Tet Offensive 1968
Visas were a problem while touring Vietnam and the only way to continue to tour was to bend the rules. This was the 'norm' and everyone played the game. We were forced to leave the country every three months to renew our tourist visas, which I'm sure was a real pain and expense for the agents. I had visa trips to Hong Kong, Manila, Penang, Bangkok and Singapore. All places several times.
We came unstuck when Bob Leppard and I overstayed our visas while working with The Barbara Virgil Show early 1968. We left Saigon OK with no hassles except they stamped our passport "NEVER TO RETURN". When we went to the Vietnamese Embassy in Bangkok, they refused us another re-entry visa. We talked and argued and made all the excuses we could think of and persisted until they finally agreed that if we could get a Thai businessperson to go guarantor for us, they might give us our visas. We had a week to acomplish this, and failed. Everyone we approached was OK until we mentioned Vietnam. Then they would back out. In desperation, we went back to the embassy without a guarantor to try and talk our way into them giving us our visas, regardless. When we approached the counter there was a different person from the previous week on duty and he went through the procedure of issuing us with fresh visas then and there, without us saying much at all. He didn't see the red stamp, NEVER TO RETURN!. We got our visas! When we left the Vietnamese Embassy, Bobby and I skipped down the road. How lucky were we? That visa opened an experience of a lifetime for both of us.
We flew out of Bangkok that evening and landed in Saigon at about 9pm. That was the last commercial flight into Saigon as that night the s*** hit the fan with the 1968 Tet Offensive.
Bob and I were stuck in the Diplomat Hotel in Saigon for five days while the war raged on around us.
The Diplomat Hotel in Saigon was a place we stayed regularly over the years. I suppose it would rate about one and a half stars as far as hotels go, (I'm not sure about the half) but what it lacked in austerity, it sure made up for in character. If memory serves me correctly, Shirley Simmons would have been the one to introduce us to the place while we were working for her in 1966. What made the place was the clientele. Apart from Australians, there were Korean, American, Phillipino, Canadian, English and whoever there all the time, to make a good melting pot of international entertainers. Every night there were at the least three of four parties going on in different rooms, and every day different people came and went. It was the norm for me to wander from party to party, sticking my nose in to see what was happening. One room would have everyone there passing joints with a stereo cassette player going and everybody out of it, sharing their newly acquired sounds. The second party might be everybody having a few beers and talking about the war, their shows, their home country and just generally socialising. The other rooms could have anything going on from a combination of the first two to people writing letters home, rehearsing their show or their part in a show, or whatever. It was a great place and seemed to be full of life every time I stayed there. I looked forward to staying at The Diplomat; it was an adventure in itself.
It's the only hotel I've ever stayed in that I would take the skin off my knuckles from laying on my bed, and when a cockroach ran across the wall, I'd pick up my thong from alongside the bed and throw it at the intruder. Invariably, I would hit the wall with my hand while throwing the thong, and graze the skin. One downside of staying at The Diplomat.
When Bob and I arrived there on the late flight in from Bangkok, it seemed like all hell broke loose and that the war had finally come to Saigon. A very noisy night with more small arms fire and explosions than we had ever heard before, and this was our third tour. The sky was filled with flares and with our ears stuck to the radio, news of what was happening came through. It seemed like Chowlon was copping it, mainly along Plantation Road, and there was a 24 hour cufew put in place immediately. A great way to mess up our plans to fly.
The first day was spent hanging around the hotel trying to find out the news about what was happening. We were not allowed on the street and couldn't get a taxi, as the only vehicles out there were military. Everything on the street seemed to be moving about in a state of emergency and even though we needed to fly out, I'm not sure I wanted to be moving about Saigon, that day anyway.
There was no food at the hotel, as the Diplomat didn't have a kitchen or a coffee shop like a real hotel, but we managed to get some rice and a few beers from a small bar across the laneway from the main entrance. That kept us going. Everyone was pretty scared and that night Bob and I eneded up on the roof of the hotel with 5 or 6 girls from a Korean (all girl) band that was in the hotel at the time. They didn't speak English so the communication with them was at a minimum. To get to the roof we went outside the door on the top floor, and then climbed a ladder to the highest roof level to be able to get the best view. The sky was lit up with flares. More flares than I had ever seen. They were eing dropped continuously from planes and choppers so the city was pretty well lit up. It was like The Royal Easter Show, Luna Park and a circus, all "ON" at the one time. There was a lot of noise from smalll arms fire and explosions close by, fires and smoke burning but most of it seemed to be coming from the Chowlon direction. What really took our breath away was two helicopter gunships firing rockets into the houses a mile or so away. It seemed so very close and helped to add to the scary picture.
