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(EDITOR'S NOTE: Charles Black, Enquirer military writer, reports from Vietnam on his fifth assignment in the Far East. On his way to the war zone he has visited various military hot spots throughout the world.)
SAIGON, Vietnam - Why would an architect design a hotel which has a room with no outside exposure, but with two picture windows looking in on the hallway?
That is where my luxury-rate room had a view, I found, when I pulled a big green drape, which looked like it had been sewed out of black market sandbags, to inspect the Panorama. I closed it and went over to see what happened when you turned on an air conditioner set into the wall. Predictably nothing. It gave a kind of mechanical sneer of a noise and lapsed back into hibernation.
It wasn't the air conditioner's fault, though, I realized. The electrical power had just gone off in the charming way it frequently does in Saigon. I listened to the little green lizard on the ceiling scuttle around, lay on the bed, it had a mattress on wood slats, and fell asleep.
Exactly two hours later all of the lights I had left on blazed into action and woke me up. The air conditioner roared. The water I had tried unsuccessfully poured.
Everything in the room operated beautifully until exactly six a.m. when it quit until the next midnight.
It was a pleasure to go and get press cards.
The Vietnamese lady at the National Press Association, which accredits reporters for Vietnamese purposes, showed me pictures of her baby. We are old friends. I got my card there in just a couple of hours. (A sign says it takes five minutes, but only a novice would fail to understand that getting a small card takes at least two hours in a well-run office.)
I then took the Vietnamese card to the only people who have ever asked to see any of the five of these I have obtained, the fellows who issue American cards.
This rite takes place in something called the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office and is performed by the Military Assistance Command Vietnam Accreditation Office. This was located in the Lincoln Memorial library on Le Loi Street, until someone wired a light wrong and burned the office there the week before I arrived.
A sign said go to the Park Hotel.
I asked a man who looked intelligent and well-dressed how to find the Park Hotel and he swore to me. Bitterly. Then he grew calm and we introduced ourselves. He was newly arrived for a magazine.
Join Forces
Turned out he had been hunting the Park Hotel all morning himself. We hunted it together, then and finally ran it down in an alley, following a map drawn by a Vietnamese traffic policeman which ended in a kind of spiral with a question mark on it.
The sign said that the gents we wanted were in a certain location on the ground floor. We opened this door and it was an unused cocktail bar full of folding chairs and card tables.
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Another sign said somebody was on the fourth floor. We went up to find him and he had a sign on saying he was out to a conference and would be back "after lunch". It was 3 p.m.
We went down and studied the ground floor layout, finding nothing which looked likely. An Air Force sergeant was smoking outside in the alley and we went out and asked him about it.
"Oh, you're hunting me. I'm on the third floor. We just brought the signs over from the other office," he said. "I guess they're confusing."
We went up and my buddy got his card with no sweat.
Records Burned
My turn came and the sergeant told me all the office records had burned. I said I was sorry. He asked me if I had a letter from my boss saying I was really a reporter. I said I had a letter from my boss raising questions about the matter, but I wouldn't show it to him. He said he had to have such a letter. I said he had been sent that letter, just like the book said to send it.
"But you see, it burned up. Now we have to have another letter," he said reasonably.
We sat and smoked and looked out the window and thought for a while. Then I asked him for a piece of paper and a typewriter. I wrote him a letter and signed my boss's name. He thanked me and asked me for some pictures. I gave them to him. He turned to a filing cabinet to get something and chuckled when he opened it.
"Say, how about that! You've been here before. We had your records in this little old file here, the old timer's file! We pulled them, knew you were coming! It didn't burn up, see? Here's all those forms and things right here," he said.
He carefully put the letter I had just written for him into the file with the rest and fixed me up a card.
Other Cards
"Now you have to get the non-combatant's card, which you can pick up in three days, and after that you can have a Post Exchange card and a commissary card," he said happily. "Then you go to this other office and get . . ."
"You're out of your mind," I interrupted happily. "You gimme my press card and let me out of here!"
He did, but it worried him, me leaving before all of the fun of getting cards even got started.
Just for the hell of it I decided to use my new cards and go to the "Five O'Clock Follies", the press briefing (which starts at 4:45 p.m., of course, despite its nickname) every afternoon by MACV.
I was glad I did. There were a couple of Army guys there wanting to know if I cared to get out of Saigon as soon as it was over.
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