A SAIGON PARTY:

And Other Vietnam War Short Stories

by Diana J. Dell

A Saigon Party:
And Other Vietnam War Short Stories
Paperback at Amazon

INTRODUCTION

From October 1970 to May 1972, during that period of gradual U.S. troop withdrawal, I lived and worked in Vietnam. 

     For the first six months, I was a program director at the USO Aloha Club at 22nd Replacement Battalion in Cam Ranh Bay, then the civilian organization's in-country director of public relations and the host of a daily radio show, “USO Showtime,” on American Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN), the military station in Saigon.

     As an eyewitness to the most significant event of the coming-of-age Baby Boom Generation, I probably will be telling war stories until my final moment on this earth.

     However, my tales—some exaggerated, many true—are not about battles, blood, gore, or angst.  They are usually about participants of the war other than grunts: CIA agents, bar girls, war profiteers, missionaries, donut dollies, strippers, civilian contractors, pilots, cooks, telephone operators, disc jockeys, rock stars, landladies, pedicab drivers, generals, Buddhist monks, movie stars, pickpockets, politicians, prostitutes, prisoners, beggars, nightclub owners, drug counselors, Montagnard tribesmen, foreign correspondents, ambassadors, doctors, humanitarians, celebrity tourists, and other REMFs (rear echelon mother f_ _kers), civilian as well as military.

     Kenny, my younger brother, who died in the Mekong Delta on November 5, 1968, a date forever etched in my memory, was the reason I went to Vietnam. 

     While walking point on his last day alive, he moved a platoon through a heavily mined area and disarmed several booby traps.  His scout dog tripped a well-concealed land mine, killing Kenny instantly, or so the Army claimed, obviously, to lessen our family’s pain.

     Before flying off to war, he talked into the long nights, while at home on leave, of wanting to return as a hero from combat with a chest full of medals to prove it.  And he did. 

     Kenny came back home with numerous decorations, including the Bronze Star for, as the citation stated, “exceptional heroism in connection with ground operations against an armed hostile force while assigned to the 199th Light Infantry Brigade.”

     It is still painful to remember the funeral.  I stared in a daze as the seven uniformed Army Reservists, safe from combat but not its destruction, stood ramrod straight, aimed their rifles at Heaven, and fired three times with precision.  The 21-gun salute sounded like three single shots.  Taps drifted throughout the cemetery and seemed to touch the souls of those congregated, even the people who did not know Kenny, 21 for eternity, lying in the flag-draped coffin. 

     The young men cried the hardest.  Many openly wept for perhaps the first time in their adult lives.  They seemed to grieve for themselves more than for my younger brother, for their own generation, for their own useless war.  The remaining tearless women could not hold back any longer when they heard the angry boys sobbing uncontrollably.  Exhausted with sorrow, I could not shed a tear and resented the obvious response taps was meant to evoke.

     We buried Kenny next to Daddy, a World War II veteran, who had died two years earlier of a heart attack.  Then, you would assume, the healing process for the survivors began.  Not so.  None of us—my mother, sister Barbara, brothers Jimmy and Ricky, sister-in-law Ruth, and I—ever got over Kenny's death. 

     Initially, my family and I tried to put Vietnam out of our minds; but for some reason, I had a burning desire to go “over there” and see what the hell was going on.  But how and in what capacity?  I certainly did not want to join the military.  During Kenny's tour of duty, I did my bit for the antiwar movement, volunteering with the Eugene McCarthy for President campaign. 

     The only other Americans besides soldiers in Vietnam that I saw in magazines, newspapers, and on television were reporters and politicians on fact-finding missions.  So many events.  So many stories.  So many facts.  Every day, for years, the media barraged the public with information, much of it contradictory. 

     “If you can't convince us, confuse us,” my father frequently quipped about the government and the press.

     During the year and a half after Kenny's death, I went from feelings of grief to sorrow to hopelessness to not giving a shit to finding absurdity all around me.  I skipped acceptance.  Everything was a joke.  A cosmic joke. 

     After the funeral, I was depressed and did nothing but sleep for three months, taught second grade for the next four, then went to Florida to teach in a newly desegregated middle school.

     When another summer arrived, I headed back home to East Vandergrift, a small Pennsylvania town.  Besides visiting childhood chums, I attended plenty of weddings, the town's main social events.  Sophie Zabinski, one of my neighborhood pals, had quite a shindig.  At the reception, I met her roommate from Washington, Caryn Hart, a secretary for National Alliance of Businessmen (NAB), who was sorry to lose Sophie as a roomy.

     Caryn and I hit it off the moment we met at the PNA (Polish National Alliance) bar during the gala wedding party.  She suggested that I try looking for a job in D.C. and stay with her.  There was plenty of room since Sophie's departure and another three months left on the lease.

     I arrived in Washington the first week of July 1970, when Nixon and Agnew were running the world.  A few days later, I was perusing the classifieds in the Sunday Washington Post for any job that sounded remotely interesting: Private Detective Trainee, Photographer's Assistant, Movie Extra.  After a while, at the bottom of a page, I spotted: "Social/Recreation Worker, college grad, U.S. citizen, over 24, for position in Thailand, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam." 

     Vietnam!  This, I had to check out.  The ad was placed by National Catholic Community Service (NCCS).  The religious connection gave me pause, but the word “Vietnam” peaked my interest.

     The next morning, bright and early, I was primly perched in the executive director's office on H Street.  A very dignified Dr. Helm (Ph.D., not M.D.) explained that NCCS was one of the six agencies that formed USO.  The others were Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), Salvation Army, Traveler's Aid, and National Jewish Welfare Board.  Hence, the name United Service Organizations; and I always assumed that USO was primarily celebrity shows—Bob Hope, Martha Raye—and Hollywood-type canteens that I had seen in World War II movies on television.

     After chatting with me for over an hour, Dr. Helm introduced me to Mr. Horn and Mr. Honeycomb, the other administrators.  The three H's ran NCCS on H Street.  I never could remember who was who, what their roles were, or what their respective responsibilities were supposed to be.  They sort of blended into one person, like the Stepford Executives.

     I fit all the qualifications they were seeking in an applicant for a social/recreation position in Vietnam: a citizen of the United States, Roman Catholic, 24 years old, college graduate (I didn't mention by the skin of my teeth), and a practicing member of the faithful.  Well, okay, I fibbed.  I had not seen the inside of a church for well over five years, except for Kenny's funeral; yet I boldly informed the H's on H Street that not only did I attend Mass every Sunday, but I also received Holy Communion each week as well. 

     Hitler—another H—said, if you are going to lie, tell a whopper to be believed.  Or was it (H)immler who made that comment?  I felt that God, who I was fairly sure had a bizarre sense of humor, would understand.  At any rate, what did going to church every Sunday have to do with going to Vietnam? 

     I didn't know then, but found out later, that USO and its six agencies were having one hell of a time recruiting volunteers for Vietnam.  When I say “volunteer,” I don't mean to imply that I was not going to be paid.  In fact, I didn't know anything about salary negotiating.  The H guys matter-of-factly told me what the wages were, and I accepted.  Gee, they sounded honest when they claimed every new employee received $7200.  So busy convincing them of my honesty, integrity, and veracity, to name but three traits I assumed they possessed, I never dreamed they would lie to me about money. 

     When I got to Vietnam, I soon discovered that I was the lowest paid of all the staff from the six agencies. 

     The standard, incredulous question I heard more than once was, "Didn’t you even try to haggle for a higher salary?"  

     The holier-than-thou H's on H Street casually reported, “Oh, regarding wages, everybody starts at the same level of pay.” 

     I suppose I should have become suspicious when they cautioned, “we think it prudent that you not discuss your earnings with anyone at all in the organization,” as though this information was top secret crypto or something.

     "You're hired as far as we're concerned," one of the H's said, "but you have to be approved by USO headquarters in New York.  It’s merely a formality."

     Believing that I must have really impressed them, I strolled into another office while they placed a call to USO’s home office in New York to arrange an immediate interview. 

     Sitting smugly in the adjoining room out of earshot, I imagined they were notifying the USO bigwigs in the Big Apple, "She's wonderful!  She's charming!  She's perfect!"

     Now, after these many years, I'm reasonably sure that the words spoken into the phone by Dr. Helm (Ph.D., not M.D., as he pointed out each and every time he introduced himself) went more like this: "We caught one.  Yeah, she'll do.  She won't embarrass us, and she didn't even dicker about money.  That makes three to Vietnam for us this month.  How about the other agencies?  How are the Jews doing?  What about the Protestants at the Y’s?   No, don't worry, we won't lose her.  We won't give her a chance to even think about it.  She will be at the airport in an hour.  Play with her a little before you accept her.  We do not want her to think we are too anxious.  And, Jack, try not to drink too much over lunch and tell her anything she does not need to know, such as wages."

     Jack Daniels, director of personnel, met me at the airport and escorted me to USO headquarters.  We didn't actually go in.  Instead, we drove by; he pointed at a building and said, "There's USO.  Let's go to lunch."

     While he did all the talking during the interview, I got the impression that he was getting a little drunk.  Well, it was more than my imagination, because lunch lasted from 11:30 till 4:00, during which time he ate no food and downed at least 10 scotch and waters.  No wonder he was as skinny as a rail.

     Jack Daniels was excited about me (I don't know how he could have been, since I barely got a word in edgewise), hired me (for the second time) on the spot, offered an immediate expense account, and arranged for training at the Portsmouth, Virginia USO while the paper work was processed for Vietnam.  I had to get a passport, series of shots, and security clearances.  The job title was assistant director.

     "When can you start?" the looped personnel director asked. 

