Gimpy_Fac
01-14-2014, 09:49 AM
All of our various boating excursions in and around the Mekong Delta had thrown up and involved some dynamic, interesting, larger than life individuals. One of these was the Cabaret Club owning, petit and slender, Mademoiselle Béatrice de Funès, who had been recruited into the murky world of military intelligence by our agency operating out of Saigon. Being a natural linguist blessed with a phenomenal eye for detail made her an invaluable addition to their clandestine activities.
In addition to her various socialite, and local connections via the Cabaret Club, she had a unique relationship with the Can Lao a shadowy political party of the Diem government, which pervaded the entire administrative, intelligence, and military structures of South Vietnam. Our military inteligence people rightly judged these alliances perfect for information gathering, especially within the Can Lao, as they had a strong suspicion that some within their ranks were playing the old two-card-shuffle, the double game, and hedging their bets with Hanoi against the final outcome of the war.
After the Agency backed an overthrow of Diem in 1963, some of the Can Lao did exactly what was suspected of them, and swapped sides. Their defection put Béatrice in an even stronger position within our military as she now had contacts on either side of the fence.
Béatrice de Funès was reputedly her given name, but was never officially confirmed, neither to me, nor for that matter, anyone else. If the Agency knew for a fact either way, they never said, this being standard practice in all cases. However, those who self-styled themselves as being close friends to Beatrice claimed that it was. Intriguingly, and true to her frosty personality, she always coldly stated that she never had friends, only acquaintances.
Known to the majority by her intelligence operative name of Tante Bee she was, with all certainty, by birth a product of La Troisième République, the third French Republic. She was the only female child within the strata of an haute bourgeoisie, upper class, family living on the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, who enjoyed partaking of the decadent Paris style of the time.This Parisian lifestyle could well have been a gilded one for Béatrice, and would possibly have remained so indefinitely, had not the Great War come along and destroyed it forever. Not only did that war violently take her beloved, devoted father from the family, it also removed her brothers and uncles from her young life in exactly the same cruel manner.
Shells and other war ordnance have no particular preference as to social class when doing their work. By the war’s end the complete male line, seven in all, of the de Funès who lived in a grande maison on the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, lay amongst the near million and half other French military dead.
The fall in fortune for the now all female de Funès was not a swift one; it was more a case of just gently withering on the vine. Eventually the money started to run out with the Great Depression speeding up the process, and thus allowing their creditors to eagerly strip away what few assets remained.
They had descended the social ladder to complete financial insolvency. Being now destitute, the de Funès found themselves having to live hand-to-mouth in the Mediterranean city of Marseilles. Having few options left, it was by far a better choice than having to do the same when forced to endure the bone-chilling cold of a harsh Paris winter.
Proof that she was one of a life’s survivors, it was by sheer determination, and supreme personal effort, that Béatrice eventually dragged herself out of the Great Depression’s induced gutter. Escaping the despair and poverty, she emerged from the squalid slums of Marseilles just as les années folles, the crazy years, were drawing to closure.
Around the time when the Yen Bai Mutiny heralded the slow demise of French colonial rule in Indo China, Béatrice became romantically involved with a low ranking French government official, who was to be banished to serve in Morocco. This posting was regarded as a punishment for a minor financial transgression. To Béatrice it was to be one more recovering step on society’s ladder.
By the time German jack-boots were crashing their way through much of Europe, and with the fall of France, Morocco’s carefully constructed French society started to split and fall apart, into which, due to her original social standing, Béatrice fitted so well, started to lose its appeal. It was at this point her life took another completely different direction.
Whilst her previously disgraced Official grasped the opportunity for his redemption within l'État Français, the French state, by returning to Marseilles and enthusiastically serving Doriot’s Parti Populaire Français, the French Popular Party. Béatrice, on the other hand, not wishing to be considered as directly supporting the Vichy regime, made a much more intellectual choice by heading for pastures anew in Guyane Française, French Guiana, on South America’s northern coast. Securing, using various contacts, a lucrative post assisting in the planned closure of Bagne de Cayenne, the French Guiana penal colony.
Having not emulated her lover’s folly did prove, by passage of time, an astute decision on her part. Following the allied victory in Europe, her Official, who so dedicated followed the French fascists, went into hiding in Sète. There he was tracked down and treated to a swift, summary execution for treason by members of a local resistance group.
Within months of the Japanese surrendering in Vietnam, and the reestablishment of French colonial rule, Béatrice was once more on the move. Her excellent work in Guyane Française had not gone unnoticed, nor in a certain way unrewarded. On hearing that a city secretariat post had become available in Saigon she immediately took interest.
