A HOLIDAY FROM HELL

[Music] over a decade ago r r meant a five-day escape from the mountains and the cold and the chinese of korea and over a decade ago that escape r r went in one direction to japan now rnr is an escape from here vietnam but it goes in many directions an r r flight from south vietnam can take you to tokyo or hawaii or thailand or you could end up in uh taipei or in malaysia however the r r trip doesn't really start here at tonsino the busiest airfield in the world but rather at a rather dusty and dismal place called camp alpha [Music] velva is the staging area outside saigon where thousands of weary gi's from every combat zone in vietnam wash off the mud in the sweat put on fresh uniforms and process out for five days leave in official jargon r r means rest and recreation but to these men it is a holiday from hell after each man has spent at least three months in the swamp and jungle warfare of vietnam the r r processing is routine even boring there are forms to fill out u.s military scripts must be changed into u.s dollars boarding pass an id card and there's the ubiquitous medic with his blunt needle all right you go out the door if you have to seize if you get the wrong shot as this captain did you write it off as service above and beyond the call of duty the call of r r is more important right now and everyone at camp alpha is full of plans some have big plans and talk about them with a cockiness or a caution bread of war what do you plan on doing in taipei on r oh wow he's mostly eating sleeping i guess he's goofing off you're gonna spend a lot of money you know i got about 300 i probably won't spend that much i don't know sure probably solo what do you plan on doing on rnr i'll see the city spend a little bit of money get drunk anything else well take a lot of pictures and try to call my parents at home um oh no no i plan to visit all the bars and see all the good-looking growers in taipei and i cheer the city and see the great things that the chinese have got there and uh spending maybe three or four hundred dollars having a pretty good time i figure anyway what do you plan on doing on iron art uh just having a good time a bit of a break away from this can you be more specific oh well i could be a specific one i might say it over there yeah uh oh yeah just playing a bit of a rest you know a bit of it what do you plan on doing don't plan on resting that's for sure what else i'll make a hog on myself get trunk or spas keep up the australian image abroad what do you plan on doing no no you're not there but it'll be good whatever it is after processing it's a short ride from camp alpha to heavily guarded tonsino air base where the r r planes are waiting each gi has a free choice of cities on the r r circuit he lists them by preference and if he's lucky the saigon military headquarters sends him where he wants to go these gi's did not choose hong kong or tokyo or bangkok or any of the better known watering holes of asia they chose taipei on the island of taiwan and most of them think they chose taipei for very good reasons the plane waiting for them is a commercial airline but it's one no civilian can ride on this one is part of a fleet of planes put together by pan-american airways under a special r r contract with the pentagon it is probably the world's largest commercial airline operation that is deliberately nonprofit good afternoon ladies and gentlemen we are coming up on board our flight 64 on our flight between saigon to taipei would you kindly pass your seatbelt and no smoking until we are airborne in a matter of hours when this plane does land in taipei that all too brief respite from war called r r will begin i'll be back with that part of our story in a moment [Music] hello this is taipei taiwan the capital of nationalist china it is off the beaten path for most american tourists but in the past few months taipei has become a favorite r r center for u.s troops it was only in january that nationalist china agreed to let american soldiers come here by the thousands and now pan am's r r shuttles are burying in several plane loads a week at taipei airport i asked pan am vice president tom flanagan how the airline got involved in the first place well about a year ago the military invited all the airlines to out to scott field to bid on this operation our company was the very deeply involved in the vietnam operation we have something like 14 aircraft doing nothing but flying supplies to the west coast out to vietnam company thought that in return for business they were doing in that respect they would like to contribute something of their own so we bid on the contract do you think the company's sorry now oh no i think they're very happy with it's worked out very well for everybody now you are in charge of the r r operation yes sir how big an operation is it well it's hard to uh the various ways you can describe it i mean the geographical area that we cover uh would make it as large as any transcontinental airline in the united states we have 13 dc sixes and two 707s assigned full-time to it how many so-called r r centers are there there are 10 in the southeast area region then we have honolulu well which one is the largest one as far as the number of people used right now it's honolulu is there any special reason for honolulu well i think the reason it's so popular right now is because the 25th division which is based in vietnam came from honolulu originally and a lot of those boys are going back to see their families