with the rest of us.
     Moses Fiske was working on the 16mm movie camera in the tent, and was having problems. All four Indians and I were there as well. Fiske told Stewart he wasn't sure he could get the camera to work. "Can't you nigger-rig it?" Stewart asked.
     In the weeks after we returned to the States from Honduras, I asked Bill Pensoneau by telephone if he remembered Stewart’s question to Fiske about whether Fiske could “nigger-rig” his movie camera; and if so, what he thought of the remark. Bill said he did indeed remember it. He said “Yes, I hate it, but even Indians have to have someone to look down on,” or words to that effect.

     We were lying around the tent. The four Indians were discussing the situation of their fellow Indians in Nicaragua. A year or so earlier, Bill Pensoneau had traveled there and visited some of the camps to which the Sandinistas had relocated Indians, possibly including some of the people who were now our hosts, to clear the border area for combat operations against the contras,
     Their conversation got around to the history of the Sandinista movement, beginning when someone wondered where they'd gotten their name. Someone knew that there'd been this guy named Sandino, but didn't know who he was or what he'd done. They asked Stewart to clarify it, and Stewart gave an answer which I don't remember, but which was inaccurate. I had been keeping my mouth shut in the interest of self-preservation, but now I blurted out a short history of Sandino's guerrilla fight against Somoza’s Guardia Nacional, and the US Marines who trained and led them, during the 1920's. Since Maco and I and Shooter were all exMarines, my little history lesson definitely “stirred the stew” in our tent. (See also my chapter below, “Interview with Bill Gandall.”
(Gandall was one of those Marines stationed in Nicaragua during the 1920s.)

     Stewart turned to look at me with alarm. "How did you know that?" he asked. I told him I'd worked in Nicaragua as a freelance journalist in 1983, had written some pieces about it, and had since then read quite a lot about the history of the country and US interventions there.
     I'd said too much. Stewart wanted to know more about me, where else I'd been, what else I'd done, what I thought of the present situation and about US policy in general - the sort of questions he should have asked in the Houston airport. The four Indians were listening; we'd already had some conversations along these lines ourselves, out of Stewart's presence. I'm a lousy liar, and didn't want to appear to them to be hiding something they already knew I knew, or felt. So, I told Stewart that I knew about CIA interventions in Vietnam and Laos and with the Kurds in the area of the Persian Gulf, and allowed that US intelligence operatives had a history of recruiting poor, dark skinned people to fight our wars for us, which too often turned out to be losing wars, and then abandoning our former proxies to bloody retribution by our former enemies.

     It didn't seem a wise thing to be saying in an armed camp of just such operatives a short walk from the Río Coco. But I was pissed off enough about the situation to risk having Stewart hear me say that in order that the Indians would hear it too. They'd heard the basic story about the Montagnards in Vietnam, but very little about the Kurds, or about the Hmong people in Laos who'd been slaughtered in large numbers as a result of their participation in US-initiated or -widened military conflicts.
     From that time on, I was looked at differently by everyone in the camp, though I was never specifically threatened.
    
     That is, unless Perico's visit was a threat. Within a day after my talk with Stewart, Perico came over to our tent while the four Indians and I were standing outside it talking. Perico entered our circle and stood next to me. His dark eyes glittered even more than usual. From his pocket he pulled a length of spring steel or piano wire, rolled loop upon loop into a coil about four inches in diameter, with a steel ring affixed to either end. He held it up for us to see.
     "Do you know what thees eez?" He asked in heavily accented English.
         "It's a garrote," I said.
     "Isn't that for strangling people?" one of the others asked.
     "You bettah believe it," Perico said, with a smile like dry ice, at once hot and cold.  As he smiled, he turned and sent his unambiguous gaze into my eyes from a few inches away, still holding his garrote directly in front of our eyes.

