John Laurence covered the Vietnam war for CBS News from its early days, through the bloody battle of Hue in 1968, to the Cambodian invasion. He was judged by his colleagues to be the best television reporter of the war, however, the traumatic stories Laurence covered became a personal burden that he carried long after the war was over.
In this evocative, unflinching memoir, laced with humor, anger, love, and the unforgettable story of Méo, a cat rescued from the battle of Hue, Laurence recalls coming of age during the war years as a journalist and as a man. Along the way, he clarifies the murky history of the war and the role that journalists played in altering its course.
The Cat from Hué has earned passionate acclaim from many of the most renowned journalists and writers about the war, as well as from military officers and war veterans, book reviewers, and readers. This book will stand with Michael Herr's Dispatches, Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War, and Neil Sheehan's A Bright, Shining Lie as one of the best books ever written about Vietnam-and about war generally.
John Laurence covered the Vietnam war for CBS News from its early days, through the bloody battle of Hue in 1968, to the Cambodian invasion. He was judged by his colleagues to be the best television reporter of the war, however, the traumatic stories Laurence covered became a personal burden that he carried long after the war was over.
In this evocative, unflinching memoir, laced with humor, anger, love, and the unforgettable story of Méo, a cat rescued from the battle of Hue, Laurence recalls coming of age during the war years as a journalist and as a man. Along the way, he clarifies the murky history of the war and the role that journalists played in altering its course.
The Cat from Hué has earned passionate acclaim from many of the most renowned journalists and writers about the war, as well as from military officers and war veterans, book reviewers, and readers. This book will stand with Michael Herr's Dispatches, Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War, and Neil Sheehan's A Bright, Shining Lie as one of the best books ever written about Vietnam-and about war generally.
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Overview
John Laurence covered the Vietnam war for CBS News from its early days, through the bloody battle of Hue in 1968, to the Cambodian invasion. He was judged by his colleagues to be the best television reporter of the war, however, the traumatic stories Laurence covered became a personal burden that he carried long after the war was over.
In this evocative, unflinching memoir, laced with humor, anger, love, and the unforgettable story of Méo, a cat rescued from the battle of Hue, Laurence recalls coming of age during the war years as a journalist and as a man. Along the way, he clarifies the murky history of the war and the role that journalists played in altering its course.
The Cat from Hué has earned passionate acclaim from many of the most renowned journalists and writers about the war, as well as from military officers and war veterans, book reviewers, and readers. This book will stand with Michael Herr's Dispatches, Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War, and Neil Sheehan's A Bright, Shining Lie as one of the best books ever written about Vietnam-and about war generally.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780786724680 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | PublicAffairs |
| Publication date: | 08/05/2008 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 864 |
| Sales rank: | 985,015 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
FEBRUARY 19, 1968
The whole war was in the room. Light came in through a hole in the roofmade by a mortar—monsoon light, murky and dim, filtered by low heavyclouds the color of stone. The floor was littered with wreckage from theexplosion: sharp-edged fragments of a metal shell, pieces of plaster rippedoff the walls, splinters of wood from a shattered table, and a pool of bloodthat was slowly becoming a dark stain on the once shiny surface of the tiledfloor now scorched black by the explosion and covered with a film of finedust. The air was cold and wet. Nothing moved.
I sat on the floor with my back to a wall, eating a can of C ration foodwith a white plastic spoon, trying not to think. Beyond the wall, a few hundredyards up the line, a machinegun rattled, stopped, rattled again. Thebullets hissed in flight and the hisses gathered in a long steady ssssshhhhuuuussssshhhhhthat caromed off the walls and buildings and the great chunks ofbroken stone of the old Hue Citadel and reverberated around the city.Grenades burst—muffled blasts—one at a time, punctuating the flow ofriflefire. A mortar banged—first the pop of the tube, then, a few secondslater, the crash of the shell. Rifles cracked, sixteens and AKs, fast and slowfire.
Thank God I'm not up there, I thought. I had arrived at the house an hourbefore and had asked the marines to take me forward, but they said nothingwas going up during the fight. 'Later,' they said, 'we'll take you up later,when we go up with this stuff.'
