Dining with the Montagnards by Douglass Robb

Second Place, Adult Non-Fiction

For me 1961 was a time of disappointment, angst, confusion and grief.  I was disappointed that our new President, John F. Kennedy, had been humiliated by the failure of his Bay of Pigs operation.  Having been raised in a town with no Black families, I was confused by the Civil Rights struggle.  As a draft age male I worried that the Army might interrupt the beginning of my adult life.  Finally, I was grieving for a beloved brother who had committed suicide.  It crushed my family and left me wanting to escape the pain I saw in the eyes of other family members, especially my Mother.  

Eventually, I listened to my Mother and enrolled in college instead.   Four years later, I received my BS degree in civil engineering and a commission as a second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers.  A year later after completing the Engineer Officer Basic Course and parachute training, I found myself in Ban Me Thuot, Vietnam, as a Combat Engineer platoon leader.

One morning, my company commander tasked me to conduct a reconnaissance of the area to identify potential water purification and quarry sites needed to support the planned deployment of the 4th Infantry Division to the area.  Excited, but apprehensive, with the help of my Platoon Sergeant I identified several locations to check out.  I set out in two vehicles with seven heavily armed members of my platoon. After two hours off road we came upon Montagnard village.  In my imagination it felt like a scene from a John Wayne western.  Our small band of American soldiers cautiously moving towards a stockaded native village where a celebration of some kind was underway.  Except this village was 12,000 miles from the American prairie, and instead of teepees and Indian ponies grazing, this native village contained thatched long houses raised high on teak stilts with water buffalo, chickens, and pigs rooting in the muddy red laterite soil.  Above it all soared the triple canopy jungle, and the smells of unwashed bodies, excrement, dampness and decay.

Despite my imagination, none of us wore spurs nor were we mounted on horses.  We were shirtless, wearing flak vests, fatigue pants, jungle boots, and camouflage-covered helmets. I was armed with fragmentation and smoke grenades as well as an M-14 rifle.  My troops had rifles, an M-79 grenade launcher, a M-72 LAW, and an M-60 .30 cal machine gun.   Despite all the weapons, the last thing I wanted was enemy contact.

The natives were Montagnards, part of over 60 nomadic tribes populating the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.  Of the same ethnic stock as the Polynesians, they were regarded as the enemy by both North and South Vietnam.  These villagers were conducting a week-long sacrifice mourning the death from cholera of the village chief’s daughter.  After warily looking each other over, we both became convinced that neither side was a threat to the other.  The Montagnards came out of their village and indicated we were welcome to enter and share their home-made rice wine and smoked Buffalo meat.

Montagnards fermented rice wine in large pottery jars.  When it was ready to drink, they sealed the jar with banana leaves and filled the empty space above with water.  Bamboo straws were then forced through the leaves and the wine was ready to sip.  The taste was not pleasant, but better than "Ba Muoi ba" the Vietnamese beer, "thirty-three."

There is no way to fake drinking it.  You are not allowed to pass the straw until the water level has visibly dropped.  Before the next drinker begins the water level is restored.   After I had been seated among the village elders and begun drinking, a couple of my soldiers began taking pictures.  Seeing the cameras some of the Montagnards scurried away.  I feared we’d insulted them and told the troops to put their cameras away.  I needn’t have worried.  Shortly, the Montagnards reappeared wearing their ceremonial costumes, which consisted of long, roughly woven and dyed, red loin cloths.  The shirts were also homespun but of a darker color.  Attached to the shirts were breastplates made of bamboo.  They looked remarkably like pictures I had seen of Sioux warriors, but without the feathered headdresses. With happy smiles, they proudly posed in family groups.  

During this time a small group of Montagnards stood aside, looking us over and smiling.  After I had drunk my quota of rice wine, they stood me up, pulled me aside, and began removing my flak vest and pants.  I was quickly naked since we didn’t wear underwear. They then dressed me in a loin cloth and breastplate shirt and posed me among the costumed adults and children.  I was selected not because I was the only officer, but because at 5’-6” and 129 pounds I was the only American who could fit in one of their costumes. 

By then the Montagnards decided that we were worthy of becoming members of their tribe.  Normally, such an honor was reserved for someone important, like a Special Forces “A” Team commander. For such an exalted person the Montagnards would sacrifice a water buffalo over a period of three days.  In our case, they thought the sacrifice of a chicken would be sufficient. After wringing the neck of the unlucky fowl, they dabbed each of our foreheads with its blood.  Finally, they slipped a bracelet made from a brazing rod onto our right wrists.  

We were then invited for lunch.  We climbed up a wooden ladder into a nearby longhouse, were seated on mats, and offered more rice wine.  Nothing was done to the unlucky chicken except to hang it from the rafters, feathers and all, to cook over a slow, smoky charcoal fire.  We choked from the smoke, but it did not discourage the flies which were everywhere.  When we hesitated to begin eating, the Montagnards picked up a piece of smoked meat, bit off a piece and handed it to us.   Bowls of rice, some boiled vegetables, and a plate of cold meat were added.  Someone eventually decided that the chicken had cooked enough and took it down.  They pulled the feathers, broke up the meat, and added the guts to the rice bowl.  At this point we Americans glanced nervously at each other, but we silently agreed that we could not refuse to eat.  Later, after leaving the camp we all agreed that we would probably develop dysentery.  

It didn’t happen. The only explanation I can think of is that every Monday in Vietnam, and for 6 weeks after leaving, we were required to choke down a large orange anti-malaria pill, chloroquine-primaquine-phosphate. With the tablet came 3 or 4 days of stomach cramps and acute diarrhea.  It was just one of the reasons that most of us in the field didn’t wear underwear.  In any case, the pill masked any discernible symptoms from the chicken guts we had consumed.

As I think back over the fifty years since, I have only admiration and regret for a courageous and doomed people, the Montagnards.  The Vietnamese called them “Moi”, or savages.  Both the North and South Vietnamese attempted to eradicate them.   They remain one of my few good memories from my Vietnam service.