     That evening, in the little mess area by a creek a short walk from the tents, I sat at one of the rough wooden tables with Maco Stewart, Moses Fiske, Mike Hunt, and Miskito officer Mario Córdoba, who was wearing his new silver captain's bars on his hat. I'd become somewhat friendly with him; he seemed someone committed to struggling for his people, but not overly excited about the fighting itself. He seemed to see no romance in it, and was bemused, rather than impressed, by the      propagandizing of both sides. He was particularly unimpressed with rank, his own or others'. He reminded me of Harris, the young black Marine who'd treated the  Marine Corps mostly as a joke, to whom I'd tossed the rifle after we saw the three aluminum caskets on the loading dock at Oakland as we were shipping out for Vietnam.    
     We had, as usual, mess-gear metal plates of gallo pinto, standard peasant fare of rice and red beans. It was likely that we were eating the rice and beans that Stewart had brought in aboard the Setco Air C47, saying that the food was for the refugees. During the meal, Mike Hunt(20), the only one of us five tribal representatives who had accepted Flaco's offer of a weapon, told stories about the 1973 confrontation between Indians and federal agents at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. He had apparently been one of the armed Indians, though he was careful not to say anything that would be provable if it got back to the Feds. But without coming right out with it, he alluded to the fighting in such a way that it seemed to me that he might be hinting that he was in on it. Mike said he was a member of the Survival of the American Indian Association located in Olympia, Washington. I never got a feel for how large its membership was.
     He also said he acted as a bodyguard on occasion for his friend Hank Adams, head of the Association. In the company of the four North American Indians that week, I got a glimpse of their informal but very active nationwide network, which they called the "moccasin telegraph," a word of mouth and telephone web, augmented by Indian media outlets, which informs Indians in the US about issues which concern them. BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) policies, treaty violations old and new, Federal legislation regarding Indians and their lands, any such stories which often barely surface in the mainstream media are given full treatment by the "moccasin telegraph."
     The other strong feeling I got was one of danger, of yet another group of people who have so consistently been treated so badly for so long by the larger society that two very different, but perhaps equally dangerous, reactions are becoming more and more common. One is a deep despair resulting in severe alcoholism, drug abuse, and a disproportionate suicide rate. The other is an accumulated anger, especially among some of the younger men, that makes them itch to grab a rifle, put their backs to the wall, and go out like warriors.

     Once during the week Gary Fife had told of his favorite trick while waiting for a table in restaurants. He and a couple of friends would put "War" as their name on the waiting list, and later there would come the announcement "War... party of three," and diners would look up in surprise when three Indians trooped past to their table. He clearly told it as a joke, but it just as clearly had an edge to it.
     I noticed that Mario Córdoba, the Miskito officer, was eating more slowly than the rest, so I slowed down too. By the time he and I walked down to the creek to wash our plates, the others had left.
     I wanted to talk to Mario. But I was worried about two things: that I would compromise my journalist's neutrality by what I had to say, and that I would get my ass in serious hot water, especially after what I'd said to Maco about US use of minority peoples as proxy soldiers. Perico's bit with the garrote didn't seem to have been done just for the sake of entertainment.
     Finally I just said "Fuck it," and did it anyway. There was enough light left to see Córdoba's face. I moved close to him and spoke quickly, in Spanish, in a low voice. Be careful, Mario, I said. I told him, as succinctly as I could, about how the Montagnard highland people of Vietnam, and the Hmong of Laos, had had their populations decimated during and after their service with the US CIA and Special Forces, and about how the Kurds in the Middle East had been recruited, armed, and then abandoned to their enemies by a sudden policy change.
     He listened, nodding in a way that intimated that either he knew more about those histories than I'd assumed, or that he wasn't at all surprised to hear it. Be careful, I admonished again, and ended by asking if he trusted "these people" as I nodded toward the mercenaries' tent.
     He looked at me with a flat gaze that was neither friendly nor hostile: "No tengo confianza en nadie demás de los indios:" I don't trust anybody except Indians.
     His look made it clear that that included me.

RATTLESNAKE DREAMS + INTRO

The rattlesnake dream    

     Sometime in 1991, I was walking down a back street in a Guatemalan town – either Guatemala Antigua, the old Spanish capital; or Panajachel, on the shore of Lago de Atitlán. I was with my friend Roger Bunch, who’d spent years in Guatemala, and a friend of his who was interested in dream interpretation. That friend asked me to tell some of mine. So while walking down that back street in Guatemala, I told him about “Dance of the Arrows” and “Rattlesnake and Pistol.”

     Roger’s friend was agog, and asked me to write them down so he could interpret them for me. In good Marine Corps fashion, I told him to go piss up a rope: “Forget it, buddy. Those are my dreams, and I already know what they mean.”

