what a sight! 550,000 GI's in vietnam by the phong (saigon)

we promise one another - poems from an asian war-
selected, published by
don luce+  j.c schafer+  jacquelyn chagnon-
Washington D.C. 1971


                                               what a sight!
     550, 000 GI' s in Vietnam

                                                                by Thế Phong

                                                                                                   [TRANSLATED BY DAM XUAN CAN

                                                               The Phong  [i.e Do Manh Tuong 1932-  ]

Thế Phong is an airman working with the press office of the Vietnamese Air Force.   He spent two years working for the American military in Vietnam and was a lecturer in politics at the Vũng tàu training center whci produced cadres for the Government of the Republic of Vietnam's pacification  program.  Working closely with the American military in South Vietnam,  he has had an opportunity to observe the effect the presence of the GI's has had on Vietnamese society. many of his poems contain lurid details of the actions of Americans in Việtnam. Included here are excerpts from a longer poem.


Well, well,
Our friends
                The Americans have arrived in our country,

They have manpower,
They have money,
They have munitions
                ( the recipes of the magic formulas,)
And there are 550, 000 of them.

Deserted places
                     Becomes military bases.
Petrified places,
                        Stupefied,
We Vietnamese see American establishments musheooming, 
Cam Ranh Bay, Cam Ranh  Air Base,  Cam Ranh City,
Qui Nhơn, Chu Lai, Tân sơn Nhứt, Biên Hòa, ...

How many have died?
                                 We don't know,
The dead never asked to be counted
                                         Or even to be remembered.
We can only be sure of one thing:
                        We will never suffer over population.

For the survivors
                         Each grain of rice we eat
                         Is imported from vast fields in California.
Germany and Korea are divided countries too,
                         But they' re doing all right --
While we suffer in the most cruel and obscene way,
                                                        What an irony!

I've been walking the roads of my beloved land,
                         One afternoon when I stopped, terribly hungry,
What have I to tell you?
Where I can ask
                         For a clean breathing space?

In thousands of bars from muddy Pleiku,
                                 Kontum buried in the mud,
                                 To dusty Nha Trang, Đà Nẵng,
Our girls brazenly ply their trade to sex-straved GI's --
                         Coloreds,
                         Whites,
                         Reds,
                         Blacks,
                         Democarcy protectors!
                         Freedom fighters!
I've seen them all !

Anyplace they set foot on
                         They are followed by our women and girls,
                                     The fun-makers par excellence,

As for you,
                 You must produce passes
                       When you come down to any of these places,
Hundreds of raids are being carried out daily.

In an office there was a Vietnamese woman
                                    Whose officer husband was away;
She had a cute son,
                           He could mumble a few words.
He wept and screamed,
                           Scared of his mother's  American visitors;
Unlike her,
                  He was not a bit impressed by dollars;
Shaking his head
                  Shouting louder,
                                Broken into tears,
                                            He called his father's name.

His father had long been enied a leave,
                  He was leading  his troops
                  Against the enemy in the highlands.
The woman worked for the Americans
                  To get money,
And that would be that --
                                      She thought.

The American officer who employed her
                     thought differently,
He said: " I will help you,
               Your husband is an army officer,
               He is my best friend ..."
Not long after that
                He fell madly in love with her.

One rainy evening
                He proposed to drive her home.
                                   It rained,
                                        it rained,
The car ran smoothly on the road
               When suddenly he pressed the brake pedal.
The car didn't overturn
                                 But she was trapped .

Holding her tight
                            In his two hairy arms
                                  He kissed her savagely,
               Then raped her in the back seat.
He gave her all the MPC's * he had,
                                                         A lot of money.

That night
                Her child went to bed early,
          Unaware the officer had takes the place of his father.
In the bed of his parents
          The next morning
                                 He got up
                                      Amazed to see so many MPC's. *
He did not like them
                        And tore them to pieces
                                              Calling to his mother.

Startled
              She rushed to him
                                         Handed him a parcel of candies
Telling him it was from his father in the war zone.
Jubilant
             He held tight his present,
                     Mumbling hia father's name ...

I have a question
             To ask good Americans like Bernard Fall,
Who wrote "The two Vietnam", discussing problems in both
                                                        The North and the South,
Who died on Vietnamese soil
                                        In the field trip with the US Marines
                                                                            in Quảng Trị.

I want to ask good Americans
                                             Like the Us missionary
Who tried to learn about us
                   And to do good things in the name of Christ.
You are people of wisdom,
                                        People of strength;
                                                       But are you honest enough
To admit the silly mistakes your fellow country men committed
                                         in the name of friendship!

I for one cannot entertain
                      The prospect of your girls becoming prostitutres
                                                    And boy pimps

This land of ours counts on you,
[Men who are not Comunists]
Men who have convictions,
Men who are not servants,
Men who have dignity,
Men who do not allow wives to work for Americans,
Men who bring salvation.

I hope you will feel humiliated.
I tell you
              You must learn American
If you want to know
                     What the hell is going on ...

  THE PHONG

---
* Military Payment Certificates (MPC's) are issued to servicemen as currency for military-operated facilities and services provided in Vietnam. They are used in lieu of the gren dollar.        (DON LUCE' S NOTE)

      <We promise one another- poems from an Asian war-  p.33 - 39>