Phu Bat 2

Phu Bat is -- or was, I don’t know these days -- a small city on the coast of the South China Sea, population around 15,000. National Route 61 connected Phu Bat with Nha Trang to the north and Cam Ranh Bay to the south. Regional Highway 13 ran into town from the western mountains.

The 15,000 population did not include American soldiers and airmen, civilian engineers, representatives of the U.S. government and civilian volunteer organizations. You might think that there weren’t all that many American civilians in Vietnam. The books you read or the movies you saw most likely didn’t mention civilians other than State Department employees and CIA spies and killers.

Reality was, every department of the government had people in Vietnam, and Phu Bat was no exception. State and Labor, Interior and Justice, Agriculture and Post Office, Transportation and Treasury, each and every one intent on bringing civilization to the indigenous peoples.

The way the government saw it, if the indigenous peoples really believed in freedom and democracy, they wanted to be just like us, right?

So to make the indigenous peoples just like us, every American had his, or her, job to do, from the Labor Department people who organized pedicab unions, to the Post Office representatives, who taught the locals that neither wind nor rain nor sleet nor snow nor dark of night, etc. Okay, they left out the sleet and snow part, maybe added nor mortars nor ambushes will keep these couriers from their appointed rounds.

The State Department guys we figured were really spooks in disguise, although everybody was a spook of one kind or another.

Treasury people tried to keep the local economy from inflating out of control, attempting to stabilize the currency and all that. They were fighting a losing war, though. See, your South Vietnamese basically is a capitalist, believing that if you put in a little money on this end, you get more money at the other end. And, like good capitalists everywhere, the South Vietnamese types believed in cheating everybody.

Concepts of Vietnamese capitalism, with a bit of Confucianism added in, ran smack into ideas of American fair play. Americans had a sort of theoretical understanding of Confucianism -- the part of a place for everything and everything in its place -- but almost none of the whole.

Also, in trying to convince merchants of the evils of rampant inflation, Treasury people faced basic Oriental manners. Treasury people did not understand that merchants would show agreement when discussing economic theory, but at the same time hide their true thoughts. In short, Treasury people were told what they wanted to hear, then were surprised when actions did not match words. The funny part is, the Treasury Department people actually believed Vietnamese and Chinese merchants were telling the truth in negotiations and conferences.

Justice had its work, too, trying to set up an American-style police department and a court system.

Interior wanted to convince the local woodcutters not to destroy virgin forests; Agriculture brought in new kids of rice, gasoline-powered tillers to replace water buffalo, and diesel generators to supply electricity to villages.

Transportation Department people did do a good job on repairing district and regional highways, although forgetting that graveled roads and paved roads made movement of VC supplies much easier than before.

There were American women in Phu Bat, too. Round-eyes with the American Red Cross, YWCA and the Health Department. Their jobs were different, but all with one goal in mind -- civilizing the indigenous peoples.

The Red Cross girls -- Doughnut Dollies -- went where American soldiers were. Large base camps, artillery fire bases, Special Forces outposts -- anywhere GIs were stationed, Doughnut Dollies in teams of two or three would come out and supply a day when guys could remember crisp white blouses and blue skirts, blue eyes and green eyes and gray eyes, catch a small wisp of perfume, study brown hair and blonde hair, red or black. In the 407th Truck Company, I saw the Doughnut Dollies only when the women came onto the compound to catch a helicopter somewhere. The women from the YWCA and the Health Department I saw only when driving through town.

Other than the Doughnut Dollies, American civilians had little to do with us. We -- the military -- were an impediment, an obstacle between their good deeds and the indigenous peoples. Getting a helicopter to take American civilians somewhere or a truck to a village -- then the civilian departments needed us. Otherwise, as far as they were concerned, we should just stay out of the way and let them get on with winning the war.

(Phu Bat is a fictitious town between Cam Ranh and Nha Trang. On a previous post I said the fictitious Phu Bat was north of Nha Trang; actually it is south.)

Phu Bat

Rick told Jake how Major Pancik got to be executive officer of 407th Truck Company in Phu Bat.

“Before he got here, he commanded some ash and trash stateside battalion,” Rick said.

Rick and Jake were on perimeter duty, occupying a sandbagged bunker on the airfield’s northwest perimeter. Likelihood of VC or NVA sappers coming through the wire was somewhere between slim and non-existent, but for appearance sake, all bunkers were manned between 30 minutes before sundown and 30 minutes after sunrise.

“Something like the 45th Messkit Repair Battalion,” Rick said. Rick and Jake had drawn short straw on bunker assignment, which, in the unusualness of things that made Phu Bat SOP, meant they got first choice. The bunker was dug in almost underneath a big tree that shaded the bunker and ten meters all around. The tree looked like an oak, but it was some other kind, some foreign, Vietnamese tree.

“The 45th, or whatever it was, was at Fort Meyer,” Rick said. He took a Budweiser from the Coleman cooler and the church key that was attached to the handle with a small chain. The wind changed direction, blowing in easy from the bay. The sun was above the western hills, now about 10 minutes from going down. Rick punched two holes in the can.

“Before Pancik got to the 45th, the NCOs and officers pitched in a few dollars each and set up a coffee and donut stand in headquarters building. They made enough money to buy more coffee and donuts, pretty soon started selling sandwiches.” Rick took a short swig, then continued. “Well, with selling sandwiches, they had a good stash of what they call petty cash. All off the books, of course.”

“I’ve heard the terms,” Jake said.

“Sure,” Rick said. “Anyway, when Pancik was assigned there, the sergeant major explained how things worked, and Pancik said he didn’t have any problems with the petty cash fund as long as inspectors didn’t find out, and as long as he could deny he knew it existed. But, our good major is a little greedy.”

“You got that right.”

“Yeah. What he started doing was, he’d stop by the sandwich stand and ask the Spec Four or Pfc. if he could cash a twenty-dollar check. Whoever was running the stand that day would always say, ‘Yes, sir.’ I mean, what else is a Spec Four or Pfc. going to say? Battalion commander asks something like that, you say, ‘Yes, sir.’ Then, Pancik would check his pockets and find out he forgot his check book. ‘Just let me have twenty, and I’ll pay it back tomorrow,’ he’d say.”

“But tomorrow never came.”

“Oh, it did,” Rick said. “But not the way the major figured.” He settled into the story then, grinning. “There was a second lieutenant got assigned to the battalion. A by-the-book second lieutenant. He found out Pancik was taking money, but he -- the lieutenant -- was in the same position as the Spec Four or Pfc. There wasn’t shit he could do.”

“But...”

Rick nodded. “Yeah, there’s a ‘but.’ Seems like this second lieutenant had an older brother, a major in the IG office at the Pentagon.”

“Ah-ha,” Jake said.

“You got it. The lieutenant told his brother, the IG major conducted a surreptitious investigation, off the books. He took the information to his boss, a full-bull colonel. The colonel did some checking around of his own. Course, they couldn’t court-martial the major for stealing twenty dollars five or six times.”

“They could have,” Jake said. “But it wouldn’t look good for the army.”

Rick slapped his knee. “Now you’re thinking like a soldier. The upshot was ...”

“Major Pancik gets transferred here, as executive officer.”

“Riiight,” Rick said, nodding. “And as purchasing officer, with five thousand dollars a month overwrite authorization.” He grinned. “Ain’t the army wonderful?”

(I made up the name Phu Bat, but it turns out there is a town by that name, in North Vietnam, SE of Hanoi. My Phu Bat is north of Nha Trang and home of the 407th Truck Company.)