Frances Fitzgerald

I remember the day after I got there, I was asked to a party.

on top of the roof of the best hotel, the Caravelle.

There was roses and champagne and all kinds of wonderful things you'd think you were at home, you know.

But then, over the edge of the parapet, you could see these flares coming up.

And the question was whether it was incoming or outgoing.

You would never know until it happened.

I thought I would just spend a month there.

to an article or to pay my airfare back.

But when I got there, I found I couldn't leave.

I mean, I'd never seen a war before, of course, and it was all too fascinating.

Every evening, a girl on spindle heels picks her way over the barrier of rotting fruit and onto the sidewalk.

It just occurred to me that the thing that was missing was that the American high command knew nothing about the Vietnamese.

Behind her, the alleyway carpeted with mud winds back past the facade of new houses into a maze of thatched huts and tin roof shacks called Bui Phat, one of the oldest of the refugee quarters.

Well, I found several interpreters along the way.

That wasn't hard to do because people wanted to do that.

You make a lot of money that way.

Americans do not normally walk through the slums.

Not the real slums, like those in the outlying areas.

They were angry at being displaced from their villages and

put in this marsh.