     In a split second I decided to play tourist in D.C. for a few weeks.  "The end of July would be good."

     "That's three (hiccup) weeks from now.  Owkaay," Jack slurred. 

     I was getting almost a month of paid vacation even before beginning employment.  Nice job.

     Riding back to D.C. from New York on the Metroliner after accepting the civilian position with USO, I met a film producer who had gone to West Point for two years.  After I informed him that I was off to Vietnam, he told me about a general who took potshots at Vietnamese peasants from his helicopter.  I was appalled.  So was he, but for a different reason. 

     "If the general wasted two gooks, he bragged about bagging six."  The former plebe shook his head in disgust at the dishonesty of embellishing kills. 

     The documentary creator explained that he had transferred out of West Point when it dawned on him that he might have to play soldier in a war and enrolled at the University of Miami.  All the while waiting out the draft, he picked up a master's degree, got married, had a child, and taught for two years. 

     "Just to be on the safe side, I also became a Quaker," he added.  "I sure as hell wasn't going to be mistaken for a dink by some trigger-happy, nearsighted two-star in a low-flying chopper."

     On the way to get drinks, Shane enlightened me about his friends who had faked medical exams, acquired law and MBA degrees, married quickly, and were lucky enough, or connected enough, to obtain slots in the Reserves and National Guard.  Because of my drinking companion's loud voice and friendliness, the bar car was soon abuzz with conversations of ways the men in suits had avoided the draft.  It was a shared camaraderie, and each person was enjoying reciting his tale. 

     Only two minority members were present—the Black man serving drinks and me.  I could see in his tired brown eyes that he knew boys who were drafted or had enlisted.  Silently, the weary bartender and I listened to the young men boasting about how smart they were.  As far as they were concerned, serving in Vietnam was the penalty for those who lacked the wherewithal to avoid it.  The word "sucker" was used more than a few times that evening to describe soldiers fighting and dying in Vietnam, not smart enough to get one over on Uncle Sam. 

     Not one of them expressed any outrage at the war.  They didn't give a hoot about its nobility or immorality or care about the Vietnamese on either side.  Their primary concerns were lying, cheating, faking, conniving, defrauding, and pulling a fast one on the military.

     Two Columbia University grads, leaning against the bar, chortled about going to peace rallies to pick up girls, to get laid, to smoke some pot, and to get on television. 

     "At one rally my buddies and I went to there was a crowd of about 2000.  Of that throng, I'd estimate that, tops, there were 10 asshole do-gooders, and the rest of us were there to party.  Jesus, those fag pinkos are so f_ _king serious.  If they don’t like this country, we should ship their sorry asses to Moscow where they belong.  Thank God there are so few of them, or they’d put a damper on all the fun," one of the Ivy Leaguers firmly stated with patriotic passion.

     Remember those persistent TV images of masses and masses of well-intentioned students against the war?  Hmmm?  The media has some 'splaining to do, Lucy, about inflated numbers and other inaccuracies. 

     "It's a badge of honor to avoid military service," bragged a husky guy displaying the American flag in his dark blue suit lapel.  “I’ve got more important things to do with my time than play soldier.”

     Boys who served in Vietnam, like my brother, were called “saps” and “losers” and “chumps” by the well-dressed, briefcase-toting draft dodgers in that smoky, boisterous bar car, rocking and rolling to Washington, D.C., our nation’s capital, that hot July night in 1970.

     The next three weeks in D.C. was one big party.  Convinced I was off to my doom, Caryn, my temporary roommate, insisted that we go out every night to bars and house parties with her friends. 

     One of her coworkers had helped form an organization called “Zero Population.”  I asked him, "But don't you want to have kids?"

     "Oh, yeah, I plan on having five," he answered, surprised at my question.

     "You're kidding, right?"  Surely he was joking.

     "No, I'm not.  The fundamental objective of Zero Population is for the wrong people not to procreate."

     "Oh, I understand."  I certainly did.  It was clear: he was one of the bright guys.  I had to know, "How did you stay out of going to Vietnam?"

     "A very, very high lottery number.  My uncle's the head of the draft board in my home town and made sure it was," snickered the fellow who felt that he was the right kind of person to populate this planet.

     Caryn's boss at National Alliance of Businessmen, a chap named Winston Windsor, a dead ringer for Michael Caine, squired me around the capital during those three weeks.  Veddy British and in his thirties, he perceived the war as no big deal in the scheme of things. 

     "Your country is flush with cash, not only because of Vietnam, but also because of the huge military budgets lining the pockets of every company doing business with the military around the world," explained the Alfie look-alike.

     Winston believed that my going to Southeast Asia would be a marvelous adventure.  "The romantic Orient.  Kiplingian characters.  Gin and tonics.  Oh, how I wish we British still had our empire that the sun never set on.  You Yanks are so bloody lucky."

     The next step was informing my mother, brothers, sister, and sister-in-law about my new adventure.  Lordy, the reaction to the news was overwhelmingly negative, much more so than I had assumed it would be.  It had been less than two years since Kenny was killed, and everyone's, except Winston's, perception of Vietnam was one big battlefield.  Mine was too.

     After a week at home filling out all sorts of paperwork for the FBI and other security agencies, I flew to Virginia while everything was being processed and it was determined if I was or was not a subversive, radical, or Bolshevik spy. 

     I swear to God, I did not have a clue what I was getting into or even what to expect.  I just wanted to see Vietnam, where Kenny had died.  I wanted to be an observer.  Also, to be honest, I began regarding the journey to the war zone as a once-in-a-lifetime experience, recalling Winston's quixotic monologues about the exotic Far East.

     The training in Portsmouth consisted mostly of sunning by the pool, similar to that tan-crazed Doonsebury character, at my temporary abode at the Holiday Inn.  The executive director at the USO in the Hampton Roads’ area, Randy Foreman, adamantly insisted that personnel destined for Vietnam should not work.

     Following the boss’s orders, I checked into the USO a few hours a week and the rest of the time relaxed on the deck and read like crazy.  During this time, I also kept Randy at bay, because he felt that before traveling to the war zone and my ultimate death, I should have the privilege of sleeping with him.

     Showing up at the motel during odd hours, he relentlessly tried everything to seduce me, to no avail.  He composed poems.  (Remember those Rod McKuen books?  Like those.)  Randy sent flowers and daily invited me out to breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  I couldn't complain to anyone, because he was the person who wrote my progress reports, had been with USO for 10 years to my one month, and was a man in an organization headed by men. 

     The moment that I realized he was a harmless flirt, Randy—Hugh Hefner's double, down to the trademark pipe—made me laugh.  He was quite amusing and fun to be with, when not verbally lunging at me; and he was married, so had to behave himself in front of witnesses. 

     Within a short time, Randy and I became pals.  Often we would be lounging by the pool,  and I'd glance up from my book to comment about a moving or thought-provoking passage I had just read. 

     As he intently listened, nodding his head in understanding, he would say something such as, "God, I would give my life just to see one of your breasts." 

     His shocking remarks, which rolled off me like water off a duck's back, to use one of his favorite phrases, were becoming as innocuous as he was.  Either Randy needed to impersonate Casanova, or he was preparing me for the lewd comments he believed that I would hear from female-deprived GIs in Vietnam.

     Oh, incidentally, the males at USO headquarters and the three H’s at NCCS thought Randy was a prince and a great executive—a family man, a pillar of the community, and a hell of a swell fellow.  A man's man. 

     When I sporadically showed up at the USO recreation center for a dance or other program, I heard all about Consuelo O'Keefe, who had been in training a few months before I arrived and was now in Vietnam.  Not of Irish descent, Consuelo was full-blooded Latina, and O'Keefe was her adopted name. 

     The sailors, particularly the Blacks and Hispanics, thought the world of her.  Randy appreciated her, too, and implied that they had a hot, intensely steamy affair during her training.  (In his dreams.) 

     Sandy Snob (not her real name, but one that suits her), the program director at the USO and a woman my age, did not have one kind word to say about Consuelo.  Sandy was so square that, compared to her, Tricia Nixon appeared to be a drugged hippie.  I mean, that gal wore white gloves to teas and on dates, while women her age were burning their bras.

     The sailors who volunteered at the USO admired Consuelo, who was like a big sister to them.  Encouraging them to read, she created lists of books and talked them into going to college after their military obligations were complete.  All this, mind you, without the support of her Maidenform. 

     Consuelo O'Keefe, I quickly discovered, was one of those characters that others either loved or hated.  She either pissed you off or amused you.  I couldn't wait to meet her in Vietnam and rake Sandy Stupid over the coals.

     Consuelo had organized a project to clean up the poor section of Portsmouth, the south side, where the Blacks of the city lived.  After Senorita O'Keefe left, the weekly activity was dropped until I came along and started it up again.  It was a blast for me and the many sailors who contributed their Saturdays.  The townspeople began perceiving the sailors in a new light, not solely as bar-hopping rowdies about to defile their virginal teenage daughters.

     Sandy Shithead (not her real name, but one that suits her), for some unknown incentive, maybe jealousy of Consuelo and at this time me, contacted the members of the local USO board of directors (entirely white) and informed them of the rubbish detail (in her words), declaring it unseemly and unfitting for a Caucasian girl (Consuelo, now me) to ride in the back of a trash truck in the Black section of town with Black sailors.  The august group of pale officials must have shuddered at the thought.

     There were USO clubs in the Southern states, at the time, that were segregated, and snow-white Sandy felt it was a shame that Portsmouth didn't have two separate ones for whites and for Blacks.  Dear, sweet Sandy Sanctimonious (not her real name, but. . .) is now married to a minister.  And people insist that priests should wed.