     I decided then and there to write this memoir. It would be titled RATTLESNAKE DREAMS, and would have chapters about most of my life, since a young child. It contains no fiction. It would have dreams, with many of the post Viet Nam nightmares I had taught myself to remember and write down.  Including this one, which became the book’s title piece:

Dream: Rattlesnake and Pistol

People come running up to me: people I know, friends, family, the human community. They're all afraid. They scurry and bump into one another in their urgency to summon my help: "Dean! Dean! There's a snake... you have to shoot it. Hurry!" I follow them. They form a wary circle around the snake, a rattler with powerfully writhing body as thick as my forearms, and triangular head the size of a fist. I'm in the circle, between the people and the snake. Someone hands me a pistol. It's a Hi Standard .22 semiautomatic with a 5" barrel. I recognize it in the dream, and later when I waken, as the first real pistol I ever held, the one my stepdad Bill Gano taught me how to shoot when I was a kid, setting up bottlecaps on a log to represent snakes' heads. The pistol is totally familiar: the purposeful weightiness, the dully glinting, no-nonsense machined surfaces, the knurled metal grips, the thumb safety and the blade front sight and the notch rear sight at the rear of the slide, even the screws, all as I remember them, in their proper places. The people become more frightened, their urgings more frantic: Hurry, they say, and shoot the snake. You're the only one who can do it. The snake throws its body into a coil of scaly, muscular loops. It cocks its head. It emanates power. The people surge back, their entreaties swelling to an ever higher pitch. I take the pistol and look down at the snake. It's in position to strike, but something is missing, which I notice more viscerally than visually. What is missing is that last critical increment of muscular readiness, the quiver of surgical tubing under tension. As I look closer, I notice that the head, instead of hovering just above the coils, tracking its target in readiness to strike, is still resting on the topmost coil, in a physical attitude which suggests both threat and a certain reluctance. And the mouth, which, if open to strike, would have been a terrifying maw in a snake that size, is still closed. I remember that a rattlesnake ready to strike flares its jaws open to almost 180 degrees in order to point all four fangs at its target. And this snake's eyes are not the cold, unblinking eyes with vertical black pupils I had stared into from six inches away, on the Rogue River, as a teenage boy. They are much larger, softer, moist, and brown, more like a dog's, or even a human's, eyes. The snake looks back at me. Its eyes convey ferocity layered with a deep wisdom; and with more layers of warmth, menace, accusation, resignation, regret, and a slight admixture of pleading. Though the snake does not have a voice, what it says with its eyes reaches my brain, not in words exactly, but still in a form akin to language. Ah, the snake says with its eyes. I guess you have to shoot me. I am, after all, a snake. And yes, I am dangerous. I wish I could promise never to bite any of these people, but I can't. I am what I am. But I'm not that different from you. And if you kill me, what does that make you? The urgings of the people in the circle around the snake and me have become a cacophony. They're aware of the eye-to-eye conversation between me and the snake, and want me to shoot before I have time to think about it. The snake is lying in its coils, its eyes now conveying only sadness and a deep reserve of dignity that says it will not demean itself by trying to avoid its fate. I reach down, pick up the snake, and put it in a burlap bag. I leave the circle. The people howl in surprise and protest, but express relief that the snake is no longer free among them. I walk down a road that leads away from the circle of the snake's accusers - the circle of my people - with the rattlesnake in the bag in my left hand, and the pistol, still loaded and still unfired, in my right.

RATTLESNAKE DREAMS + PANAJACHEL INTRO

The rattlesnake dream    

     Sometime in 1991, I was walking down a back street in a Guatemalan town – either Guatemala Antigua, the old Spanish capital; or Panajachel, on the shore of Lago de Atitlán. I was with my friend Roger Bunch, who’d spent years in Guatemala, and a friend of his who was interested in dream interpretation. That friend asked me to tell some of my dreans. So while walking down that back street in Guatemala, I told him about “Dance of the Arrows” and “Rattlesnake and Pistol.”

     Roger’s friend was agog, and asked me to write them down so he could interpret them for me. In good Marine Corps fashion, I told him to go piss up a rope: “Forget it, buddy. Those are my dreams, and I already know what they mean.”

     I decided then and there to write this memoir. I would title it RATTLESNAKE DREAMS; it would have chapters from much of my life, including Viet Nam service and journalism travels. It would also contain many post-Nam dreams and nightmares, including the book's title piece.