and wives mr flanagan considering the considerable size of the r r program today do you think it's reached its optimum size or will continue to grow well no it'll continue to grow as the troop strength in the vietnam goes up it uh started out when we took it over in march we carried 5 000 approximately in march to r and our sites by the end of 66 we had carried a little over a hundred thousand and the first three months of this year we'll be carrying about ninety thousand i think the projections for next year be in the vicinity of 400 000. that means that every man serving in vietnam apparently is going to fly on a pan am plane on r they're all entitled to yes after they're in the country three months uh every man in vietnam is entitled to an r well considering all the money that pan am must be making on rnr it is a success well on that money bit we're not making any money the first four months we did it for a total sum of four dollars and we refunded to the government well over a million dollars which we got under the contract after the first four months uh we bid it on a no-profit basis so there's no profit for pan eminent at all is there any intention to change that no now you've mentioned 10 r r centers now in use are there any plans for expansion well they're always looking for new uh areas as the requirements go up and they are currently looking for other spots in southeast asia and probably in the south pacific can you be specific about their locations or not uh yes we find a tokyo taipei hong kong bangkok and three places uh south that uh just soon not mentioned compared to hong kong and bangkok taipei may not seem glamorous to the tourist but like all teeming asian cities it has everything a weary veteran of the vietnamese jungles could ask for and some things he won't ask for and everything it has to offer will be ready and waiting after dark when the latest plane load of gis arrives there's a minimum of formality as the gis arrived just an abbreviated immigration procedure then the troops are herded aboard a bus for a no-nonsense briefing by a marine corps sergeant who has seen everything happen too many times for your information my name is gunnery sergeant-carlton u.s marine corps i'm one of your six service representatives handling this rnr station if you have any problems you're running any difficulties while you're here i want you to stop down the rdr sir we'll try to help you out first off security where you come from and what you've been doing is your own business keep it to yourself it's nobody's business but your own incidents if you get involved any incidents out here any incidents at all while you're here in taipei on on the island of taiwan you notify us at the r r center or the provost marshal's office we are equipped to handle it and get it out of the way quite quickly and quite efficiently if you try to take care of it yourself it's going to make a little bit more difficult and we come out to help you your general conduct i'm not going to go into detail on that gentlemen you're all old enough to know how to conduct yourselves also joan we got two types of girls here on the island we got the good ones the bad ones those that wear white socks and those that don't wear any white socks at all the first girl i'm going to tell you about where's a little triangular shaped pen on her lapel so you're going to meet her tonight out in the bars and she's what we call a hostess a gentleman this girl is that's all she is the hostess she'll sit in the bar and she'll sit there and talk with you all night to the tune of one drink every 15 minutes to four drinks an hour and it's going to cost you a bucket drink every time they drop one of those little tulips on her flat now i'm going to tell you right now that she's going to probably drink more than one drink every 15 minutes so you keep tracking them and if you don't want her to have them you make sure that you tell the guy that's delivering this drink to her that you'll be the one that orders it to it when you get ready to order another thing use a system out here pay as you go don't let them build up a tab because if you do you're going to knock down anywhere from 50 on up to 100 bucks at that bar tonight and before you know it you're not going to know exactly where it went to so if you use the system pay as you go you'll have no problem the other little girl we got out here wears a little circular pin on her lapel she's what we call a thoroughbred and she's got funny practice she's been in operation since january and with the chinese she's been in operation a little bit longer than that now this girl you'll find her out in the bar november she wears a little circular pin on her lapel this girl can be hired out of the bar in order to hire you must sign a contract for it just like buying a car press a suit or anything else that you might want to take out these bars that we're telling you about are not off limits and they are available to you but if you go into them i want you to watch yourself we've had personnel spend considerable amount of money there in one evening and they give you a little sum around 375 for two people these are the bars that i suggest you watch your money very closely the okay bar the casablanca barge the new york bar the fox bar and specifically the hong kong bar and the playboy bar now if you go into these places and you find out that they're charging just a little bit while the sergeant talks most of the gi's are taking careful note of every place they should