     The clean-up undertaking came to an end soon after that, even though Randy loved it.  The horny wimp could not take my side of the garbage debate because Sandy's family was very influential in the (white) community, and she was a little old-fashioned about Black folks. 

     No skin off my bronze back.  I just spent more time sunning at the pool, reading, and fending off Randy's burlesque advances.

     While soaking up the rays, I used to admire the boats moored at the dock just beyond the swimming pool.  One day, a young girl sitting on an oddly shaped craft waved, and I waved back.  After that initial, neighborly gesture from the oldest of three children, the Goodwin folks, owners of the three-hulled 35-foot sailboat, the Wild Whale, were soon constant guests of mine at the swimming pool. 

     They were docked at the Marina for a few months before continuing their around-the-world trip, which they expected would take three or four years.  They had already been at it for two when I met them and, among other things, had missed being struck by a passing freighter at night, almost lost their 40-foot mast in a storm off the coast of Venezuela, gouged the bottom of the boat on a reef in Puerto Rico, and had the auxiliary motor conk out off the coast of Mexico and sailed 1500 miles to Panama for a new one.  Brave them.

     Cowardly I bawled like a baby every time I got a shot—small pox, typhoid-paratyphoid, tetanus-diphtheria, poliomyelitis, influenza, typhus, yellow fever, cholera, and plague.  After each one, I became either sore, sick, or exhausted and had to take to my bed for a day or two, similar to one of those frail women in a Victorian novel.  When I weakly emerged from seclusion and headed to the pool, the kids spotted me, ran over, and inquired about which shot I had gotten. 

     Whichever one it was, they chimed in, "Oh, we had that one, too.”  Then they conferred with each other about how it was “no big deal” and none of them experienced any side effects, implying, I am sure, what a chicken I was.  The little showoffs.  And me, so nice to them.

     A few weeks before I left Portsmouth, a new trainee breezed into town.  Peter Dickerman had been in the Navy in Vietnam and afterwards joined USO through YMCA.  His assignment after his training period was to be a USO director in Thailand.  (Men started as directors; women, as assistant directors.)  Tall, blonde, and Paul Newman-handsome, Peter figured out extremely early (the first five minutes) that training under Randy's command meant basking at the pool at the motel.

     Peter Dickerman loved to tweak noses.  When his girlfriend from D.C. wasn't visiting and staying with him at the Holiday Inn on weekends, he was lavishing attention on me in front of Randy in order to "bust his balls," as he put it.  Randy was livid whenever he saw Peter and me together. 

     Whenever I questioned Peter about his experiences in Vietnam, what he related were mostly escapades during R & R's in Hong Kong.  The incident involving the prostitute named Parrot, Pussy a Pekinese, a rope, molasses, and him must have been his favorite war-time yarn, because I heard that one at least 25 times.  The more nonchalantly I reacted to his feats in the Far East, the more outlandish they became.  More props, more characters, more bedroom aerobatics.

     Before my training was finished, Peter and I had turned the Holiday Inn into our private party place.  After the USO closed, sailors, junior volunteers (young women of high moral character who were hostesses at USO activities), and guys from the Coast Guard showed up with cases of beer and guitars and frolicked until three in my room, Peter's, or at the pool.  The Holiday Inn waitresses, desk people, maids, janitors, bartenders, and the organist in the lounge were also part of this merriment entourage.

     Shortly after Peter dropped anchor in Portsmouth, he suggested that I fly home to pick up my car, so that we could trek to Virginia Beach whenever we became bored at the Holiday Inn pool.  During the flight home, there was a stopover in Philadelphia; and in the terminal I shook hands with Huey Newton, who was surrounded by TV camera crews.  In town for a conference at Temple University, he was quite the star.  Handsome, charismatic, charming, debonair. 

     It was a heady time for activists in the antiwar and civil rights movements.  Plenty of people who otherwise would not have had their day in the sun, shone brightly back then.  And the media, a pack of lemmings, trailed each other and interviewed the same people and events over and over and over again.  Still do, as far as I can ascertain.

     The reason I even mentioned encountering Huey Newton was because it was so Forrest Gumpish.  He was cute, though, in that long leather coat and beret, appearing so, so, I don't know, so revolutionary.

     Speaking of activists.  A number of years ago on a plane to Paris, I sat next to a woman who had been a leader in the Black Panthers and had been Huey Newton's lover.  What was she doing on the jet to Paris?  She was on her way back home with her French multimillionaire lover after touring the States promoting her recent book about her time in the Movement.  What were her current concerns?  Shopping and being seen in the chic places in the City of Lights were on the top of her priority list.  As far as I could determine, the Black Power Movement just bumped into her, she joined, and fell in love with the media attention, stardom, power, and celebrityhood that came with the territory. 

     Whatever happened to the activists of the sixties?  I suppose the answer is, they wrote their books, landed their movie deals, made tons of money, and now don't give a shit.  Why did the caring about their fellow man disappear?  I am not so sure that was their motivation in the first place. 

     But then, who am I to cast aspersions?  When the women's memorial was dedicated in Washington in 1993 and I was summoned to be honored along with other females—military and civilian—who served in Vietnam, I went.  What's more, even though laughing at myself, I marched in the parade and accepted thank yous and other forms of adulation from Vietnam Vets lining the streets.  Maybe Mother Theresa was the only honest soul out there.  Then again, what do we really know about her motives for all that exemplary work she supposedly did?

     Whoa!  I'm digressing and getting way ahead of the story.  Let's return to Portsmouth, before I courageously served my country in Vietnam.

     For two weeks, I had a roommate of sorts.  Flaming liberal Gary Angel (not his real name), the other assistant director besides Sandy Satan, had rescued one of the junior volunteers who had been thrown out of her house by her abusive mother.  Lolita, who was part Cherokee and part Filipino, had nowhere to stay.  She also had an illegitimate child that she kept secret from Sandy.  Mother and baby moved in with me for two weeks, until Gary and I could raise enough money from beer keg parties thrown in my room to buy her a ticket to her aunt's place in California.  We also wanted to raise enough cash for her to have a small nest egg to help begin a new life out in L.A.

     During parties, the night desk clerk, as part of his contribution to the Lolita-fundraising kitty, loaned us another room where the young mother and her infant could sleep.  When Lolita wanted to join the fun, there were volunteer baby-sitters from the pool of waitresses and sailors who took turns changing diapers.

     Almost $1000 was collected.  When we put the happy Lolita and her kid on the plane to California, there was a mob at the airport to say goodbye.  Many of them were young men that she had dated.

     Sandy had fired one of the junior volunteers before I arrived because she had worn a miniskirt to a USO dance.  God, she would have had a stroke if she had found out about Lolita's out-of-wedlock baby, Sid, whose father was a sea dog, part Eskimo, part Japanese.

     Oh, I forgot to mention, I was sort of engaged to be married (very unofficial, no ring, no announcement) to Robin Rogers, whom I had met when I was a junior in college and he was in law school.  He asked me to marry him on our first date, a blind date, when he picked me up wearing a priest's uniform.  Proposing continuously for four years, whether we were seeing anyone else or not, he finally wore me down, and I at last said “yes.”  Yes, as soon as I go to Vietnam, see what it's like there, and then return.  The only reason I said “yes” was because he was so damn much fun to be with. 

     Robin wanted to visit me in Portsmouth, but I declined his offer, remarking in my best Greta Garbo impersonation that I needed and “vahnted to be alone.”  Patiently, he said he understood and would wait for me until I came back from Vietnam.  He even promised that he would send me cookies and write often. 

     Yep.  Robin was the man for me, despite the fact that I wasn’t in love with him.  Understanding, loose, sweet, but most of all, he was fun to be with.  What more could a girl ask for in a mate for life?  No pressure, no hassles, as we boomers spouted in those days in the sixties, which extended into the seventies.  No hassles.  Nobody wanted any hassle or bullshit.  A nation of cynics was being hatched back then, even though we never realized it at the time.  So many of us wanted to float along and be constantly amused and entertained while drifting.

     During the stay in Portsmouth, I saw loads of movies, read every Pulitzer prize-winning book (fiction, nonfiction, and plays), partied each night, and slept till noon or beyond.  I dated a reporter for the local newspaper, who had a student deferment then high blood pressure that mysteriously went away when he turned 26, and a teacher, who left education when he turned 26 and started a career with IBM.  There were lunch dates, dinner dates, movie dates, and barhopping.  The training was exhausting.  I could not wait to go to Vietnam, where I could get some rest.

     Now, I know I'm sounding flip about going to Vietnam; but to tell the truth, I was scared silly.  And in the back of my mind, I had this assurance that I could chuck the idea and renege.  I mean, what were the honchos at USO and NCCS going to do, force me to go?  Hence, whenever I had a moment of sanity, I just thought, oh well, I won't go; instead, I'll call Robin, get married, and live happily ever after, after a whimsical paid vacation in Portsmouth.  Plus, I knew that if I did go to Vietnam and changed my mind once I got there, I could easily quit and return home.  I would not be shot for desertion or anything.  Would I?  A civilian woman?

     After fond farewells to and from the Portsmouth gang at the USO and the Holiday Inn, I was on my way back to East Vandergrift and then the flight to Southeast Asia.  Following three months of exhausting employment by USO, I still did not know much about what I would be doing as far as the job was concerned in Vietnam.

     Upon arriving home, I phoned everyone I ever knew to say adieu, knowing that I might not see them again.  After writing out my will, I tried to make each moment with my family as precious as I could.

     I did get cold feet a few times and thought seriously about changing my mind and not going.  I kept visualizing the hardship, the danger.  Was I brave enough?  Strong enough?  Stupid enough?

