The Correspondent Vol 2 No.4 1977

Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong

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I

couldn't guess his age.

Well-

muscled and strongly veined arms

told of a life of hard work. A

whispy white moustache and thin whiskers of beard belied the look of strength about him. He was only one of 200 refugees evacuated from a small hamlet along the infamous "Street Without Joy" north of Hue. He sat silent and stoney on a Navy landing barge, the body of his teenage son wrapped in a dirty cloth before him. He stared back hard at my obvious interest in him but

OUR COVER

It

hesident Bert Okuley FÞst Vice hesident Jack Worth Second Vice hesident

Martin Bishop Tleasurer Martin Bishop Secretary Ken Kashiwahara

Editor I)on Ronk Photographer Hugh Van Es Advertising Nida Cranbourne

was

that the

two years ago April 30

message came

zit-zit-zitting

p I

over the UPI teleprinter on the 'l4th

É,*rlE í¿Ër4'*êÞ

ublished monthly as

an

of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong. Offices at 15th Floor, Sutherland House, 3 Chater

floor that the war, for all intents and purposes, had ended in South Viet Nam. The Americans were withdrawing. For those of us with relative$, . friends and colleagues there, thère were some anxious

organ

Road, Hong Kong. Tel: 5-237734 and 5-233003.

Cables: CORCLUB HONG KONG. Address all correspondence to: Editor, Foreign Correspondents' Club of

days until word finally arrived that

all were safe, whether still in Viet

Nam, on the South China Sea or in The Philippines. _ For many of us still working Southeast Asia, April 30 ended añ era of our lives not easily forgotten.

There are good and'bad reasons for remernbering Viet Nam -- and lndochina -- and every one of us who does remember uses our own yardstick of good and bad. But one thing it was to everyone who was there -- an inescapable memory.

I

gave no sign

only

guess

of emotion. I could

what anguish might lay

behind his proud face.

Who had killed his son? I never found out; perhaps no one knows how or knew then. Possibly the

Hong Kong, 15th Floor, Sutherland House, 3 Chater Road, Hong Kong. Adver-

Viet Cong? Or the American

tising: Nida Cranbourne, First Floor, 30 Ice House St., Hong Kong. Tel: 5-248482

Marines? Or an accident, an inadvertent step on a mine lald for Marines? Or an air strike? Or one of the ARVN troopers on the

Printed by Yee Tin Tong kinting Press, Ltd., Aik San Factory Building, Ground Floor, Block A, 14, Westlands Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong. Tel: 5-62227I-7

operation?

His was the tragedy of Viet

Nam, the stupidity of people killing

and maiming people in quest of some political objective which, at best, could nevei match the value of a single human life. And yet, when I look at the picture I took of this ageless peasant refugee, I see

more than tragedy. There is triumph and pride and deep interiors of strength.

As a journalist, I left friends in Viet Nam, in Laos, in

dead

Astained bundle

Cambodia. Fellow journalists who, more than l, covered the war in all its dimensions of tragedy, farce and irony, and left their souls there.

Bob Ellison, Charlie Eggleston, Heri

Huet, Larry Burrows, Terry Reynolds, Kent Potter, Tu Vu,

Shlmamoro, Sully. The list is long.

There were nights of terror when

He stared back hard at my obvious interest in him....

For many years Hall Ellithorpe,

his brother and a collection of

a'a/

2

2a

t

Sole Agents: FRENCH FASHIONS LTD., Hons Kons.

r'2zt z '¡t

Lt

by Hol

Ellithorpe

other classic old Viet Nam hands, operated an agency in central

Saigon. Hal became so enamored with Saigon that he brought out the best souvenirs, H Janie and Donald.

one realized in self-reproach the vulnerabilities of the human

psyche. And days of

witnessing the inhumanity

horror

of it

all.

Memories fade, however, and war talk is of the unusual, the hilarious and the obscene delights of life in a country being blown to hell.

Yet when sober reflection comes

at odd moments, it is the

visage

of that lone man, upright and noble amid his tragedy, that returns. He

endured and the pride

strength went beyond

of

the

his mere

military might of his tormentors.

