Woman in a Chopper

If you were a correspondent in 1968 Vietnam, a helicopter trip became as routine as a cab ride in New York City, but it had a wonderful bonus. Because you flew high to avoid small arms fire, it was cool, wonderfully cool, and you came to see the country as a composite of small towns, immense rice fields, bomb craters, people working the soil and children riding the backs of water buffalo, which, according to local wisdom, didn't like the smell of Caucasians.

This particular ascent was all the more welcome because we had been in the boondocks for a week, saw little action, wore the same fatigues we started out in and were more than exhausted. My Vietnamese cameraman and sound man were instantly asleep as we flew among low-hanging clouds . They had paid little attention to the several bound women and the terrified children who clung to their mothers as they hurtled at 150 miles per hour toward Saigon.

They had seen the noisy foreign birds of prey hundreds of times, but now they were aboard one of the terrifying machines, essentially prisoners of war because they had been picked up in a village suspected of being sympathetic to the Viet Cong. Adding to their terror was the fact that the doors of the chopper had been left open, deliberately, to take advantage of the fast-flowing air.

I took off my helmet and looked closely at the nearest woman, who had her hands bound behind her back. She could not hold her terrified two-year-old son. There was no comfort for the child who was beyond the crying stage, now struck dumb with terror.

She was a typical peasant woman in black pajamas, with the prematurely lined face of one who tilled the fields alone while trying to provide for her elders and young son. God only knows where her husband was, either with a Viet Cong unit somewhere in the neighborhood or on the run from the South Vietnamese and allied troops. She was very alone.

She looked straight at me with neither malice nor curiosity, just with that incredible Vietnamese stoicism. But for one moment I saw her glance toward the open hatch of the chopper and realized there was nothing between her and that void and should we make a fast maneuver, she, and her child, could be hurled out that door to their deaths. I moved my reclined body so that one foot jammed against the hatch door and the rest provided an obstacle to her rolling in that direction. She stared at me without any indication that she recognized what I was doing but I knew because she relaxed her body a trifle, or as much as she could with the rope biting into her wrists.

What must she have thought of this big American "round eye" with the rapidly graying hair who wore an American uniform but who carried no visible weapon? Actually I had a pistol in my rucksack for all the good that it would do in an automatic weapons firefight, or against mortar or artillery attack. It was a tiny macho gesture which seemed appropriate under the circumstances. The casualties figures had soared during this year of the Tet offensive. The weapon was just there adding weight to equipment which was already more than sixty pounds. Sixty pounds on my back to be humped among American and ARVN troops who were, for the most part, in their late teens, or in Vietnamese ranks, in their mid twenties.

I reached for a canteen and noticed that she looked at it intently, then wetted her lips. She was thirsty as the other women and children must have been. Without thinking I slid across the metal floor of the chopper and held the canteen to her lips. She stared at me for a moment, didn't make a sound, but parted her lips and I poured the warm water into her mouth and into the mouth of her son.

The other women looked at the canteen and I did the same for them. Soon the canteen was empty and I removed Voo Su's, my cameraman and comrade. He didn't even stir. The Vietnamese were the best sleepers in the world. I put the empty canteens next to my gear and went back to my position as barrier in the open door.

The Vietnamese woman stared at me without any expression and now I stared back and somehow made tentative contact, but for the life of me I could not tell what it was. In another half an hour we descended into the heat, and laterite dust and activity of a fire base. We alighted, put on our gear and started for a group of buildings. The prisoners were being herded out none too gently and were gathered in a group before a truck pulled up to take them for questioning.

I saw the woman again as the truck started up and she look at me as she passed and never said a word, but our eyes remained locked as the truck pulled away and finally turned a corner.

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