Approaches

Sunday morning, we arose before dawn and headed for the river. Crossing in the ancient way from this ancient place, we boarded the rickety old train again, arriving at BKK for our flight to Saigon. I am feeling some anxiety about this for some reason. 

While waiting in the departure lounge, we worried about the fact that the date on our tickets did not match that on the itinerary supplied by MHT back in Alexandria. We had hustled to an internet club the day before to get a message off to Ed Henry. He received it and faxed us to go by the date and time on the tickets. We were not sure we would then be met in Ho Chi Minh City, but meanwhile, there was a very nice western toilet beckoning prior to entering the departure area. This is an opportunity not to be missed, so I went in. A young Thai girl was cleaning by the urinal. I hesitated. She motioned me to go head, but didn't move. I decided to go in a stall, where I discovered that I had a great deal of gas. With each explosion, she shouted encouragement from outside the stall. 

We departed Don Nahm Airport (BKK) on time and flew east over Cambodia. The air was crystal clear, and we could see the countryside. It is mostly desert now, since it has been stripped of timber. Tunle Sap Lake slipped by to our north. It is the largest lake in SE Asia. When the rains come and the snow melt from the Himalayas starts down the upper MeKong River, the Tunle River, which usually drains the lake into the lower MeKong, reverses itself and the lake fills. This phenomenon prevents the lower MeKong in VietNam from flooding often and insures a fairly even flow of life-giving water. 

At the north-west corner of the lake is Siem Riep. Just north of that rude town is Anghor and its fabled temples. I can almost see that far from the plane. It was in this area that the Killing Fields of Cambodia claimed the greatest toll of life. To this day, bones are stacked in school houses, not needed because of the killing. To this place John headed in the back of a pick up truck a few weeks ago and visited the incredible and mysterious Ang-hor in the jungle, with Banyan trees enveloping them. This is the place of dreams, for most people about as accessible as the far side of the moon. 

The Tunle River slides by below us to its confluence with the mighty MeKong, at which site lies Pnom Phen. Our Airbus flys down the Parrot's Beak of Cambodia and we see towering above the landscape Nui Ba Dhen, the Black Virgin Mountain. Tay Ninh City is where I remember it being, and the Army Base and airfield still show as a scar on the land. I spent a few very threatened nights there long ago, hidden among the sandbags, waiting what the intelligence officers said must come, but didn't just then. 

The mountain was my reference point in those days when traveling around 3rd Corps by air, but nothing down there looks the same. It is dry season, but there is more. The jungle is gone, and the traditional hamlets and villages have been replaced by planned communities as the population of Saigon has spread way out here toward the western border. 

The plane banked north of the city and I wondered if I would be able to see Ben Hoa airbase and the giant Long Binh Army Post, once the largest in the world. I spent my last night in this country drinking Tiger Beer with Cpt. Braddock in a tent called the Officers' Club and contemplating eating, and eventually eating, the only item of food on the shelf, a can of corn on the cob. This is the man whom I had never seen before. We departed by different flights on the same morning in 1967, only to walk into each other going through the door to IBM at 201 N. 9th Street, Richmond, three weeks later. 

Suddenly, there it is, not the tent, not the corn on the cob, but the old revetments of Ben Hoa which once protected hundreds of F-5 Freedom Fighters and F-100 Super Sabers. We head down Song Saigon and land in the city at the old Tan San Nuit AirBase. It was once the world's busiest. I re-member laying over in transit here all one day and night watching T-38 jets taking off 3 abreast as 3 more started their takeoff roll behind them. They would return in minutes for another bomb load, indicating fighting only minutes away, probably in the Cu Chi area, where I was normally stationed. 

Now most of the former giant airbase is covered with urban development of that particularly objectionable Asian style. At least the avenues are broad and the streets solid. They ought to be since they once were the runways. One runway is still operating, along with a few abandoned Quonsets and a few dozen of the hundreds of revetments that once dotted this place. One large maintenance shed remains, over which looks the vertical stabs of a few old transport aircraft. It was on one such maintenance hanger I remember seeing the large sign painted with an arrow. The lettering said, "See Rock City, 11,000 miles" and the arrow pointed to that attraction in the city of my youth, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

We arrive:  SaiGon (Ho Chi Minh City)