Saigon to Pleiku: a Counterintelligence Agent in Vietnam's Central Highlands, 1962‒1963 by David Grant Noble

Author:David Grant Noble
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2020-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

A Bahnar woman at Plei Bruk Klah.

A Montagnard walking along the road south of Pleiku.

After returning to the States, my sister, Sandra, introduced me to an anthropologist friend of hers at the Smithsonian Institution, a linguist who had worked with tribal people in a different part of the world. We had dinner together and afterward he asked me to tell him about the Montagnards. When I referred to them as “primitive,” he stopped me and asked what I meant. I elaborated—no shoes, hardly any clothes, spears and crossbows, animists, and so forth. He said it sounded like I was assessing the superiority or inferiority of people based on who had more or less things. People and culture, he explained, were more than having stuff.

Also from the September 16, 1962, a letter to my brother and his wife:

Howdy from the high plateau region of Vietnam! That’s where I am now, believe it or not. I’m in a little ­one-water-buffalo town called Pleiku where there are two hundred or so US troops stationed in the role of advisors to the VN Army units here. It’s a pretty fantastic place in certain ways and in other ways just a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. Let’s start by describing the good side.

Pleiku is in the heart of S.E. Asia, which in itself is interesting …. The inhabitants of this region are weird little folk called “montagnards” by the French, and the name stuck. Actually they are very primitive people of Laotian and Polynesian stock who for centuries have lived up in these highlands in separate tribes, isolated from the progress of civilization and the influence of governments. They stand somewhere between Frenchmen and Pygmies, have dark, leathery skin, wide eyes and big feet. They wear nothing but a tattered jock (loin cloth) or, in the case of women, a ragged cloth around the waist…. In all truth, they are wild people who run around naked, with long hair, carrying baskets, babies, crossbows and blow guns. They walk single file due to the narrow mountain trails and when they come into town they still walk single file just out of habit. Many have never seen the face of white men, not to mention machine guns and helicopters. [Note: Given the long French colonization of Vietnam, this was inaccurate. It’s also evident that I enjoyed describing the Montagnards to my friends and family as “primitive” and “wild,” an urge I got over with time.] All of a sudden they are caught up in the focus of the world, the battles between the forces of Light and Darkness, and the poor souls simply don’t know what in hell is coming off. [Note: This, too, I later learned, was factually untrue.] They are playing a really vital role, militarily, whereas, in fact, all they care about is growing their little rice patch and playing it safe with whomever comes ­hell-raising into their hamlets. It’s a 20th century tragedy. In one case, one single village was burnt down

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