The prospect of being marooned in Guyana, or returning to France, when the penal system finally ceased held no appeal. Making full use of a portfolio containing influential acquaintances she had compiled, the post in Saigon was soon to be guaranteed. Vietnamese Independence was just a fire glow on the horizon when the then vibrant, cosmopolitan city of Saigon first encountered Mademoiselle Béatrice de Funès, and she it.
The area from the west of Saigon, all the way up to the Cambodian border, and to the south west, a vast Everglades swamp called “The Plain of Reeds”, which reminded us of our training time in Florida’s “Sea of Grass”, was of the greatest interest to our intelligence agency. These areas were where the VC and NVA had started to concentrate the majority of their infiltration, and supply efforts. The Delta, as a whole, did see similar enemy activity, but it became to a lesser degree once our Riverine forces engaged the problem more forcibly. Firstly, by directly taking on the “no flag fleet” of Chinese built fishing trawlers which were smuggling arms, personnel and equipment, in the coastal waters. Then progressively punching our way into even the smallest of waterways the Delta had to offer.
In the years of Riverine warfare, Béatrice and her ilk participated in operation Phoenix, the intelligence-based campaign to disrupt, and whenever possible eliminate, the Viet Cong. Had it not been for them producing accurate, detailed reports, regarding many VC and NVA planned activities, in and around Saigon and the Delta; our tasks would have been made that much harder, and certainly more deadly. They were amazingly adept at gleaning all sorts of important intelligence, but exactly how this was done I was never made privy to.
Béatrice did give me one piece of valuable advice regarding any possible clash of cultures, if or when I would have to deal directly with the Vietnam populace, by saying, “Remember, you are in their world, not of their world”. I took this as meaning mutual respect will achieve more than mutual mistrust. Interestingly, during an alcohol fueled candid moment, a senior officer confirmed that which most of us had already come to realize, by saying, “ For us to win here will take replacing our natural contempt for an enemy with respect. Unfortunately, as our arrogance will never allow this, we are going to lose.”
Regardless of the projected air of ice cold indifference which she gave out to others, I always found Béatrice to have a motherly concern as to my wellbeing, which I believe arose from my personal connection with Montréal, having told me that it was her hearts wish to quietly live out the remainder of her life in either the French speaking parts of Canada, or the United States. Returning to her beloved France was not an option for it held too many painful memories for her.
In the spring of 1968 when on an enemy enforced visit to the military hospital in the King’s Park area of Hong Kong, I lay on a hospital beds rock-hard butchers slab of a mattress with a badly infected wound. The offending limb, my leg, was strapped to a board, and a broad smile decorated my face. This out of place cheerful look soon attracted puzzled interest from the ward nurses and corpsmen orderlies, for being marked down as possibly requiring an amputation they were unable to fathom out just what I had to smile about. It was beyond the effort of explanation, for I was listening to an unknown in the adjoining ward rendering a whistled version of non je ne regrette rien. As the tune echoed around the ward, once more, in my mind’s eye, I could see Béatrice.
Just as Piaf who had dedicated the song to them, she adored the French Foreign Legion, and had backed their putsch against the leadership of Algeria in 61. On any occasion when an ex Legionnaire entered the Club, she would vigorously bang on the Club’s bar with a beer mallet for silence, ascended a short staircase to the cabaret stage, and sing the timeless, and haunting, non, je ne regrette rien in their honor, as it being an imbedded part of French Foreign Legion heritage.
For this she received an enthusiastic, raucous chorus, of appreciative whistles and shouts, accompanied by deafening applause. In response to such an accolade, as an encore, she would sing la vie en rose, then, ne me quitte pas. Had anyone in the early years of the 1960’s wished to seek a later-in-life Édith Piaf look-alike, and in their quest took to the backwaters of the Mekong Delta, there was available, the one and only, redoubtable, Béatrice de Funès.
Two of my crew hailed from Louisiana and couldn’t get enough of these impromptu programs of song. Being sons of that state they had an understandable natural love for French, and especially Cajun, music. They used to drive us to near insanity, by playing on a little portable player their collection of bayou classic records, at a near eardrum bursting volume, as if doing a brainwashing exercise! Over, and over again, they would relentlessly play their favorite tunes, with la danse de mardi gras being the most often chosen.
This activity we had to suffer in silence, for one reason, and one only, in that they were a tremendous asset to our boat. Being used to a humid, subtropical climate similar to that found in Vietnam, and from an area made up of delta marsh and swamp, the Mekong Delta was a second home to that Acadian pair; they just fitted right in, and understood all of its little quirks and mysteries. Something crews on other boats always tended to struggle with.
It is beyond doubt that some of those who still live in Saigon, now called ho-chi-minh City, will ever forget Mademoiselle Béatrice de Funès, also known as Tante Bee, for her efforts undoubtedly saved many lives, both Vietnamese and ours. Unfortunately, the heroes and heroines of the intelligence services regrettably, but in normality, remain unsung. It took a particular style of courage, which very few possessed, to brave-up and accept being an overt or covert in-field operator, surreptitiously gathering intelligence during the Vietnam War.
