Flying for the CIA
Escape from the Perfume River
The only time I have ever felt completely safe in an aeroplane was the time I was flying it.
Which shows just how illogical a human being can be.
It was 1967 and I was in the 200-year-old ancient Imperial capital of Hue in central Vietnam on the beautiful Perfume River … where the Vietnamese girls distinguish themselves by cutting their long black hair straight across above the waist.
Looking for a story on my way south from the giant US Marine base at Dong Ha, I ambled through Hue’s version of Peking’s walled Forbidden City … where I’d been just two years earlier.
Hue’s Walled Citadel differed from Peking’s in that it was surrounded by a moat; the palace was less grand; the temples smaller; it was largely flat … and contained trees. There were elaborate tombs of past Emperors and even quarters for the eunuchs.
The Hue Citadel wall was more than six miles long and seven feet thick.
I was heading for the city of Danang – another 60 miles south – where I was based.
The next American airstrip was at Phu Bai, just eight miles south, but I was warned off travelling down that section of road: it was now controlled by the Viet Cong.
Because I’d been writing stories for Reuters Newsagency about the US Marines up near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) next to North Vietnam, I was wearing American military uniform – they wouldn’t take you with them unless you did (so they didn’t accidentally shoot you).
So it wasn’t a good idea for me to travel down that road alone.
I was marooned in Hue.
Before the Vietnam War took off in the mid-1960s, an optimistic tourist organisation had started to build a huge Hotel overlooking the Perfume River near the Citadel: but the Hotel was now a crumbling concrete skeleton.
There were no lifts and no doors or windows on any of the rooms … it was almost completely deserted.
But not quite.
Three men who the war had forgot occupied the penthouse on the top – an Indian, a Pole, and a Canadian: their only armaments being large binoculars, sharp pens, and thick notebooks.
I watched from below as they scanned the jungle tops around and prepared reports ... though I knew they could see nothing of this giant war from where they were stranded.
That was the mystery.
These three phantoms were members of the International Control Commission (ICC) … an organisation that nobody took any notice of once the Americans took over the war.
The ICC had been formed in 1954 under Geneva Accords to oversee the division of Vietnam into North and South and “to ensure peace, conduct studies, and write reports”.
It was staffed by former diplomats and military officers from Poland, Canada, and India who were seen as the perfect combination as “Communist, Capitalist, and Non-Aligned”.
One of these ICC members in Saigon, a high-ranking Indian military officer, had a room next to the one I shared with several correspondents in the Continental Hotel when I’d first arrived in Saigon.
I wondered why he was there because – with nothing much else to do – this mustachioed officer delighted in bursting into our room at 6 a.m. waving his swagger stick and shouting: “OK men, hands off your cocks and on your socks!”
So I decided to avoid the ICC men in the penthouse – even though they probably made this accommodation safer by their presence.
On inspection, I thought the ground floor looked too vulnerable. With nowhere else to spend the night, I walked up three flights of concrete stairs and allocated myself a room at the end of a long corridor: just one of 200 furniture-less rooms I had to choose from.
Later that night, strangely in a tropical country, a cool wind blew in over the Perfume River and it became quite cold.
I gathered some sticks and rubbish paper to make a small camp fire with US-military-issue green fire-starters on my concrete floor … and huddled in close.
The fragrance of the fire and the river outside soon wafted me off to sleep: to dream of men abandoned in a shattered tower eternally watching over a war they would never have any say in.
Incongruously, inside the ancient Walled City at the end of one of many narrow paths, someone had built a short dirt air strip … because the only safe way in and out of Hue was by air.
So next day – with no other way out – I waited there, hoping a plane would drop in over the thick purple wall.
By the second day, I’d just about given up when suddenly a twin-engine 10-seater Twin Otter out of nowhere swooped low over the Citadel, did a looping U-turn at great speed, and skidded to a halt in a pall of dust.
Written on the side was Air America, which meant it was operated by the CIA.
Some nicknamed it Scare America.
None of this bothered me so long as they gave me a lift back to my base in Danang.
I watched as half-a-dozen young American men climbed out of the back of the plane accompanied by an important-looking young Vietnamese man dressed in a Western-style blue suit.
The Americans appeared to be Embassy personnel: they could have come straight out of a Graham Greene novel because one of them even carried a small book called Communist Subversion in South-East Asia.
They were followed by the pilot, a tall, lean, grizzled old American in an ill-fitting leather flying jacket.
As they left, I approached him.
“You’re an Australian!” he shouted enthusiastically. “I was a fighter-pilot against the Japs in the Pacific! Flew with the Australians. Great pilots. I’ve got lots of Aussie buddies. Wonderful people.”
Was I glad to hear that. I was now in with a chance … so I shook hands warmly and told him of my problem.
He said he’d be glad if I jumped aboard.
Several hours later the Embassy group returned from wherever they had been and filed back onto the plane.
I took up a seat at the rear – noticing the windows were so small you could hardly see outside – and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible … I didn’t want to get bumped off by this important delegation.
As I did so, the American officials were ushering their special Vietnamese guest into the co-pilot’s seat in the cockpit.
As the Vietnamese man sat down and pulled on his seatbelt, the old pilot turned and told him to get out.
“It’s all right,” called one of the young Americans, “we told him to sit up there! He wants to get a good view of Hue when we take off … and he wants to see Danang and China Beach when we land.”
“You just get him out of here,” demanded the pilot.
The insulted Vietnamese dignitary returned to his seat where the Americans all reassured him that, no doubt, the pilot liked to fly alone.
But soon there was another shout from the cockpit: “That Aussie down the back, come up here with me!”
I obeyed.
My new buddy continued loudly: “I don’t want any Gooks in here. You never know what they might grab if we have any trouble on take-off.”
I could see all the CIA’s efforts to win hearts-and-minds that day had flown straight out the cockpit window.
Once safely over the high wall, I enjoyed the broad vista of the Citadel and the city of Hue from the co-pilot’s seat. I even saw my crumbling Hotel on the Perfume River as the pilot headed east towards the South China Sea.
At the coast he turned south for Danang which – with the bombing of both North and South Vietnam – was now reputedly the second-busiest aerodrome in the world, after Saigon.
“Ever fly a plane before, Aussie?” the pilot yelled above the two roaring engines on either side of us.
I solemnly shook my head.
“It’s easy,” he said. “Push your right foot down…” and when I did the plane tilted violently to the side. “And now the left,” and it straightened up again.
“I’m going back to do the manifest, Aussie,” the pilot said as he stood up with a clipboard and pen in his hands. “Just follow the coast.”
It was a beautiful day.
The air was clear, the sky was blue, and best of all I was in control.
As I followed the sandy beach all the way towards Danang I was euphoric … even though I knew it was irrational. For the first time since I’d arrived in Vietnam, tranquility washed over me.
Between us and Danang was a small mountain and the pilot returned just in time to tell me to “pull back” on the steering wheel.
As we came over the mountain, I saw the twin parallel runways of Danang with fighters and bombers and fighter-bombers and C130s and C-123s taking off … and helicopters whizzing past.
The old pilot said: “Aussie, d’you think I’d better land it?”
Reluctantly, I relinquished my brief hold on the world.
It is like reality has been reversed, like one of those parallel universes where a cold wind freezes you in a hot country, where ghosts living on nothing at the to of a concrete shell continue to do the same futile Sisyphus job they did in life, where the subservient servant shouts orders, and a man who can type sits at the controls a d flies a plane. You have conjured a bubble for us.
I have it all in my minds eye. The empty decrepit rooms, the tiny runway, the wall. The upgrade to copilot. Then pilot. What a good yarn!