The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

46 THOMAS A. BASS
father before I reported for duty. My mother told me that he
had been hurt by the security people. ‘He is sick. You better go
see him, before you leave for the jungle,’ she told me.”
When An went to Saigon, his father asked him to stay and
take care of him. An did so willingly. Vien had a lung removed
and remained in Cho Ray hospital for two years. It was probably
in the TB ward that An acquired the scarred lung tissue that
remained after his own bout with tuberculosis. “I got a little bit
of the grisaille from my father, the infiltration of microbes.
This is why I got a deferment from the Vietnamese army, until
they were sure I had been cured.”
An used his time in Saigon to read books and study English.
When the United States Information Service opened an office
on the rue Catinat near the Grand Hotel, An signed up for the
first language course. In 1949 he made another attempt at finishing
high school. Thanks to the intercession of his former
math teacher, who had been named director of the Collège de
My Tho, An was allowed to reenroll in school. Located in an
amiable market town seventy kilometers southwest of Saigon,
My Tho was the delta’s second lycée devoted to preparing students
for the baccalauréat.
Instead of finishing school, An got caught up in organizing
student strikes and demonstrations. In 1950 Cochin China’s
schools were closed as students rallied for two mass demonstrations,
one against the French and another against the Americans.
Known as the Tran Van On demonstrations, these protests—
borrowing a page from An’s father’s generation—were organized
around the funeral of Tran Van On, a fifteen-year-old high
school student at Saigon’s lycée Pétrus Ky who had been killed
by the French police. (One story says he was shot during a
protest in front of the governor’s palace; another says he was
bludgeoned to death.)
An returned to Saigon for the big demonstrations, which
were held in January and March 1950. The United States had
sent two destroyers to Vietnam carrying war matériel. They