In addition to her various socialite, and local connections via the Cabaret Club, she had a unique relationship with the Can Lao a shadowy political party of the Diem government, which pervaded the entire administrative, intelligence, and military structures of South Vietnam. Our military inteligence people rightly judged these alliances perfect for information gathering, especially within the Can Lao, as they had a strong suspicion that some within their ranks were playing the old two-card-shuffle, the double game, and hedging their bets with Hanoi against the final outcome of the war.
After the Agency backed an overthrow of Diem in 1963, some of the Can Lao did exactly what was suspected of them, and swapped sides. Their defection put Béatrice in an even stronger position within our military as she now had contacts on either side of the fence.
Béatrice de Funès was reputedly her given name, but was never officially confirmed, neither to me, nor for that matter, anyone else. If the Agency knew for a fact either way, they never said, this being standard practice in all cases. However, those who self-styled themselves as being close friends to Beatrice claimed that it was. Intriguingly, and true to her frosty personality, she always coldly stated that she never had friends, only acquaintances.
Known to the majority by her intelligence operative name of Tante Bee she was, with all certainty, by birth a product of La Troisième République, the third French Republic. She was the only female child within the strata of an haute bourgeoisie, upper class, family living on the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, who enjoyed partaking of the decadent Paris style of the time.This Parisian lifestyle could well have been a gilded one for Béatrice, and would possibly have remained so indefinitely, had not the Great War come along and destroyed it forever. Not only did that war violently take her beloved, devoted father from the family, it also removed her brothers and uncles from her young life in exactly the same cruel manner.
Shells and other war ordnance have no particular preference as to social class when doing their work. By the war’s end the complete male line, seven in all, of the de Funès who lived in a grande maison on the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, lay amongst the near million and half other French military dead.
The fall in fortune for the now all female de Funès was not a swift one; it was more a case of just gently withering on the vine. Eventually the money started to run out with the Great Depression speeding up the process, and thus allowing their creditors to eagerly strip away what few assets remained.
They had descended the social ladder to complete financial insolvency. Being now destitute, the de Funès found themselves having to live hand-to-mouth in the Mediterranean city of Marseilles. Having few options left, it was by far a better choice than having to do the same when forced to endure the bone-chilling cold of a harsh Paris winter.
Proof that she was one of a life’s survivors, it was by sheer determination, and supreme personal effort, that Béatrice eventually dragged herself out of the Great Depression’s induced gutter. Escaping the despair and poverty, she emerged from the squalid slums of Marseilles just as les années folles, the crazy years, were drawing to closure.
Around the time when the Yen Bai Mutiny heralded the slow demise of French colonial rule in Indo China, Béatrice became romantically involved with a low ranking French government official, who was to be banished to serve in Morocco. This posting was regarded as a punishment for a minor financial transgression. To Béatrice it was to be one more recovering step on society’s ladder.
By the time German jack-boots were crashing their way through much of Europe, and with the fall of France, Morocco’s carefully constructed French society started to split and fall apart, into which, due to her original social standing, Béatrice fitted so well, started to lose its appeal. It was at this point her life took another completely different direction.
Whilst her previously disgraced Official grasped the opportunity for his redemption within l'État Français, the French state, by returning to Marseilles and enthusiastically serving Doriot’s Parti Populaire Français, the French Popular Party. Béatrice, on the other hand, not wishing to be considered as directly supporting the Vichy regime, made a much more intellectual choice by heading for pastures anew in Guyane Française, French Guiana, on South America’s northern coast. Securing, using various contacts, a lucrative post assisting in the planned closure of Bagne de Cayenne, the French Guiana penal colony.
Having not emulated her lover’s folly did prove, by passage of time, an astute decision on her part. Following the allied victory in Europe, her Official, who so dedicated followed the French fascists, went into hiding in Sète. There he was tracked down and treated to a swift, summary execution for treason by members of a local resistance group.
Within months of the Japanese surrendering in Vietnam, and the reestablishment of French colonial rule, Béatrice was once more on the move. Her excellent work in Guyane Française had not gone unnoticed, nor in a certain way unrewarded. On hearing that a city secretariat post had become available in Saigon she immediately took interest.
The prospect of being marooned in Guyana, or returning to France, when the penal system finally ceased held no appeal. Making full use of a portfolio containing influential acquaintances she had compiled, the post in Saigon was soon to be guaranteed. Vietnamese Independence was just a fire glow on the horizon when the then vibrant, cosmopolitan city of Saigon first encountered Mademoiselle Béatrice de Funès, and she it.