Dream: Rattlesnake and Pistol

People come running up to me: people I know, friends, family, the human community. They're all afraid. They scurry and bump into one another in their urgency to summon my help: "Dean! Dean! There's a snake... you have to shoot it. Hurry!" I follow them. They form a wary circle around the snake, a rattler with powerfully writhing body as thick as my forearms, and triangular head the size of a fist. I'm in the circle, between the people and the snake. Someone hands me a pistol. It's a Hi Standard .22 semiautomatic with a 5" barrel. I recognize it in the dream, and later when I waken, as the first real pistol I ever held, the one my stepdad Bill Gano taught me how to shoot when I was a kid, setting up bottlecaps on a log to represent snakes' heads. The pistol is totally familiar: the purposeful weightiness, the dully glinting, no-nonsense machined surfaces, the knurled metal grips, the thumb safety and the blade front sight and the notch rear sight at the rear of the slide, even the screws, all as I remember them, in their proper places. The people become more frightened, their urgings more frantic: Hurry, they say, and shoot the snake. You're the only one who can do it. The snake throws its body into a coil of scaly, muscular loops. It cocks its head. It emanates power. The people surge back, their entreaties swelling to an ever higher pitch. I take the pistol and look down at the snake. It's in position to strike, but something is missing, which I notice more viscerally than visually. What is missing is that last critical increment of muscular readiness, the quiver of surgical tubing under tension. As I look closer, I notice that the head, instead of hovering just above the coils, tracking its target in readiness to strike, is still resting on the topmost coil, in a physical attitude which suggests both threat and a certain reluctance. And the mouth, which, if open to strike, would have been a terrifying maw in a snake that size, is still closed. I remember that a rattlesnake ready to strike flares its jaws open to almost 180 degrees in order to point all four fangs at its target. And this snake's eyes are not the cold, unblinking eyes with vertical black pupils I had stared into from six inches away, on the Rogue River, as a teenage boy. They are much larger, softer, moist, and brown, more like a dog's, or even a human's, eyes. The snake looks back at me. Its eyes convey ferocity layered with a deep wisdom; and with more layers of warmth, menace, accusation, resignation, regret, and a slight admixture of pleading. Though the snake does not have a voice, what it says with its eyes reaches my brain, not in words exactly, but still in a form akin to language. Ah, the snake says with its eyes. I guess you have to shoot me. I am, after all, a snake. And yes, I am dangerous. I wish I could promise never to bite any of these people, but I can't. I am what I am. But I'm not that different from you. And if you kill me, what does that make you? The urgings of the people in the circle around the snake and me have become a cacophony. They're aware of the eye-to-eye conversation between me and the snake, and want me to shoot before I have time to think about it. The snake is lying in its coils, its eyes now conveying only sadness and a deep reserve of dignity that says it will not demean itself by trying to avoid its fate. I reach down, pick up the snake, and put it in a burlap bag. I leave the circle. The people howl in surprise and protest, but express relief that the snake is no longer free among them. I walk down a road that leads away from the circle of the snake's accusers - the circle of my people - with the rattlesnake in the bag in my left hand, and the pistol, still loaded and still unfired, in my right.

