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by Stephen Sossaman
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0400 Hours, January 29, 1968 — the most historic day in the Vietnam War — the major Tet Offensive turning point in the whole war. Do you know where Cpl. Earl Chanser was? As usual, he was not where he should have been.
Many soldiers on both sides in that war showed moments of extraordinary heroism, of course, but only one soldier was celebrated for an act of heroism that really was just a desperate effort to save himself.
That night in Saigon plenty of armed men were watching for anyone who was not where they should have been. Chanser wished that he had listened to his CIA pals on Dung Street when they warned him about curfews.
“Only rats, security patrols, and murder victims venture out at night,” a SOG analyst had warned Chanser. “Don’t get caught after dark on the wrong side of your door lock.”
“Sentries use stray pedestrians for target practice,” a DIA interrogator had said. “The roving military police patrols are like piranha, but less polite. For cold-blooded killers, they are the Creme de la Creme. Each man was hand-picked from ARVN combat units, so that all the natural killers are stationed right here in Saigon.”
“Why would the government take its best fighters out of combat?” Chanser asked. “A committee decision?”
“To the government,” the cryptologist said, “winning the war is not nearly as important as preventing coups. First things first, Chanser, c’mon, you should know that.”
Chanser paused as another Rule appeared for his upcoming book of business advice for opportunists:
An organization’s first priority is itself, not its official purpose.
And Chanser was in Vietnam to make a killing while trying to avoid being killed. He had been ordered by a judge to join the military or go to jail, and he knew there were more business opportunities in a war than in a prison exercise yard.
Chanser hadn’t paid much attention to warnings to not be on Saigon streets during the nightly curfew. He was confident in the infiltration and evasion skills that he had learned at Jasper Regional High School, playing cat and mouse with the teachers whose main job reward was terrorizing students as roving hall monitors, Boys Room Flying Squads, and athletic field Cossacks.
But Saigon during the Tet holidays was even more dangerous than Jasper Regional High School right before summer break.
Saigon seemed quiet, even though so many Vietnamese were heading home for Tet that traffic in general was unusually dense. The curfew kept civilians off the street at night, and all of the government and military facilities were locked down tight. The few military vehicles out were stopped at drowsy checkpoints, where nervous ARVN and American soldiers watched for infiltration.
If the Viet Cong did try to move equipment on the streets at night, those checkpoint guards would be an effective tripwire warning device, nice compensation for being the first to die. Those night guards kept themselves alert with coffee, fear, and the illusory comfort of carrying an automatic weapon.
Earl Chanser should have been tucked safely into his small bed, dreaming of Jane Fonda, but his dreams now were all about business. By now Chanser was aroused by women with big purses, slim business ethics, and well-turned bank balances.
But at 0400 hours that morning, Earl Chanser was not in bed. After a late business meeting with an ARVN logistics officer offering American truck tires cheap, he was standing outside a door whose three locks had just been secured from the inside. He was in a dark alley he had not seen before. He knew the neighborhood he was in, but he did not know a safe way to get back to the front of the building where his borrowed jeep waited.
Fortunately Chanser had not napped through all of his infantry training and night exercises. He kept perfectly still, got his breathing into a low-panic rhythm just short of fibrillation, and he looked around as his eyes adjusted to the low light. He had to be alert to all of his senses, without letting them overwhelm him like a pack of wolves.
As his eyes adjusted, Chanser developed a sense of the alley shape, and he looked for the safest paths through the trash and the heaped junk that prevented a decent sprint out to a street. He looked up at the blinking stars to get a better sense of where north was, but realized that the stars were actually helicopter and airplane lights. Not even Copernicus could figure out where he was by looking at these heavens.
Just as he had been trained to do, Chanser checked his gear to see that he had everything in its place, and that nothing would make noise when he moved out of the alley. Any little clinking could draw lethal attention. He moved the safety off his M-16, and could almost hear the grinding of rust. He wished for a moment that he had actually cleaned the weapon once in a while, or taken an M-16 from some soldier more fastidious about details.
“Showtime,” he said to himself, in a tremulous falsetto.
Chanser stepped slowly into the alley, listening for AK-47s being locked and loaded. He heard nothing. He looked left and right to see which side street was closest. To the right, the alley ended tight against a brick wall. Having to go left, Chanser was relieved of the anxiety of choice.
Suddenly he stopped. There was a business rule here, and he might as well commit it to memory, just in case he got out of the alley alive:
Giving customers too many choices leads to paralysis. Give them two choices, your favorite and one ridiculous alternative.
Chanser held his M-16 at the ready and started walking slowly to the street to his left. He felt like a camera in a horror film, moving slowly, deeper into a trap.
