06/17/97

BACK TO VIETNAM
Beer and memory in a small, hot place

By RANDALL RICHARD
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer

Journal-Bulletin reporter Randall Richard, who 25 years ago covered the Paris Peace Talks that ended the Vietnam War, is in Vietnam on a special visa to cover a conference organized by Brown University.

Richard filed this story from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). He is now in Hanoi and will follow the historic discussions between former defense secretary Robert S. McNamara and his Vietnamese counterparts, which begin Friday.

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam -- Never before, declares Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia, has he invited a foreigner into his home to drink beer.

Tea, perhaps, in his makeshift office - amid the clutter of his motorbikes and his ancient Peugeot - but never beer, and certainly never in his home. But this is a special occasion, he says with a mischievous smile.

Two days earlier, Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia's 18-year-old niece, who emigrated to Iowa with her parents seven years ago, happened to be sitting next to a reporter from Rhode Island on the flight from Singapore.

After landing, she offered the reporter a ride from the airport into the city once known as Saigon, and introduced him to her uncle.

Now, Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia (pronounced "Mr. Near"), is standing in his home and shaking his head in feigned exasperation.

"All night, I am thinking. I do not sleep, because I am thinking. Thinking, thinking, thinking. And then - then I remember.

"Paris! 1972! The Peace Talks! Madame Binh! The American bishops!"

Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia grins from ear to ear and lets out a roar of triumph. His guest gapes in astonishment.

"But 25 years ago, you did not have this," he roars again, playfully tugging at his own imaginary beard. "You had the face of a baby."

Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia was part of the Vietcong delegation to the Paris Peace Talks, the same Peace Talks covered by a young reporter from Providence, who just happened to be sitting next to his niece on an airliner.

The war, the peace talks and the failure of U.S. and Vietnamese political leaders to end it sooner will be the focus of a four-day conference sponsored by Brown University.

That conference brought this reporter to Saigon. But what were the chances that Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia's niece would sit next to him on the plane?

Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia will have one more surprise for his visitor. He will introduce the reporter to a mysterious American named Mr. Bob.

MR. HUYNH HUU NGHIA dials a number and hands the reporter a phone. "You want to learn about Vietnam," Mr. Bob barks into the telephone, "just get on a motorbike and go. Just ride and ride and ride. Right now. Just get on a bike and go."

Mr. Bob does not want to chat with the reporter.

"Just who are you?" Mr. Bob demands. "Some kind of adventurer?"

"Vacation?" he repeats with a snort. "Americans don't spend their money coming to Vietnam on vacation. They come here for business. They come here to make money. This is the last frontier. They don't come for vacations. The French maybe. But not the Americans."

Not yet, anyway.

"You know who's sitting across from you right now?" Mr. Bob then says. "He's one of the most powerful men in Saigon."

Mr. Bob was Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia's enemy in a war that claimed 58,000 of Mr. Bob's compatriots; a war that claimed as many as 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.

"If you really want to learn about Vietnam," Mr. Bob says, "Go into the countryside. That's where you'll find Vietnam."

The countryside, certainly, is where Mr. Bob found Vietnam.

The jungle is where he "lived like a monkey," where he dropped from 200 pounds to just over 120, where farmers and strangers took him in and nursed him back to health and where he eventually found his Vietnamese wife.

He returned to Vietnam to put his life back together - and began building a home in the jungle - a home that he hopes will someday have an indoor toilet.

"Tomorrow," Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia says, "you will meet Mr. Bob."

"Step by step," he cautions. "Step by step."

MR. HUYNH HUU NGHIA dispenses his information as he dispenses his beer. At times in cool sips. At other times in huge gulps, to the cry of "Fifty percent, fifty percent."

Then everyone raises his glass in unison, and drains it in half in a single swig.

He controls his flow of information, just as he controls the flow of the beer. This is his home. His beer. His nation and its costly triumph over the most powerful country on earth.

"Nine rooms," Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia says of his house. "The home of a four- star general in the South Vietnamese army - went to America." He chuckles. "But his home stays here. Now it is mine."