DREAM: DANCE OF THE ARROWS

Dream: Dance of the Arrows

I'm standing alone in the center of a wide, barren plain that stretches to the horizon in every direction. The sky is clear, and sits like a hemispheric blue cap over the plain. I look at the horizon, follow it around. It is featureless... but wait: there is a solitary figure, a speck on the horizon. That figure and I are the only visual interruptions of the universe bounded by earth and sky. I'm invigorated by the feeling of spaciousness, but recognize that I must be watchful. Sure enough: the figure on the horizon is an archer. He draws a powerful bow. Alarm, my warrior's antennae say. The archer shoots an arrow into the sky. The arrow's trajectory says that it is perfectly aimed at me. The arrow disappears from sight, but I must track its flight. I do so by moving my head as though my initial observations had actually programmed the arrow's trajectory into my nervous system. I track the arrow forward, from the point where it disappears in the sky until it reappears, a deadly dot in the blue, now on its way down to kill me. I jump around. I try to dodge it. But it never wavers: no matter how I move, I feel the tingle of its anticipated penetration just below my navel. The arrow swoops toward me, visually accelerating in the way I've seen machine-gun tracers appear to speed up as they come nearer, after having seemed to be moving quite slowly toward me as I observed them from a distance; or the way the ground swoops up toward a parachutist during the last seconds of fall. Just before the arrow hits me, I make one final, quick sidestep. The arrow's feathers brush my belly; it thunks into the earth. Alarm. I look up. Comes another. Again I am able to dodge it only at the last instant. Again the feathers brush my abdomen. Again the arrow stabs the ground at my feet. There is an infinite succession of them. I have figured out that the arrows, while seeming to remain perfectly aimed at my center, never waver in flight, no matter how I jump and dodge. This, I learn, is because the arrow simply knows where I will be when it arrives three and a half feet off the ground, and is aimed there. So my jumping about as the arrow descends is irrelevant. I learn that, with each shot, I am given one, and only one, chance to save my life. This is what Japanese martial artists call suki, or "opening": that tiny window in time - often far less than a second - when an opponent's attention is interrupted or distracted, when only an instinctive, forceful, and unhesitatingly intentional motion will be quick enough and sure enough to enter the opening. So I must watch each arrow as it leaps out of the sky to kill me, and I must wait. I must let it come. As the arrows continue to come and I tire from exertion and fear, I must force myself to relax so that in dodging one arrow I don't overexert and fail to recover in time for the next. Each time, I must wait, closing out the fear that tries like a pack of howling dogs to crowd my mind, to panic me. I must wait until the steel of the broadhead is about to puncture my belly. Then I must perfectly - without protest, without excuses, without appeal to fairness or justice, without asking for help -execute the one quick movement I'm allowed for dodging that arrow. Then I must forget that arrow, allowing no thought of relief or victory or pride in accomplishment, and be ready for the next. The arrows come in a perfect rhythm. So my sidesteps adopt the same rhythm, thereby becoming, of necessity, a dance. I'm never released from the mortal urgency of the situation, but it begins to strike me as funny. At the end of the dream, I'm still dodging the arrows, which never relent in accuracy or intention. But I'm laughing, as at something in a Chaplin movie, funny but urgent, as I dance my dance of survival.

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

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HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

This photo shows (3) US pilots who had been shot down over North Viet Nam, imprisoned (I don’t know how long), then released, coincidentally, just in time for Julian Manyon and me to show up for their release in Vientiane, Laos. I do not know their names. I remember Ambassador Sullivan, who had spent a half hour inside their plane with them before they all walked down the exit ramp to the circle of waiting journalists, saying that “Major (if he gave a name, I don’t remember it), as senior man, would speak for all of them, and we should keep our questions brief.” (photo by Dean Metcalf)

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

(Continued from previous post)

Wilcox was careful to ascribe the limited nature of his offer of help - he would give us names of people to see, and try to get us aboard an Air America plane to SAVANNAKHET (if there were any extra seats) - to limited resources. He skillfully parried our questions intimating that the reason journalists weren't welcome aboard AIR AMERICA, or even, it seemed, in front areas in general, might be because something was going on there which the public wasn't supposed to hear about. He would shrug off such queries, saying that we already knew that there was no American military effort in Laos - after all, that was strictly forbidden by the 1962 Geneva Accords - and we should know how much it hurt when the Americans had to stand by helplessly and see their Laotian friends get overrun by superior numbers.

     We didn't press further because we needed his help. He gave us press passes to the airport where the three American pilots were to be flown in from Hanoi the following night (Friday, August 2, 1968), and told us how to get in touch with BRIGADIER GENERAL OUDONE SANANIKONE, who was Chief of Staff and Information Officer for the Royal Laotian Army.

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(2014 NOTE: PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING THIS THREAD OF LAOS STORIES MIGHT RECALL THAT PHIL WILCOX WAS THE US PRESS OFFICER IN VIENTIANE. WE LEARNED SHORTLY AFTER THAT HE WAS FAIRLY HIGH UP IN THE CIA HIERARCHY IN LAOS.)

     LATER, AFTER I'VE POSTED THE LAST LAOS PIECE, I WILL JUMP AHEAD 23 YEARS TO ENCOUNTER WILCOX WHEN HE AND I RECOGNIZED EACH OTHER IN EAST JERUSALEM. HE WAS US CONSUL IN EAST JERUSALEM, AND HELD AMBASSADOR'S RANK. I WAS (AGAIN) A FREE-LANCE JOURNALIST TRAVELING WITH A GROUP OF PEACE ACTIVISTS JUST AFTER THE GULF WAR THAT HAD JUST ENDED. (1991)

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     A hard core of reporters had been making the round trip from Saigon to Vientiane and back for as many as four weekends in a row by the time Manyon and I arrived after a haphazard journey of six days, which covered some seven hundred miles by just about every means of transportation imaginable except flying. When the newly released pilots conveniently deplaned less than thirty-six hours after our arrival, some of the Saigon-

based journalists were envious of our luck.

