"Since there was no central advance plan for the camp, it grew through hundreds of separate improvised decisions taken by a great number of organizations, with the Vietnamese organizations reporting to Colonel Ba and the Ameridan organizations reporting to Colonel White" (p 81)
"The reason for the total lack of shelter and facilities for the villagers at Phu Loi when they arrived was simply that the Vietnamese who were to provide these knew nothing about their assignment until twenty hours before the influx began. On the morning of the attack on Ben Suc, [Colonel Ba], the chief of Binh Duong Province, learned, to his surprise, that American troops had already set in motion a plan to destroy four villages in his province and evacuate the villagers to Phu Loi, where he was expected to provide them with what the Americans called a 'refugee camp,' and also with food, and with a form of security around the camp." (p. 78)
"At Phu Loi, truckloads of villagers from the north end of the Triangle and from Ben Suc continued to arrive in front of the little row of huts in the huge field. On the first day, over a thousand people were brought in. WHen they climbedd sowly down from the backs of the trucks, they had lost their appearance of healthy villagers and taken on the passive, dull-eyed, waiting expression of the uprooted. It was impossible to tell whether deadness and discouragement had actually replaced a spark of sullen pride in their expression and bearing or whether it was jut that any crowd of people removed from the dignifying context of their homes and places of labor, learning, and workship, and dropped tired and coated with dust, in a bare field, would appear broken-spirited to an outsider." (p76)
[He describes the next few days: Rolls of barbed wire stretched around squatting people, huge, open, communal tents with 10 sq ft per family, water trucks creating great mud areas, disorganized food distribution leaving many without food for days, a ditch latrine without cover in view of the main entrance]
"The designers of this mass toilet apparently intended its users to balance themselves of the brink of the ditch in order to relieve themselves into it. This latrine got very little use. Instead, most of the villagers restrained themselves until dark and then slipped out beyond the lighted part of the amp to a place where the bulldozed earth had been left in rough hills and mounds. But there was no grass or brush cover within the bounds of the barbed wire, and on the first day under the canopies a few of the old people, who could not stand to relieve themselves semi-publically, sneaked through the barbed wire in search of brush, protected areas outside the coils. This became considerably more difficult on the second day, when two coils of barbed wire were added to the first to form a barbed-wire pyramid--two coils on the bottom and one on the top. The children slipped in and out with no trouble, but the old people required help. (p88)
[Several giant tents were constructed, not enough for everyone, but they provided shade. The villagers improvised screens and hammocks from whatever they could find. Food distribution was rationalized, but the villagers thought the American rice was of the quality they fed to their pigs. American and ARVN soldiers and officers worked consistently to get things organized. They seemed mostly driven by a sense of professional accomplishment.]
"After the two AID officers left, Colonel White paused, again looked out over the coils of barbed wire toward the bright [tent] canopies, and, turning to Philip Carolin, said with warm satisfaction, 'You know Phil, sometimes it just feels right.'" (p91).
I came across a note elsewhere—I can't find it know—that the "rice" was actually bulgar wheat. This is what we use to make tabuli. They tried to slip them parboiled, cracked wheat, to replace the staple of their diet.
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