At the housenext door, a teenage marine carried wooden cases ofammunition from inside the house to a pebble-covered driveway outside andheaved them one by one onto a small flatbed vehicle called a mule. Theyoung marine wore a dark green T-shirt, fatigue trousers, flak jacket and helmetand was sweating hard in the humid air. As soon as the battle up aheadwas finished, he and the other marines in his squad would load their mulesand drive the ammo and other supplies to the front, then turn around andcome back for more, bringing with them the wounded and dead. The militarysupply line was an endless conveyor—from factories in the States to theriflemen at the front—a long human chain moving men and materials forwardfor the infantry: replacements, rifle ammunition, machinegun bullets,hand grenades, mortar shells, rockets, tank gun canisters, high explosives,food, water, gas, tank parts, batteries, mail, medicine, morphine, IV fluid,bandages, body bags—all the paraphernalia required by a U.S. Marineinfantry battalion of 650 men to sustain itself in extended combat. In thiscase it was 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, also known as Bloody 1/5. The battalionwas trying to take a tall brick watchtower in the Citadel, had been fordays, but the advance was slow.
An animal appeared in an open doorway at the back of the room. It wasvisible at first only in silhouette, a black shape against the bleak light outside.The creature was dirty, disheveled, its greasy fur sticking out at odd angles.Silent, curious, its nose twitched above its head and turned from side to sidein a slow arc, sniffing the scent of food from my C ration can. It appeared tobe a kitten, maybe eight weeks old, about the size of my hand.
Not much chance of a scrawny cat surviving this place, I thought. Lucky it hasn'talready gone in a cooking pot. The kitten stared at the can of food andsniffed the air above its head.
"Hello, there, cat," I said. Anything new or unusual, any distraction, anythingthat took your mind off where you were and what you were doing wasworth the diversion.
The kitten paid no attention. 'Chao ong,' I said, trying to get the tonesright, figuring it might know a little Vietnamese. The kitten turned its heada fraction to one side and looked at me as if I were demented.
'Too young to know the language. I get it,' I said, smiling. The kittensniffed the air.
When I had finished eating, I reached into a pocket of my fatigue jacket,opened a waterproof plastic case, shook out a cigarette, and lit it. The metallid of the lighter snapped shut, making a sharp metallic click. Instantly thekitten turned and dashed out the doorway
Spooked, I thought.
No wonder. All of Hue was spooked. The venerable old city of shadedgardens and pastel yellow villas and slender graceful people had enduredtwenty days of unrelieved fright, twenty days of riflefire and shellbursts andsleepless nights and empty stomachs and mad subhuman screams and slow-movingdeath that spread from house to house and street to street like aplague, crawling on khaki-covered knees and elbows across garden walls andnarrow alleys and bursting through doorways with weapons ready; constantlymaneuvering closer for a kill. Hue was thunderstruck by violence.After being spared most of the misery of two Indochina wars over the pasttwenty years, the citizens of Hue were now condemned to suffer the worstof it all at once.
I got up and walked to the doorway The air in the garden behind thehouse was heavy with moisture. A light afternoon rain had lifted, leaving afine cold mist in the air. The garden was tangled with tall vines and fat leafyplants that had flowered in kinder times but were now struggling to surviveagainst an encroaching wild of weeds. Everything was green and gray.Beneath the foliage, a stream gurgled. Invisible insects screeched. A waist-highwooden barrel full of rainwater stood next to the doorway beneath adrainpipe that ran down from the roof. The kitten was perched on the edgeof the barrel, its front paws and hind legs together, drinking in fast tiny laps.As soon as I appeared in the doorway; it looked up and saw me, then jumpedto the ground and ran into the garden and out of sight.
I took a breath and looked around. The house was part of a compound ofone-story buildings made of stucco and wood with orange tile roofs. Fivehouses were arranged in a neat semicircle with a courtyard and circulardriveway in front. The style was graceful, harmonious with the surroundings,practical and elegant at the same time, peaceful.
