William Boyd - Sweet Caress

I wondered if I could sneak a photo, then I thought, no, better to ask. I went towards one man, an officer, but stopped as soon as I heard the voices around me as they spoke to each other. These men weren’t Australian — they were British. I heard cockney accents, Lowland Scots; one man was a Geordie. I crouched down and pretended to fiddle with my knapsack straps. Yet they were all wearing SASR unit patches, yellow and beige, and a couple of them even sported the regiment’s caramel berets. As the men turned and made ready to climb into the approaching lorries I could see the shoulder flashes saying ‘Australia’. These manifestly non-Australians were clearly making every attempt to be Australians.

The senior officer who’d been in the jeep, who was wearing neatly pressed olive-green fatigues, approached and the men climbed to their feet and straightened up in a notional stand-to-attention as he had a few words with them. I backed off, carefully. What was going on here? The two-ton trucks stopped, the men were dismissed and they hauled themselves on board. As the senior officer headed back to his jeep he passed close to me.

‘Hello, Frank,’ I said. ‘Small world.’

Frank Dunn froze, then turned. I could practically hear his astonished brain working. He managed a thin smile.

‘Amory,’ he said. ‘Bloody hell.’

He came over to me and kissed me on the cheek, to his credit.

‘May I ask what you’re doing here?’ he said, stepping back and looking me up and down. ‘Love the headgear.’ I now rather wished I wasn’t wearing John’s bush hat.

I explained. ‘Picking up a colleague’s stuff.’ I held up the gunny bag. ‘He’s MIA.’ I paused. ‘More to the point: when did you join the Australian Army?’

‘I’ve left the army,’ he said, bluntly. ‘I’ve retired.’

I looked at him — he had no badges of rank, no identifying name above his breast pocket; he was dressed as a soldier, but that was all. Yet those men had stood to attention as he came up to them.

‘Some retirement,’ I said. ‘Why are all those British soldiers pretending to be Australians?’

‘They’re on secondment to the Australian Army — as observers.’

‘Come on, Frank. I’ve been out here for well over a year. I was married to a soldier. I’m not a fool — they’re straight out of combat.’

Frank Dunn linked arms with me and walked me towards his jeep.

‘I’m only going to say this once, Amory. Let me be clear. You came to Nui Dat, you picked up your friend’s bits and pieces, and then you went back to Saigon. You didn’t see them. You didn’t see me. You certainly didn’t talk to me. Understood?’

‘Understood.’

‘I’ll drop you off at the CIB.’

‘Thanks.’

Even though we made our fond farewells — Frank asking for news of the girls, how I was coping out here, kissing me goodbye — I knew I had made a mistake. I should have kept my mouth shut.

I was upstairs at my desk in the SPS bureau trying to draft a resignation letter to Lane Burrell. Seeing John’s paltry collection of possessions had depressed me — a whole young existence subsumed by some dirty laundry, damp-swollen paperbacks and a couple of cameras. It had been no life for John and it was no life for me — and it was time I brought it to a dignified end.

Renata rapped on the door frame. She looked a little alarmed.

‘You’d better come down, Amory.’

I followed her to the reception area to find a US master sergeant with an MP brassard on his arm and two smart ARVN military police acting as escort.

‘Amory Clay?’

‘Yes. What’s this all about?’

He glanced at the sheet of paper in his hand.

‘Your visa has been rescinded. You are illegally in this country. You are under arrest.’

I am writing this down, sitting on my suitcase, somewhere in Tan Son Nhut airport. This hut has a mud floor and no furniture. The door is locked and an ARVN MP is standing outside it. I’m being deported and I know exactly why — because of what I saw the day before yesterday at Nui Dat. Unwittingly, I now share a secret — but a secret no one wants me to share, hence this unseemly rush to have me out of the country.

The master sergeant who took me into custody told me the bare minimum as he allowed me to return to my apartment and pack up my belongings — following orders, highest authority. I sit here feeling frightened and glad. Glad to be leaving — that was planned — but frightened by this exhibition of absolute power. My visa had six more months to run — I had renewed it on my return from Hong Kong. My accreditation was solid. I was being rushed out of this country as if I had the plague. On whose orders? Frank’s? I doubted it. No, Frank would have told someone important about our meeting at Nui Dat; then that information would have gone up the chain of command until a decision was made. Get her out. I’m waiting for a Pan Am charter to Hong Kong where I’m to stay in transit until I’m put on a BOAC flight to London. I am not being charged for any airfares.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON LEAVING VIETNAM

John Oberkamp had more scars on his body than Sholto. Maybe that was what attracted me to him — he reminded me of Sholto in some way. Not physically, but some quality of alertness, of curiosity. Just the loose-limbed, supple way he carried himself. There is still no news. No reports of his capture. 1

Truong returned just as I was leaving the apartment with my MP escort. He foolishly tried to grab hold of me and bundle me into his Renault. ‘No, Truong, no!’ I shouted. ‘I’m all right. Don’t worry. I’m going home.’ He began to sob, his hands over his face.

The name of the master sergeant who escorted me out of the country was Sam M. Goodforth. He was burly, unsmiling, florid — as if he’d just stepped from a hot bath — with a close crew cut. I remember his name because it was printed on a plastic rectangle over his left breast pocket. Goodforth — go forth.

After John Oberkamp had motored off up the road to Vinh Hoa, one of the APC crew replaced John’s makeshift bandage with a proper field dressing. ‘You ought to get that properly cleaned up,’ he said. ‘I heard Charlie puts shit on their bullets.’ The lieutenant called in a medevac helicopter for me — as a favour — and it was to be my last trip in a Huey helicopter in Vietnam. I was designated as a ‘lightly wounded casualty (civilian)’. I was choppered back to base hospital in Saigon. That’s how I feel now, on leaving — a lightly wounded casualty (civilian).

And as I sit here, worried, uncomfortable, a bit miserable, a bit angry at this summary, enforced departure, I ask myself if I’d done the right thing in embarking on this Vietnam adventure, leaving my home and my family behind to go on some half-thought-out mission to prove something to myself, to discover something of myself. What did I learn that I didn’t already know? Quite a lot, actually. And I took some good photographs and made a book of them. And made some money. And I met and loved another man. . I don’t think I can blame myself for wanting to do what I did — and I don’t think Annie and Blythe blame me, either. It is my life, after all, and I have every right to live it to the full. Oh yes, you keep saying that to yourself, don’t you?

I can hear voices outside the door — American voices. Is it time to leave? Am I finally going home?

*

And that was the end of my Vietnam Scrapbook, but not entirely the end of my Vietnam experience — it travelled with me a few thousand miles. I arrived at Heathrow on the Hong Kong flight early in the morning. As I crossed the tarmac apron towards the airport building two police officers intercepted me and led me to an unmarked car parked nearby. I reminded them that I had a suitcase on board; I was told it would be brought to me.