3

Alan CANADIAN.BORN Dawson first went to Viet Nam in the mid-1960s as an American Gl. He remained after his hitch, first as a radio reporter before joining UPl. He was Saigon Bureau Chief in the c{osing years of the war and staYed on after the communist takeover,

Quietest

until the new government

franticallY, and even services a

for the wire

story could be out of date

got off the teletype tape' More booze ProbablY created fewer drunks in a one-month span before

it

from the ministry and announces duty calls him to make a trip to Saigon. lt's like the reaction of the women of London when father must go to Pãris, on business, of

VietNam's promlses

course.

One Hanoi gentleman told me his wife knows he has for years much admired photographs of Marilyn Monroe and, when time came for his trip to Saigon, she enquired if he intended to seek a

than ever before. We lived on adrenal i ne'

exPelled

him. He is now UPI Bureau Chief in Bangkok.

Editor

A tired Saigon evacuee in a tired TV suit arrives in Subic Bay to be met by Vic Maliwanag, UPI Bureau Manager in Manila. lt's unknown at press time whether this same TV suit (a Minh creation) was the one later

"lifted" in Australia.

for Asia Frank Beatty

Monroe down yonder.

"When I returned she asked me if I had been with bar girls. I told her I understood there were no

and

Leon Daniel were mud uP to their armPits, having just

sartorial

by

disembarked

from Hong Kong

time to catch a ride to

Alon

"Babylift"

Dowson

in

more bar girls in Saigon," he said.

"l

the

crash tragedY'

Paul (better him than me) Vogle rode the last flight to Da Nang and

s

"rice bird" to Phnom Penh'

And after we

boosted

American veterans.

Old Saigon hands among the Presidential Commission - dispatched to Hanoi by the White House to push for data on missing Americans - and its State Depart-

one

(l won't mention irir namt, but a hint is he is the oarticular Person

ment and journalists watched raptly the night the Vietnamese singers and dancers performed for them.

The maidens performed classical

current FCC President) over the EmbassY

Hanoi certainly has no bar girls.

But it does have the beautiful little women of Viet Nam so talked of by

oroduced Probably the best single storv of the war. Robert C' Miller was back in a war, and rode the last

þ \

do not think she delieves me."

walls evacuation hight'

there was time for some reflection' The guns were remarkablY silent

and folk numbers, ballets and played violins, and none of the

at 3 am. TheY were silent everYwhere. Fires burned on three sides of Saigon. But the evacuation

rock and winking of Saigon's Tu Do Street in times past.

But the sight of the

helicooters were gone and we certainlv knew that even if there were a baitle for Saigon, the war would

up memories of the Melody Bar, the female parade past

conjured

Saigon's Brodard's Cafe and hot nights at the Continental Hotel bar.

The Hanoi

stormy very narrow tree in front of the Presidential Palace'

It's PerhaPs hard-hearted to saY the lasi two months of the Viet

Nam war were exciting. But theY were. What do You do if You're under 50 and You've covered the end of the Viet Nam war and You

*.nt to rise in the news business?

The new authgrities cut our

It

was the quietest night of the war, that last one, and sitting ontop of the nine-story Peninsula Hotel

gave me time to reflect a little.

For just about two solid months (that began for me with one of

those whirlwind trips

to

Phnom

Penh March 1 with some Congresspeople (they included Bella Abzug) and it was obvious I wasn't too far away from getting a decent night's

4

sleep.

We had long before used uP all

communications six hours after they took over Saigon, and we all got *ome sleeP over the next few daYs' And then we thought about the friends we'd lost, so many that not a few of us consciouslY avoided

our adjectives, so "frantic" not really describe the last two months of the Viet Nam war' lt getting reallY CLOSE to does

was .

haze of events, actuallY. one point we commiserated

a

At

with a correspondent who had been asked to do, in mid-Apiit, tOZS, a "think piece" on "what it all means." The story was telling itself

anYone

who might get blown awaY.

And we could ask

ourselves,

when the frantic daYs ended with the war: Dammit, whY do excitement and tragedY so often go together?

girls

by Ricfiord Growold

Dick Growald is a

National

for

UPI and reeæntly visit' ed Hanoi w¡th a US Executive PartY.

Reporter

He recalls South Viet Nam from

earlier days.

Hanoi is one of those places where the postage stamps come without glue on the backside, like Moscow of old.

-

Three days in

Hanoi and still no

mentions Ho Chi Minh

Vietnamese TheY

City.

still call it Saigon. And they still sneer at it.