     Soon afterward, while composing a resignation letter to Jack Daniels, the USO personnel director, with cc's to the three H's at NCCS on H Street in D.C., I received a packet of information from USO headquarters with a cover letter from Polly Ann Sweet, former director of public relations in Vietnam. 

     It began, "So you're going to Vietnam!" and continued in a cheerleaderly tone of excitement.  The letter included four pages of suggestions about what I should take with me to war.  "Keep in mind that you will need nylons for evening and special affairs, plus your R & R trips.  .  .I do recommend colored lingerie.  .  .The girls wear dressier clothing for dinner engagements.  .  .I did bring a black chiffon dress to Vietnam.  .  .Don't forget a mantilla for church.  .  ."  And when I read the line, "Do include at least two cocktail dresses," I was assured that maybe, just possibly, it would not be the dreaded hardship I had envisioned.

     There were plenty of tears—my family's and mine—at the Pittsburgh airport as I boarded the plane en route to the war.  By then, inertia had taken over, and my trajectory was hurling me 9000 miles away to I did not know what.  I was, however, prepared to face the unknown, secure in the fact that three cocktail dresses were folded neatly in one of the two suitcases I was taking along.

     The first leg of the trip had a layover in San Francisco before leaving the United States.  Bivouacked at the Hilton, I stayed up all night watching television—nine hours of 18 Superman shows with the original Man of Steel, George Reeve—believing that it was the last TV I would see for a long time, maybe forever.  I had visions of being killed in a foxhole in some rice paddy during a rocket attack while wearing one of my cocktail dresses. 

     This was nuts.  I was insane.  How could I do such a stupid thing?  I kept questioning myself, “What idiot would go to Vietnam if she did not have to?”  Boys my age were doing everything they could to stay away from that place.  Talking myself out of going, I then talked myself back into going throughout the night and into the morning.  By noon, I was so sleep deprived that I put myself on automatic pilot and caught a cab for the three o'clock flight to Tokyo, the next short visit of my odyssey.

     Sitting in the San Francisco airport, waiting for that flight across the Pacific, there was only one thing on my mind.  "Faster than a speeding bullet.  More powerful than a locomotive.  Able to leap tall buildings with a single bound.  Look!  Up in the sky!  It's a bird!  It's a plane!  No!  It's Superman.  Yes, it's Superman.  Strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.  Superman!  Who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel with his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, a mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights the never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way," kept being repeated in my thoughts over and over and over and over again like some broken record that I was powerless to change.

     That flight, which passed through a zillion time zones and took 16 hours, really turned my body clock upside-down.  It made one stop—Anchorage, Alaska.  The only reason I mention that stop is whenever anyone asks if I had ever been to Alaska, I say yes.  Well, it's the truth. 

     Chatterbox me, I talked with almost everyone on the plane and especially became chummy with Caroline, Max, and Steve, members of a Berkeley and Columbia left-wing student delegation headed to Vietnam on an antiwar fact-finding mission.  By the time the Pan Am jet landed in Tokyo, we seemed like lifelong friends.  But, except for the flight, two days in Tokyo, and part of the five I spent with them in Saigon, I never saw them again these many years; and except for one or two letters after they left Vietnam armed to the teeth with facts, I never heard from them again either.  We all seemed to live in the present and were too busy going forward in our daily lives to look back.  At least I know I was, even though I thought about that trio often over the years and still have warm memories of that brief time with them.

     For some reason, my Berkeley/Columbia buddies and I had been booked for two overnights in Tokyo.  Wow!  We painted the town red, me and my pinko friends.  None of us had slept on the plane over the Pacific, nor had I snoozed the night before in San Francisco.  A little afraid of going to Vietnam, we were practicing that old adage, "Eat, drink, and be merry, because tomorrow you may die."

     Ed and Vivian, two hippie-looking (long dirty hair, peace symbols, bell bottoms) college students from Harvard and Radcliffe, traveling around the world, also on our flight, joined our group in taking in the sights.  The six of us went to a Japanese bathhouse, even though public baths were outlawed since the American occupation after World War II.  Satosan, a bartender we met our first night, arranged for us to go to one exclusively for Japanese.  We missed the tea ceremony, but crammed plenty of other touristy stuff into those 48 hours—shopping on the Ginza, Takarazuka (a Radio City Rockettes-type show), and plenty of saki and sushi.  We snapped pictures of each other standing in front of everything.  There was one of Caroline being shoved into the subway during rush hour by a person whose job it is to push passengers into the cars. 

     It was such a blast, the first time out of the U.S. for each of us, that their group decided to stay another day, before heading to Hong Kong, and tried to talk me into sticking around too.  I decided against it, because I didn't know who to call in Saigon to report that I was delayed in Tokyo.  Anyway, I didn't think USO officials in Vietnam would buy the excuse that there were only three bars left out of 4000 that we had not visited and wanted to hit those before leaving Tokyo.

     Caroline, Max, Steve, Ed, Vivian, and Satosan accompanied me to the airport and waved goodbye as my next plane headed for Saigon with a three-hour stopover in Taiwan.  “Yes,” I answer, “I have been to Taiwan.”

     Flying Air Vietnam, I was thankful I never ate breakfast, because the morning meal was raw fish mixed with raw eggs.  On top of a hangover.  The Vietnamese businessman who was heading home, sitting beside me, was pleased when I gave him my meal and spent the entire trip lighting my cigarettes with his gold Dunhill lighter.  Hmmm?  I thought Vietnamese were poor and here was this guy, no older than 30, who appeared rather prosperous.  His English, with a trace of a British accent, was excellent.  He had learned English in Hong Kong while at boarding school as a boy, he told me.  I had never met anyone as sophisticated as he seemed.  Books, movies, plays, travel, the chap could converse about anything.

     When I told him about my new job, he said he knew many people who worked for the USO in Saigon. 

     “No kidding?”  I assumed he meant Vietnamese.

     “No, I am a friend and business associate with many Chinese as well as Americans.” 

     Just before landing in Saigon, passengers were required to fill out cards divulging how much currency they were carrying into Vietnam.  Mr. Urbane whispered that I should not declare the 300 in greenbacks and instead double it on the black market money exchange.  I didn't know much about Vietnam, but I did understand that what he had just suggested was illegal.  Peter Dickerman had recommended the same thing and wanted me to hide money in my shoe and then swap it on the black market.  I decided against it.  I did not want to get caught and land in a dingy Vietnamese prison. 

     Many thoughts were swimming through my head as the plane approached Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airport, including: Why would a stranger tell another stranger about committing a crime?  And what kind of business did Mr. Smooth as Silk do with Americans working at the USO in Saigon?  It was a fleeting thought that did not re-enter my mind again for many months, and when it did, I was pretty sure I knew who he not only knew, but also who he did business with at the USO. 

     The plane landed, and I was expecting a representative from USO to welcome me to the war zone.  Walking down the steps of the plane, everyone gasped from the heat.  Not me.  Back then, before menopause, I loved the heat.  The hotter, the better.  It was the strange smell that had me puzzled, and just about everybody else who spent time in Vietnam during the war talks about it.  Jet fuel?  Garbage?  Car fumes?  I didn't know then, and I don't now, but I never again smelled it anywhere else. 

     Waiting for hours, I kept checking the Air Vietnam counter to see if I had any messages.  None.  I waited and waited and waited.  Lots and lots of soldiers came up to me and asked where I was from and what I was doing in Vietnam.  Before long, I learned that Saigon had a daily eleven o'clock curfew and a one o'clock on weekends, and I had to be where I was going by then or else sleep in the airport overnight until 5:00 a.m. when the curfew lifted. 

     I repeatedly stopped civilian men and asked if they were from USO and searching for me.  I must have looked like Little Orphan Annie.  Finally, a middle-aged USAID (United States Agency for International Development) civilian offered to give me a lift into downtown Saigon and suggested that I check into a hotel then go to the USO in the morning, since he was certain it closed at 10:00 p.m.  By now it was 10:30.

     After dropping me off at the Eden Roc Hotel, a third-rate establishment, and helping with my two suitcases, he sped home.  Before leaving, he assured me that I would be safe and there was nothing to be afraid of.  Right.  I was terrified and felt very lonely and tired.

     Before going to bed, I went to the bar in the lobby for a Coke and met a group of pilots from Cam Ranh Bay on their way to Hong Kong on R & R the next day.  The one who was a spitting image of Lt. Calley of My Lai fame bought me a drink and, before I had taken two sips, asked if I would like to go to bed with him. 

     I wanted to clobber him, but instead heard someone saying, and realized the words were coming from me, "No thank you.  But thanks for the drink."

     Each room in the hotel had a Vietnamese woman assigned to it who stayed outside the door throughout the night in case the guests desired anything.  I kept waking up during the night, because mine was gregarious and either singing at the top of her lungs or having loud conversations with the other Vietnamese women squatting near the other doors in the hallway. 

     I did go out one time to ask my congenial guard (in English—Ugly American that I was) for a towel.  I went through an elaborate pantomime for 15 minutes.  Puzzled for the longest time, she at last squealed and shook her head, disappeared down the hall, and an hour later returned with a Coke on a tray.  I signed the tab and tipped her a dollar bill.  You would have thought that I had just given her a diamond.  Crying with joy, she kept patting my head and kissing my hand.  It dawned on me that I might have overtipped.

     The next morning, I woke up not knowing where I was.  When it hit me that I was in a hotel room in Saigon, Vietnam, I screamed out loud, "Oh, shit!" 

     The room was like an icebox from the air-conditioner.  I turned it off before proceeding into the bathroom, which had a bidet (the first one I had ever seen) and a toilet with a pull chain, which I kept yanking like some two-year-old with a new toy. 