Two blocks away from the Diplomat was an American NCO club and we could see the building from our vantage point on the roof. All of a sudden, after we had been on the roof for some time, small arms fire broke out from the ground to the roof of the NCO club. The noise and the tracers made it seem all the closer when we saw a body fall from their rooftop to the street. They had shot a VC sniper off the roof were were later told. As they shot this bloke and he fell, we had no idea of what was going on except that it was the war coming closer. The Korean girls started to scream and all tried to climb down the ladder at the one time. They were making a hell of a racket and all I could think of was that someone had just been shot off a rooftop close by us and here we were, on a roof top with this bunch of Koreans, screaming and yelling at each other. An immediate traffic jam ensured with all the girls trying to climb down the ladder, all at the same time. I laid flat on my back to make the smallest target possible and started yelling myself at the girls to shut up and get down the ladder as quickly as possible (not exactly in those words). Well, we managed to get off the roof without a scratch but shaken. Never again did we venture up there to watch the war.
Three days had passed and it was all still happening. The noise and sounds of war were all around, and the nights were long and scary. I spent the nights imagining VC bursting in through our hotel room door and spraying us with an AK47. I really thought it was going to happen!
Everybody in the hotel was in the same boat so food became a priority. We formed a delegation with the idea that we would go to the NCO club and get some food and bring it back for everyone to share. Five or six of us headed out the front of the hotel and started down the lane to where there was an American MP in a sandbagged position on the corner. We hadn't gone far outside the hotel when the MP yelled to us, "Go back!" I called out that I was Australian and that we had run out of food and were headed to the NCO club. Before I could complete my story, he yelled out again for us to go back. We inched toward him as I yelled out, trying to explain our situation, and he lifted his M16 to his shoulder and pointed it at us and called again, "Go back!"
It's funny how much emphasis was placed on his side of the altercation when he lifted his rifle. I no longer wanted to be on the street and I certainly didn't feel hungry any more. With the sight of that M16 I lost my appetite then and there and once again put my arms in the air and called out that it was OK, we were doing what he suggested and heading back into the hotel. We came through shaken again, and still unscathed!
After four days and nights, some GI came to the hotel to see someone staying there and he was in a U.S. military jeep. We spoke to him and told him we were trying to get to Ton Son Nhut to fly out to Danang. Blow me down if he didn't offer to take us in his jeep the next morning. I cannot remember who or where he came from, or what he ws doing driving around in a jeep. I don't think it really concerned us much at the time, as we just wanted to be out of Saigon and to get back to the rest of the show in Danang. Danang seemed to be home, and safe! Bob and I were travelling pretty light and so we were ready at the allotted time outside the front of the hotel the next morning. True to his word, this bloke shows up in his jeep with a couple of other Yanks aboard already. We jump in the back and he takes us off down Hi Bah Trung in the dark. The sun hadn't come up as it was that early and everything was pretty eerie. When we commented that he was not going in the right direction for the airport he replied that he had some more people to pick up in Chowlon. CHOWLON!
Now, as much as we wanted to get to the airport, we didn't want to go via Chowlon. According to the reports, that's where most of the heavy fighting was, particularly along Plantation Road. Our protests fell on deaf ears and the GI's in the jeep all just laughed. There was no other vehicle on the streets and ARVN, White Mice, QCs and American MPs were watching us go past from behind their fortified sand bag positions. We were still protesting when the jeep swung into an alley and the bloke driving switched off the lights and told us to, "Shhhhh!" The alley was pitch black dark and not much wider than the jeep. As the driver edged the machine forward at about 2 miles per hour, he whispered "listen to the safety clips come off on the rifles". We could hear the clicks alright and it's a wonder with my heart pounding in my chest. Christ I was frightened! Another two GIs were waiting for us and jumped in. The jeep backed out of the alley and we drove off, to the airport......
Silly me had the audacity to ask where we were off to now and the driver replied, "Ton Son Nhut". Thank Christ for that! Then I asked him which way we were going, he informed me we were heading down Plantation Road. PLANTATION ROAD!
Now I was sure this bloke was mad and that we had done the wrong thing going with him when we didn't even know him, who he was or what he was up to. The sun was coming up and the day was breaking so we had a better view of the devastation along the street. Plantation Road sure looked like a war zone! There were bullet holes in everything it seemed, with buildings not only holey, but some destroyed and knocked over altogether. Burnt out vehicles and holes in the road didn't seem to hinder the driver. There were sandbag pillboxes on most corners and everytime we approached one of these, whoever was inside, raised their weapons and aimed at us, following the jeep in their sights until we went past. I got the feeling that they did not trust us.
What a relief. We made it along PLANTATION ROAD in one piece and headed into the airport compound through the main gate. I repeat, what a relief. When I said how happy I was that that trip was over, the guys in the jeep only laughed again and said it was more dangerous inside the compound than out as snipers had infiltrated the wire and they were still trying to weed them out. Thinking it was all over, that made me immediately begin to tremble again. They dropped us off at the terminal OK and we played it low key until we boarded our flight to Danang.
The flight was a relief and I was happy to be out of Saigon. When we made it home to our villa in Danang, Barbara Virgil and her husband, Jim, had decided that the war was hotting up too much for them and that they were going to leave Vietnam and head to Germany. They had their daughter, Monica, who was three and a half years old, in Danang with them and it really seemed like the best thing for them to do at that point in time.
We left Vietnam and set up in Hong Kong for a while but eventually followed them to Germany for 6 months touring the U.S. bases and then returning to Vietnam for another two tours with new shows. Vietnam and performing for the troops there was well and truly in our blood!
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