These victors of a 3o-Year war do talk of the former enemy capital.

It is as if the forces of San Francisco had taken Los Angeles and that down there it might not be so Pure but an interesting time can be had in that bawdy old town.

So interesting that Hanoi wives

frown when hubby comes

home

to meet yout budget

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Hanoi street crowds are possibly

the cheeriest in the world. Three decades of war has not dulled their good nature, Girls smile, giggle and wave back.

Old men nod and speak greetings.

An expectant mother in black pajama bottoms and white blouse threw back her head in happy laughter at a look from a foreigner.

The braver children tried out their school English and French and Russian at the foreigner.

At the Government

The foreigner strolled into the of the square beside the

guest house breakfast table, President Carter's

middle

Commission

Government guest house. Suddenly

breaking Hanoi, Viet Nam

performance got

applause.

OFFICE DESIGN

and reporters

Viet Nam's

sat

magnificent

cakelike bread.

A reporter said that British colonialism may have left

democracy behind but the French colonialists spread great baking.

"Yes and the French legacy may last longer," commented a smiling Leonard Woodcock, President of the United Auto Workers and Chairman of the visiting Commission.

Two-foot-long female hair pony tails sell in the shops of Hanoi's

Sugar Street'for cents to $2.50.

from

US$O.50

he noticed the crowd closing

in.

The courting couple on the park

bench stepped

up.

So did

men

wheeling their bicycles, youngsters adorned with the red communist Pioneer kerchiefs, three sol.diers and a posse

of teenagers.

The foreigner was surrounded.

There was no escape.

He noticed hands pointing

way.

his

He too smiled.

The crowd was interested in his

camera.

He raised the camera and the crowd vanished,

laughing.

s

The enclosed ran in a Sunday edition of the St Times. l'm passing it along because I thought might be appropriate for reprinting in The

¡t

can hardly deny the quality offood

Paul Vogle llved in Viet Nam for

19 years. First as a Gl, then as a teacher, then as a newspaperman.

Pete

available.

He joined UPI about seven years ago, remained in Saigon aftet the "fall," and now is a UPI correspondent reporting from Bangkok.

Correspondent.

ln addition to being a warm letter to Mrs Hangen, touches on many bases familiar to all who have walked the backwaters of Asia, including the undersigned. l'd still trade all the nuoc mam ¡n Da Nang for a permanent assignment ¡n Phnom Penh or

it

Kompong Som or Takeo or Takhmau.

In any event, Wilbur Landrey formerly was Foreign News Editor for UPI in New York City. lf you reprint his letter and if you'd like some material fol

by

Even bachelor David Kennerley admitted that the lure of Viet Nam lay as much in the soft sweep as in

Poul Vogle

those sultry eyes sheathed in satin skin.

Many would perhaps prefer to forget rushing back to Saigon from a gruelling week-or-so-field-trip to

FORTIJqEI, OIUED.

bang out a story condemning the repressive Saigon regime, so they

could get on with the busi'ness of their girls, and then a relaxing few

an intro, l'm sure Okuley, Leon Daniel or Charlie Smith could spin off a graf or two.

pipefulls at Phan's on Le Van Duyet

Regards,

St.

Lynn C. Newhnd

It

ÊlettertoPqt Hqngen

by Wilbur G.

I

sat up with your book the other night until

I

two were married in Cairo. Life was good and exciting, and none of us ever could have imagined

that day would

be the beginning of your book or that

I would be writing these lines to thank you for it.

But the book is more than a human love story.

lt

is about Welles and about what he was doing and what we were all doing. You were one of us from

the beginning.

It brings back a good feeling now to read about those days in the Middle East when we used to get up at dawn to catch the old DC3s to Amman, and to recall fighting the schedules and the airline clerks to try to get to Baghdad after they killed Nuri and King Faisal and to remember going up into the Basta of Beirut to see Saab Salam during that first Lebanese

let Welles come back into the country. I wasn't all that good or wise about what to do, and if you remember that I said all those things you quote then, you must have total recall.

At any rate, it was mostly you who got Welles

back into Egypt

quiet - your persistence, your And it will

unending, inflexible insistence; your

faith.

be mostly you again if he and the others ever come back, after seven years, from the jungles of Cambodia.

