I had to go into Saigon on private business. A number of Decca people had private business concerns which I may deal with later. I took PB along as interpreter. I hired a car and chauffeur.
We left Vung Tau early in the morning, passed through Baria with no trouble and had gone a few miles further on when we heard an explosion up ahead. It was a beautiful day, after a number of years one gets used to the nightly crump, crump of artillery, one hopefully learns to differentiate between the sounds of outgoing and incoming shells, mortars or rockets, machine gun fire etc. One learns to live with it. To have one’s knee jerk for years after the war every time a car backfired or one heard a loud bang was for later. We pushed on and found a large crater in the road. As we were able to drive around it and there were no destroyed vehicles we were not unduly concerned. There was no traffic in either direction though.
A few miles later we arrived at a large village. There seemed to be a lot of activity, traffic had piled up, not moving in either direction. Questions were asked about what had happened on the road we had just come along, and we were informed that a...