But he reached the end of the alley without being shot, so he paused in the shadows to plan his next move. It would have to be to his left, so that he could turn left again and get to his jeep. He emerged from the alley, stayed as close to the wall on his left as he could, given the trash and debris, and slowly walked to the street. He knew that once he reached the corner he could peer around it to his left and see his jeep waiting faithfully.
He peered around the corner, but the jeep was gone.
Damned thieves. Now he understood why horse thieves were hanged, transportation being a matter of life and death. If he had used his own jeep, his Soviet-built security devices probably would have prevented the theft, but he had instead taken someone else’s jeep, and it was as vulnerable as a sirloin steak in a dog pound.
Time for Plan B.
Plan B turned out to be the smallest, rustiest little three-wheeled motorized cyclo in Saigon. It looked like the grotesque, deformed love child of a small motorcycle and a tricycle. Behind the driver’s saddle was a rear-facing seat, since this kind of cyclo functioned as a taxi.
If it functioned.
The cyclo looked so rusty and dented that Chanser wondered if it would start. The three tires were badly worn, and in the moonlight Chanser could see that two of them had been patched around with duct tape. The original handle bar was gone, replaced with a broomstick. The throttle and brake lever had been duct-taped onto the broomstick, which unfortunately rotated in its makeshift clamp.
Chanser was desperate. If the cycle did work, it probably would have been stolen already. But it was sitting here unchained.
He had no choice. He would try to hot-wire this cyclo, and if it worked he would make a dash towards home, even though it was across the city. He would have to dodge patrols, checkpoints, and snipers. First Chanser twisted the after-market headlamp around so that if he turned it on, it would illuminate him as he drove. He was in his U.S. Army uniform, and the guards might not kill him if they realized he was an American.
Besides, no Vietnamese would be crazy enough to illuminate himself to make the target easier — only an American. On the other hand, illuminating himself as an American on a slow cyclo could turn any VC Mama San into Annie Oakley.
“Hot-wiring a vehicle is simply applied physics,” Chanser’s shop teacher had once said. The class was so motivated to learn for the first time that the shop teacher happily taught them everything he knew about starting cars without keys.
Chanser was a quick study, so here in this dark Saigon street the moonlight, the dim streetlights, and the occasional flares were enough for Chanser to locate the right wires. He cleared debris from the cyclo’s path to make a quick get-away, just in case it actually started and actually had gas in its rusty tank. Chanser tore a piece of duct tape off one of the tires, held the two wire ends close together, and paused.
Deep breath, deep breath — and — now.
Chanser twisted the two wires together and heard the little motor cough quickly, sounding like an Army recruit in tear-gas training. He secured the two wires with the duct tape and hopped onto the saddle.
He felt like a movie cowboy leaping onto the saddle of a strong horse, but he was in fact on the tiny saddle of a cyclo. One old donkey had more horsepower that the little motor gasping for life here. The motor noise was enough to wake half of Saigon, and the cyclo hadn’t even moved yet.
Chanser was a tall man, and the cyclo was built for a small, bow-legged driver. Chanser’s legs man-splayed out like a subway exhibitionist’s, and the saddle started to work its lewd way deeply between his buttocks.
Time to get into gear and flee. Now.
Chanser engaged the gear, leaned forward as if he were driving Seabiscuit in the Kentucky Derby, and revved the motor. Chanser could see street trash from the flash of sparks where the muffler used to be.
The cyclo jerked forward like a greased pig at the Jasper County Fair, backfired once, and then stopped with a lurch, coughing. The motor seemed to be undecided about whether to go or stay, and it was breathing heavily. Chanser leaned forward even more and his body English seemed to work: the cyclo sprunted forward and lurched down the street. Not fast, but at least it was moving.
Chanser was relieved, even if he was making enough noise to awaken every checkpoint within a mile, even if he was traveling slowly enough for the every VC in town to pick up a weapon and get into position, even if he wasn’t completely sure of which direction would take him to his quarters, close to the American embassy.
He was in an intersection in a maze. He felt like a steer in a stockyard with three chutes to choose from, all of which led to a meat hook.
Chanser heard the crack of a rifle round. He looked over his shoulder and in the low light saw three men chasing him from behind.
He looked to his left and saw helmeted heads behind a barricade.
He looked to his right and saw several menacing figures standing in shadows.
Chanser looked to the front again and saw a checkpoint ahead, but he could not tell whether it was ARVN or American or VC or NVA or Pinkerton. No time to think, barely time to act. He turned right, putt-putting past the shadowy figures, who shrank slightly into the shadows.
Once he made the turn, Chanser’s pursuers could no longer see him, but that would change quickly, when they made the turn themselves. He abruptly turned into a dark alley on his left, hoping that it opened out to the next street, not into a dead-end killing zone.
The cyclo was bouncing over street trash, scattering rats, and scrapping against the alley walls. Dim lights ahead promised a path to the next street, but Chanser’s cyclo was bucking him so badly that the lights seemed to be jerking around, and he could not see what was ahead.
