Saigon Under Siege

Cities, like people, react to war in different ways. After a month of terror, Saigon has totally lost its old insular mood of relative peace and well-being and developed a bothersome split personality. By day, the South Vietnamese capital is struggling to regain a veneer of normalcy; by night, as artillery crashes in the suburbs and searchlights stab the sky, Saigon retreats to a mood of agonizing fear and foreboding, awaiting another Communist onslaught that most of its citizens feel is inevitable.

Half Alive. In many ways Saigon is only half alive. The public-transportation system operates only sporadically or, in some places, not at all. Mail has piled up undelivered in the post offices, weeks late. The city's hospitals are so crowded that only emergency cases are accepted, and even then the newcomer will probably have to share his bed with another patient or sleep on the floor. Coffins lie unburied for days because of a lack of gravediggers. Practically all the schools are still closed, and children either clog the streets while at play or are kept indoors by nervous, anxious parents.

The government's twelve-hour curfew (7 p.m. to 7 a.m.), intended to hamper the Viet Cong terrorists, has hampered the average Saigonese even more. Having in the past moonlighted on one or two extra jobs in order to make ends meet, he now is able to hold only one job--if he is lucky enough to still have one. Because of the curtailment of working hours, there is far less economic activity. Some 20 freighters, for example, are lined up in the river waiting to be unloaded. The lack of these imports means fewer jobs, smaller pay packets. Partly because of the slowdown, hundreds of small businessmen have gone broke. As a result, the Saigonese have less money to spend at a time when they need it most just to keep alive.

Winking Lights. In the first two weeks after Tet, food prices rose sharply. Rice, for example, rose to 150 per lb. v. 70 pre-Tet; fish went from 370 to $1.44 per lb., and live chickens from $1.50 to $7.00 apiece. But farmers in the area were in such a rush to take advantage of the high prices that they hurried supplies into the city. Result: prices dipped downward again--though they still remain about 15% above pre-Tet levels. Despite the higher prices and some temporary shortages of vegetables and chicken, most Saigonese have continued to eat fairly well; there have been no serious nutritional deficiencies in their diet. Against the possibility of another attack, many families have laid in a one month's supply of canned food, rice, dried fish and evaporated milk.

On the surface, Saigon seems in some ways to be its old self again. Traffic is nearly as heavy as before in the morning, but slackens during the afternoon in anticipation of the 7-p.m. curfew. The black market is still operating, but business is off by about 50%. About 70% of the sidewalk shops and stalls have reopened, most for only half a day; many of the finer shops still remain closed. Money is circulating freely and most Saigonese seem to trust its worth, since there has been little upsurge in bartering. Phone service has been restored, and so has electric power--though it remains as unreliable as before, winking off in some part of town almost every night.

The piles of garbage that accumulated during the first two weeks after Tet have mercifully been cleared away, even so, Saigon remains the dirtiest city in Asia, and the marks of war further blotch the city's face. In the Chinese quarter of Cholon, the heaviest damaged area, only rubble and fragments of walls mark the places where row upon row of one-story houses once stood. Patched up and painted, the U.S. embassy shows few scars from its dust-up with the Viet Cong, but many buildings elsewhere are pockmarked by bullets and bomb fragments.

Saigon-Hanoi Tea. Because of the curfew, there is almost no entertainment in Saigon. The state-controlled television now dedicates 90% of its programming to anti-V.C. propaganda. Cinemas and theaters are closed. President Nguyen Van Thieu also ordered all Saigon bars and nightclubs to shut down, but only about half of them have complied with the order. The others try to beat the early curfew by opening early.

Saigon's bars provide an interesting insight into the city's mentality. Some bars have changed the name of the drink guzzled by the bar girls from "Saigon tea" to "Saigon-Hanoi tea." Many of the girls, mindful of Viet Cong retribution for consorting with Americans, now alter the traditional toast, chin-chin--to your health--to chin-chin, Ho Chi Minh. They also bring a change of clothing to work so that they can slip out of their conspicuous B-girl tight pants and into the traditional flowing Ao-Dais for the evening trip home to the suburbs.

Foreigners in Saigon still congregate on the veranda of the Continental Hotel in the early evening, and there the talk is, as previously, all about the war. Many American civilians in Saigon have taken to carrying their own weapons--.357 Magnum revolvers, Beretta automatics, M-16 rifles, some privately owned and some issued by the military. Since many of the Americans apparently have never handled loaded weapons before and tend to gesture with the barrels as they talk, the guns sometimes go off by mistake.

Grim Search. The Americans, much less the Saigonese, can hardly be blamed for some nervousness. The battalions of U.S. troops that were brought into Saigon to root out the V.C. gunmen have mostly been withdrawn, but platoons of South Vietnamese airborne troopers last week continued a grim house-to-house clearing operation in Saigon's environs. Hard-core V.C. snipers continued to fire on U.S. military police and Vietnamese army patrols from rooftops and windows in Cholon. The government makes its presence felt all over Saigon. Police or soldiers guard almost every corner, have set up checkpoints throughout the city.

The unpleasant fact is that the Viet Cong used the Tet assault to infiltrate into Saigon hundreds and perhaps even thousands of agents who pose as normal Vietnamese going about their jobs. The chief mission of such agents is to try to turn the resentment of the Saigonese against the government and the Americans, charging them with the destruction of the city after the V.C. invasion. Meanwhile, V.C. assassination squads operate in broad daylight. The results of their handiwork turn up--hands bound and bodies mutilated--in the river. The V.C. have been active in Saigon for years but, in a city under siege, their presence is more unnerving than ever.

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