Must have been one big family, I thought—maybe twenty to thirty people—grandparentsand great-grandparents with their children and their children'schildren. I imagined what it would have been like three weeks before on thefirst day of Tet. It was Vietnam's biggest holiday, a celebration based on tradition,rebirth and renewal. Tet marked the beginning of the lunar year, inthis case the year of the monkey. I pictured the family, some visiting from faraway, enjoying themselves in this compound, observing their ancient rituals:tending the family gravesites, honoring their ancestors, making offerings tothe Ong Tao, decorating the house with bright-colored flower blossoms andlanterns and handmade prints, baking banh chung cakes and other delicacies,catching up on family news, exchanging stories of babies born and sonsgone off to war. I imagined the elders sitting with their children and sharingobservations, the young children laughing in excitement at the sparkle ofskyrockets, playing perhaps with a litter of newborn kittens.
Then, in the cool early hours of New Year's Day, as the city slept, the warburst upon Hue and its people with the convulsions of a volcano. The nightexploded in brilliant light. Fierce white flashes of military flares illuminatedthe sky. The slow red rush of machinegun tracers flew above the rooftops.The earth rumbled with the shock waves of long-range rockets. Artilleryshells shrieked over the city and cracked open the earth and everything on it.
In the turmoil, hundreds of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldierstrotted through the streets in their dark close-cropped hair with rifles androcket launchers on their shoulders. They seized the city's main installations—government buildings, bridges, communications facilities—and starteddigging in to defend them. The small number of South Vietnamese and U.S.soldiers on duty in Hue were surprised by the swift-moving attack andforced to withdraw to their headquarters, where they were quickly surrounded.Hundreds of others were captured. At least half of the governmentsoldiers were away on leave because of the holidays. Intelligencereports that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were preparing an offensivethroughout South Vietnam did not suggest it would come during Tet.Civilians had no adequate bomb shelters, no trenches, no safe places to hide.Families gathered behind the doors of their houses and held one another intheir arms. Mortar, rocket and artillery shells shrieked out of the sky andonto the rooftops and streets.
And the one large family of Vietnamese who lived in the compoundwhere I now stood staring into the garden survived the twenty days of fireand smoke and ferocious noise. They had adjusted to the new conditions ofdanger and shortages and made their accommodation with the crisis. Eachday they searched for food to eat, fought back their fear and panic, consoledthe children, tried to cheer each other, and lived their diminished lives withdaily, individual acts of dignity and fortitude—they survived—until this afternoonof the twentieth day when the mortar crashed through the roof oftheir home and exploded in a flash of flame and heat. Arriving at the compoundan hour ago, a few minutes after the explosion, I saw the family beingtaken away, their pale brown bodies piled in the back of a marine truck, brokenand bleeding and making no sound at all, their arms and legs limp andtwisted, faces frozen in expressions of pain and disbelief—the dead anddying family, together still at Tet.
From the doorway at the back of the house, I stared into the tangle oftropical trees and vines in the misty garden. I was lost in thought, my visionout of focus. Gradually, I became aware of something moving in the interiorof the brush. My sight sharpened. A shadowed presence deep inside thefoliage took shape. A Vietnamese soldier! He crouched on one knee on theground with a rifle in his hands, an AK-47. Now I saw him in sharp focus:mustard-brown uniform, ammunition vest, green bamboo helmet, blackhair sticking out the sides. A North Vietnamese army regular. Slowly, withdeliberate care, he stood up in the thicket of vines and raised the rifle to hisshoulder and pointed the end of the barrel at me. Movement in the gardenceased. Absolute silence. I couldn't move, even to breathe. I felt trapped,paralyzed by the fear of what was about to happen, as in a bad dream. Onethought flashed into consciousness. So you've made it all this way and it endslike this.
Time slowed and stopped. My concentration on the soldier was total, nosense of anything but the danger, my perceptions heightened, as if all otherreality was suspended.
The soldier's eyes came away from the rifle sights and looked out at mefrom inside the shadow of his helmet. How young he is! The barrel of the rifledipped. Then, in one slow continuous move, he turned his head and lookedbehind him and swung his shoulders around with the rifle in his hands andtwisted his hips around and then his legs and stepped back into the brush anddisappeared into the green and gray foliage.
