He roamed about with insurgents, looked for evidence of “yellow rain” and later began to search for remains of U.S. Schwab’s favorite place to reconnoiter was Laos, which had a largely unpatrolled 1,100-mile border with Thailand. Embassy, until he earned its displeasure by suggesting that the most economical way to stop the flow of opium from the Golden Triangle was to buy the entire crop at prevailing market prices.
But Schwab knew the region well and had even worked briefly for the U.S. Some regarded this behavior as a bit squirrelly for a Williams College graduate who had an advanced degree in international management. Schwab used a pseudonym in those days and described his profession as “adventurer.” He changed hotels with irritating frequency and refused to talk on the telephone. “I’ll sit facing the door, if you don’t mind,” he said by way of introduction. But Schwab, just returned from a fortnight with anti-communist guerrillas inside Laos, took no chances. With the exception of a mama-san planting joss sticks in a spirit house above the bar, I was the only person present when he entered. My first meeting with Schwab was in a Bangkok tavern frequented by Western spies who wore safari suits and drank their beer from quart-sized bottles.
“There are people like me who just can’t pass up something like this,” he said, adding that success would have achieved “something no other American ever had in Vietnam-victory.”
13 after 16 months in prison, he defended his noble, if inept, foray. Schwab’s plan, if it can be called that, was to present himself to the Marxist authorities who, touched by his affair of the heart, would reunite him with his former lover.Īlas, this made-for-television scenario did not play well with the Nghia Binh Province Peoples Committee, which arrested him before he had the chance to surrender, stonewalled all queries regarding the girl and denounced him as yet another spying Rambo run amok. His goal was to locate a girl left behind in America’s chaotic exodus from Saigon a decade before. His most recent exploit began in April, 1985, when he sailed alone across the South China Sea to central Vietnam. And then there were those who made their break with civilization and filtered back into the jungle. veterans could be found squatting in the shade and discussing counterinsurgency with men awaiting resettlement to Montana. In places where Hmong tribesmen took shelter, after fighting for the CIA, U.S. Others came for shorter intervals, to work in refugee camps along the dusty Cambodian border. veterans, uneasy at home, pulled up stakes and emigrated to Thailand. Temptations of the yellow sickness did not end with the collapse of Saigon. Americans proved susceptible: 9,000 remained behind when Washington withdrew its combat forces from South Vietnam in 1973. But prolonged exposure to the exotic culture of Vietnam, the French believed, could turn Paris boulevardiers into confirmed expatriates. The affliction strikes only those who have lived in Southeast Asia, and in most cases is benign. Robert Schwab, an American who was released this month from a Vietnamese prison, may have been suffering from what old Indochina hands once called “le mal jaune “-the yellow sickness.
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