When he had almost reached the end of the alley, Chanser slowed to a halt. The motor was smoking and seemed ready to melt, but Chanser wanted to dismount and reconnoiter the street before plunging ahead. Over the motor’s noise Chanser could hear hysterical sirens, neurotic dogs, and explosions muffled like theatre coughs. As always, helicopter and aircraft lights twinkled overhead.
Might as well turn right.
As soon as he remounted the cyclo, Chanser heard a small van squealing into the alley. Two rifle rounds cracked over his head before he could muscle the clutch into action.
The cyclo lurched out of the alley and was almost finished making its left turn when Chanser saw that to his left the ARVN jeep was making a U-turn to pursue him. He could see the flashes of automatic fire from the ARVN military police, and he heard the gunners cackling.
Now he was downrange of two fast vehicles hunting him down.
Without thinking, Chanser pulled his own U-turn and then headed right. He scrunched down over the broomstick handlebar like a little kid, and felt the urge to pedal. The cyclo had found its second wind and was picking up speed.
Chanser looked over his shoulder through the exhaust cloud to see that the VC van and the ARVN jeep were side-by-side, headed in his direction. They weren’t shooting at him any more because they were too busy shooting at each other, each driver banging into the other vehicle just like those Film Noir car chases that Chanser used to enjoy on late night television.
Chanser smiled at the idea of being rescued by the very men trying to kill him, until he looked back to the front to see that he was barreling towards the sandbagged guard posts of the American embassy. MPs on both sides were training their automatic rifles at him and his pursuers. Flood lights came on.
Chanser flipped the light switch to illuminate himself. He was seconds away from either finding a safe haven among the burly American Embassy guards, or being shredded by M-16 rounds.
Chanser coasted his cyclo, as it ran out of gas, through the American embassy front gate, past the Marine guards. His putt-putting to the gate, headlamp turned around to illuminate him like Boris Karlov, had raised the Marines’ attentiveness to red alert. The sound of AK-47 fire as the Viet Cong tried to unhorse Chanser also caught the Marines’ attention.
Which was fortunate for them, because this saved the day. Now everyone was awake and alert.
Only two minutes after Chanser staggered into the embassy building itself for a fresh set of underwear, Viet Cong sappers began their Tet assault on the embassy, part of the biggest battle of the whole war. Their surprise had been ruined by Earl Chanser.
Although Chanser was only trying to save his own ass on a noisy old cyclo, the New York Post called him the Paul Revere of the war. Bartenders all over Los Angeles began writing screenplays about his exploit.
But the legend of Earl Chanser did not stop there. Chanser’s reluctantly revealed proprietary corporate secrets, recast as intelligence reports, had days before convinced the American commander in Vietnam that the Viet Cong planned a major offensive against Saigon itself. Gen. Westmoreland had ordered American and ARVN troops back to the cities, spoiling the enemy’s plans to lure those troops further into the countryside. You can look it up.
When the smoke had mostly cleared, and the Tet Offensive had proven a military failure, Gen. Westmoreland himself modestly told the press that his decision to move those troops back had saved Saigon from collapse, saved several provincial capitols from being lost, and allowed the near total destruction of the Viet Cong as a viable military force. Not bad, considering that Chanser wasn’t even trying.
“You are a hero,” Gen. Westmoreland told Chanser at a photo op. “You are my hero.”
The two men were shaking hands long enough for all the photographers to get good pictures. A handshake that long without press cameras would have brought an investigation by the vice squad.
“Thank you, Sir,” Chanser said as the flashbulbs popped. “The victory you and I have achieved proves the value of enlightened self-interest, unregulated free enterprise, low taxes, Congressional irrelevance, and the American entrepreneurial spirit.”
Gen. Westmoreland frowned and started to speak, but Chanser was on a roll.
“This Army has been emasculated by government regulation and . . .”
Gen. Westmoreland stopped shaking hands and applied his West Point vice-grip, not quite enough to break any bones in Chanser’s hand, but enough to quiet him.
“Shut up, Chanser,” Westmoreland said softly, without losing his magisterial expression and manly smile.
That day MACV’s marketing spokesperson told the press that all of this good news meant that America would win the war after all — as long as it stayed the course, committed more troops, spent more money, threatened to use nuclear weapons, and quit asking so damned many questions.
“There is light at the end of the tunnel,” Westmoreland would later tell Congress, after he had been relieved of command and booted upstairs to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“And that light is the heart-glow from Cpl. Earl Chanser, an American hero. Go Army.”
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Stephen Sossaman was an artillery Fire Direction Computer with the 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam. He lives in Burbank, California, and is a Professor Emeritus at Westfield State University in Massachusetts. His writing has appeared in Paris Review, Military Review, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere.
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