40 years later: Return to Vietnam
Jack Swickard
Publisher, 575magazine.com
HO CHI MINH CITY — The country and people were not entirely what I expected.
But they were predictable.
Last October, I joined two other ex-Army helicopter pilots and a former communications officer in reliving a mission we flew in May 1967.
Five months earlier, Bernadette Ross, assistant producer of a planned four-part documentary series on helicopter missions from Vietnam, the Falklands War, Afghanistan, and Iraq, had contacted me from Windfall Flms in London.
The Distinguished Flying Cross Society had suggested she and producer-director Richard Max consider the May 14, 1967, mission in which 2 UH-1D “Huey” helicopters rescued some 120 South Vietnamese soldiers and a U.S. Special Forces advisor from an ambush.
Ross explained in her e-mail our mission met initial expectations to be included in the series and she would like additional information.
I sent her a narrative about the mission, referring Ross to Tom Baca of Albuquerque, the aircraft commander of the other Huey involved in the 1967 mission.
Several months, about 50 e-mail notes and a dozen transatlantic telephone calls later, Richard Max and Bernadette Ross flew to Albuquerque to meet with Tom and me.
The interview lasted more than 6 hours, as Richard and Bernadette grilled us about the mission, making certain they had a timeline that could be converted into a documentary.
Before we went to dinner that night, Tom mentioned he was planning to visit Vietnam in October.
Richard Max pounced: He would like to join Tom and shoot footage of him in country and, he hoped, in the landing zone from where we had extracted the allied soldiers from the battlefield.
Tom turned to me with the question: “Why don’t you join us?”
My wife Renee and I linked up with Tom and Sterling Essenmacher, Tom’s flight school roommate, at Tokyo’s Narita Airport. When our Japan Airlines flight landed at Tan Son Nhut Airport in Ho Chi Minh City, the surprises began. I regularly flew to Tan Son Nhut Airport in Saigon during the Vietnam War.
I was not sure what to expect, but it wasn’t what I saw. The new airport terminal is one of the most modern terminals I have visited.
We caught a taxi to the five-star Caravelle Hotel in the fashionable First District of Saigon. Even at night, it was apparent Ho Chi Minh City-Saigon was undergoing a building boom.
The next morning, Al Croteau, the former Signal Corps lieutenant who had crewed my Huey on the May 14 rescue, met us for breakfast at the Caravelle. Al was staying several blocks from us, at the Marriott, because he received a military discount.
We joined a bevy of international business people and vacationers from Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, France and Germany for breakfast. The buffet selections would have been familiar in any country of the world: Noodles and rice in the Orient; cold cuts, cheese and vegetables in Eastern Europe; ham, eggs and pancakes in North America; French and Austrian pastries.
The attentive young ladies who served as hostesses and waitresses were dressed in well-tailored, fashionable uniforms. They and other staff members at the Caravelle were invariably polite, a great Vietnamese trait.
Tom and Sterling joined us over breakfast and we laid plans for the rest of the day. The five of us then walked three blocks to the hotel where Richard Max was staying. We found him in the dining room with film cameraman Stuart Dunn. We agreed to meet at the Caravelle for lunch and then push off for Bien Hoa, the city near Saigon where the aircrews had lived in 1967.
Our Vietnamese driver, our guide and Dinh Ngoc Truc from the Vietnam Ministry of Culture and Information met us in the Caravelle lobby in the early afternoon.
On our first meeting, Truc shook hands and told me in perfect English he had been a member of the Viet Cong during what the Vietnamese refer to as the American War.
“What did you do?” I asked.
Truc replied, “I was an antiaircraft gunner.”
“I’m glad we didn’t meet before,” I told him.
Because the aircrews were on tourist visas and the film crew from the United Kingdom on work visas, we traveled in separate vehicles. Ours was a spacious, Ford minibus; the film crew and Truc used a van.
Driving the once-familiar highway between Saigon and Bien Hoa, I was struck by the massive change.
Where open rice fields and groves of trees existed in the 1960s, the sides of the highway were lined with shops, high-rise apartments, ceramic animals, even a theme park.
As we looked for the villas in which we had lived during the war, few buildings were familiar in Bien Hoa. We looked for Cong Li Street, where we had lived, but the name had been changed and the small, alley-like street was now a major thoroughfare.