After Cairo, of course, our paths parted. Just after you and Welles went to lndia, I went to Africa. With-

Hue is a dirry word to most of touts, beggars and drunken ARVNs looking for a fight, and of fleabag places to stay parading as hotels. Few remember that before the 1968 Tet Offensive ¡t was a quiet c¡ty

foreigners, a city

out you, Welles came back there once, and we worked

together in the Congo. You know that story wasn't very pleasant.

When you and Welles went to Germany and then to Hong Kong. I was in the Caribbean and in Latin America and then back in New York as foreign editor.

But our paths always crossed. The last time I saw Welles, only a little while before he disappeared, we sat in front of my television set in New York and

populated by the most polite people in South Viet Nam, people so lawabiding that ¡t was considered an insult to lock your door at night.

Fewer

diarrohea.

Fewer yet are those who care.

But even in the midst of the war which flared into seriousness in the early 60s, not all the Vietnamese were swindlers all the time, and pockets of charm remained to the

Being a news correspondent wasn't only, or even always, an exciting life, as other people are wont to gush at cocktail parties. For us, it was simply the only life. As you write, the news business is a kind of obsession. And, as you say, committing oneself completely to any one pursuit involves hazard. besides the work did matter - not the flies, not the sweaty nights, not the crummy hotel rooms, not the communications that failed. Not even the slimy officials who tried to hide what was happening. One of us usually found out. A lot of times, ¡t was Welles.

He was the best.

You are much too generous to me in telling about that time, just after you were married, when Nasser, or somebody in the Egyptian Government, wouldn't 6

still are those who re-

member that 15 years ago anyone even a foreigner -- could travel -by himself anywhere in South Viet Nam w¡th nothing to fear except a vehicle breakdown, the weather or

civil war.

But in the Middle East, as elsewhere, nothing

d¡ff¡cult to forget, of course,

that bleak stretch of Highway 13 during the 1972 offensive, when

Londry

Dear Pat,

read it all the way through, and I suppose I should hand-write a few lines thanking you for it.

But because it really tells what our lives have been all about these past 30 years, I deðided to write you this way instead. Others might want to understand, too, You've written a beautiful love story. lt gives me a warm and grateful feeling to read it, and itwill give a warm and grateful feeling even to those who never khew you or Welles. I can remember the day you

¡s

being held up by ARVN soldiers on

hooted back at Nixon as he talked about Viet Nam. Anybody who reads your book is going to get a good rundown on recent history, because you and Welles covered a lot of the world's big stories. Welles Hangen became a familiar voice and face on the screens of NBC. When you wrote your book, I hope you had some of his notes and scripts to help you.

Welles was one of the bravest, but also one of the 5re plge tE

very end.

Married newsmen probably were not awale, but few sorts of women could be as alluring as the

Vietnamese whose

sultry

eyes

promised everything -- and usually it. Those who used to journey to Gholon or sit at David Halberstram's roundtable in gave

He was a Nguyen Hue bandit, perhaps the tiniest pickpocket Saigon produced.

Brodard's

for

gargantuan lundres

the newsman was already tisking his life to get a few paragraphs ofcolor.

And anyone who wasn't "ripped o11" by hit-and-run gangsters in downtown Saigon, Hue or Da Nang simply can't claim to be one of the brotherhood (but it never happened to me.) And, let's face it, most of us who worked in Viet Nam and are now reading this rambling account owe whatever fortunes we have to the place.

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Don Ronk spent nearly nine in lndochina, as teacher,

by Don

years

Erich Schwaabe

photographer and freelance correspondent. After four years in Viet Nam he moved to Vientiane, Laos, covering that end of the war until its conclusion. His photos of Long

Cheng, Laos

sAys...

base were the

ClA" -firstthe "secretwithout allowed

restriction and possibly the only

The question vou must ask yourself is: should I trust my eyes to someone who is not

ones.

Ronk

h/E ST4VED \^/e STVCD

qualified?

Anyone in Hong Kong - regardless of training or qualifica-

tion

-

w

credit

(without dunning) in the restaurant of the Constellation. And as the years passed you noticed his children (eight of them) growing up and somehow felt a part of it.

There were the two Madrasirun notion stories across the street with everything from mosquito

insignificant part of one dollar. And there was the US Embassy around the corner from The Constellation where the "spook" office provided

ness, conduct eye examinations,

fit

would provide meals on

repelent to French letters. There was "Cafe Ka-nohm" " uptown" to provide noodles and coffee at an

can open an optical busi-

prescribe and

one of the finest human beings in Asia, but could and would get the residence visa, then the extension.