The area from the west of Saigon, all the way up to the Cambodian border, and to the south west, a vast Everglades swamp called “The Plain of Reeds”, which reminded us of our training time in Florida’s “Sea of Grass”, was of the greatest interest to our intelligence agency. These areas were where the VC and NVA had started to concentrate the majority of their infiltration, and supply efforts. The Delta, as a whole, did see similar enemy activity, but it became to a lesser degree once our Riverine forces engaged the problem more forcibly. Firstly, by directly taking on the “no flag fleet” of Chinese built fishing trawlers which were smuggling arms, personnel and equipment, in the coastal waters. Then progressively punching our way into even the smallest of waterways the Delta had to offer.
In the years of Riverine warfare, Béatrice and her ilk participated in operation Phoenix, the intelligence-based campaign to disrupt, and whenever possible eliminate, the Viet Cong. Had it not been for them producing accurate, detailed reports, regarding many VC and NVA planned activities, in and around Saigon and the Delta; our tasks would have been made that much harder, and certainly more deadly. They were amazingly adept at gleaning all sorts of important intelligence, but exactly how this was done I was never made privy to.
Béatrice did give me one piece of valuable advice regarding any possible clash of cultures, if or when I would have to deal directly with the Vietnam populace, by saying, “Remember, you are in their world, not of their world”. I took this as meaning mutual respect will achieve more than mutual mistrust. Interestingly, during an alcohol fueled candid moment, a senior officer confirmed that which most of us had already come to realize, by saying, “ For us to win here will take replacing our natural contempt for an enemy with respect. Unfortunately, as our arrogance will never allow this, we are going to lose.”
Regardless of the projected air of ice cold indifference which she gave out to others, I always found Béatrice to have a motherly concern as to my wellbeing, which I believe arose from my personal connection with Montréal, having told me that it was her hearts wish to quietly live out the remainder of her life in either the French speaking parts of Canada, or the United States. Returning to her beloved France was not an option for it held too many painful memories for her.
In the spring of 1968 when on an enemy enforced visit to the military hospital in the King’s Park area of Hong Kong, I lay on a hospital beds rock-hard butchers slab of a mattress with a badly infected wound. The offending limb, my leg, was strapped to a board, and a broad smile decorated my face. This out of place cheerful look soon attracted puzzled interest from the ward nurses and corpsmen orderlies, for being marked down as possibly requiring an amputation they were unable to fathom out just what I had to smile about. It was beyond the effort of explanation, for I was listening to an unknown in the adjoining ward rendering a whistled version of non je ne regrette rien. As the tune echoed around the ward, once more, in my mind’s eye, I could see Béatrice.
Just as Piaf who had dedicated the song to them, she adored the French Foreign Legion, and had backed their putsch against the leadership of Algeria in 61. On any occasion when an ex Legionnaire entered the Club, she would vigorously bang on the Club’s bar with a beer mallet for silence, ascended a short staircase to the cabaret stage, and sing the timeless, and haunting, non, je ne regrette rien in their honor, as it being an imbedded part of French Foreign Legion heritage.
For this she received an enthusiastic, raucous chorus, of appreciative whistles and shouts, accompanied by deafening applause. In response to such an accolade, as an encore, she would sing la vie en rose, then, ne me quitte pas. Had anyone in the early years of the 1960’s wished to seek a later-in-life Édith Piaf look-alike, and in their quest took to the backwaters of the Mekong Delta, there was available, the one and only, redoubtable, Béatrice de Funès.
Two of my crew hailed from Louisiana and couldn’t get enough of these impromptu programs of song. Being sons of that state they had an understandable natural love for French, and especially Cajun, music. They used to drive us to near insanity, by playing on a little portable player their collection of bayou classic records, at a near eardrum bursting volume, as if doing a brainwashing exercise! Over, and over again, they would relentlessly play their favorite tunes, with la danse de mardi gras being the most often chosen.
This activity we had to suffer in silence, for one reason, and one only, in that they were a tremendous asset to our boat. Being used to a humid, subtropical climate similar to that found in Vietnam, and from an area made up of delta marsh and swamp, the Mekong Delta was a second home to that Acadian pair; they just fitted right in, and understood all of its little quirks and mysteries. Something crews on other boats always tended to struggle with.
It is beyond doubt that some of those who still live in Saigon, now called ho-chi-minh City, will ever forget Mademoiselle Béatrice de Funès, also known as Tante Bee, for her efforts undoubtedly saved many lives, both Vietnamese and ours. Unfortunately, the heroes and heroines of the intelligence services regrettably, but in normality, remain unsung. It took a particular style of courage, which very few possessed, to brave-up and accept being an overt or covert in-field operator, surreptitiously gathering intelligence during the Vietnam War.