Page 104 - Been There… Done That!

Gary Graham
Despite a war going on, the atmosphere in Saigon was subdued, but there was still a lot of crap every day. The first night I was in a hotel room the South Vietnamese army and Saigon police came through my door with guns drawn and pointed, the whole bit. One guy who spoke pretty good English told me the entire thing was about making sure the hotel, a secured property, was occupied only by Americans, so they conducted periodic raids.
The citizens of Saigon had a certain attitude about the war because they were used to it. They had been fighting for 40 years before American soldiers ever went there. War had become an everyday part of life. Business went on in the city pretty much as usual and the culture there was very different from America’s. I can still see the bicycles and motorcycles they used to get around and the little Renault cars left over by the French, that could only hold three people. The American military presence was active in the city, with soldiers and patrols throughout the streets. One incident I’ll never forget was a sergeant telling us about a restaurant that had good food right around the corner from the hotel. We walked there one day to eat, but on the way out I walked around the back of the hotel and behind the restaurant, people were doing the dishes in the gutter. I was sick for three damn hours just thinking about it!
Everywhere we went we had an armed military escort from the time we left the hotel. Sometimes it was a soldier or a sergeant and a few times it was a colonel. People volunteered for that duty because I had pretty girls and the soldiers sure wanted to see “round- eye” girls. When we traveled, which was never far from the hotel, we went by jeep or van, sometimes both. The only incident that ever
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