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Land of Smiles

By John Ketwig (reviewer)

Land of Smiles
by A.A. Maytree
(iUniverse, Inc., 2008)

I left Vietnam in September 1968, with 15 months remaining on my enlistment. Instead of returning home to "the World", I transferred to nearby Thailand, where I completed my military obligation, avoided any possibility that I might be assigned to stand on the Pentagon steps and hold a bayoneted rifle against the anti-war protestors, and attempted to get my head straight enough that I could dare to walk down the street in my hometown. It was a hell of a year, and to this day, I have wonderful memories of Thailand and the Thai people. I wrote about my year in Thailand in my memoir, … and a hard rain fell.

A few months ago, someone told me about a book called Land of Smiles, about an American Peace Corps volunteer who spent three years in Thailand, arriving in 1969. I had to read it! I found Land of Smiles listed on Amazon and received it a few days later. From the first, I was attracted by the title. I found the Thai people to be the happiest society I've ever known. Even the poorest peasants are quick to smile and laugh, and they were especially welcoming to newcomers. I noted that the Thais live their religion with far more attention and allegiance than any segment of the American population save Catholic priests and nuns. Land of Smiles describes Thailand perfectly.

Author Maytree was a college graduate and a divinity student at a Catholic seminary in 1968, when he became skeptical of the church and uncertain about his faith in God. He resigned and was immediately ordered to report for a draft physical. He was walking and breathing, and rated 1-A. Unwilling to be drafted and sent to Vietnam, he volunteered for the Peace Corps. He was accepted, trained, and in May of 1969, he arrived in Thailand. He would spend two years in the Peace Corps. If he quit in mid-stream, or failed to make it through the two years, he would be immediately re-classified 1-A and eligible for the draft.

Maytree's first assignment was to teach English as a second language at a private school, where he was assigned to oversee a class of "problem" boys. A few weeks later, he was reassigned to a less disruptive class, and he began a freelance writing career with the Bangkok World. President Nixon announced the draft system would be dismantled and replaced by an all-volunteer military. The author could have left the Peace Corps and returned home, but he opted to stay in Bangkok for a while.

While I admit that Land of Smiles touched many of my personal nerve endings and nostalgic memories, this was not a particularly informative or enjoyable book. The author and his story both bounce around a lot. He accomplished his goal of avoiding being drafted and traveled frequently, visiting some of Thailand's most exotic locations. Still, his story seems random and disorganized, without any clear theme or plot to involve the reader. He tosses in a lot of Thai words and phrases, most of which I was able to decode using my old Thai-English dictionary. In a few cases, his pronunciation suggestions and translation to English varied significantly from my memory and my dictionary, but that wasn't surprising. I was stationed in Korat, or Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand's second-largest city, located about 60 miles northeast of Bangkok. Whenever we went to Bangkok, we were told our pronunciations made us sound "like farmers." Mister Maytree learned his Thai in Bangkok, and it was a significantly different dialect from what we heard in Korat.

I was mildly uncomfortable reading Land of Smiles until I was about two-thirds of the way through the book. Chapter 46 begins with the author receiving a surprising phone call from a man named Cornell Hawekridge. Regular readers of The Veteran will recall that I wrote an obituary article for my friend Cornelius Hawkridge a couple of years ago. I had become familiar with Hawkridge through a book a friend had allowed me to borrow. The American title was The Greedy War, and it was also published in England under the title A Very Personal War, which included photographs. He was raised in Hungary, where his father was a police colonel hunting down former Nazi criminals. When the Russians took over Hungary after World War II, Hawkridge joined the resistance and was captured and sentenced to life mining coal in one of Stalin's gulags. One morning, seven years later, he was freed; he never knew why. He intended to rejoin the resistance, but when he saw Soviet tanks rumbling into Budapest, he left Hungary and eventually made his way to the United States, where he became a citizen. He became involved in security work, first in the Dominican Republic, and then in Vietnam.

Working as a civilian consultant to a US foundation running a refugee camp in Qui Nhon, Hawkridge soon discovered that Vietnamese officials were stealing 90 percent of all the goods being shipped into Vietnam, and selling them in the black market marketplaces, especially in the port city of Qui Nhon. He immediately reported this outrageous behavior and found that the officials were well aware of it and totally reluctant to take any action. The black market was selling over $10 million in stolen American goods a month, anything from clothes and boots to rifles, ammunition, food rations, and vehicles. When Hawkridge asked to purchase a tank, he was told there weren't any in stock at that moment, but would he consider an APC, or armored personnel carrier, a smaller track-driven vehicle? He transferred to another American company, a trucking firm hauling Army equipment and supplies around the Saigon area. Again, he saw huge quantities of M-16s, ammunition, building supplies, and items intended for the PX system were loaded onto trucks at the port facilities and driven directly to the black market. By agreement with the Vietnamese government, Americans were not allowed to unload goods from planes and ships arriving in Vietnam, or to drive delivery trucks. Of course, many of the drivers and their employers were Viet Cong. Losses were running $100 million a year! Hawkridge, whose anti-communist sympathies were well known, tried to report these thefts to his superiors, the US military, and Congress. He became a marked man.

In May of 1968, Hawkridge was invited to testify before a US Senate subcommittee, but before he could do so, he was run off the road in Washington state. His new wife was killed, and he was hospitalized with serious injuries. He did testify before the subcommittee, but was severely limited in the topics he was allowed to discuss. Life magazine did an article about him, but the article was downsized when Ted Kennedy drove a Buick off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, killing a young female companion who was not his wife.

Having seen a similar theft ring operating among the higher-ranking officers and non-coms of our battalion in Korat, I immediately sought to buy a copy of The Greedy War, and, in those days before the Internet, several used book stores told me that it was a "suppressed" book, targeted by the government to prevent the American people from learning about the corruption in Vietnam. I had no idea our government did that! Eventually, I was able to find and purchase a copy. Convinced that Cornelius Hawkridge was an actual hero of the war in Vietnam, I set out on a quest to meet the man and shake his hand. I was surprised to find he had a close-knit circle of friends protecting him. After more than seven years of searching, I was finally able to talk with Hawkridge by phone. He was living a hermit's existence on a remote farm, but after we talked several times, he invited my wife and me to visit. For about the next thirty years, we talked by phone about once a week and became very dear friends. We returned to his home on many occasions.

Cornelius Hawkridge was a man the word "curmudgeon" was invented to describe. He was strictly old-school and rigidly formal. He never smoked or drank alcohol, and he would never use profanity. Author Maytree calls him Cornell Hawekridge and has him cursing like a sailor! I was shocked. Maytree's description of Hawkridge's background agreed with what I knew, but the quotations Maytree describes are completely out of character with the man I knew. To the day he died, Hawkridge believed the KGB was searching for him and intending to eliminate him.

Is Land of Smiles a worthwhile book? Yes, it offers a realistic overview of the roles Thailand and the Thai people played in the Vietnam War, but the author's treatment of Conelius Hawkridge is twisted and disrespectful. This isn't a book you are apt to find at a bookstore or in a library, but anything's possible. I believe A.A. Maytree was in Thailand during the Vietnam War years, but monsoon rain must have blurred his notes. He has done a serious disservice to a genuine American hero.

John Ketwig is a lifetime member of VVAW, and the author of ?and a hard rain fell, A G.I.'s True Story of the War in Vietnam, and Vietnam Reconsidered: The War, the Times, and Why They Matter.