A tale of decency in Vietnam
many thanks to my friend, chuck searcy, a vfp member living in hanoi, for sending this story of a young, idealistic american working as a u.s.a.i.d. volunteer in vietnam, who got launched into a career in journalism because of his courage and compassion. good stuff.
mike
mike
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn@PROTECTED>
To: Tom Searcy <tesearcy@PROTECTED>
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 1:27 PM
Subject: Fwd: Ron Moreau
From: Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn@PROTECTED>
To: Tom Searcy <tesearcy@PROTECTED>
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 1:27 PM
Subject: Fwd: Ron Moreau
I'm passing along this story circulated by one of many friends of Ron Moreau, a former Newsweek correspondent who distinguished himself as a writ
e
r at many other publications as well
during an outstanding career until his death earlier this week. Ron was a friend of mine also, a top-drawer professional who had a great eye for a story because he always saw the human element in every situation as the most important. He was a very decent guy. I last saw him about a year ago when we were both transiting the Saigon airport. He was walking with a cane and told me that he was battling cancer. A few days ago he finally succumbed.The following vignette, which I had not read before, explains how Ron inadvertently began his career in journalism, because of the highly acclaimed Gloria Emerson and as a direct result of a U.S. military action during the war which Ron and a colleague found objectionable. They raised some hell about it, and eventually stopped it. The anecdote explains a lot about Ron's character, and illustrates the futility -- and the human tragedy -- of the U.S. war here.
CHUCK SEARCY
71 Tran Quoc Toan
Hanoi, Viet Nam
---------- Forwarded message ----------
On Thursday, May 15, 2014 5:34:42 PM UTC-4, George Lewis wrote:
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So here’ Ron in his own words. It’s typical Ron writing,
empathetic and clear. He was a fine storyteller.
RIP Ron. Condolences
to Lac, Lin Anh, and all of Ron’s family.
A Letter from Ronald
Moreau in Islamabad (Newsweek Magazine) Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Something horrible was happening and we didn't know how to
stop it. Alexander Shimkin and I were community development volunteers in
Vietnam for International Voluntary Services, a Washington-based, humanitarian
organization that was largely funded by USAID. In 1971, we were working in Tinh
Bien District, near the Cambodian border, which at the time was one of the few
Mekong Delta regions that still had a significant presence of North Vietnamese
Army soldiers and their southern Viet Cong allies. Tinh Bien was also unusual
in that it was the only part of the horizontal Delta that featured a range of
long, brush-covered, rocky hills, called the Seven Mountains, running along the
border.
North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, who were
infiltrating into the Delta from Cambodia, had set up an important way station
and military base in the mountains that were honeycombed with caves and dotted
with huge, rock outcroppings. Naturally, the communist-led troops visited the
local villages at night, asking for food and supplies and spreading anti-Saigon
government propaganda. To help secure their mountain redoubt from Saigon
attacks, the guerrillas had seeded the hillsides, the scrub brush and the
largely abandoned fruit orchards surrounding the hills with landmines and booby
traps.
A handful of US military advisors were stationed at a small
South Vietnamese Army base in Tinh Biens Ba Chuc village, not far from the foot
of the highest hill, called Nui Dai, or Long Mountain. Periodically, North
Vietnamese gunners shelled the camp. The Americans and their Saigon allies had
tried just about everything to dislodge their foe from the mountains. But the
carpet of landmines and booby traps hampered any ground assault toward the
hills. If Saigon’s soldiers tried to clear the mines, the NVA/VC would rain
down barrages of mortars. Next Saigon’s troops tried heliborne assaults onto
the top of the mountains. But the choppers were driven away by heavy
anti-aircraft fire from well-camouflaged gun emplacements. B-52 Arc-light
bombing strikes were called in. That didn't seem to work either.
Finally, US and Saigon C-47 helicopters tried to burn the
enemy out. The large, two-rotor choppers flew high over Nui Dai with dozens of
55-gallon drums of diesel fuel, dangling from the aircrafts’ bellies in rope
nets. The helicopters released the slings, dumping thousands of gallons of
diesel fuel on the mountainside, some of which would run into the caves, or so
the Americans hoped. Then Cobra helicopter gunships attacked, firing rockets
that ignited the fuel, setting great patches of the mountainsides on fire. The
theory was that the walls of fire would not only cause the landmines and bobby
traps to explode but would also burn the enemy out of, or suffocate him inside,
the caves. But when Saigon soldiers attempted another ground assault the next
day, they quickly found that the landmines were still lethal and that enemy
gunners were as active and as accurate as ever.
Then, suddenly, the American advisers and Saigon’s officers
had a new idea. They believed that the poor, local villagers who lived
scattered around the base of the mountains were sympathetic to, and in close
contact with, the communists. They reasoned that since the villagers did manage
to grow some rice and pick some fruit from their war-damaged orchards near the
mountains, then it followed that the villagers knew where the NVA/VC had placed
the mines and booby traps. To rid the land around the mountain of these hazards
to Saigon’s troops, American and Saigon officers devised a cruel plan to force
the local villagers at gunpoint to clear the minefields by hand. For their
trouble the villagers would be given sacks of US-donated rice.
The operation proved to be a disaster for the villagers from
day one. It soon became obvious that the peasants didn't have the slightest
idea where the NVA/VC had planted the mines. Almost immediately, the poor
farmers began being fatally wounded and maimed when their sickles and hoes hit
and detonated the nearly invisible explosives. Nevertheless, the US advisers
and Saigon troops didn't relent and continued forcing the villagers to labor in
the minefields. The communist forces took no pity either, mortaring the work
crews if they ventured too close to the mountain. The village men were not the
only victims. Many women and children became casualties, too. Either out of
loyalty to the head of the family or because Saigon’s officers coerced them,
many wives and children accompanied the men on their deadly, daily
detail.