not go and everything they should not do as any sensible gi would they tumble out of the bus at the american r r center in downtown taipei have their baggage checked by customs and then receive chips for the hotels they will stay outside the r r center representatives of the hotels wait with what can only be described as [Applause] eagerness scene that will repeat itself in every r r city in asia tonight asian hotels are noted for their service on this their first night on r r it will be catch's catch can and if the hotel representatives aren't as fast on their feet as the eager g.i the troops can be trusted to find their own way off limits [Music] [Applause] [Music] we found many of the gi's exactly where we expected them to be in one of the bars the marine sergeant had warned them away from the setting may seem a little unreal like a hot house but after months in the stinking jungle of war a little old-fashioned american overindulgence helps even if the whiskey is watered and the music is too loud and after some boyish awkwardness a little conversation can do as much good as whiskey give her a kid give her a kiss i'll give you a kiss i don't know you who knows me nobody i just got here [Music] he said [Music] how long have you been here until [Music] saturday [Music] 1966 [Music] some of these gi's will spend their whole r r in bars from one end of taipei to the other until the taste of war has been completely drowned it is in the back of almost every throat even among the fuzzy cheek kids who've just had their first taste of combat in their first taste of rnr but others will find more to do than drink and talk here in taipei and across the r r circuit and i'll be back in a moment with a look at some of the other sides of rnr [Music] on any afternoon in any r r city in asia you will find a gi emerging from a bar usually with a girl on his arm and a smile on his face not surprisingly many of them have fallen in love of one sort or another and it will last or it won't last at the same moment in time you will find other gis prowling the streets hunting for presents for a parent or a wife or a child back home something exotic from a place that produces both exotic trinkets and exotic wars in taipei as in other cities east meets west in a peculiar fashion on movie marquees or on adding to a strangeness that becomes more familiar every day [Music] the delicacy served from familiar containers along the streets of taipei may not be so familiar to the pallet or too appetizing until you discover why they've been cooked that way for thousands of years [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] for the squeamish or the wandering gi with the japanese camera bought at the px there is that ancient chinese culture breathing heavily in the crowded streets smoking fragrantly in its carved temple or hanging in delicate silk scrolls within the new national palace museum the largest collection of chinese art on [Music] earth [Music] some of the gi's will find beethoven a lush suburb of taipei and a colorful hangover from the decades of japanese rule before world war ii [Music] here in what is now china are some of the most popular japanese inns in the far east even highly paid japanese businessmen fly to taiwan to sink into the geisha houses of beethoven for some tea some conversation over rice wine some sultry japanese folk songs or a bath in mineral water provided energetically by business-like girls as the big pair of brogans at the door to an inn suggests american gi's do find their way here too thank you [Music] and it is just as relaxing and just as business-like despite the giggles in the geisha myth as it would be for a middle-aged industrialist from hokkaido but for many of the gi's on r r neither the hectic pleasures of the city nor the artificial relaxation of beethoven offers enough peace after months of guerrilla warfare in vietnam [Music] in search of complete solitude and complete quiet some of them travel south away from taipei into the countryside in the mountains of taiwan they are not disappointed for this is one of the most beautiful islands on earth [Music] oh [Music] is as plain tourists or as men running away from war for a mere five days there is the almost infinite solitude and peace of sun moon lake where the silk scroll paintings of classical china take tangible form in every sunrise in every sam pan moving like a water bug across the dawn lake [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] whether they go alone or not alone the placid resorts in taiwan's mountains provide the gis with the closest thing to a holiday from hell that they're likely to find [Music] [Music] but that hell and reminders of it are never far away this is asia and in the omnipresent paddy fields of taiwan in the grunting water buffalo toiling through the paddies even in the ageless turning of a water wheel there are reflections of the peaceful countryside of vietnam before nightfalls and the black-clad viet cong come out of hiding before the five days of r r really begin they're over and when r r ends the war begins again out of the bars of every r r city out of the soft hotel beds from tokyo to kuala lumpur out of the peaceful mountains and the lakes that make war and peace so much of a stark contrast in asia the gis will file back aboard waiting aircraft to make their way wearily back to war to the jungles and the swamps and the patties of vietnam some of the gis will be going home in a few months others will not [Applause] hey yes you