He's in control, and he's savoring every moment of it.

Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia sees the possibilities. Vietnam may be one of the poorest nations on the planet. But poverty, like war, won't last forever.

For example, there is Procomm, Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia's tourism and development company. And Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia's restaurant in Saigon, the restaurant he owns with the deputy chief of police and the young mayor of Saigon's Ward 15. There is Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia's construction company.

Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia is proud of Procomm. There are three major tourism companies in Vietnam, he explains: the first is owned by the military, the second is run by the ministry of internal affairs, the third is Procomm.

Which is where Mr. Bob comes in.

Three days a week, Mr. Bob leaves his jungle home and his Vietnamese wife to travel to Saigon to teach English to a handful of Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia's students.

In December, a half-dozen or so students, including Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia's son, Dat, will go to California, where they will enroll in a special program at Panama City College.

It will cost Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia $20,000 for each student, but when they're done, they will know the ways and customs of America.

"They will be ready," he says, "to serve as tour guides for the now middle-aged American veterans who find the need, for whatever reason, to return to Vietnam."

IT'S NEARLY 2 A.M. - the end of a long party in a steamy Saigon restaurant - a party where chunks of ice are forever being tossed into pitchers of beer in a war of attrition against the heat.

The table is low. The seats, blue and of molded pastic, are made for children. Somehow they support the bodies and sweat of five middle-aged men.

Two are American, three Vietnamese. All are part of a generation shaped by a war.

Many are deferential to Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia. But not Mr. Bob. And the Vietnamese businessman never shusshes Mr. Bob; never raises a finger to his mouth to command his silence. Between the two former enemies, there seems a genuine affection.

"I am lucky," Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia says. "Very lucky. I have friend, American. Now my friend, American, has a friend, American."

"Without family, you die. Without friends, you die. Mr. Bob has many friend Vietnamese. Now, Mr. Bob has friend, American. I am very lucky. Fifty percent. Fifty percent."

Mr. Bob does not seem nearly so convinced. But the hours of beer and sweat seem to have loosened him up a bit.

Yes, he admits, this is a rare moment. Usually, he avoids his fellow countrymen like the plague and implies he has good reason.

In America, says Mr. Bob, money is God. This is a society built around land and family. This is where Mr. Bob finally decided to plant his roots.

MR. THANH, and Mr. Phan Van Hoang, raise their glasses in approval. Like Mr. Bob, they too saw the war, not from Paris, like Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia and the reporter, but close up in all its horror.

Mr. Phan Van Hoang was a fighter pilot for the South Vietnamese Air Force; Mr. Thanh was with the U.S. Marines, First Division, initially as a squad leader for a South Vietnamese unit, and later, after being wounded, as an interpreter for the U.S. Marines.

Mr. Thanh smiles almost perpetually - even when telling of a midnight rocket attack, 80 kilometers north of Hue. It was 1968. His Marine company was ambushed, not by the VC, but by a brigade of North Vietnamese regulars near the Demilitarized Zone.

He tells of a chopper ride to the Seventh Fleet hospital, the incredible pain in his bowels, his first delicious shot of morphine, three months in a hospital bed and the nightmares about friends who had never made it through the night.

"I cried," Mr. Thanh says through his smile, "until my tears were empty."

Mr. Bob catches a glimspe of Mr. Thanh's briefly serious face.

"Lovesick," he laughs gently. "He's been lovesick ever since his wife left him and moved to San Diego.'

"True," Mr. Thanh smiles, as he stirs from his reverie. "I am lovesick. But someday my wife and I will be together again."

"The Vietnamese: quick to forgive. Quick to forget. But they always remember," says Mr. Bob.

In Saigon, he adds, there is now precious little time for looking back. Saigon, says Mr. Bob, is now in the business of making business.

Mr. Huynh Huu Nghia can't resist raising his glass.

"Fifty percent," he roars as he looks around the table. It's a command more than a toast. "Fifty percent."

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