     While I lounged in a shampoo bubble bath, a giant, and I do indeed mean humongous, cockroach raced across the floor.  My blood ran cold.  I hated them then and still abhor them now.  Those repulsive critters.  If I were a spy in possession of America's greatest secrets, the only thing an enemy would have to do is threaten to lock me in a room with one cockroach and I would spill my guts. 

     I threw a bar of soap in the direction of where I saw the cockroach go.  It appeared, glared at me, and then scurried to a corner and disappeared into a hairline crack.  I'm lousy with measurements and am still amazed that my son is an engineer, but I did notice that cockroach was as big as the bar of soap.  How is it possible for an insect the size of a pack of cigarettes to crawl into a crack in a wall that is barely noticeable? 

     While I was in training, and I do use that word loosely, in Portsmouth, I read so many books that I was on a first-name basis with everybody at the local library, including the cleaning staff.  One of the books I read three times was Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, about a fellow who turns into a cockroach. 

     The only reason I'm rattling on and on about cockroaches is that when people find out I lived and worked in Vietnam, they invariably inquire, "Were you afraid?"

     "Yes," I reply.  "Of cocky cockroaches."

     After I finished bathing, I tiptoed into the bedroom, which by then was as hot as an oven.  The ceiling fan was circulating sweltering air.  The air-conditioner had two settings, on and off.  So the ritual of 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off began.  After drying off with the sheet, I put on something that was not too wrinkled and set off to find the USO. 

     I would have asked Lt. Calley's twin for directions the night before, but I never had the chance after his crude proposition at the bar.  He had scared me so much my first evening in Vietnam that I took the elevator up a floor past mine then quietly walked down in case he was following my movements in order to rape me while I slept.  Little did I know then that all he had to do was bribe the desk clerk.  After witnessing the maid's reaction to American greenbacks, I venture to guess $5 would have sufficed and he would have been slipped a key to my room.

     That first day none of the Vietnamese in the hotel knew what the hell I was babbling about when I asked where the USO was, even the ones who did speak English.  I asked to see a phone book.  Nobody knew what that was either.  Not to worry, I thought.  I'll just find a GI and ask him.  I did not have to look far.  As soon as I walked outside, there were hundreds of American men in military uniforms.  To the left was the Saigon River.  I headed right.  I had not taken a few steps before I spotted two MPs not far ahead.  They escorted me to the USO Saigon a few blocks away. 

     My initial impressions of Saigon?  Let me just state that for a girl from small-town East Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, who thought Pittsburgh was a big and exotic place, this place was surreal.  Salvador Dali would not have stood out in that setting.  I stuck out like a sore thumb, though, especially when my two burly chaperons and I passed the bars and brothels on Tu Do Street.  The bar girls and prostitutes gave me the once-over, sized up what they probably regarded as the competition, and threw some rather rough language my way.  No man (let alone any woman) had ever in my life told me to “f_ _k off.”  And for those few blocks, I was instructed to “f_ _k off” at least 50 times.  I had the sneaking suspicion that those Vietnamese professionals did not like American women very much. 

     "Don't pay them no mind," Sgt. Alabama advised me. 

     Oh, sure, easy for him to say.  He didn't have everyone on the street, Vietnamese men, women, and children, as well as throngs of soldiers—Americans, Vietnamese, and Koreans—staring at him and giggling.

     I tried to enjoy the scenery as we neared the end of the bar part of Tu Do Street.  As we turned the corner heading to Nguyen Hue (pronounced Win Way), I observed an American soldier leaning down, whispering in a bar girl's ear and fanning money in front of her nose.  I smiled knowingly and just at that moment our eyes met. 

     The very young working girl smirked and yelled, "American c_ _t!"

     I was warned about coarse language from the GIs but nobody cautioned me about the Vietnamese bar babes.  Without thinking, I threw her the finger.  The MPs, walking protectively on either side of me, roared with laughter at the gesture.

     My first daylight glimpse of Saigon will forever stand out in my memory, exactly as the first of anything usually does: Blaring rock music assaulted pedestrians from bars.  Teenage prostitutes strutted their stuff in size-one miniskirts.  Teenage boys rode double on Honda motorcycles.  Miniature blue and yellow cabs barely missed the scooters.  Old women squatted on the sidewalk over steaming pots.  Signs advertised dress makers, massages, and quick marriages.  American soldiers towered over elderly Vietnamese women, who wore conical hats and carried parasols. 

     Black market stalls lined the sidewalks.  For sale were boonies (boondocks, bush) hats, flight jackets, Crest toothpaste, cartons of Marlboro cigarettes, Hershey candy bars, Tampax, cameras, Prell shampoo, and hundreds of other items that were shipped from America to PXs in Vietnam but somehow never made it to the intended final destination.  The consumer products were either stolen from the docks or bought from GIs who made a little extra money on the side, the MPs explained.

     "How come nobody does anything about all this stealing and black market stuff?"  Miss Innocent I wanted to know.

     The burly, Southern MP, who had been patrolling the streets of Saigon for eight months explained, "Every once in a blue moon the Saigon police, the ‘White Mice,’ as we call them, arrest a handful of the merchants who are selling goods on the street.  It's a symbolic gesture meant to show that corruption will not be tolerated.  The next day, the same shopkeeper is back on the same spot selling the same products and the same White Mice pass him without a second look.  Shit, whenever the PX is out of something, I just come here and buy it.  Everybody does.  Need anything yourself?"

     There were beggars every few feet and throngs of kids with hands outstretched asking for P (piasters), the South Vietnamese money.  Buddhist monks with shaved heads strolled by, stopping occasionally to buy an item from the black market stands.  The air was filled with odors of cooking food and automobile fumes.  Petite girls were selling sweet-smelling garlands of flowers. 

     During our walk, the Black MP, not the one from Alabama, said he had met a really neat (his word, I swear) USO girl in Danang a month earlier while he was on in-country R & R at China Beach.  “I’m fairly sure her name was Consuelo O'Keefe.” 

     Talk about a small world.  Not that she and I were friends, but I felt as though I knew her before meeting.  And what I knew of her I liked.  In my mind, the pro- and anti-Consuelo camps had been formed.  So far, I preferred the people who belonged to the pro faction.

     Finally!  The USO was in sight. 

     There was a guard at the entrance checking identification.  Nonchalantly, he waved my escorts and me through without even a glance at any of my documents.  Before going in the club, I stopped to smile at the little boy, not more than six, who was peddling plastic bags in front of the USO.  The MPs howled when I paid him his asking price of 50 piasters.  They claimed I lost face because I did not bargain.  I certainly did not need the plastic bag, but the kid looked so cute that I just wanted to stare at him for a moment while the transaction took place. 

     Sitting down next to him was a tiny girl about four years old, his sister, he told me in pidgin English.  The little bag seller had on gray Bermuda shorts and sandals.  She had on a cute yellow dress, tattered but clean.  I wanted to hug them, but the boy seemed so serious that I didn't want to embarrass him. 

     I stooped down when I gave the kid the 50 piasters, which I borrowed from Sgt. Alabama, and he insisted I take two bags.  When the MPs saw the boy give me the extra bag, they each shelled out 50 piasters, with no haggling, and the three of us strolled into the USO clutching our plastic bags.

     The place was enormous.  To the right, when we entered, there was an information desk.  The sign on the wall behind it announced, "USO Saigon, Your Home Away From Home.  Ping Pong.  Letter Tapes.  Snack Bar.  Pool Tables.  Piaster Exchange.  Flowers By Air.  R & R Information.  Stateside Telephones.  Saigon Camera Tours.  Musical Instruments.  Concession Arcade.  Checking Facilities.  Writing Material.  Air-Conditioned Lounge.  Open Daily 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m."  Farther down, there were leather couches, a bunch of tables near the snack bar, the booth for money exchange, and at the very end of this cavernous room a band was performing on a stage.

     The band members were Vietnamese.  The musicians were wearing tie-dyed shirts, jeans, and love beads and peace symbols on chains around their necks.  Each of them had long hair.  The lead singer, a female, was sporting a miniskirt and white boots.  The Vietnamese Nancy Sinatra was just finishing singing "These Boots Are Made For Walking" and was a hell of a lot better than Frank's daughter. 

     There was nobody behind the information desk, and I just stood there taking in the scene as the female singer started belting out "Me and Bobby McGee" in a fairly good imitation of Janis Joplin.

     "May I help you?" a male voice inquired. 

     When I turned to the person speaking, I gazed into the face of a very attractive Oriental man.  It was obvious that he wasn't Vietnamese. 

     His name was Danny and he was Chinese, he proudly blurted out.  From Cholon, the Chinese section of Saigon.  The guy oozed charm from every unblemished pore. 

     Before long, I was behind the desk looking at his autograph book of famous people who had come into the USO—movie stars, reporters, politicians, singers, writers, as well as baseball, football, tennis, hockey, and basketball players.  I glanced at the signatures of Bob Hope, Gypsy Rose Lee, James Stewart, John Steinbeck, Martha Raye, Sam Yorty, and a couple of Miss Americas.

     "You met all these people?" I asked, impressed and somewhat puzzled.  "What were they all doing here?"

     Danny, from Cholon, smiled a charming smile.  "Best hamburgers in town!"  My Chinese companion obviously took great pride in the USO.  "Besides, Miss Diana, have you ever seen the movie Casablanca?" he asked.

     "Sure.  Lots of times.  Why?"  I did not have a clue where the conversation was going.

     "Well, the Saigon USO is the same as Rick's Cafe Americain.  Everybody makes it to the USO when they come to Saigon, just like Rick's place in Casablanca."

