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Hope

By E.C. Streeter

Like everyone in my infantry platoon, I was constantly torn between wanting to be there to provide whatever support I could for my buddies and wanting to get out of the bush and spend some time in the rear where I could sleep on something other than the ground and eat something that might not have come straight from a can. A month or so before the end of my Vietnam tour, I was chosen to spend a couple of days in the rear to attend a servicemen's show starring Bob Hope. While I had nothing at all against that particular comedian, I'd managed to develop a bit of a short timer attitude, which led me to say to my company commander, "Thanks, that's great, but could I also get that dental check-up that I've been requesting for at least the last month and a half?" Needless to say, this bit of insolence infuriated him, and that was the last time I was ever offered anything in the way of a perk for having been there longer than some of my fellow grunts.

Connecting the dots between my time as a medic and my later work as a circus clown is one thing I've never had much success with. However, there is the obvious fact that both endeavors involved daily travel under frequently difficult circumstances. It's also perhaps worth mentioning that I received several favorable notices over the years for my portrayal of a nurse assisting a demented dentist in a tooth-pulling gag. Then again, the smiles that resulted just could be a link of sorts.

Most of the time, we were assigned to free-fire zones in a region near the city of Hue, and so we didn't get many opportunities to spend time in villages. However, occasionally, one would be on our route, and I'd conduct an impromptu clinic. The children were always the first to see us, and when I told them that I was a "baksi," they would immediately rush off and spread the word. Soon there would be a line of people, most of whom were youngsters waiting for that most fascinating of panaceas, the band-aid, or elderly people who tended to have stomach troubles or irritated eyes. The ailments were rarely serious, and usually the band-aids, antacid pills, and tubes of eye ointment that I kept in my rucksack were sufficient. A few of the complaints were undoubtedly of the imaginary sort, but in any event, each encounter invariably ended with a wordless exchange of smiles.

Through these and other small experiences, I developed an affection for the Vietnamese and their country, and fifteen years later, I began having vague thoughts about wanting to see for myself how the people were managing to recover from the horrific trauma that I, as a representative of my government, had been in part responsible for. When I happened to read that Vietnam had a national circus, my thinking evolved into something more along the lines of attempting to connect at least a few more of the dots. Almost on a whim, I sent a proposal for a "vet-turned-clown-visits-circus-in-Hanoi" article to a few newspapers, and amazingly, an editor at The Washington Post expressed interest. Press credentials duly arrived by fax, and I proceeded to book a flight to Hanoi.

Even my translator was not all that certain about the location of the circus arena. He'd dealt with plenty of journalists who wanted to see a performance of the famous water puppets, but I was the first to inquire about the national circus. Fortunately, the words "rap xiec" were all our taxi driver needed to get us there. It was located in Lenin Park, approximately a ten-minute drive from Hoan Kiem Lake and the business district. Round and slightly wider at the top, with statues of lions on either side of the entrance steps, the building resembled a cross between the Guggenheim Museum and the New York Public Library. Inside, its sixteen hundred seats were so steeply raked around the single ring that I almost had the feeling of being inside a giant teacup.

Along with an act featuring bears native to Vietnam, one of the more notable acts was a rola bola act in which the performer stood on a board balanced by a cylinder and then added layer after layer of boards separated by glass tumblers filled with water.

"I used to do that act." Tam Chinh, the director of the circus, told me. "And now my daughter, Le Kim Cuong, is performing it in the show. She recently won an award at the Asian circus competition in Pyong Yang." After the show, we walked through the circus's "back yard," where I got to see the next generation of bears waiting for their moment in the spotlight. Chinh then took me to a meeting room with a wall filled with photographs. She pointed to a couple of shots of herself from her performing days and then to an older black and white image of a group of children, which included her sitting on the floor around a beaming older gentleman who happened to be Ho Chi Minh. She went on to tell me that the circus was celebrating its fortieth anniversary, having started in 1956, and that it was more profitable than any other state cultural organization, including the water puppets. She also mentioned that they had done tours of Thailand, Holland, Sweden, and Taiwan.

While I was certainly interested in what she was saying about the circus, there was something else I wanted to talk to her about, but I wasn't quite sure what it was. And then the memory of my missed opportunity serendipitously came back to me.

I asked her if the circus had ever performed for the troops. "Oh, yes," she replied, "in 1971 we spent two months going to some of the places where the fighting was and doing shows for the soldiers. We performed in Than Hoa, Nghe An, and Ha Tinh provinces, and also on the Ho Chi Minh Trail." I then asked her how they traveled, and she said that they went by bicycle with their wardrobe in rucksacks and their equipment strapped on as best they could. A mental image of Mr. Hope pedaling a bike with a microphone stand slung over his shoulder flickered briefly. "Sometimes we were attacked during shows. Then we had to run into the tunnels and switch from being artists to being ammunition carriers and things like that. A few times we cooked for the soldiers while they were fighting, and sometimes we sewed for them. We also performed in hospitals for the wounded."

Another thought occurred to me as I listened to her, but I decided to leave it unmentioned: 1971 was the year that I was there.

It came as no surprise that the Post did not find the article I filed to be acceptable. Elicited smiles were hardly the kind of journalistic thread that they were used to dealing with. No matter, I was soon caught up in preparing for a series of Shrine circus dates in Syracuse and Rochester.

My trip was only ten days long, and from my limited experience talking to Tam Chinh and a few people in the Hanoi neighborhoods I walked through, I'm afraid that I didn't get a very clear sense of how the population was faring in general. One thing I can say, though, is that I probably came as close as anyone to meeting the Vietnamese Bob Hope.

E.C. Streeter is a retired high school English teacher. Before working as a teacher, he spent seven years as a clown for Circus Odyssey, Hoxie Bros. Circus, and Rudy Bros. Circus, among others. He served as an army medic from June 1969 to May 1971. This essay was initially published in a somewhat censored form in the November-December 1996 issue of Destination: Vietnam.

Theater of the National Circus of Vietnam.