Helplessly, Alex and I witnessed what was going on and tried
to imagine how we could stop the carnage. When we approached the American
military advisers we were told that the villagers were volunteers, and that the
operation was none of our damn business anyway. So we thought about writing an
article for Dispatch News Service that had made its name by uncovering and
publicizing the My Lai massacre. We took our plan to Don Luce, the former
director of IVS who had resigned in protest over the war, and who had done some
work for Dispatch and had recently uncovered the infamous Tiger Cages on Con
Son Island for Life Magazine.
Wisely Don had only two words of advice for us: Gloria
Emerson. He said that if we tried to write and publish the story, no one would
read it. No action would be taken to stop the bloodshed. He said that not even
he had the clout that Gloria had to end this cruel operation immediately. So
Alex and I went to the Times office in Saigon with Don’s introduction.
Gloria swung into action immediately. She arranged hotel
rooms for her two unwashed sources in rubber flip-fops. She booked Air America
tickets to Chau Doc, the provincial capital, and hired the best photographer in
the business, Magnum’s Philip Jones-Griffiths. She and her brilliant and
courageous interpreter and fixer, Nguyen Ngoc Luong, debriefed us. Within a day
or two we were off to the village.
After a long, jolting ride along the potholed road, we
arrived at Ba Chuc village and immediately set out along the still dangerous
paths to where the villagers were squatting down, clearing away brush in search
of mines. Through Luong, Gloria talked to the villagers, both men and women,
while Philip snapped pictures with his silent Leica.
When Gloria was convinced that she had heard the villagers’
story, she led the way back to the small military base at Ba Chuc and headed
straight into the complex of sandbag bunkers where the American advisers
stayed. Gloria immediately asked to see the US infantry captain in charge of
the American advisory team.
“He’s taking a nap,” an American sergeant replied
testily.
Gloria didn't hesitate. She blew right passed him and marched straight
into the bunker where she found the captain sleeping in his bunk. She kicked
the bunk as hard as she could, waking the captain with a start.
Gloria glared
at him and said, ”Tell me everything you know right now and Ill go easy on
you.” The captain knew there no way he could escape or lie to Gloria. He even
sounded apologetic as he answered Gloria’s questions like a school kid replying
to his teacher.
Gloria wrote her usual first-rate, colorful and
emotion-filled story that landed on the front page along with one of Philip’s
pictures. In what was unusual for the Times back then, I believe two photos of
the peasants working in the minefields were published inside the paper as well.
The story had an immediate impact. The Pentagon ordered a halt to the
mine-clearing operation at Ba Chuc, although it still tried to justify the
unjustifiable by saying the villagers were volunteers who had been paid for
their services with rice. But never mind. Gloria had scored a clear victory. Ba
Chuc’s peasants were no longer forced to venture into the minefields.
Gloria’s story also changed Alex’s and my life. Gloria
quoted both Alex and myself in the story, saying how much the villagers had
suffered from the operation. Within days, Alex and I were summoned to the IVS
office in Saigon where we were both fired for having talked to the press
without permission.
But Gloria wasn’t about to cut us loose once she had her
story. No. She marched Alex into Newsweek’s Saigon bureau and told the bureau
chief, Kevin Buckley, that he was going to hire the Vietnamese-speaking Shimkin
as a reporter/translator. Kevin, seeing a good thing and certainly not wanting
to cross Gloria, consented immediately. Then she hustled me across the street
to the Washington Post’s office. There she told Peter Jay and Peter Osnos that
they now had a new Vietnamese-speaking stringer/ photographer/ translator. They
graciously accepted the offer they couldn’t have refused anyway.
So Gloria saved Ba Chuc’s villagers and launched Alex and
myself into careers in journalism just like that. She was our hero.
On Thursday, May 15, 2014 5:34:42 PM UTC-4, George Lewis wrote:
Christopher Dickey reports the passing of veteran Newsweek correspondent Ron Moreau. He posted the following on Facebook:Some very sad news about our longtime colleague Ron Moreau:
Dear friends,
On Tuesday May 13, Ron passed away in his sleep with his loving wife and daughter, Lac and Linh Anh, at his hospital bedside in Houston. As many of you know, Ron received a lung transplant a year and a half ago after a pulmonary fibrosis diagnosis. The lung transplant gave him another eighteen months but ultimately it cost him his life as he succumbed to a variety of ailments associated with the transplant, including a weakened immune system, a collapsed lung in December which landed him back in the hospital, and kidney failure.
Ron wanted to pass, and it is our belief that he wanted to leave us and end his suffering. He did so quietly without wanting to burden his family any longer. He was a committed son, father, husband and journalist. Ron spent his life doing what he loved, reporting and writing from Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Latin America, Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf, Paris, Miami, Bangkok and most recently Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he and his dear colleague Sami Yousafzai broke many stories and won a Clarion Award in 2010 for magazine feature article.
Ron was born in 1945 in Los Angeles. A talented high school basketball player, he played for Hall of Fame coach Denny Crum at Pierce College, before graduating from UC Berkeley. A conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam and, as his father called him "the best educated hippie in the country," he joined International Voluntary Services which sent him to the Vietnamese countryside where he taught English and began his lifelong love of journalism. In 1972, he joined Newsweek and worked there for the next forty years and, later, the Daily Beast. Ron was happiest when he was writing and reporting and traveling, and his disease unfortunately took that away from him. Per his final wishes, Ron will be cremated and his remains will be transferred to the Vietnamese Buddhist Center in Sugar Land.
Ron enjoyed your friendships immensely and he spoke to us fondly of you all.
Thank you for your friendship to Ron over the years.
Best,
Dan & Liz, Lac and Linh Anh
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