Arms & the Bishops

BATTLE OF INDOCHINA

TIME Correspondent Eric Gibbs visited a little-known part of Indo-China which is ruled neither by France nor Bao Dai nor Communist Ho Chi Minh. Gibbs's report:

FOR centuries the great Red River has swept its rusty silt into the blue salt water of the Gulf of Tonkin. On the rich soil thus built up have risen the twin bishoprics of Bui Chu (pronounced Booey Choo) and Phat Diem (pronounced Fat Zee-em). In a predominately Buddhist country and against the rising tide of Viet Minh Communism, they have established their predominately separate existence as independent Roman Catholic theocracies ruled by Monsignor Le Huu Tu, Bishop of Phat Diem, and his protege Monsignor Pham Ngoc Chi, Bishop of Bui Chu.

Le Huu Tu is the only Catholic bishop in the world (besides the Pope) with his own private army: two battalions of regular troops, five battalions of militia. His cathedral enclosure includes an army barracks. Adjoining the priests' quarters is a small factory for making grenades, mortar bombs and grenade throwers. The two bishops are temporal as well as spiritual rulers over a principality of 1,070 square miles and 2,600,000 population, of whom one-quarter are Catholics, the rest mostly Buddhists. The flat skyline of the two bishoprics is spiked by the tall spires of no less than 650 churches.

Wish for Sten Guns. Phat Diem and Bui Chu can be reached only by boat or primitive ferry after miles of bumping along dikes. Few Europeans or Americans have ever visited the bishoprics. Thus it was a memorable day recently when a group of U.S. visitors, including a representative of EGA, dropped in to pay their respects.

Outside of Phu-Nai church, largest in all Viet Nam, a small boy ran ahead of Les americains waving a big new Stars & Stripes made for the occasion in the hardworking local flag factory. A six-piece brass band was on hand and a demonstrative crowd stood by, cheering wildly. In the gothic-style church, a choir of little girls dressed in white chanted, "Our Lady, pity Viet Nam and bring peace." Then the straggly-bearded parish priest. Pere Luc, presented an embroidered silk panel to his visitors and in the same breath asked for his dearest wish: 20 to 30 Sten guns to help arm the hundred local militiamen.

Chubby, cheerful Bishop Pham Ngoc Chi celebrated the occasion by smoking his first cigarette in 23 years. At lunch, an excited waiter spilled gravy all over Bishop Le Huu Tu's white fleece cape and cream-colored soutane. After lunch, Bishop Le Huu Tu set out for his own see of Phat Diem aboard one of the principality's boats, flying the yellow & white papal standard, and manned by a crew of young huskies armed with new Tommy guns and wearing on their shoulders Le Huu Tu's own crest, a Chinese dragon coiled around a trumpet, surmounted by a star and a bishop's hat.

Bishop Le Huu Tu is an interesting personality; for 17 of his 54 years he was a Trappist monk. He has black eyebrows and protruding teeth. When he smiles, revealing a dazzling expanse of teeth and pink gums, and his long, bony hands flutter sensitively, he suddenly becomes transfigured into a man of charm and considerable magnetism. In 1945, before his rebellion, Communist Boss Ho Chi Minh named Bishop Tu "Supreme Counselor." "Being Supreme Counselor to Ho Chi Minh," explains Tu suavely, "was only an expedient. I realized from the first that he was Communist, but I used to tell him if you are a nationalist I am for you and your government, but if you are a Communist I am against you." Le Huu Tu has declared allegiance to Bao Dai's government, but in practice he operates as an independent sovereign.

Cheers for Father. Le Huu Tu has so far managed to protect his bishopric from the Communists. Phat Diem is too small to warrant full-scale Viet Minh attack and too determined in its self-defense to be taken without such an attack. Le Huu Tu chuckles at his own cunning. Phat Diem people are happy about it too, because the net effect so far has been favorable : while other towns in the delta region have been systematically destroyed by earth-scorching Viet Minhs, Phat Diem and Bui Chu are alone unscathed.

Among simple people of this region, Bishop Le Huu Tu is clearly a hero. When the sampan carrying him from steamer to shore was in danger of sticking on a mud-bank, crowds of men & women jumped into the river to their waists, virtually carried the whole sampan, including the bishop and his attendant priests, plus the American visitors. Along the road from the river to Phat Diem town, a group of young cyclists waited to greet the returning bishop. He had been away only four days, but the people seemed genuinely moved and excited in welcoming him back. Some knelt by the roadside. Mothers held out their bare-bottomed babies for the bishop's blessing. Little boys & girls ran screaming, laughing, cheering beside the battered old episcopal car. In Hanoi, I have seen frozen-faced people watch Bao Dai pass by. This was very different.

As cheers of "Hoan Ho" (long life) swelled up along the road, Bishop Tu chuckled. "It's always like this," he said. "You see I am the government. I am their father. When I am away they feel lost. They don't quite know what to do. When I return, they feel happy again."

Beatings for Truth. In this isolated part of the country, the old-fashioned "L'Etat c'est moi" seems to provide, for the time being at least, an effective answer to Communism. It is doubtless too medieval to work in more complex conditions elsewhere in Indo-China.

Taxation and justice are a mixture of old Indo-Chinese custom and Bishop Tu's improvisations. He names magistrates as well as every other important official in Phat Diem. "We are very human here," he explains. "If we catch a thief we just keep him in jail for a few months, and then if he is converted to the church or shows himself repentant we let him go. We have no capital punishment. We have no corporal punishment either. Of course, when we catch a spy we beat him. But that is not to punish him. It is only to get the truth out of him."

Though Bishop Tu is also commander in chief of the private army of Phat Diem and Bui Chu, operational control is in the hands of dapper Ngo Cao Tung, who looks ten years younger than his 40 years, claims to have served as a major on Chiang Kai-shek's staff and as military counselor to the Nationalist commander in chief in South China. He arrived in Phat Diem last May. Under him are two regular battalions of 1,700 men, known as Groupe Mobile Autonome. His uniform, a strange mixture of his own and the bishop's design, includes a Sam Browne belt, rank badges of a French major and a gold cap badge showing a miter with crossed keys.

The G.M.A. has five jeeps, seven G.M.C. six-wheeler trucks, two radios. Also under Le Huu Tu's "exclusive authority" are 5,800 militiamen equipped with very little but bush hats, about 30 old rifles per company of 120 men, and a good deal of zeal.

On Phat Diem's southern border, where mountains leap suddenly from the rice plain like rocks from the sea, the Viet Minhs occasionally raid the bishop's territory. But so far there has been no big attack. Bui Chu and Phat Diem still manage to maintain their independent existence. At the back of Monsignor Le Huu Tu's episcopal palace, the lathes grind out crude grenades, mortars and one Rube Goldberg contraption, proudly described by one of the priests as "our flying bomb."

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