     It was a disgusting experience, made more disgusting by the fact that what happened really surprised no one who was present.

     The INTERNATIONAL CONTROL COMMISSION aircraft (a C47, I believe) taxied onto an apron near the terminal building at about 10:30p.m., local time. AMBASSADOR SULLLIVAN, dressed in a tropical suit and tie, climbed the portable stairway into the plane. We were expecting a wait (there were 30 or 40 reporters present), and we got it. The cordon of Laotian police allowed us to pour through the gate and form a large half circle with its center at the tail exit of the aircraft.

     After a time some men - possibly members of the COMMISSION - began to straggle to the exit and down the ladder, disappearing behind the ring of reporters and AMERICAN EMBASSY personnel. Once in a while we would see a stewardess appear silhouetted in the doorway, then disappear again inside. Two or three times the policemen fell back and let us reduce the size of the ring. The still photographers were talking about shutter speeds, and the television cameramen set up their floodlights to create a small area of intense whiteness in the surrounding dark.

(2014 NOTE: IT WAS THE TV CAMERAMEN’S FLOODLIGHTS WHICH ENABLED ME TO HOLD MY USED JAPANESE CAMERA OVER MY HEAD AND SHOOT THE PHOTO OF THE THREE PILOTS. I HAD NO FLASH ATTACHMENT. THE THIRD PILOT’S FACE IS IN SHADOW. THE FACE AT THE FAR RIGHT IN THE PHOTO IS A JOURNALIST HOLDING HIS MICROPHONE UP IN FRONT OF THE SMILING MAJOR WHO SPOKE FOR THE THREE PILOTS. (PHOTO BY DEAN METCALF, FIRST PUBLISHED IN COLORADO COLLEGE MAGAZINE, WINTER 1969)

     Finally AMBASSADOR SULLIVAN came down the ladder and strode to the center of the ring of waiting newsmen. He made a terse statement that Major so-and-so, as senior man, would speak for the three pilots, and that we should keep our questions brief. Then he left.

     Then, after about a forty minute wait, the pilots came out. All were wearing white shirts, open at the neck, and not-too-convincing smiles.

     "How's it feel to be back, Major?" was the profound first question.

     "Oh, great, just great, really good to be back...." Toothy smile followed. Somebody had given the Major a big cigar, and he lit up and puffed happily. When he was asked how they had been treated in prison; he answered, "Very well. The North Vietnamese treated us very well."   

     (2014 NOTE: I DIDN’T BELIEVE HIM THEN, OR NOW. AT THE TIME, I HAD ALREADY LONG SINCE LEARNED THAT US MILITARY PERSONNEL, SELECTED TO SPEAK BEFORE THE PUBLIC, HAD ORDERS ABOUT WHAT THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO SAY, AND THAT’S WHAT THEY SAID. IT’S ALL PART OF THE TAPESTRY, ALREADY WOVEN FOR THEM. WE JOURNALISTS AND OBSERVERS FROM OUTSIDE THE ORB OF FLOODLIGHTS, OF COURSE CAN HARDLY BLAME THEM.

BUT ONE CAN ALSO LEARN FROM THESE SITUATIONS, AFTER SOME TIME AND DISTANCE HAVE PASSED. (SOME OF US BEGAN TO LEARN AS THE EVENTS WERE HAPPENING.) LYING IN SUCH SITUATIONS – ESPECIALLY IN THE CASE OF POW’S - IS SO SOLIDLY AT THE CORE OF WHAT HAPPENS, THAT IT IS EXPECTED, FORGIVEN, AND OF COURSE NOT BELIEVED. THE PILOTS THEMSELVES CAN HARDLY BE BLAMED. EXCEPT IN THE SENSE THAT WE CAN ALL BE BLAMED, FOR CREATING THE WORLD WHERE SUCH THINGS HAPPEN BECAUSE EVENTS CANNOT GO ANY OTHER WAY. WHATEVER THE DOWN-AND-DIRTY DETAILS OF WHAT HAD HAPPENED TO THEM IN THE NORTH VIETNAMESE PRISON, THEY HAD LEFT COMRADES BEHIND THERE. ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN CONSEQUENCES TO ANYTHING THEY SAID, OR DIDN’T SAY. WAR SUCKS, AND NOBODY WINS… IF YOU WANT TO SUM IT UP THAT WAY.

