Sad Memories - Vietnam Era

US Army Vietnam Signal Directorate

Man on Fire

Morales and I took an early bus to downtown Saigon. We had planned on inventorying the PX next to the Brinks Hotel to look for new items that we could afford. The Brinks area PX was not an enormously huge facility, but it carried in small quantities much of the stateside gadgets and general merchandise found in today's 7-11 or other convenience stores. I once picked up a box of something I never knew existed. It was several silver-colored bullet-shaped metal cartridges of some three inches long. The instructions did not help identify its use. Morales came over. "Pues, que tienes ahí?"¹

"Well, I'm trying to figure it out," I replied.

We tried to figure it out. "Let's ask somebody," Morales suggested.

I took the dare and asked a lady major who happened to be walking by saying, "Excuse me, major, what are these used for?"

Walking away from us, she replied smiling, "Why, those are seltzer CO₂ cartridges and quite dangerous unless you have a home bar dispenser. Now, I doubt you boys have a bar in your hooches."

Morales felt offended. "Is she talking down to us? Is she making fun of us because we don't know?" asked Morales. "I don't care if she's a major. I'll go kick her ass!"

I brought Morales under control, but we were still just as confused about those cartridges, so we moved on inventorying the rest of the PX. Morales found a popcorn popper and suggested, "Orale, Ojeda, let's buy this. They don't have the cooking oil or popcorn, but we can probably get that at the Cholon PX."

"We don't have power outlets in our hooches, Morales," I replied. "Where are you gonna pop it?"

"But we have outlets at work. We could always stay late and pop it at work after everybody leaves."

"Naw, bad idea," I replied. I loved popcorn as much as my friend, Morales, but sometimes making popcorn is just not logistically feasible. The popcorn idea died that day, and I was to go nearly ten more months without the popcorn I craved.

From the bus stop, we took a taxi to the Saigon USO on Nguyen Hue and had burgers and fries.  Burger buns were more like tasteless oversize soft, mushy biscuits, and the fries were limp with a burnt taste as if they had been fried in last week's stale cooking oil. But eating burgers and fries was the fashionable thing to do in Saigon. We shot pool for some time then caught a taxi to the PX.  Arriving in a parking space near the Brinks PX, the taxi driver turned around to us in the back seat and asked "You smoke?" Morales and I both said we did not.

"You wanna make good money, you buy for me cigarettes from PX?" he asked adding "I give you money to buy, you buy cigarettes and I give you more money when you bring to me. And you no pay for taxi. Taxi free today."

At that time I believe we were authorized four cartons of cigarettes a month.  Morales and I both agreed to the black market scheme.  We got the taxi driver's money, bought the cigarettes which we delivered back to him.  We each profited probably some twenty dollars on the deal. Morales said "Mira, Ojeda, we can make extra money every month."  We made a few more sales over the period of our assignment there.  And with experience we made the right contacts to double our cut for black market goods.

From the PX we started walking around downtown Saigon taking pictures and just getting familiar with Saigon.  We were crossing a major intersection when we noticed something on fire.  We went to investigate but stopped short of the fire.  We were on the sidewalk looking towards the fire where a man had set himself on fire on the median of a street leading to the intersection.  There was a gas can sitting on its side near him.  It was apparent he may have doused himself with gasoline, thrown the can away from him then lit the fire himself. Morales was more shocked than me. 

Burning man seemed calm and peaceful while sitting there burning in the Buddha position.  Morales warned "Ojeda, let's get the hell out of here before we get involved in a demonstration."  There were several Buddhist demonstrations throughout the country protesting President Diem. We began walking away from burning man as the crowd near him got bigger. 

There were several self-immolations of Vietnamese citizens in Vietnam in protest of President Diem's (a Catholic) treatment of Buddhists in his country.  Morales and I were witness to one.

We walked back to the Brinks Hotel bus stop and boarded the bus for Tan Son Nhut. En route, we discussed how completely ignorant it was for anyone to ever set himself on fire. "Creas que es hombre o mujer?"² asked Morales.

"I believe it's a man," I responded. "But it's hard to tell because of all those flames and smoke."

We agreed our burning person was actually a man. We didn't believe a woman would be crazy enough to set herself on fire. Our conversation on burning man was totally cerebral and did not last but some three or four minutes. To this day that image of burning man is still freshly imprinted on my mind but not in a disturbing way. I believe my long journey of desensitization had already started and burning man was just another notch in my desensitization process.