     I had to laugh.  But upon doing so, I could tell he thought I was laughing at him.  Quickly, I assured him that I was not making fun of him.  It was just that I did not expect all of what I had seen and heard so far.  I do not know what I anticipated, but it was not what I had experienced so far.  He looked perplexed at what I was trying to express.

     Before I had a chance to explain to him why I was there and to ask if he would help me find a USO official to let him or her know that I had arrived, Danny was explaining to me the similarities between Rick's Cafe Americain and the Saigon USO.  He, of course, fancied himself as Humphrey Bogart. 

     Waving his arm to survey the club, he whispered, “There is lots of gambling at the pool tables and the joint is crawling with an abundance of spies—CIA and VC disguised as kitchen help, no doubt.  There is plenty of illegal deals and transactions being carried out all around us,” he confided. 

     The young man had a wonderful imagination and I really could have, and probably would have, spent hours listening to his stories; but in the middle of one of them, a middle-aged woman approached us and demanded to know, “Who are you and what are you doing behind my information counter?”

     Priscilla "Prissy" Powers was the honcho of “the American women volunteers at the USO and president of the Saigon American Women's Club,” she quickly enlightened me. 

     Danny had already snapped shut his autograph book and was standing at West Point attention as though in the presence of a four-star general.

     You know how sometimes things pop out of your mouth and you do not have the faintest idea where they came from?  Well, it was one of those moments for me. 

     "Do you know Consuelo O'Keefe?" I asked her. 

     In spite of the "yes, she is a nice girl" answer, I could deduce by the grimace she made at the mention of Consuelo's name that Prissy Powers did not like my soon-to-be good friend.  Danny's beaming face at the mention of Consuelo told me that he was one of the good guys.

     With the litmus test out of the way, I was escorted upstairs past the musicians, who now were singing "My Girl" and waving at me from the bandstand.  Two GIs shooting pool whistled; and the Vietnamese snack bar workers stared at me, huddled together whispering to each other, and then giggled while the band started throwing me kisses. 

     Prissy softened a bit and asked obligatory questions.  “Where are you from in the States?”  “Where did you do your training?”  “What does your father do?”  In other words, she really wanted to know if I was rich and worth her time.

     I told her my father played the harp, forgetting to mention that he was dead.  Then, I quickly turned the tables and asked her some dumb questions.  I learned that she had belonged to a sorority in college.  Restricted, no Jews.  Natch.  She was so stupid that she did not even try to hide her bigotry. 

     Prissy’s better half (anyone had to be better than this crow), Nathan Powers, was the owner of Powers Construction.  As we reached the last step upstairs, I was briefed that they knew and were "dear, dear friends of Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker," a Yaley like Nate.  The Powers duo had been in Saigon doing construction business since 1961 and also owned a travel agency that catered to affluent Vietnamese and foreign business owners like themselves.

     Holy Cow!  They had been in Vietnam for nine years!  Business had to be booming.  It did not take a rocket scientist or a seasoned Asian hand to sum up that there was a ton of money to be made from the Vietnam War.  Danny's autograph book alone could someday be worth a bloody fortune.

     On the second floor, there was a counter of souvenirs, postcards, paintings on black velvet, and ceramic statues of heroes from Vietnam's ancient history.  A beautiful Vietnamese woman was behind the counter speaking French to her young female helper. 

     There were six phone booths, where GIs were standing in line, waiting to call home.  A gold-plated sign that announced “USO Executive Office” was attached to the double doors, across from the phone booths. 

     The Queen of Saigon ushered me in; and the American receptionist, with the biggest beehive hairdo I had ever seen in my life, glanced up and saw Mrs. Powers, snapped to attention, and practically curtsied.  Prissy Powers, who could have easily passed as the mother of Sandy, the oh-so-prim-and-proper program director from the Portsmouth USO, made the introductions and left. 

     Mrs. Beehive's courteous tone changed to near hostility as soon as the middle-aged war profiteer was out the door. 

     "We weren't expecting you," the office worker snarled at me.

     Then, out walked an American man, a few years older than I and partially bald.  He saw me, smiled, and stretched out his hand to shake mine.  Richie Smith, the treasurer, laughed when I told him I was a new program director.  He was not surprised in the least that the personnel director from New York headquarters had forgotten to send a telegram about my arrival. 

     Guiding me into his office, in a stage whisper, he confided, "Jack Daniels is a great guy, but he drinks a tad too much.  He'll remember you eventually and send a telegram before your 18-month tour is complete."

     Within a short time, Richie introduced me to the Vietnamese and Chinese secretaries in the executive office, helped me with all the paperwork (forms for this and forms for that), and gave me a brief rundown of the USO clubs in Vietnam. 

     I was sent out in the hallway to the gift shop where that lovely Vietnamese woman had one of those photo machines that motor vehicle offices use, and I was photographed for various identification cards I would need to travel around Vietnam.  I had to exchange my American greenbacks for piasters and MPC (Military Payment Certificates), the funny money used in military establishments, such as the PX and movie theaters.

     Consuelo O’Keefe, I found out, was in Danang, but Richie wasn't sure how long she would be there since she did not get along with Rob Clawson, the USO coordinator up north.

     Richie, who only had nice things to say about everybody, said he liked them both, but Rob did not think Consuelo represented USO well by showing up at her club wearing Indian saris with a dot on her forehead and meditating with the Vietnamese kitchen help.  Before going on an R & R to India, she had converted to Buddhism.  Since her return, she toyed with the idea of  becoming a Hindu, but could not imagine giving up hamburgers and steaks.  That made perfect sense to me.

     All new USO employees in Vietnam were given a five- to seven-day orientation in Saigon upon their arrival.  A time of unsupervised exploration.  Talk to people at the USO.  Take tours.  Walk the streets and mingle with the Vietnamese.  Investigate.  Sleep off the jet lag.  Look, listen, and learn.

     Richie guided me into the office next to his.  Two American women, one talking on the phone and the other listening to the conversation and grinning, were sitting at desks facing each other.  The older one, maybe mid- to late-forties, with bluish hair, was trying to calm down the person at the other end of the line. 

     "Now, now, take it easy.  Yes, yes, I understand.  No, no, he can't fire you.  What?  Please, Consuelo, speak English.  I don't understand a word of Spanish, except adios.  No, no.  That's better.  No, no, I wasn't going to hang up.  Listen, Darling, I'll fly up there tomorrow and try to straighten it all out.  And, in the meantime, if you see Rob coming your way, cross the street and pretend you don't see him."

     A throw-your-head-back belly laugh erupted from the blue-haired peacemaker.  She looked at me, waved Richie and me into the office, and continued. 

     "Listen, Consuelo, it appears that a new assistant director has arrived without New York letting us know.  I really must go, but don't worry.  I'll see you tomorrow."  Pause.  "Yes, yes, peace to you too, Pumpkin."

     "Don't you just love her?"  This comment from the younger woman, the one with the short blonde pixie, maybe late twenties or early thirties, Molly Dew, the assistant director of public relations and Margo Flame's (the one who just hung up the phone) right-hand woman.

     Hand shakes all around.  And an explanation to Molly about the hearty laugh.  When Margo advised Consuelo to pretend not to see Rob coming her way, Consuelo replied, “Amiga, that would be impossible since Rob is so fat that if he were in a before and after diet plan advertisement with a sumo wrestler, everyone would assume the picture of the wrestler was the after photo.”

     Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that Margo was wearing a hat.  The kind Hedda Hopper always wore.  She even looked like Hedda Hopper.  When I asked her if anyone had ever remarked that she resembled the famous Hollywood gossip writer, you could tell from her beaming face that the answer was “affirmative,” as I soon discovered was the military lingo for “yes.” 

     Affirmative.  Negative.  That became another way of telling whether I would like or dislike someone.  If a person could not say a simple yes or no, I really felt there was no way I could give someone like that my trust.  I guess I am exaggerating a bit.  But, if an individual said “affirmative” and “negative” instead of “yes” and “no” and did not like Consuelo O'Keefe, well, you can figure out the rest.

     Next, we—Margo, Molly and I—went to lunch downstairs. 

     "The best hamburgers in Saigon," Molly gushed.  "And the safest to eat, as long as you don't use mayonnaise on them.  The kitchen staff always forgets to put away the mayonnaise."

     Molly Dew, former high school teacher from New Mexico and current assistant PR director, also hosted the 30-minute radio show, “USO Showtime,” at 12:30 and left for the military radio station, AFVN, after wolfing down one of the best hamburgers in Saigon.

     The band on stage was finishing a rousing rendition of "Proud Mary" to a packed lunch crowd of GIs, who were either stationed in Saigon or on their way to or from R & R’s.  R & R stands for Rest and Recreation or Rest and Relaxation, in other words, a week's vacation from whatever war job they had.

     USO employees were entitled to one R & R every three months.  And if there was space available, we could hop on military flights for free heading to Hong Kong, Bangkok, Australia, and Hawaii.  Wow!  Talk about falling into a great job. 

     Hold on a minute.  You're probably saying to yourself, "Is this the same young woman whose main reason for going to Vietnam was to see the place where her brother had been killed?  Is she the one who wanted to be an observer to a war she felt was wrong?  Where's the angst?  Where's the war?"

     In defense of the Oh Wow! attitude about my first full day in Vietnam, I was tired, didn't know what was expected of me, and felt like Alice in Wonderland with a great tan from my training period in Portsmouth.  My eyes and ears were wide open and, except for all the soldiers and the sign at the information desk requesting men to check their weapons, it was hard for me to believe I was in a war zone.