The garden was still. I took what felt like my first breath. Time started tomove. A pulse beat in my temples. An insect chirped. I hadn't heard anythingfor what had seemed like an hour but could only have been a few seconds.The air felt cold, damp.
Why didn't he shoot? Because I didn't have a gun? Because I was looking for thecat? Maybe I wasn't worth it? He might have been after someone more important, anofficer perhaps. It didn't make sense.
His presence was still there, as if some part of him remained in the mist.Nothing tangible, only the essence of our encounter, but nearly physical. I wasaware of the narrow separation between life and death in this place, betweenextinction and survival, and the immediate closeness of both. It was beingdefined in Hue so often these days that everyone seemed to take it for granted,saw it as just another part of the landscape: everybody ended up with one orthe other, nothing you could do about it. But I was taking it personally.
I stepped back from the doorway; crossed the room and sat back downagainst the wall. Out of breath, mouth too dry to swallow, I picked up my helmetand put it on. The noise of fighting at the front sounded more menacing.
Hey, man, you must have imagined him. Surely it was just a phantom. Couldn'tbe anything else. Otherwise he would have shot you. You must be seeing things.Short-timer's syndrome. Who knows? Or was it a premonition? Something up therewaiting for you? God knows. I tried hard not to think.
The kitten appeared in the open doorway again and sat. Its tiny earsturned toward me.
"Puss-puss-puss," I whispered between my lips. No reaction. I tried anumber of different animal calls without effect.
Spunky cat, I thought. The kitten seemed to sense danger. I must havelooked and smelled like the marines in the house next door. Faded greencombat fatigues, boots, helmet, flak jacket—for all it mattered to the cat Iwas one of them. It couldn't know I was no danger at all, just an unarmedcivilian, a noncombatant, a reporter. The kitten was drawn to the food by adesperate hunger, but its fear of me was greater.
I unfastened the straps of my rucksack, lifted out a can of C ration meatand opened it with a small metal tool called a P-38. I pried back the lid andheld out the can a few inches above the floor, offering it. The kitten raised itsnose high over its head and caught the scent. Then it stood up and stiffenedits muscles, straightened its four legs to their full height, arched its back anddanced a few feet toward me, sideways. So, it's a skitter cat, I thought, surprisedby its jerky movements. It reminded me of a book from childhood.
The kitten crossed a third of the room and sat on its back legs, strainingits neck toward the food. I held out the can again and called, "puss-puss-puss."The kitten danced a few inches closer and stopped. As much as Icoaxed, it would not come nearer than the center of the room. It sat, tenseand alert, watching over its shoulder, measuring its route out the doorway tothe safety of the garden.
I could see the animal more dearly now. Its rice, legs and paws were mostlyblack. There were a few spots of soft white on its flanks. A splash of orange onits forehead, from the bridge of its nose to the space between its ears, gave it adistinctive, offbeat look. Its short, slender tail appeared to be light brown ororange and had a crook at the tip. Its pale blue eyes were dull, distracted.
"So, you're a lucky cat," I said.
Most Vietnamese do not have the same affection for cats that many Westernersdo, but I knew that some of them thought an orange, black and whitecat—a calico cat—brought good luck to itself and its owner. The Vietnamesecalled it "a cat of three colors" and believed it to be rare, to be prized. Ilooked at the kitten with new respect. It looked at me and the food but didnot move.
Like most line troops and combat reporters, I was superstitious. I'd doalmost anything to get an edge against the fear, the vulnerability that wentwith me into the field. Each time I went out I wore the same old set of GIfatigues I had first bought on the black market in 1965, scrubbed in Stone AgeVietnamese laundries until they were bleached and threadbare and tatteredand safe. Like a few other field reporters, I never polished my boots. Overtime they had become scuffed and worn and encrusted with layers of dirtand mud from all over—from Con Thien to Can Tho, from Pleiku to BongSon—a record of where I'd been, my ID as an old hand in this place. I wore alucky hat, a floppy Australian bush hat that had been a gift from Dan Rather.The hat was a size too small but it was certified good luck so I wore it undermy helmet. I also carried coins, charms, four-leaf clovers, religious medalsand all kinds of talismans in my pockets, wallet, around my neck. The onething I did not carry was a weapon.
