Incoming
Embassy Hotel, Saigon, South Vietnam, 1968
It had been an exhausting and traumatic day for Time correspondent Wallace Terry. Trying to get some rest in his hotel room, he was startled upright in his bed, gasping for air. He finally managed to get to sleep but bolted awake, his body wracked with chest pains. Too frightened to let himself fall back to sleep, his first thought was to seek help from John Cantwell, his Time colleague, whose room was on the floor above. Terry, however, realized that Cantwell was not there. He was in Hong Kong visiting his wife and children.
“He’d know if I were having a heart attack, I thought, with some confidence,” Terry remembered.
After banging on Smitty’s door, a voice thundered at him: “Goddam Wally. What the hell you want at this hour?”
Terry tried to explain.
“What you eat today?” Smitty asked.
“Not much of anything,” Terry responded.
“Hmm. Well, what were you doin’? Where’d they send ya’?”
Terry told Smitty about flying four missions with the Vietnamese air force, including streaking at treetop level to strike enemy positions, narrowly avoiding midair collisions because the pilots insisted on flying at the same altitude, and getting lost over the Mekong Delta with no view of the ground below.
Smitty laughed. He informed the reporter there was nothing to worry about. The explanation was simple.
“Oh, man, you just scared.”