     Everybody in Saigon seemed to be waiting.  Waiting to go on R & R.  Waiting to make a phone call back to the States.  Waiting for a burger.  Danny was waiting for a celebrity to saunter in and sign his autograph book.  Prissy and Nate Powers were waiting for another lucrative military construction contract for their bulging coffers.  Foul-mouthed streetwalkers were waiting for the next customer.  I was waiting to find out where I was going to be assigned and when I was going to see the war, the one I saw nightly on television news in the States.

     The USO Vietnam personnel director, Averell Van Buren, was on R & R (didn’t anybody work around here?) and the executive director, Charlie Stonewall, the main man, was in Bangkok on USO business, so Margo was in charge.  The PR director ordered me to hang out in Saigon for a week, get over my jet lag, and relax.  After checking me out of the Eden Roc Hotel, she helped me get settled into the penthouse apartment USO rented for staffers traveling through Saigon.

     Penthouse?  Well, it was really a sparsely furnished, top floor apartment in a building across from the USO.  It was cheaper, in fact, than booking people into hotels.  Directors and assistant directors were continually flying into Saigon either as new arrivals or from clubs around Vietnam for meetings, or for new assignments, or for pep talks, or to complain about some other coworker. 

     Consuelo O’Keefe and her boss, Rob Clawson, from Danang were frequent guests at the penthouse, since they were regularly soaring in to complain about each other. 

     I bunked in the room where Consuelo usually stayed.  The walls were decorated with “Che Guevara” and “War Is Not Healthy For Children And Other Living Things” posters.  The bedroom that tubby Rob Clawson frequented had a framed photo of Richard Nixon, the guy who proclaimed in October 1969, "I'm not going to be the first American president who loses a war."  Need I say more about their individual personalities?

     That first week in Saigon was packed with multifarious activities: I dined at Caruso's, an elegant French restaurant, with Jacques, a French photographer who lived in the same building as the penthouse; took a bus tour of Saigon and visited the zoo, Botanical Gardens, Quang Trung Judo School, and the Central Market, where Saigonese shopped for fresh fruits and vegetables, live ducks, and skinned rabbits, and foreigners haggled over flea market treasures from the Japanese occupation during World War II, French trinkets, and American military junk; smoked grass for the first time with the Berkeley/Columbia crowd from the plane and an AP stringer they met in Vung Tau, working out of Hawaii, in Saigon on vacation; gave candy, gum, and money to every 10th beggar I passed; said a prayer at Our Lady's Basilica on my brother Kenny's 23rd birthday; shopped with Margo Flame, the PR director, at the PX and bought a 35 mm camera for a fraction of what I would have paid in the States (Margo bought perfume, nylons, two ice cube trays, cosmetics and booze, at ridiculously low prices); declined numerous times to exchange money illegally, sell my new Nikon, or buy drugs, a monkey, a snake, or a machine gun; was interviewed on Molly's radio show at AFVN (American Forces Vietnam Network) and met Martha Raye in one of the studios telling war stories to a bunch of DJ’s; took hundreds of pictures of beggars, bar girls, street urchins, pedicab drivers, children with no pants defecating in the street, a man peeing against a wall, a woman breast-feeding an infant next to her husband who was cutting his toenails beside their black market stall overflowing with products stolen from American ships at the docks; lunched at an Italian eatery with Richie, the USO treasurer, and his Vietnamese wife; supped with a New York Times reporter (who claimed Vietnam was becoming boring and Cambodia and Laos were the places to go for action) and my antiwar delegation buddies on the rooftop restaurant of the Caravelle Hotel, where we watched DC-3’s drop flares on the far side of the Saigon River; had drinks at the Continental Palace outdoor verandah, where Graham Green jotted notes for The Quiet American and Somerset Maugham once held court; talked to hundreds of GIs (“Where you from?”  “Where you stationed?”); befriended Mitzy, the Nancy Sinatra wannabe singer, who along with the band escorted me to a nightclub to catch the show of one of their rivals; stayed up till three every night reading USO literature, brochures, pamphlets, and flyers, as well as Saigon tour books, magazines, and English-language newspapers with ads for massage parlors and escort services featuring comely Swedish girls; spent a day with the director of the USO in Dian (where Nixon visited in 1969), during which time she showed me her club, took me to a party at the base and, driving back to Saigon in her pink jeep with a bumper sticker that read, "Vietnam: Love it or Leave it," we were shot at by a sniper hiding along the road; feasted with Danny, from the USO Saigon information desk, owner of the autograph book, and his mother, father, six brothers and sisters on a 16-course dinner in Cholon, the Chinese section, where he asked for my signature just in case I ever became famous; ate escargot, onion soup, steak tartar, froglegs, Baked Alaska, and lychees for the first time; had my future told by a sidewalk fortune teller; cocktailed at Margo's garden apartment, where I chatted with Sebastian Cabot, who was in-country on a handshaking tour; danced with 45 GIs at a sock hop put on by the staff at the Tan Son Nhut USO near the airbase and at one time a fabulous villa used by a plantation owner from the Delta for weekend trysts with his mistress; sent scads of postcards to family and friends back home; authorized my pay to be sent to my mother in the event that I was “interned by an alien force” during my employment with USO; and got very little sleep, due to the sounds of mortars in the distance. 

     The noise I heard was called “outgoing,” which was our side shooting out somewhere.  “Incoming,” which was the enemy firing toward us, did not occur during my first week in Vietnam.  Once I was told that the frightening sound was only outgoing, it started to lull me to sleep and would do so for my entire stay in Vietnam.

     Averell Van Buren, the personnel director, returned from R & R and decided that I would be sent to Cam Ranh Bay, where there were three clubs.  The directors there could decide what to do with me.  Hmmm?  I did not detect any long-term planning here in Vietnam, but then again, what could I expect?  Still no telegram had been sent from New York that I was on my way, and it had been a week since I had arrived.

     Off I was sent to the airport with one of the USO drivers who, when he wasn't driving people from the executive office all over Saigon, hung out with the owners of the black market stands, sort of like a permanent sidewalk sale, outside the USO. 

     By the way, I did not meet one American who did not buy something from illegal vendors.  I bought a hairdryer for the 220 current, because the PX didn't have any and had not for months, even though the item was listed on its manifest sheets of goods delivered.

     Armed with all the necessary documents needed to get on military flights, we passengers took a bus from the terminal to the plane on one of the runways.  Metal mesh covered the windows of the bus to protect us from grenades that might be tossed our way.  Remember, this was a war zone, after all. 

     When the bus stopped, one of the pilots jumped in and matter-of-factly reported, “This will be the last plane out of Saigon before Typhoon Louise, which is minutes away, strikes.  Anyone who doesn’t want to take the chance can get off now and take the bus parked alongside that plane over there back to the terminal.” 

     Half of the soldiers got up, gathered their belongings, and left.  The other half and I decided to beat the storm.  Well, why not?  I was eager to get to Cam Ranh Bay and, besides, I knew the pilot was bullshitting about Louise being “minutes away.” 

     While sitting in the airport with me, he and his copilot asked if I would like to ride in the cockpit with them during the flight and joked about giving the GIs a chance and a good excuse to spend another day in Saigon before they had to report back to work.  I was starting to see how loose things were around here. 

     Finally onboard, I waited, securely strapped in the navigator's seat, for the C-130 to take off for Cam Ranh Bay, and I did not have an inkling of what else.  Maybe I would finally see the war, the one Kenny had died in.

     Off we flew into the wild blue yonder, with me, who has to pretend I'm writing to distinguish between right and left, perched in the navigator's seat.  From the cockpit the view was panoramic: Gleaming white villas and thousands of shanties.  The muddy-brown Mekong Delta.  Boats and ships crowded on the Saigon River. 

     The flight took the coastal route north to Cam Ranh Bay.  The blue-green water of the South China Sea came into view.  The scenery of isolated beaches and pounding surf was truly breathtaking, until it started to rain.  And rain, and rain, and rain.  Visibility was zero as the rain pelted the cockpit window.  Typhoon Louise was closer than the flyboys had anticipated.  All conversation with me stopped as the pilots concentrated completely on the lighted instruments on the dashboard (I know it's not called that in a plane, but that's what they told me it was) in front of them.  I had never sat in a cockpit before and did not realize how much work was involved in flying a plane.  I was impressed.

     The rain started to let up as we got closer to Cam Ranh Bay.  Ole Louise was behind us, I was informed, and it would be an easy landing.  As the plane approached the airfield, the pilot handed me the microphone and I did what they said to do. 

     I pressed the button and spoke, "Pilot to tower.  Pilot to tower.  Request landing instructions.  Do you read me?  Request landing instructions."  Then I let go of the button. 

     The pilots were chuckling.  No answer.  The copilot explained, “You forgot the last line to let them know you’re finished transmitting. 

     I did it again.  "Pilot to tower.  Pilot to tower.  Request permission to land.  Do you read me?  Repeat.  Do you read me?  Over and out."

     This time I got an answer. 

     The voice through the copilot's earphones, which he was sharing with me, barked, "Roger.  I hear you.  Now who the f_ _k am I talking to?  Over and out."

     As the plane circled, the pilots were beside themselves with laughter.  I was getting a little nervous at this point.  I always heard that taking off and landing were the most dangerous parts of the flight.  When I expressed this fear, the pranksters assured me that circling was safe, and that's what we were doing. 

     So again I took the microphone, pressed the button, and said, "This is flight two-two-niner.  Request landing instructions.  Over and out."

     The voice from the earphones responded, "Flight two-two-niner.  There better not be a girl flying that plane or you guys are in a heap of shit.  Over and out."

     The joke had gone on long enough, and the rain started to pick up.  Louise got closer as we circled.  The pilots became dead serious and there were lots of “Roger,” “Affirmative,” and “Over and Out,” and they landed the plane. 