For no few bums who drifted into Vientiane he not only could but

contact lenses

and eyeglasses.

E¡ich Schwaabe of Optica Ltd. is a fully qualified professional optometrist. He gra-

an endless means to get a rumor started.

It simply was not true that all the streets of Vientiane were un-

duated from the College of Optometry in West Berlin and has been in practice in Hong Kong

paved

It

--

a few miles of them were.

was not true that heroin was brewed in the backyard of The Constellation, nor true that it was

for three years.

At Optica you are assured that a professional - qualified in all aspects of eyecare - is deter-

free for the asking around town.

But my junkie friends assured me it

mining your eyesight require-

was damned cheap.

ments.

There was also Tammy of the tradition of being a fallang in Arbuckle, as much a part Vientiane

'-"I^

----- 3

o crñ m

1

(tl

n o Þ o o rn z { 7 Þ t-

Á.çÍ '.t. "-'-t .io_- ' '* : .-,

Four and a half years

in

Vientiane? they ask, simply repeating my statement, but adding the question mark and smearing their faces with perplexity.

Yes,

four and a half years re-

sidence in Vientiane, the little backwater capital of the little backwater kingdom (then) on the banks of the Mekong. Good years, the passing of which are sorely regretted.

î'

'"

".

porary respite from the preceding four years of Viet Nam, a way to stay with the Vietnamese to whom I had become inordinately attached,

while getting away from the war

unseen grip of fascinating boredom,

Wing Cheong House, lst floor I Li Yuen Street West, Central Tel: 5-256937

..DOWN

THE LANE IN CENTRAL''

monotony, or lethargy -- or as it did so many, supplied the hold with

bountiful and cheap drugs that sapped both mind and body far beyond boredom, monotony and lethargy. One supposes that whether one used drugs or not Vientiane was solace for the weak.

A cradle of sorts.

For mvself

l0

it

Maurice or Madame

started as a tem-

that long -I never thought

anyone stay Maurice and

overhead could be met by product-

ion of only the most

freelance

material

you got "rich."

minimal

otherwise

We stayed, and stayed and stayed.

There was Maurice Cavalerie at The Constellation to make staying

easier. Maurice was (is) not only

which

is

twice as long as I was. A good part of the strangers who came to town thought Tammy worked for "the agency," because why else would

200,000 or so people were a quarter Vietnamese and much of the best of the country had been replanted in Laos. I went and stayed.

many, that formality was simply ignored) and about $lOO a month for food and lodging. That sort of

--

not to say they had anything in common aside from being part of the tradition. Tammy is a Scot and managed to be a foreign correspondent in Laos approximately

linked with their name. Vientiane's

It didn't take much to stay ¡n Vientiane was that way. lt Laos. Less that US$20 each six captured people, held them in some months for a residence visa (for Erich Schwaabe of Optica Ltd.

as was

Koulap or Tony Poe

but that.

We knew how it happened. lt happended to us on the way somewhere else.

Tammy's said

to be in

Rhodesia

now.

And there was Souvanna and General Thongpanh, and Ly Teck, and the King, and the naked kids swimming in the Mekong, and Long Cheng, and Carl Strock and Jerry Doolittle Et Al, Bert Okuley, Fox Butterfield, Ross Perot, Baseball cap Jack, Souphanouvong, Jim Bennett, Rex Ellis, Hal Ellithrope, Dan Berrigan....

And the longing grows more

acute'

11

by Noncy Nosh

Air

On July 9, I was back in Phnom

Cambodge service between

Phnom Penh and Hong

Kong was finished on Apríl 9, 1975, when flight RC 161 departed from Hong Kong after six days on the ground

HongKong isfinÍshed

for

a "routine check."

for days. There was only

a

handful of visitors then, in that incredible summer heat, and my Cam-

bodian guide respected my wish for silent exploring. Hours, days passed

with only jungle sounds,

monkeys, parakeets, and parrots.

nies home and developed a

particular

Each day finished

with a swim in a

pool shaded at one end by bougainvillaea. The slightest stir of air was enough to make the ripest petals

fall from the branches, and each

a

of suspended time disappeared when

l'd never studied French, but I could make out the front page story with a Hong Kong dateline. Border

police had been killed the day before by gunfire from the Chinese side. I was nervous. The Cambodian crew was relaxed and

joking. They were turning around at Kai Tak, and pointed out that I was practically the only passenger going to Hong Kong. "But," said a pretty

hostess wearing a crisp white blouse, a uniform sarong skirt and

a big smile, "we are

fully booked on

the return."