     He (THE MAJOR) was already beginning to sound like a tape recorder.

     There were more questions: about how long each of them had been imprisoned, whether they'd heard from their families, when they'd found out they were to be released... and there was the question of how the three would return to the United States, to which the major answered that they had been given the choice of going by commercial aircraft or a special Air Force jet, and "hadn't decided yet." The questions were mostly of the unphilosophical, hometown news release type, and several of us were getting the impression that the major preferred them that way. As the queries got closer to sensitive territory  what kinds of missions they'd been on, what they felt about the damage they'd caused  the major began to hedge, and indicated that it was time to cut the thing short; they were very tired and wanted to get home to their wives.

     

     Manyon's question was the capper: "Major, have your personal views changed any as a result of your missions over North Vietnam and your subsequent imprisonment?"

     "Well, since you don't know what my views were before, I guess you can't tell, can you? Ha, ha."

     Again, there was the toothy smile and a flourish of the cigar as the three pilots began to ease their way through the crowd of reporters. Someone muttered that Ambassador Sullivan had done a pretty good coaching job.

 

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

This photo shows (3) US pilots who had been shot down over North Viet Nam, imprisoned (I don’t know how long), then released, coincidentally, just in time for Julian Manyon and me to show up for their release in Vientiane, Laos. I do not know their names. I remember Ambassador Sullivan, who had spent a half hour inside their plane with them before they all walked down the exit ramp to the circle of waiting journalists, saying that “Major (if he gave a name, I don’t remember it), as senior man, would speak for all of them, and we should keep our questions brief.” (photo by Dean Metcalf)

HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (6)

(Continued from previous post)

Wilcox was careful to ascribe the limited nature of his offer of help (he would give us names of people to see, and try to get us aboard an Air America plane to SAVANNAKHET (if there were any extra seats) to limited resources. He skillfully parried our questions intimating that the reason journalists weren't welcome aboard AIR AMERICA, or even, it seemed, in front areas in general, might be because something was going on there which the public wasn't supposed to hear about. He would shrug off such queries, saying that we already knew that there was no American military effort in Laos - after all, that was strictly forbidden by the 1962 Geneva Accords - and we should know how much it hurt when the Americans had to stand by helplessly and see their Laotian friends get overrun by superior numbers.

     We didn't press further because we needed his help. He gave us press passes to the airport where the three American pilots were to be flown in from Hanoi the following night (Friday, August 2, 1968), and told us how to get in touch with BRIGADIER GENERAL OUDONE SANANIKONE, who was Chief of Staff and Information Officer for the Royal Laotian Army.

     A hard core of reporters had been making the round trip from Saigon to Vientiane and back for as many as four weekends in a row by the time Manyon and I arrived after a haphazard journey of six days, which covered some seven hundred miles by just about every means of transportation imaginable except flying. When the newly released pilots conveniently deplaned less than thirty-six hours after our arrival, some of the Saigon-

based journalists were envious of our luck.

     It was a disgusting experience, made more disgusting by the fact that what happened really surprised no one who was present.

     The INTERNATIONAL CONTROL COMMISSION aircraft (a C47, I believe) taxied onto an apron near the terminal building at about 10:30p.m., local time. AMBASSADOR SULLLIVAN, dressed in a tropical suit and tie, climbed the portable stairway into the plane. We were expecting a wait (there were 30 or 40 reporters present), and we got it. The cordon of Laotian police allowed us to pour through the gate and form a large half circle with its center at the tail exit of the aircraft.

     After a time some men - possibly members of the COMMISSION - began to straggle to the exit and down the ladder, disappearing behind the ring of reporters and AMERICAN EMBASSY personnel. Once in a while we would see a stewardess appear silhouetted in the doorway, then disappear again inside. Two or three times the policemen fell back and let us reduce the size of the ring. The still photographers were talking about shutter speeds, and the television cameramen set up their floodlights to create a small area of intense whiteness in the surrounding dark.

