Phu Bai
Share Article In Phu Bai I shared my story of arriving when I was older than yesterday and younger than tomorrow. I arrived from Saigon in 1969.
I stayed at the 8th Radio Research Field Station for a couple of days and volunteered to join the 265th Radio Research Company supporting the 101st twenty miles north. Screaming Eagles. Chicken Hawk. Saigon bar girls called us the Chicken Fuckers. They were the chickens.
Going north was a wise choice. The 8th enjoyed stateside amenities. Rosie cheeked donut dollies from O Hi O gave crochet lessons on Saturday and banged officers.
The 265th was a life lesson in teamwork, respect, trust and relationships. People rotated in. People rotated out. I put in my time and paid my dues for 364 days.
I returned to the world and became a happy ghost on a flight from S.F. to Colorado in 1970. Traveling became my mistress, motivation and meditation. I collected and invented stories about life’s ebb and flow in a long film with diverse characters, fate, chance and opportunity.
I put my Nam experience in a memoir called ART, Adventure, Risk and Transformation, a memoir published in 2019.
I discovered a piece of paper in the parking lot at Phu Bai airport. I turned it over. It was from a Vietnamese Airlines container/pallet cart. In big blue letters it said EMPTY. I slipped it into my Moleskine.
A perfect Ah Ha moment.
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In 1970 three of us drove over the Perfume River and through the Ngan Gate into the Citadel in Hue. It is a masterpiece of Nguyen architecture. Five massive stone slabs with Five Phoenix Watchtowers and nine yellow glazed tiled roofs resembled five birds in flight.
A benevolent Blue Dragon sculpture guarded the East. The aggressive White Tiger protected the West. Harmony. We passed through the Southwest Ngo Mon Gate (Noon), one of five into the Imperial City.
The citadel was built in an auspicious location preserving the harmony of heaven and earth, man and nature. Welcome, said a Vietnamese intelligence liaison officer. He led us through a courtyard to the Thai Hoa Palace, or the Palace of Supreme Harmony, constructed in 1805 for ceremonies, coronations and receiving foreign ambassadors. It glowed with red and gold lacquers.
There were once large bronze pots and urns in this courtyard, he said. During the Tet offensive in 1968 they were melted down for ammunition.
Twenty-five days, including ten days of house-to-house combat killed 5,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, 384 Southern troops, 142 Americans and 1,000 civilians. Described by one journalist as the bitterest battle of the war. War is hell.
A two-story building with pink paint was divided into classrooms for artists studying music, art and sculpture. Painters created behind easels as a young man posed as a Greek archer. Off a verandah sculptors worked around a kiln with tables of bronze warrior figures.
Music students tuned delicate instruments creating soft melancholy sounds, weeping energies, ancient cultural memories. It was the perfect place to meditate and inhale venerable music in a calm way.
The Swiss and I visited eight ostentatious tombs south of Hue. Ancient sites with pristine carvings of dynasties. We climbed stone steps and wandered corridors seeing gilt carved thrones and photographs of kid emperors. History was guarded by statues of civil and military mandarins, horses and elephants.
Hard to imagine they built all this for one little emperor, said Sam.
In twilight we explored old tombs, thick forests and an ornate wooden pavilion extending over a lake where 108 concubines recited poetry to a lucky little emperor once upon a time.
