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12 Montagnard
Villages There were many Montagnard villages in the
Plieku area, mostly occupied by Jarai tribesmen. Most of the villages were
"consolidated," meaning several villages were relocated to a single cluster so
their population was sufficient to defend itself from small bands of Viet Cong.
This also allowed the establishment of schools, clinics, and resident U.S. Army
Civil Affairs teams. My first visit to such a village was in December 1968 when
I escorted MG Ken Hodson, The Judge Advocate General, on his visit to the
largest consolidated village in our area. My duties as escort prevented me from
using a camera during that visit. A couple months later LTC
Bill Oldham, Deputy SJA of USARV, unexpectedly showed up in my office one
morning with his camera, asking to visit the same village. I called Hensel Army
Air Field, explained the request, and asked if we could get a helicopter. All
the regular choppers were out on operation missions but, after some scrambling,
they offered an ancient OH-23 3-seat "bubble" chopper that they no longer used.
When we got to the field, they had to jump-start the engine because the battery
was dead. We took off and had flown a few minutes when the pilot asked me where
we were going. I had no idea! I thought he knew. I didn't know the name of the village or in which
direction it was. So we just flew over one village after another, but none of
them looked familiar. Out of desperation, I told the pilot to land at the
next village. It was a village with no U.S. military presence
and therefore no security or guarantee of a friendly reception. I put a clip in
my .45 pistol as we landed. The pilot had to stay with the chopper and keep the
engine running for fear that otherwise it wouldn't start again. Fortunately, a
Montagnard in a military fatigue shirt rushed out and gave us a friendly
greeting. He spoke no English but manage a little French, explaining that he had
served an an NCO under the French. My French was worse than poor but it was
better than my Jarai, and we managed to communicate. He showed us around the
village, explained the social structure (e.g., all men without wives lived
together in a hut whose roof-line ran perpendicular to all the others), and
introduced us to his family. The unmarried men were roasting a pig in a pit and offered
to dig it out on the spot (even though it wasn't yet done) so we could share
it. I declined, explaining that it was Friday and, as a Catholic, I could not
eat meat. LTC Oldham had an instant conversion and similarly declined. Our
guide, familiar with French Catholics, accepted this and explained it to the others. Then they insisted that we
share their rice wine, drunk from a large crock through a reed. We couldn't
refuse without offending them but did our best not to swallow much wine (due
to hepatitis warnings). The rice wine actually tasted quite good. After spending nearly two hours in the village, we made our
way back to the helicopter. Just as we never knew where we were going, we never
knew where we had been. We probably were foolish to undertake this visit to an
unknown village with unknown risks, but the Montagnards couldn't have been
friendlier. And I'll bet LTC Oldham thought all along that I knew what I was
doing, and he probably told everyone back at USARV that I spoke French. The following pictures were taken on another occasion at a different
Montagnard village, Plei Ho By I believe.
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