A

swim finished with fuschia flowers

One of the

"little"

dealers.

colleague overhead her, and

added, "Hong Kong

on the water's surface.

rlt

plane I took was later destroyed by

I picked up a newspaper.

paths

1

?

last flight from Hong Kong. The

Colony for a trip around Southeast Asia that finished in Cambodia, as as

i

The aircraft was a Caravelle, forerunner of the plane that made the

Khmer Rouge attack on the Phnom Penh airfield. ln July 1976, Phnom Penh was still beautiful, but the enchantment and feeling

one could find on the planet.

Angkor worked its magic on me, and I wandéred among the sculptures and stones and along jungle

love for Cambodia, particularly its Angkor Wat.

to catch the Royal Air flight to Hong Kong.

Cambodge

summer of 1967 labor troubles and strikes in Hong Kong had led to riots and bombs. I left the conflict and uncertainty in the

ln the

peaceful and beautiful a place

Nancy Nash ¡s no stranger to Indochina. For a number of years she called the former French colo-

Penh

is finished."

A

isntt bv

B¡ll Srubbs

Phnom Penh mid-l970. There seemed

wholrinkit.

thepeople

then.

/TOPMEF IRM RONG

The in drink

for generations

@trIGI] TMELL

be hope and enthusiasm

then headed out of town in rented - for a few kilometers.

"

GORDONIS

to

Every day began with Am Rong's morning briefing in the cafe above the handicraft shop. We gathered Íor cafe filtre or BaYon Beer, listened to Chhang Song's translation of the Situation Report,

There is a common opinion that all oins are the same.

It may be true of some. But not of Gordons. For the way we use juniper. coriander and other botanical ingredients in our distilling recipe. makes subtle differences to the taste of our gin.

The actual details are of course a secret. But the results are not.

Gordon's is the best selling gin in the world. Need we say more?

12

symbolic confrontation

tn

Saigon.

cars

The FANK troops rode in

Pepsicola trucks, and

actually cheered them

the villagers

- then. lt

good

both in Viet Nam and Cambodia.

Bill recalls both Hue and Phnom Penh before the sounds ofwar came "too" close.

vincial

town.

possible

wanted

a

The exchange

rate

was good, and the bars and floating dance halls had a charm and candor long since lost in Saigon.

Somehow Um Sim kept the PTT going, and aside from the censors, filing was not too difficult. There were plenty of pigeons going in and out of Pochentong, and it was still

and we thought there might be

The days usually ended at the Royale, which hadn't yet become the Phnom. We sat around the Pool,

Bill Stubbs has spent a

There weren't too many incoming rounds in the city then, and it was reminiscent of a French pro-

seemed so different from Viet Nam, chance.

part of his professional life (he a US lnformation Officer) in Indochina,

Place de la Poste.

to

drive to Saigon

if

You

to. A local herb used for making soup - banned in most other countries - was available in the market for US$0.78 a kilo, and it usually found its way into the couscous at the Pagode on Friday nights. Just ask Moose and Lowenstein. ln spite of the war, life was

vying for tables with the dispossessed French planters, and tried to teach the staff now to make martinis. Or we gathered in Studio lV and made our own. gentle. ln spite of the barbed wire, lf we didn't eat at the Cyrene, the flame trees bloomed on the

by the pool, we wandered off past the cyclo drivers at the gate ("Hey, you want girlT You want two girls?

You want boy?) to Spacezzi's Cafe de Paris, or to La Taverne at the

boulevards. American troops were not in evidence, and Coby Swank promised to buy champagne for the Press Corps if the Embassy staff ever broke 100.