     What a view I had!  It was so exciting to watch from the cockpit as the airfield got closer and closer.  My adrenaline was pumping; but the pilots, who were so loose playing around with the tower seconds ago, were sitting straight up, fiddling with this button and that knob, and in monotone voices smoothly touched down. 

     My heart was in my throat; and I kept thinking, “this plane is going so fast it will never stop and we're definitely going to crash into something and I'll be blamed because the tower thought I was flying the plane.  If I live through the crash, USO will surely fire me.  The Air Force might make me pay for the plane.  Jesus, how much could one of these things cost?” 

     Oh God, I prayed, eyes shut, and only opened them when the pilot said, "Well, how did you enjoy flying a plane?"  We had not crashed before I could see the war.

     Oh, I must mention, when pilots are in the process of landing a plane and they use “affirmative” or “negative,” that doesn't bother me; but when you ask someone if he would care for a drink or another cookie and the answer is “affirmative” or “negative,” now that annoys the crap out of me.  Especially if that someone is a civilian woman sounding more like a military person than a military person.  Like Ruby McGillacutty, my soon-to-be new boss. 

     I wish someone in Saigon had warned me about her, but new people in Vietnam—military and civilian—had to go through a sort of initiation or baptism.  Nobody already there and feeling like an old-timer wanted to make the first few days in Vietnam easy for the new person or FNG (military slang for f_ _king new guy).  The rule of thumb was to learn how things worked as you went along.

     A blue bus with metal mesh protection took us to the terminal.  Inside waiting for me was a middle aged woman—I thought about 48, but later found out she was then 39 and intending to stay that age for many, many years—wearing a yellow slicker, yellow boots, and a yellow fisherman's hat.  Her yellow hair was plastered down from the rain.  Years later when I saw my first Paddington Bear, I instantly thought of that initial meeting with Ruby McGillacutty.

     At that point, I was just happy to have been met at the airport and quite pleased to see a smiling face greeting me warmly.  She was even holding a piece of cardboard with my name spelled out in large red letters.  I looked around the terminal and noticed that we were the only two women there. 

     While Ruby and I stood there chitchatting, the pilots came up to us to shake my hand goodbye.  Ruby lit up like a Christmas tree. 

     "You guys want to go have a drink?" she purred. 

     They quickly answered in unison, “No!” 

     I was surprised, because on the plane they said that when we landed we would go find Lynn Willowbrook, the director of the USO Coffee Bar at the airport, and have a drink at the officers’ club on the airbase. 

     As they quickly walked away, Ruby shouted at their backs, "You pilots don't know how to have a good time.  Whatsa matter?  Don't you like girls?"  Talk about guts.  Ruby, nonplused at their response, stared at me, grunted, "f_ _k 'em," picked up both of my suitcases, ordered, "Let's go find Lynn and see if she wants to go have a drink," and started marching in what I assumed was the direction of the USO Coffee Bar.

     Lynn Willowbrook was tall, had long brown hair, and was wearing a flight suit that she had made in Hong Kong, just like the pilots wore.  She was slim enough to get away with the outfit.  Ruby gushed about how great it looked on Lynn and said she wanted to have one made for herself. 

     Lynn glanced at me at the same time I glanced at her, and then we both looked at Ruby, at least 50 pounds overweight and appearing even heavier in the yellow slicker, yellow boots, yellow rain hat barely hiding her yellow slicked-down hair. 

     Our eyes revealed our silent screams, "Don't, Ruby.  Don't!  For the love of God, don't embarrass yourself."

     Instead, Lynn sweetly said, "That's nice."

     Ruby batted her eyelashes and, trying to imitate Lynn’s sweetness, asked, "Can I have the name and address of your tailor in Hong Kong?"

     Tripping all over her tongue and lying through her teeth, Lynn told her, "Oh, darn.  I think I lost the receipt when I was shipping some boxes home.  But as soon as I remember the name, I'll let you know."

     “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” my eyes silently revealed as Lynn made eye contact with me.

     Lynn was closing the USO early, because the airport, which was now deserted, would be shut down until Typhoon Louise had come and gone.  Since Ruby had decided to go back to her club, USO Aloha at 22nd Replacement Battalion, about 10 miles away, Lynn offered to drive me to the trailer park where I would be living, with a stop at the USO Cam Ranh Bay Club to meet Jolly Jackson, the director, and Bertha Bombeck, the assistant director.

     Off Ruby went in a pickup truck.  Lynn and I waved goodbye as we drove in the opposite direction in an uncovered jeep.  Someone had stolen the canvas top a few weeks after Lynn had traded a case of steaks for the jeep from a supply sergeant at the airbase, who had gotten the jeep in a trade he made with some guy from the motor pool at the Army base.  The supply sergeant gave the motor pool guy an AK-47, the Chinese-made gun used by the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) and VC (Viet Cong), the enemy.  The AK-47 was given to the supply sergeant by a truck driver GI passing through on a convoy, who had swapped a case of whiskey (part of his cargo) for the weapon, whose third owner was a GI loading-dock clerk in Saigon.  The first owner was an enemy soldier, who was killed by a grunt in the Mekong Delta.  The combat GI brought the weapon to Saigon and traded it with the clerk for a typewriter, so that he could write the definitive Vietnam War novel.  WOW!!!  I was truly impressed.

     The rain was pouring and Lynn was grinding the gears. 

     "Could you please reach back and get the umbrella?" she politely asked as the MPs at the front gate of the airport waved us out.  Turning around, I reached for a blue-and-gold-striped beach umbrella.  "Open it up and hold it.  It won't be much help, but at least it'll keep the rain out of my eyes so I can see where I'm going.”

     She was swerving all over the narrow, muddy road and concentrating intently on keeping to the middle.  On each side were steep embankments.  The right side ended in water, and the left led to what looked like woods.

     "I'm so tired,” she moaned, not realizing that I was quite worried because of the road conditions.  Her driving was so lousy that I could not imagine how she had ever passed a driving test.  I wished I had packed a rosary as my mother had suggested. 

     Lynn continued, "I didn't get a wink of sleep last night."  Oh, great!  Then she announced more to herself than to me, "I think we just lost the brakes."  We were going downhill. 

     As she pumped that pedal, I cursed myself for not listening to my mother about those Catholic beads.  Lynn pumped furiously and bingo, the saints be preserved, the brakes were working again.  Slowing down a bit, she repeated how tired she was.  By now, I was holding the umbrella completely over her head and decided to strike up a conversation so she would not fall asleep. 

     "Nice umbrella," I started the conversation rolling.  "Where'd you get it?" 

     I should have known.  It was acquired through a convoluted barter transaction she made with some supply sergeant, who got it from a cook, who got it from a nurse, who got it from a pilot, who got it in Hawaii on an R & R to meet his wife.  The nurse was the pilot's in-country girlfriend.

     Lynn was now wide awake, telling me about other possessions she had procured through barter; and I wasn't frightened anymore, since on the left of the now wider road was level ground, wet sand, and on the right was the same.  The “Welcome To Cam Ranh Army Depot” sign was straight ahead, and again the MPs at another gate waved us through. 

     "Doesn't anybody check identification around here?  I mean, it looks like security is too lax with VC planting satchel charges and all that stuff I read in the papers back home," I, the FNG, wanted to know. 

     "Do you really think two white American women could be mistaken for VC terrorists?" was the answer I got from the driver whose head was being protected from the pouring rain by an umbrella stolen from the Hilton Hotel on Waikiki.

     After only eight of the over 600 days I spent in Vietnam, I could plainly see that there was a whole other side of the war that the media did not report.  I wonder why.

A Saigon Party:
And Other Vietnam War Short Stories
Paperback at Amazon

Irreverent, sardonic, creative, cynical, unique, astute, sarcastic, original, satirical, witty, intelligent, cheeky, and insightful are a few of the words used to describe "A Saigon Party: And Other Vietnam War Short Stories," which includes:

Barbie and Ken Experience the War

A Pedicab Driver Peddles Through History

Sunning on the Deck

A CIA Hired Wife Bares Her Soul

The 4th of July

Major Holloway, Lifer

The Vietnamese Rock Star Interview on AFVN

Yolanda's Favorite Beggar

Saigon Rumors

Barbie's Combat Zone Diary

General Westmoreland's Houseboy (and VC Spy) Talks

The Library Card

The Glazed Donut Dolly Reminisces

The Philanthropic Executives

The War Through Pamela Rose's Eyes

A Saigon Warrior's Journal

Rob Clawson, Soldier of Fortune

The VC Colonel, a.k.a. Hannah

The American Journalist's Deathbed Confession

Dan Quayle's Double

Books by Diana Dell

About the author:

Diana Dell was born in 1946 in East Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, where she grew up, and graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in journalism. Then she worked as a journalist on a newspaper and also taught second grade. In 1970, two years after her brother Kenny was killed in the Mekong Delta, she went to Vietnam as a civilian with USO.

She was a program director in Cam Ranh Bay and director of public relations in Saigon, where she hosted "USO Showtime," a daily program on American Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN) radio. In addition, she set up "Feed the Children" programs in orphanages, coordinated programs and publicity for the 14 centers in-country, and escorted USO shows and visiting celebrities around Vietnam from the Delta to the DMZ.

Upon leaving Vietnam, following the Easter Offensive in 1972, she worked in Europe for a year as publicity director at the Frankfurt USO and two years as a freelance writer and photographer in Athens and Madrid.

After owning an advertising agency in Massachusetts for 10 years, she sold it and taught Vietnam War history and journalism classes at Tampa College. Diana divides her writing time between Boston and Clearwater, Florida.