Art Music Prohibited by Vietnam Socialist Government After the Fall of Saigon

McFarland & Company, 196 pages, $29.95

America's involvement in Vietnam's civil war in 1962 and 1963 is non as well-known as later battles. The Tet Offensive, Battle of Khe Sanh, and Saigon's fall are often remembered, simply the days before our military machine presence in Vietnam exploded are seldom written well-nigh.

Santa Fean David Grant Noble went to Vietnam in 1962 as a 22-year-old private in the U.S. Army. The sixty letters and postcards he wrote to his family dorsum home are the basis of his newest book, Saigon to Pleiku: A Counterintelligence Agent in Vietnam's Central Highlands, 1962-1963. They are recollections of a time when few Americans had thought nearly Southeast Asia.

The book chronicles his tour every bit an enthusiastic but unprepared counterintelligence agent who learned a lot about the U.S. Army, something of the South Vietnamese government, and a fleck about the colina tribes where he was stationed in Pleiku. Over fourth dimension, he became less and less convinced that the Americans could build up a struggling democracy that would keep the Communists at bay in Asia. After leaving the Army in 1964, he became an anti-war protester.

A young David Grant Noble at the Bahnar hamlet of Plei Bruk Klah in Pleiku Province in 1963. Although he was in the Army, he wore noncombatant clothes considering served every bit a counterintelligence agent. Photo courtesy of Noble.

When Noble graduated from Yale University, many classmates joined the Peace Corps or enrolled in war machine officeholder training. Noble was drafted. He went to basic grooming at Fort Dix in New Jersey and was later accepted into the intelligence schoolhouse at Fort Holabird in Maryland. Considering he was fluent in French, he put France as his showtime option on his assignment preference grade, then Belgium, so "any other French-speaking land."

The sergeant announcing duty stations told Noble that he would be sent to Saigon.

"Noticing the blank look on my face, he added, 'Vietnam.' Vietnam I knew of only had problem placing it," he writes. "That evening, I went to Fort Holabird's library where, in its sole world atlas, I could detect no 'Vietnam' in the alphabetize. The librarian suggested I try 'Indochina' and in that location it was, along with Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina. To find out that the army intelligence middle'southward atlas was so far out of date was my first hint of things to come."

That short and humorous paragraph explains a lot about America's failure in Vietnam — besides in Iraq and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan.

The intelligence training center's library had only 2 items almost Vietnam: a slim book of honey poetry and an old pamphlet with tips on how naval officers assigned to the Saigon embassy should clothes and how they could proceeds membership in an elite French colonial club.

Once in Vietnam, the junior intelligence amanuensis'southward opinion almost our military's understanding of the country didn't ameliorate. There was a cultural split up and a language barrier. Noble'southward recounting of his experiences in Saigon would be funny, if they didn't underline America'due south ineptitude abroad.

He told his commanding officer in Saigon that he wasn't clear who the Viet Cong were. The officeholder replied, "The Viet Cong is the bad guy — you'll know him because he looks just similar a Vietnamese."

Many of Noble'southward assignments in Saigon seemed inane to him, but possibly he was being evaluated for a post in Vietnam's uplands at Pleiku. He and his squad bugged the hotel room of suspected homosexuals. Over half dozen anxiety and blond, Noble was sent to tail a suspect through city streets, followed by a mob of curious children. "It would be an understatement to say I stood out," Noble writes.

Once in Pleiku, his consignment was to learn about and report to headquarters on the local tribes. These Montagnards (French for hill people) belonged to many different tribes, spoke different languages, and followed age-old community. The men hunted and fought with spears; they wore loincloths. They lived in grass and cane buildings. Few spoke Vietnamese or French. Their allegiance to the South Vietnamese ground forces, and to the Americans, was tenuous.

He began his tour feeling superior to the tribesmen, simply his attitude changed. The dedication to the volume reads, "The Jarai and Bahnar people of Vietnam's Central Highlands taught me, past their very presence, about the dignity of all human beings, whatsoever their social and cultural background or level of economic evolution."

Noble met with Vietnamese armed services personnel, some of whom he admired as dedicated and honest officers. Most Americans did not respect the Due south Vietnamese army. He visited American religious missions and French plantations. His reports to Saigon headquarters must have been excellent considering the immature man became a respected agent.

Because the Montagnards controlled more than half of the country, the Americans tried to convince them to fight on their side against the Viet Cong. This was hopeless, every bit the U.S. military machine and the tribesmen did non empathize each other — linguistically, culturally, or in any other mode.

As an example, in January 1963, a articulation American-Vietnamese military army camp at Plei Mrong was attacked. The American and Vietnamese special forces rounded up Montagnards suspected of aiding the Viet Cong, and Noble was assigned to interrogate them with the help of electric shocks from a field telephone. His commander asked a question in English, which was translated into French, then into Vietnamese, and then to the Jarai tribal language and back again. The answers seldom resembled the questions.

Ane prisoner was asked where a Viet Cong grooming army camp was. He had been in that location and explained subtle landmarks along the path from his home. The Americans needed cardinal directions, distances in kilometers, and a point on a map, not a description of mountain trails. There were no words in the tribal languages for democracy or communism. The people had never heard of the leaders of North and Due south Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, and Ngo Dinh Diem. Time, for them, was measured past how loftier the rice had grown.

"Soon," Noble writes, "I found myself taking perverse satisfaction in the uselessness of what I wrote upwards. Words such as futility and applesauce entered my mind — about the interrogations and nearly everything else. The practice I was engaged in had become a metaphor of something larger, but non even so clearly defined."

The book is an essay nigh his irresolute opinions on the war. It is also a relate of his journey into adulthood. It is often uncomfortably honest. His messages home underline racial and social prejudices he was not yet aware of. Not included in the messages to his mother were a 20-something's adventures in foreign cities. In that location were bars and women. He explored dangerous neighborhoods in Saigon. He bar-hopped in Hong Kong. He cheated a prostitute in Bangkok.

Noble left Vietnam in 1963, and the Army a year afterwards. His disillusion with the war had become so profound that he joined protests in New York and Washington, marching with anti-war veterans who included World State of war 2 and Korean State of war soldiers and members of the Spanish Civil State of war'southward Lincoln Brigade.

The book ends in that location, only Noble's career of writing and photographing had just begun. He reported for a Manhattan neighborhood newspaper and taught French at an elite New York boys' school. He lived with artist Ruth Meria, now his wife. He photographed Mohawk structure workers at New York building sites.

He adult an interest in the Southwest and became friends with Pueblo scholar Alfonso Ortiz when the anthropologist was a professor at Princeton University. In 1970, he and Meria began taking road trips to the West. When they finally arrived in Santa Atomic number 26, the couple pulled upwardly at the Sherwood's gas station near the Plaza and ran into Ortiz. "He took u.s.a. nether his fly," Noble said, and showed him the Hopi villages and Coulee de Chelly.

The couple became friends with photographer Laura Gilpin. In 1972, she told Noble the School of American Research (now School for Avant-garde Enquiry) was looking for a photographer. He went to piece of work at SAR and an early on consignment was photographing the archaeological excavations at Arroyo Hondo.

Now 82, Noble has written, photographed for, or edited a dozen books on topics including Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, ancient rock art, Colorado archeology, and Santa Fe history.

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Source: https://www.santafenewmexican.com/pasatiempo/books/before-americans-knew-anything-about-vietnam-saigon-to-pleiku-a-counterintelligence-agent-in-vietnams-central/article_88aa588e-c3e4-11eb-957a-9ba2a5acad6b.html

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