We wandered through alleys, Stuart’s high-definition camera recording our movements and conversation. At last, Tom saw a familiar building — the villa to which he had moved in late 1966 when he left the 118th Assault Helicopter Company “Thunderbirds” to fly VIPs in the II Field Forces Vietnam Flight Detachment.
When I had arrived at the 118th Assault Helicopter Company on my arrival in South Vietnam in February 1967, the other pilots were talking about “the other guy from Albuquerque.”
Tom and I shared drinks at the Officers’ Club. There I learned I knew Tom’s twin brother, Jim Baca, who was a television cameraman while I was a reporter for The Albuquerque Tribune. Jim had never mentioned he had a twin brother serving in the Army.
Now, in October 2008, we were homing in on the Thunderbird villa. When we arrived at the site, we discovered a pleasant, small hotel had replaced the villa. The hotel staff encouraged us to explore the building and to look around for familiar sights. On the second-floor balcony, we could look out over rooftops and see an occasional building we recognized.
That night in Saigon, Renee, Al and I walked through an early evening rain shower to the Continental Palace Hotel where I had enjoyed beers on the open veranda in 1967. It is now a swank Italian restaurant. The veranda has been enclosed.
Larry and Celeste Liss joined us the following day. Larry was Tom’s copilot on the rescue mission at Cau Song Be. Our minibus took us north to Phuoc Vinh, near the landing zone we had chopped with our Hueys’ main rotor blades to extract more than 100 South Vietnamese soldiers and a U.S. Special Forces sergeant ambushed by a force of 600-700 North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong guerrillas.
Tom had brought a global positioning satellite receiver with him. Using the GPS and consulting maps and aerial photographs, we found a road that wended through rubber tree groves and bamboo. If we were off in our geography, it wasn’t by far.
The Windfall Films crew interviewed Tom, Larry, Al and me in the landing zone. During the interviews, an occasional motorbike rider would glide past, smiling.
Even at the scene where so many people had died trying the escape their enemy 41 years earlier, life seemed to be moving along at a normal pace.
The rest of our visit to Vietnam entailed several more interviews: Al on the rooftop patio of the Saigon Saigon Bar at the Caravelle Hotel; a quick comment from me at Vung Tau, a resort now popular with Australians near the mouth of the Saigon River; and a wrap-up interview with Tom, Larry, Al and me in front of the old French City Hall
Between interviews, we played tourist, taking a Russian hydrofoil to Vung Tau for lunch; trying out the superb restaurants and cafes in Saigon; grabbing a beer at a small restaurant near the base of Nui Ba Dinh mountain outside of Tay Ninh City; visiting the Cao Dai Temple in Tay Ninh City; shopping in the fashionable, downtown mini-malls and shops of central Saigon; visiting the former Presidential Palace, where our guide gave a detailed tour; checking out Saigon Cathedral; and enjoying a country we had left in war and returned to find friendly and welcoming.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The “Vietnam Firefight” documentary was shown on Five in the United Kingdom on May 19 and 24. It is scheduled for broadcast worldwide by National Geographic International on July 28. The U.S. showing will be at a later date on the Smithsonian Network.
Jack Swickard, Tom Baca and Al Croteau on street in front of the hotelbuilt on the site of the 118th Assault Helicopter Company villa.
Tom Baca in rooftop Saigon Saigon Bar after a long day of traveling and interviews.
Dinh Ngoc Truc, Tom Baca, our guide, and Stuart Dunn at a gasoline station near Phuoc Vinh, checking a map to the landing zone.
Celeste and Larry Liss visit with Renee Swickard during trip to the landing zone.
The Windfall Films van, with Dinh Ngoc Truc aboard, leads the way in the search for the landing zone.
A quick conference in the landing zone before the interviews begin.
New buildings along the waterfront at Vung Tau.
Producer Richard Max and cameraman Stuart Dunn interview Al Croteau along the Vung Tau waterfront.
Al Croteau on the balcony at the Cao Dai Temple in Tay Ninh City.
Richard Max enjoys fresh coconut juice from the shell during a stop at small restaurant near base of Nui Ba Dinh mountain.
Sterling Essenmacher, Tom Baca’s flight school roommate, and Stuart Dunn visit over an 8-course dinner in a Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) restaurant.
Renee Swickard and Al Croteau (right) with our guide Dung at the former Presidential Palace in Ho Chi Minh City.
Motorbikes parked in the entryway of a Lotteria fast food restaurant in downtown Ho Chi Minh City.