13

Keith in Cholon and dragged him, literally in a cage, into the Viet

Sorgon'rogoltg' vrsts (lub

An exfro-speciol nofe of

Nam-Cambodia area. He survived his imprisonment, ill-treatment and confused interrogation for a couple of months and was finally released, exhausted and not far from death.

donating a magnificent looking and operating 26-inch

He returned to h is adopted hometown of Saígon, resumed administration of his duck-feather industry and launched into the plywood business demonstrating once more that, under non_racial

to

distinguished visitor with a well-earned titular but entirely unsought claim to industrial royalty FCC in February.

He was Keith Hyland, self-made Australian millionaire and the

his NBC crew drove south from phnom penh down

the road to Takeo.

Just ahead of him, out of sight, Jerry Miller, George Syvertsen and Ramnik Lekhi of CBS died when their jeep was hit by Viet Cong fire. And when Welles and his two men got there, they were captured along with the two other CBS men.

Since Welles' driver got away, we know that they were captured by Vietnamese troops and not by the Khmer Rouge. The troops were disciplined, ihere was an officer in charge. You write about your own extraordinary telepathy in Hong Kong, after they were captured, that Welles was all right. But we haven't seen Welles or the others since.

after the communisl takeover. successfully in ^ He now operates Australia, but obviously wóuld welcome restoration of apolitical relations with Viet Nam, where his

still in the-feather

business.

thrust into Saigon, they kidnapped

most careful, correspondents I ever knew. But chance !9o\.q hand that day on May 31, 1970, when he and

re_

going into the bag a second time

South Viet Nam. Long-timé resident of Saigon and Bangkok, he now lives and - of course works He is lucky to be alive. When the native Viet Cong forces never, of course, North Viet Nam -invaders - made their 1968 Tet offensive

members of Mike.

luctantly but wisely to quit and retreat with quiet dignity to Bangkok. He didn't want to risk

legendary "Duck Feather King,' of

Australia,

Valley shenanígans on the set, television doesñ't come

any better than Luxor. Mike will be pleased to talk over members' television needs, and sources tell us that some specials may be arranged for fellow Club

mutual advantage with Asians. !-le paid good wages to a loyal

and devoted staff.

But in April 197b he decided

enjoyed an all-too-rare dinner at the

in

color television set, located on the 18th floor. As a number of punters can attest after viewing Happy

capitalism, foreign-devils can work

A

personal,

if

capitalistic, expertise,

skill and world contacts would

surely be invaluable for promotion

of his original duck-feather business.

R.H.

rnll Phil' Romul Y. K. lunch. receive

SNAPXXXXX lã l1

FOLLOWING

SENSAIIONAL EVENTS WASHINGTôN DC IMPERATIVE YOU UNDËRTAKE IMMEDIATE SWEEP SINGAPORE, KUALA LUMPUR, JAKARTA, MAÍ{ILA, DELHI FOR FULTEST REACTION STORIES. ESSENTIAL YOU GET STATEMENT HIGHEST GOVEBNMENT LEVELS

AND DEEP BACKGROUND EMBASSY BRIEFINGS. SUGGEST YOU CONTACT DAVID LOVE OF TRAVELO\IE IN HONGKONG FOR ALL TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS. PLEASE AÐVISE DETAILED IIINERARY. REGAROS. HARRY DESKBOUND, FOREIGN NEWS EDITOR. ÊNDIT.

l;l5 combatants and the reporters who were there in search of the truth.

l3 lÞ o .<

I

z

:

o ^

z BUSINESS HOME LEAVE HOLIDAY _ PERSONAL FOR ALL YOUR TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS CONTACT

-

Su¡re 823 Star House

Kowloon

-

: Well, Pat, thank you for the book. What l.ve said about it and Welles is inadequate. Give our love to

Dana and

@T¿^tELouE OPEN WEEKDAYS AND SATURDAYS 9 A,M, TO 5.30 P,M.

fhonks

To Mr. Michael Karlstrom, Hong Kong representative of the Luxor organization. Luxor and it,s representative will be frequently remembered for

Tel: K-694108(4lines) Cables: TRALOVE Telex: 84994 LOVE HX

Petersbu rg.

Claire. And come to see us in

I ! !

St.

co co

Affectionately,

ti

N

Biil

The above letter was written to Mrs patricia Hangen,

6010 Bullard Drive, Oakland, Catif., whose book Tell Him That I Heard was published by Harper and Row on March

P

16.

r !

! æ @

N o)

General Carlos P. General magnate

shipping

ert ókuiey

before an FGC group that

3 g

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