The USO on Nguyen Hue Street in downtown Saigon was the biggest and best-staffed USO1 in Vietnam. One would walk in there and shoot pool, watch TV, play board games with American Donut Dollies2 (fondly referred to as Biscuit Bitches), or just eat an unsavory American hamburger with fries prepared by Vietnamese cooks. But it was safe there especially with the Vietnamese and American Military Police guards with automatic weapons guarding the front entrance to the USO.
I was at Camp Eagle with the 101st Airborne and had been issued courier orders and tasked to deliver some classified documents to the American Embassy in Saigon. Couriers carried .45 pistols back then. Arriving at Tan Son Nhut on a C-130 aircraft, I called for a military taxi which delivered me right inside of the US Embassy compound. I walked into the Military Attache's office and asked for directions to a US Army major who was my point of contact. He inventoried the pages of the classified document and signed for the documents then told me I could find great coffee and a respectable lunch at the Embassy cafeteria. Badly in need of a haircut, being in unclean and rumpled fatigues, sporting a two-day beard and wearing my only pair of scuffed-up and well-worn boots, I just did not feel comfortable fitting in with these military folks in their starched fatigues and polished boots.
I walked out the Embassy gate and was besieged by a mob of Vietnamese who were offering me their services for legal work, haircuts, translation and even dentistry. They were all lined up alongside the fence leading up to the Embassy entrance. They were organized by sections with tables equipped with manual typewriters, calculators and barber scissors. In the mix, I also noticed a dentist ready to pull anyone's tooth needing pulling. He had basic dentist tools like pliers, knives, dental picks and an assortment of spray bottles with different colored mouthwash. I stopped, and he smiled at me. He was a wiry little man in sandals and spoke broken English. He looked somewhat legit in his stained and rumpled dentist scrubs. I asked him if he filled teeth. He replied, " My brother good dentist. He do everything. I take you him if you want." I was not needing any dental work. I was only curious about his range of dental services. Apparently, sidewalk dentist did not possess the training or equipment to do any more than pull teeth.
The "paralegal" folks were there offering their services and fill out whatever forms the US Embassy required for such matters as passports, marriage applications, visas or notary and translation services. They were Vietnam's legal league and had their own stations set up with portable tables and portable file boxes on wheels to hold their blank forms required for many of the embassy's applications.
I walked along the sidewalk till there was a good clearing and flagged down a taxi taking me to the downtown USO. Upon entering the USO I got a table as far away from the entrance as I could yet close to an exit, an act of survival instinct. I ordered a beer with my two hamburgers with grilled onions, double cheese, fries and pickles. They had pickles. I picked a table far removed from the main area but near an exit where groups of soldiers were sitting eating their meals. I noticed a hippie-looking person weaving through the tables coming towards me. Without even asking, he just grabbed a chair and sat at my table. I ignored him hoping he'd get up and leave. He asked, "Can I talk to you?"
Rudely, I said, "No" then went back to my hamburger.
"You may be familiar with SDS, Students for a Democratic Society," he said. I said nothing and was doing a slow burn but kept eating my burger and fries.
That did not faze him. He noticed my unit patch and stated, "You're with the 101st Airborne! Have you encountered any combat?"
"Get away from me now," I said slowly and sternly. It was not every day that I could enjoy burgers and fries - with pickles.
"Go ahead and keep eating. I just want to ask you a few questions. How do you think this war is going?" he asked.
Once more I advised him to get away from me and leave me alone. He would not and kept asking me questions. I slowly and deliberately pulled my .45 pistol out of its holster and positioned it by me on the table while sternly and cruelly advising him to "Get the hell away from me NOW !!!".
Several soldiers at the distant tables took notice of what was happening. SDS hippie shot out of his chair and briskly walked out of the USO front door. One of the Donut Dollies came over to my table and asked if everything was alright. I was still pissed and only wanted to eat my burgers and fries. Still steaming from the hippie incident, I unfairly shouted at her, "Just leave me alone! I just wanna eat my burgers!"
Frightened by my outburst, her eyes opened wide. She almost sobbed as she quickly walked away saying, "I just wanted to ask if that guy was bothering you. He doesn't belong here."
Realizing I had overreacted and was overly rude to an innocent lady, I holstered my pistol, picked up my courier briefcase and walked out leaving my unfinished burger and fries - with pickles - on the table and took a taxi to see if I could find my old friend Papasan Bich. I no longer had his phone number, but I remembered how to get to his bar which he used as his base of operations. He no longer owned the bar, and no one knew where I could find my friend. I found my favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Hai Cua3 , which I frequented during my previous tours. The Pho soup was better than the hamburgers I tried to eat, and the fried shrimp were just as good as when I ate them on previous tours. The old black-stained-teeth mamasan who always greeted me as her friend was no longer around. I recall thinking how sad it was that things change and people move on which I never thought would happen.
I went by the Military Attache's office that next morning, picked up the document I was to return to my unit at Camp Eagle and caught a C-123 flying back to Phu Bai. I never again returned to the Saigon USO, and I never figured out what the SDS hippie really wanted from me. I do know that the SDS movement was against the Vietnam war and their hippies were doing everything they could to disrupt and discredit the war. While I did not support the war, I was not going to be part of the hippie's efforts to bring discredit upon us who gave much of our youth to Johnson's dirty war.
When I returned to Vietnam on what I call my "Get Well Tour" in 2007, I found the USO building. I could find no evidence showing that it had once been a haven for American troops wanting to get a taste of back home. I felt a twinge of sadness.
Entrance to Saigon USO
1 United Services Organization - A self-funded organization provided to military bases for soldiers to relax and be entertained.
2 Over 600 college-educated American women joined the Red Cross Supplemental Recreational Activities Overseas program, unofficially known as Donut Dollies, during the Vietnam War.
3 Hai Cua = two crabs in Vietnamese.
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