During a stint as Air Traffic Controller for our team's dirt airfield, I met Tuyet, an elegant and graceful lady in the Vietnamese Army who often showed up seeking air travel. Tuyet had become suspiciously friendly. She was tall for a Vietnamese and spoke English with a trace of a French accent. She once brought me a mango and handed it to me away from prying eyes. I took this as an attempt to bribe me for a flight. It worked.
I waited until the waiting area had cleared of passengers to attack my mango. I peeled it as I would a banana. It was a smallish and sweet mango, but eating it was one terribly messy process.
I was usually able to raise Tuyet's boarding priority and get her on the first available flight. Once I even called in an aircraft already in our airspace to transport her and a few other passengers to Can Tho. She would fly to Saigon on occasion and invited me to Saigon a couple of times, but I rejected the offer when she told me she wanted me to meet her parents.
I was flying to Saigon once to have some dental work done when Tuyet showed up seeking a flight to Saigon. I informed her that I, too, was flying to Saigon. She again invited me to meet her parents telling me her father was "an important man" on the Saigon police force and could help me if I ever needed help. We caught an Army Otter that had just delivered supplies to our Advisory Team and landed at Tan Son Nhut airbase where I stashed my bags and Tuyet's into an airport locker. We then caught a taxi to a Chinese restaurant by the airbase.
After dinner, I could not figure out how to get rid of Tuyet when she suggested we go watch a movie. She directed the taxi to a Vietnamese theatre where we watched The Odd Couple1 in Vietnamese with Chinese and English subtitles or perhaps it was in Chinese with Vietnamese and English subtitles.
After the movie, we were waiting for a taxi to take us back to the airbase when she asked me what my favorite food was. "I cannot live without pizza in my life," I answered, not giving it much thought. I was surprised when the taxi dropped us off at a small pizza bistro in downtown Saigon. The bistro was a Vietnamese version of Pizza Hut with a huge brick oven in the center of the bistro where Vietnamese cooks would insert the pizza with large wooden paddles.
There was no choice of toppings, but the irregularly-shaped pizza turned out to be amazingly good! Tuyet insisted on paying for it, which I found weird and uncomfortable. I allowed her to pay for it and the beers then took the taxi back to the airbase where we picked up our bags. As I left for the Victoria Hotel in Cholon, she gave me her phone number and told me to call her to set up a dinner date with her parents.
I had almost two free days in Saigon after my dental appointment with nothing else to do, so I called Tuyet. A lady speaking Vietnamese answered the phone. All I could understand was "Tuyet", "den", and "sang mai" which I understood to mean "Tuyet here tomorrow". I called back next day and the same lady talked some gibberish which I could not decipher. I gave up on Tuyet who was four years older than me.
I used these trips into Saigon as a mini-R&R2 to visit my friend Toveras, my black market contact Papasan Bich and to shop or just inventory the several PXs in the area. The pizzeria which Tuyet took me to became a favorite eating restaurant for the rest of my tour.
We took different flights back to Bac Lieu. Tuyet still kept coming to my air operations, but she was never as friendly after telling me she lost face with her parents because I never called. I never got any more mangoes after that. I never tried to justify or offer an explanation to Tuyet then left air operations the following week when I was transferred due to an air incident that happened on my watch. I learned an NCO was needed to manage the Advisory Team's Post Exchange. I talked to the second lieutenant who operated the exchange, and he accepted me primarily because no one else was available. He also informed me that I had been highly recommended by the admin officer, my nemesis. No mention had been made of my air incident at the airfield.
I was now the PX and Stock Warehouse Manager. It seems I just could not completely disassociate myself from Tuyet, however. Ba Linh, the Vietnamese accountant at the PX with whom I was to work closely greeted me when we first met with "Oh, you are Tuyet's boyfriend," I assured her I was not really Tuyet's boyfriend.
On a subsequent tour nearly two years later, I landed in Tan Son Nhut on assignment to 101st Airborne Division near Hue. Using a military phone book, I looked up Advisory Team 51 PX and called Ba Linh who was thrilled to hear from me and asked me to come visit. I could not since I was leaving for my assignment that next day. Ba Linh shared with me how Tuyet had been looking for me "long time already" and asked for my phone number to give her. I didn't know what my new number would be, so I was unable to provide it to Ba Linh, but I told her to give my regards to Tuyet.
I went to Saigon on business twice during my last Vietnam tour. Both times I tried to contact Ba Linh to check on Tuyet. Ba Linh had moved on to another job elsewhere with the military PX system, and I was unable to make contact with her. With Ba Linh's absence, I had lost my only contact to Tuyet.
I was to learn of Tuyet's tragic fate during my get-well tour back to Vietnam in October 2007. I asked my tour escort to inquire about my friend, Tuyet. He could not find anybody who remembered or had any knowledge of her. Spending the night in Bac lieu, home to my Advisory Team 51 headquarters, we drove back to Saigon that next morning. On the long drive back, my tour escort told me somebody had come to see him at the hotel the night before with information about Tuyet. She and other family members were killed in either a rocket or a mortar attack sometime after the Americans left Vietnam prior to the North Vietnamese "unification" of their country. Some of her family escaped Vietnam by boat and had gone to a relocation camp in Thailand. Tuyet had a good and gentle heart. I prayed for her and her family.
Some twelve years after last seeing Tuyet, I was appointed US Army Warrant Officer. I remembered Tuyet. Even to this day and after a string of failed marriages and some forty-five years since I last saw her, I am still lovingly haunted by Warrant Officer Tuyet's gentle ghost.
1 A comedy with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.
2 Rest & Recuperation, a break from the rigors of rockets, mortars and occasional ground attacks.
"Friendships are sometimes determined then terminated not by personal choice but by reassignment orders." - A. Ojeda
©Copyright texan@atudemi.com - January 2022