Lieutenant Colonel Anthony J. Tencza arrived in our Vietnamese 22nd Infantry Division sometime in the end of 1961. He served as the acting senior advisor of the MACV Team beside the division headquarters. I was then a young first lieutenant of 25 years old and 6 years in service.
He was one of the best American friends to the Vietnamese military and civilians in Kontum City. Behind the thick glasses, his eyes were always bright and pleasant, and his lips always ready for a smile when he met any one. He was treating me in a way that made me respect him more than any other American in the division. Whenever he met me, after returning my salute he often poked his forefinger at my belly or patted me on my back and said "Hello, dear."
As a liaison officer, I had to see him almost every day. He liked me probably because of my English - not very fluent but good enough to spare American listeners from confusion between fifteen and fifty, thirty and thirsty, or tie and time, or phrases like "If you go PX, please buy for me some booze..." In 1962, the relation between Vietnamese militarymen and American advisors were still very close in a mutual friendship. I was about 15 years younger than he, and Tencza treated me as his younger brother.
In the early morning of Sunday, July 15,1962, I was informed that a strategic hamlet armed with some 15 or 20 rifles had been overrun a few hours before by a VC company. The division C.O., Colonel Nguyen Bao Tri ordered his artillery commander, the G-2, and the commander of the Reconnaissance Company to join Col. Tencza on a reconnaissance flight over the area.
I always liked to participate in such trip. I was given a special task by the division commander to study the enemy hit-and-run attacks, so I had been sent to several overrun outposts and hamlets right after the situation permitted, sometimes while fighting was still going on.
When I saw the G-2 that morning, I asked him to join the reconnaissance party. At first he said "OK," but while waiting for me getting my pistol and putting on my field gears in my BOQ room, Captain Trinh, the G-2 suddenly said to me, "You should not go." His face lost the usual composure.
"Why," I asked him. His voice was slow but firm, "I've just 'bam don' (fortune telling by calculation based on some Y King principles). It forebode bad luck."
When I insisted, he turned serious and refused adamantly. "If I didn't 'bam don,' I would let you go. But as I predicted bad luck, I can't put you on the plane with us. As a G-2, I must go. You don't have to, so you must obey me to stay home..."
Captain Trinh loved fortune telling. His rate of accuracy was fifty-fifty like the other's. But that time, his calculation result was correct. Thirty minutes later, the Division Tactical Center called me and let me know that one of the two "whirling birds" had been downed while circling over the hamlet, a small mountainous community of nearly 300 people of the Bahnar tribe, about 15 miles northwest of Kontum City.
The other H-21 that followed at a distance soared into the air out of the enemy fire and landed at Polei Kleng, an outpost near by.
It took several hours for the Reconnaissance Company to reach the crash site. They rescued Lt. Hoa, the Recon Company commander and an American pilot who survived the crash and hid in the brushes. Col. Tencza and Captain Trinh were shot to death by the VC about 10 yards from the H-21. The two crew gunners were killed inside, one of them was Sergeant Gutherie whom I met on some previous flights. The other pilot died beside a small stream, as far as I could remember.
Late in the afternoon, the dead were brought back to Kontum. After examinations by the division surgeon, all of them were laid in the Medical Company morgue. In the morgue there were also bodies of about 20 Vietnamese Special Forces soldiers, killed on a C-47 when it crashed while taking off the Kontum airport in the preceding morning.
That evening, we Vietnamese officers were in turn watching the dead until the next morning when a C-123 would fly the corpses to Saigon. My turn was from 2:00 AM to 3:00 AM along with Lt Dang.
Under the glimmering weak light bulbs, the morgue looked ghostly and dreadful especially with an altar on which stood two red candles in brass holders and a censers holding some dozen burning incense sticks.
At about 20 minutes before our turn ended, I told Dang to stay and I walked out for the latrine in the nearby building. I had not gone farther than 30 yards than Dang ran out, calling me in a frightened voice. I could feel horror in his tone.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"He talks..." Dang said. It made my flesh creep. I swallowed hard when trying to control myself. and whispered, "Who talk? And how?"
Dang spluttered: "A corpse." I tried to appear calm and bold though my heart was thumping. "Someone in the middle of the room. I heard a voice, not a noise of an object," he said.
"We both go in to see, OK?" I said. A moment later, I gathered all my courage to get into the room with Dang beside me. Both of us drew our pistols and cocked. We moved slowly along two rows of stretchers laid on trestles about 3 feet above the floor. Nothing happened.
When we were about to walk out to the door, we startled at voice, a human voice, as if it were from someone in his sleep. I was really frightened. but with all my strength I turned to the direction of the voice. Right then, the voice repeated, and it was from Col. Tencza.
That it was from the colonel restored my composure. I did not feel anything frightening from him. I knew what happened. Gas from inside rose through his throat and caused the sound.
Instinctively, I took off my field cap, holding it at my chest and prayed as I often did in front of the altar at home in memorials to our ascendants. "Tony, you do know how we respect you, and I know you like me. I will pray for you and remember you all my life."
A little blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. It reminded me of what Vietnamese believed. It is said that a person suffered a violent death would have blood trickling from the mouth when a close relative arrives.
His close relatives were on the other side of the globe. He might have considered me as one of his relatives, I said to myself. He had often called me his younger brother.
The next morning, we saw the dead off at the airport. Each of the dead was carried onto the C-123 by two Vietnamese and two American military servicemen. The scene symbolized the true friendship between us, Vietnamese in the 22nd Infantry Division and our American friends.
About one week later, one night I went to bed late. I turned my tape recorder on to listen to a tape of American country music that Tencza gave me before his death but I had never played. A few seconds after putting on the stereo headset, my heart almost stopped when a voice rang in my earphones: "Hello, " It was Tencza's voice.
My heart jumped as I threw the headset on the bed and sprang on my feet. It took me a few minutes to find out that the colonel had dubbed the tape from his original copy, and said some words for testing.
Since then, whenever I have a service commemorating a deceased member of my family, Tencza is among the names of my dead relatives and my fallen friends whom I always pray for.
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From "My War" by L.T. (unpublished)
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