Of all the superstitions, going into battle without a weapon was the mostimportant. I believed that those of us who took no part in the killing wereless vulnerable to becoming casualties ourselves. It was part of my personalwar ideology—a loose-knit, undefined mix of humanism, morality, religion,ethics, law, pacifism, survival strategy, common sense and, above all, pathologicalsuperstition. My hope was that we noncombatants got special protection,were somehow given immunity, as if at the center of all the carnagein Vietnam some higher being watched over innocent reporters and sparedus from the physical effects of the violence we were covering. I was wrong ofcourse; no one was safe. Reporters and photographers were killed andwounded in the same proportion as the frontline troops they accompanied.(On this same day in Hue, just up the line, three print journalists were seriouslywounded in the fighting. Two of them were later given medals forhelping evacuate wounded marines.) Whatever the evidence, I neededsomething to believe, something to balance against the fear. My reasonableexpectation of survival (or denial of the alternative) made it possible to dothe job. Somewhere at the center of my being I felt protected, insured,sometimes even blessed. Somehow I was going to survive this.
The cat of three colors was down on its luck. The skin was so tight on itstiny frame its ribcage showed through the fur. "No wonder you haven't beengobbled up," I said, smiling. "There wouldn't be anything to eat."
The kitten's eyes squeezed together in a peculiar squint and blinked rapidly,as if irritated or infected. Small black insects buzzed around its ears. Itsfur appeared to be infested with fleas. And yet, despite its discomfort, the kittentried to hold its head with the confidence of a healthy cat, sitting withpride, staring at me and my offer of food as if it were not afraid.
This is some kind of spunky cat, I thought, admiring its elegant grace. Atthe same time, the kitten looked as vulnerable as I felt. This was my lastassignment of a long second tour and Hue was the worst place ever. I hadbeen in the war too long, seen too much, been scared too many times. Longoverdue to leave, I was jumping at shadows too.
I pushed the can of food to the center of the room, left it and moved backto the wall. The kitten skittered up to the can, sniffed it, looked around andsat, but did not eat.
A tall, thin-faced marine walked into the room. "If you want to get up tothe CP," he said, biting off the words, "we've got a mule goin up anyminute."
His voice was cold and impersonal, offering no sign of friendliness. Thebitterness surprised me. Marines in the field were scrupulously polite. I didnot know yet that the North Vietnamese mortar attack that had destroyedthe Vietnamese family in the compound had also killed two marines fromthe supply squad, two of his buddies.
"Thanks," I said, "thank you much," grateful to be moving on. The presenceof the North Vietnamese soldier in the garden had not gone away
I stood up and heaved the pack on my back, set the helmet straight onmy head and walked out of the room. At the front doorway I turned andlooked back at the kitten. It sat by the can of food in the center of the room,watching me.
"Good luck, cat," I said.
Excerpted from THE CAT FROM HUE by John Laurence. Copyright © 2001 by John Laurence. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
What People are Saying About This
A fascinating story that captures the tragedy of Vietnam superblyÖincisive observation and masterful storytelling.
— General Robert Shoemaker, U.S. Army (Retired)
Honest in its purpose, meticulous in its detail, as devastating in its impact as a burst from an M-16.
Laurence has written a book that is at once intelligent, perceptive and gripping. I, for one, couldn’t put it down.
Jack Laurence went and taught others, including this older reporter, about the changing nature of the war, and, very quietly, was the most distinguished television correspondent of the war.
Those who...followed Jack Laurence's seemingly fearless reporting from Vietnam have waited thirty years for this...classic of war reporting.
In a lifetime of reading there are few books one will remember always. This is one of them.
Wonderfully vivid, wonderfuly written...I don't think I've read anything that captures so immediately the peculiar taste of the war.
If you want to know how it was in Vietnam, read this book-it is superb.
— Col. Bob Thompson, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)