In November of 1969, the South Vietnamese River Assault and Interdiction Division to which I was senior advisor had been mauled in two serious night battles in the U-Minh Forest of the Mekong Delta. Half of our twenty-one riverboats along the Song Cai Lon Canal had been so badly shot up by rocket propelled grenades (RPGs – shoulder fired rockets with high explosive shaped charge warheads), mortars, and recoilless rifles that we desperately needed repairs. USS Askari (ARL 30), a WWII LST converted into a repair ship for riverboats, was waiting for us in the Bassac River (a channel of the Mekong River) at Long Xuyen, one hundred miles to the north as the helicopter flies, but much more as the boat winds its way through canals and small streams.
This situation necessitated a journey that resulted in a shock to my core.
In an ominous development, the Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) had filled with dirt, logs, and booby traps a stretch of the canal to the north that we had used to enter the area. They were trying to trap us, but they had not yet blocked the escape route to the south. We took advantage of this route to leave with our most badly damaged boats although it would add one hundred miles to our trip and would force us to travel in small streams and canals through territory that had been held by the enemy since the beginning of the war. The enemy would not expect us to try that. We left quietly and in radio silence before dawn of our day of departure. We encountered no opposition, which was good, for we were in no condition to fight.
The early part of the trip was through jungle forests or rice growing areas that had become fallow and overgrown with vegetation due to heavy bombing by B52s and due to relocation of inhabitants to government controlled areas. That area was a “Free Fire Zone,” where anyone in it was considered an enemy combatant. On the second day, the boats came upon an area that was open and neatly organized into verdant rice paddies and palm groves. Along the bank of the canal at even ten foot intervals small mangrove trees had been planted. At the south end of an arrow straight canal was a village. We stopped there.
A U. S. Navy petty officer and I were the only Americans with our boats, and my Vietnamese navy counterpart, Lieutenant Dong, told me that the people of the village had not seen a Caucasian since the French plantation owner had left in 1954. Soon curious villagers came down to see the boats and the foreigners. One young man said in excellent English that we had very nice boats. I thought, “You should have seen them before they got shot up!”
The people in this village were clearly of some different racial and ethnic makeup from any I had seen before. I asked LT Dong whether these people were part French. He said that they were not; they were the descendants of the Anhs. In the late eighteenth century, he explained, the two big clans vying for power in Vietnam were the Nguyens and the Anhs. The Nguyens won a civil war, forcing the prince of the Anhs to flee to this remote area of the country with his retinue, his wives, and his concubines. (This story caused me to fantasize about my hopefully being “forced” someday to flee to the Louisiana bayous with the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.) These people had remained isolated for centuries, resulting in a population distinct in appearance from other Vietnamese. I found these people more attractive than the general population. I still suspect that there were some French genes in the group, for their noses were taller and their eyes rounder. We stayed the night at that village. I was totally unprepared for what happened next!
When it grew dark, I was astounded by an extraordinary light show. There were millions of fireflies gathered in the mangrove trees lining the canal. Unlike the “lightning bugs” with which I was familiar from the southern U.S., these bugs were able to synchronize their flashing such that the canal looked as if it were decorated with yellow, blinking Christmas lights. The fireflies in one tree would begin flashing randomly, then, as if a switch had been thrown, the flashing would become synchronized pulses. This was happening in all of the trees along both sides of the canal as far as one could see. The trees were not necessarily synchronized with each other, but for brief periods two or three near each other would do so. The villagers had deliberately planted the trees to attract the fireflies, creating the amazing display to which I was a witness.
I could not believe my eyes. I had never read or heard of anything like that, much less seen it. The Vietnamese, on the other hand, took it in stride, for they all knew about it. They had grown up with it. It was as normal to them as ordinary fireflies are to us.
It was not just the fireflies that exhibited bioluminescence. The water in the canal was bioluminescent, too. We were quite near the coast and the water in the canal was brackish. Any disturbance of the water caused small organisms in the water to glow brightly. I had seen this in the ocean often, but not in inland waters. Tossing a stone into the water produced expanding concentric rings of glowing organisms. The whole experience seemed surreal to me, but to the Vietnamese it was nothing. The whole place was magical. Far from any city, even the stars exhibited extraordinary brilliance.
After a week, the boats safely completed a complete circumnavigation of the lower end of the Mekong Delta, heading first south, then east, then north, and then northwest up the Bassac to the USS Askari at Long Xuyen. There, skilled welders, machinists, engine mechanics, and gunners mates put each of the boats back in good as new condition. The canal blockage had been cleared and we were able to return to our operating area by the original route. I never saw the little magical village again.
I tell many stories about my Navy career, but the story of the fireflies caused some listeners to roll back their eyes as if the whole thing were a tall tale. However, the July 1971 issue of National Geographic contained a story about this bioluminescence by Dr. Paul A. Zahl. An expert on the subject, he described in great detail his quest to find what the Malaysians called the kelip-kelip, known to scientists as the synchronously flashing firefly, Pteroptyx. He found them in a lone mangrove tree in the State of Johore, Malaysia. He wrote: “In my years as an observer of bioluminescence I have witnessed many unusual phenomena, but this was far more spectacular than anything I have ever seen. Something was making those multitudes blink at the same instant…. [T]he frequency varies depending on species and temperature. Pteroptyx malaccae turns on its light about once a second. The human eye detects only one flash; in fact, the insect produces two, spaced a scant 1/30th of a second apart…. As dusk settles, one firefly signals the start of the evening’s performance. Others flash, though not all at once, and soon the entire tree twinkles. The lights in one area begin flaring in unison, others pick up the rhythm, and almost all flick on and off together. Biologists speculate that the male fireflies pool their luminosity to give females emphatic notice of their whereabouts.”
Dr. Zahl had written many articles on bioluminescence and knew full well what he would find in Malaysia. Nevertheless, he regarded the phenomenon of the synchronized flashing fireflies, as he wrote above, “far more spectacular than anything” he had ever seen. Can you imagine how dumbstruck I was? I had not expected anything, yet I had seen an even more amazing sight of, not just one lone mangrove tree lit up, but dozens of them -- as far as one could see! I knew then that I was going to have a problem persuading anyone to believe this. I was not equipped with any camera capable of recording the sight. I just had a small Kodak camera with no lens adjustment capability.
A few years later National Geographic published a new story about another expedition to observe those same fireflies, this time by cardiologists, who saw the ability of the insects to synchronize their flashing as analogous to individual heart muscle fibers contracting simultaneously. In various heart rhythm problems such as atrial fibrillation, the individual muscles of the heart lose their ability to pump together and, instead, contract randomly. The researchers hoped to decipher the cues used by the insects to synchronize their flashes. Perhaps there was a clue to a method of restoring normal rhythm to arrhythmic hearts. (Coincidentally, I have been a victim of arrhythmia and have had occasional treatments to restore normal heart function. These procedures worked for me. I hope the fireflies contributed to the development of the treatments.)
People ask me whether I ever want to return to Vietnam for a visit. I have little desire to do so. The Vietnam War was not a happy time for me. However, I really would like to see that strange village again – and the fireflies.
