|
 In
the room where I do most of my writing, to my right there is a shelf
filled with reference books. I have dictionaries of all sizes and
kinds from America, Great Britain, France and Vietnam. There are at
least three versions of Roget's Thesaurus. I have almanacs, books on
language, history, quotations, mythology, etymology, the origins of
language and the usage of language. Sometimes I refer to them merely
by looking at them, though I do open them frequently to help me with
problems of writing.
There is one volume that has traveled with me from Saigon to Hong
Kong, to London, to New York, to Washington and back to New York: a
worn Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary. Its covers are
tattered along the edges, its paper yellow with time. Scotch tape
and memories hold the book together.
Soon after arriving in Saigon in early 1966 I slowly started to find
my way as bureau chief for NBC News. Our bureau was in the Eden
Building on Nguyen Hue Street in what many would describe as the
center of the battered, fractious, noisy city. The Caravelle Hotel
and the Continental Hotel were down the street, bracketed by the old
Saigon Opera House, which in the fall of 1967 became the National
Assembly. At the other end of the street stood the Saigon City Hall,
a gingerbread pile that hardly anyone entered. The Rex Theater and
Rex BOQ were across the street from me, as was JUSPAO where we went
to briefings every day to witness the famous Five O'clock Follies,
the daily military and diplomatic briefing.
Inside the dark recesses of the Eden Building - that squat
architectural nightmare of a structure where NBC and The AP had its
offices, and where there was also a small CIA-financed airline on
the fifth floor where I lived - hidden far from the outside bustle,
I would discover an unforgettable resource and a friend in Neil
Davis.
 I had earlier met Neil with a cursory handshake in my first week. He
ran a bureau for a company called Visnews, a British consortium that
supplied material to NBC News everywhere in the world. At that time
Neil was also a stringer for NBC News in Vietnam, and he ran a
stable, in the best sense of the word, of freelance film cameramen
who were mostly Korean. I had an arrangement with Neil to provide me
with footage from around the country. I gave him $50 and a 100-foot
canister of 16 mm silent film - three minutes of film time - and a
few audiocassettes. He gave these to his cameramen to use in their
wind-up Bell and Howell Filmos. Their job was to shoot an entire
story in the three minutes, and, surprisingly, many did. If they
shot interesting and useable footage, Neil and his crews received
another $100 for their effort, a sizeable sum back in those days. I
often ended up with good action footage from these intrepid,
fearless shooters who covered Korean troops along the coastal plain
and the Australian troops in the swamps south of Saigon and below
Vuong Tao. It was a worthwhile venture for my bureau.
This, though, is not about covering a story. Those memories are for
others to recount. This is about a meal I had with Neil in his
office three weeks after I arrived. His bureau in the Eden Building
was several floors below my fourth-floor office. In the midst of all
those important buildings and locations in my neighborhood, Neil had
a small, insignificant room he shared with two Indian moneychangers
- men by the way, who were necessary to the well-being of every
foreigner in Saigon. A black curtain divided the office in half so
the moneychangers could conduct their business in private.
Neil invited me to a 'welcome to Saigon' dinner. I bought a bottle
of Algerian red in a local gourmet shop next to Air Vietnam and a
few doors down from the entrance to 104 Nguyen Hue Street where we
both worked. And, yes, several of those specialty stores actually
existed despite the war. Early that evening I walked downstairs to
dinner. In that cramped space, with the help of the Indian men, we
dined on splendid chicken baked in clay, a fresh salad of lettuce
from Dalat with oil and vinegar, succulent rice, Indian flat bread,
cold beer and my red wine. The moneychangers served dinner. Then
they joined us at the table to eat. We talked about everything but
business. I learned something about life in Saigon, about war, about
covering war, about economics and the economy. I learned that Neil
was generous and kind, that he could laugh at a good joke, and was
soft-spoken with a ready smile. I never once realized how brave he
was in combat nor how strong his nerves were to allow him to cover
stories the way he did, especially after he joined NBC News.
When the dinner ended, we sat and smoked. Cigarettes at 11 cents a
pack at the PX made it easy to feed my habit of probably three packs
a day. We relished the cold Heineken beer rather than the terrible
wine. Neil paused between puffs and sips to make a brief welcoming
speech. He handed me a gift. It looked like a book. It had the shape
of a book. It felt like a book. I tore off the wrapping paper to
discover the Webster's Dictionary I mentioned earlier. On opening
the cover I found inside, front and back, a colorful and thick blue
paper lining pasted on top of the book's inside covers. There were
Chinese characters on the pages with two dragons in the front and
three dragons in the back. Their wings wrapped around the dragons in
a circle of swirls and cascading feathers. The dragon represents
health and vitality, has the courage of his convictions, and is an
idealist and a perfectionist. I am sure Neil knew about the inside
pages. He may have ordered them himself. I never asked if he was
sending me a message or simply decorating the book. In the end, it
does not matter. All that mattered was the simple gift after a good
meal in an unusual setting.
I last saw Neil in Vietnam in April 1985 when NBC, as most other
news companies, returned to cover the tenth anniversary of the fall
of Saigon. We shared meals. We shared drinks. Then, as was so often
the case, we went our separate ways.
With great sadness, we learned that Neil died on the streets of
Bangkok on September 9, 1985, killed - many believe deliberately -
while covering a coup against the then-reigning military
dictatorship. Had he lived he would probably be doing what he always
did, which was to cover the stories that interested him, that he
believed he had to tell.
My memory of Neil Davis is in that dictionary, that first meal, and
other meals I had with him. I wish we could have had more. The
dictionary goes with me everywhere. It is a reminder of Neil's
generosity of spirit, especially for the simple things we all
desired, despite the difficulty of achieving them because of the
complicated lives we led.
.........................................................................................................................
At NBC News for 35 years, Ron Steinman was bureau chief
in Saigon, Hong Kong and London, was a senior producer on Today and wrote
and produced for Sunday Today. At ABC News Productions, he produced
and wrote documentaries for A&E, TLC, Discovery, Lifetime and the
History Channel. He has a Peabody, a National Headliner award, a
National Press Club award, a International Documentary Festival Gold
Camera Award, two American Women in Radio & Television awards and
has been nominated for five Emmy's. He is a partner in
Douglas/Steinman Productions, whose latest documentary, "Luboml: My
Heart Remembers," aired on PBS' WLIW/21 and the History Channel in
Israel, April 29, 2003. He is the author of, "The Soldiers 'Story",
"Women in Vietnam," and most recently, "Inside Television's First
War: A Saigon Journal," University of Missouri Press, 2002. |