(2014 NOTE: IT WAS THE TV CAMERAMEN’S FLOODLIGHTS WHICH ENABLED ME TO HOLD MY USED JAPANESE CAMERA OVER MY HEAD AND SHOOT THE PHOTO OF THE THREE PILOTS. I HAD NO FLASH ATTACHMENT. THE THIRD PILOT’S FACE IS IN SHADOW. THE FACE AT THE FAR RIGHT IN THE PHOTO IS A JOURNALIST HOLDING HIS MICROPHONE UP IN FRONT OF THE SMILING MAJOR WHO SPOKE FOR THE THREE PILOTS. (PHOTO BY DEAN METCALF, FIRST PUBLISHED IN COLORADO COLLEGE MAGAZINE, WINTER 1969)

     Finally AMBASSADOR SULLIVAN came down the ladder and strode to the center of the ring of waiting newsmen. He made a terse statement that Major so-and-so, as senior man, would speak for the three pilots, and that we should keep our questions brief. Then he left.

     Then, after about a forty minute wait, the pilots came out. All were wearing white shirts, open at the neck, and not-too-convincing smiles.

     "How's it feel to be back, Major?" was the profound first question.

     "Oh, great, just great, really good to be back...." Toothy smile followed. Somebody had given the Major a big cigar, and he lit up and puffed happily. When he was asked how they had been treated in prison; he answered, "Very well. The North Vietnamese treated us very well."   

     (2014 NOTE: I DIDN’T BELIEVE HIM THEN, OR NOW. AT THE TIME, I HAD ALREADY LONG SINCE LEARNED THAT US MILITARY PERSONNEL, SELECTED TO SPEAK BEFORE THE PUBLIC, HAD ORDERS ABOUT WHAT THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO SAY, AND THAT’S WHAT THEY SAID. IT’S ALL PART OF THE TAPESTRY, ALREADY WOVEN FOR THEM. WE JOURNALISTS AND OBSERVERS FROM OUTSIDE THE ORB OF FLOODLIGHTS, OF COURSE CAN HARDLY BLAME THEM.

BUT ONE CAN ALSO LEARN FROM THESE SITUATIONS, AFTER SOME TIME AND DISTANCE HAVE PASSED. (SOME OF US BEGAN TO LEARN AS THE EVENTS WERE HAPPENING.) LYING IN SUCH SITUATIONS – ESPECIALLY IN THE CASE OF POW’S - IS SO SOLIDLY AT THE CORE OF WHAT HAPPENS, THAT IT IS EXPECTED, FORGIVEN, AND OF COURSE NOT BELIEVED. THE PILOTS THEMSELVES CAN HARDLY BE BLAMED. EXCEPT IN THE SENSE THAT WE CAN ALL BE BLAMED, FOR CREATING THE WORLD WHERE SUCH THINGS HAPPEN BECAUSE EVENTS CANNOT GO ANY OTHER WAY. WHATEVER THE DOWN-AND-DIRTY DETAILS OF WHAT HAD HAPPENED TO THEM IN THE NORTH VIETNAMESE PRISON, THEY HAD LEFT COMRADES BEHIND THERE. ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN CONSEQUENCES TO ANYTHING THEY SAID, OR DIDN’T SAY. WAR SUCKS, AND NOBODY WINS… IF YOU WANT TO SUM IT UP THAT WAY.

     He (THE MAJOR) was already beginning to sound like a tape recorder.

     There were more questions: about how long each of them had been imprisoned, whether they'd heard from their families, when they'd found out they were to be released... and there was the question of how the three would return to the United States, to which the major answered that they had been given the choice of going by commercial aircraft or a special Air Force jet, and "hadn't decided yet." The questions were mostly of the unphilosophical, hometown news release type, and several of us were getting the impression that the major preferred them that way. As the queries got closer to sensitive territory  what kinds of missions they'd been on, what they felt about the damage they'd caused  the major began to hedge, and indicated that it was time to cut the thing short; they were very tired and wanted to get home to their wives.

    

     Manyon's question was the capper: "Major, have your personal views changed any as a result of your missions over North Vietnam and your subsequent imprisonment?"

     "Well, since you don't know what my views were before, I guess you can't tell, can you? Ha, ha."

     Again, there was the toothy smile and a flourish of the cigar as the three pilots began to ease their way through the crowd of reporters. Someone muttered that Ambassador Sullivan had done a pretty good coaching job.