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General Nguyen Khanh, who toppled the junta that had toppled President Diem, ran South Viet Nam in 1964-65 through a series of revolving-door coups and countercoups (one of which sidelined Khanh himself for a time). Amid wide civic unrest and a serious deterioration in South Viet Nam's military effectiveness, Khanh responded to his problems by repeated calls for a "march north" (Bac tien)—which served to torpedo a promising peace initiative that was then under way. Finally ousted in 1965 by General Nguyen Van Thieu, Khanh, 44, now cheerfully operates a Vietnamese restaurant in Paris called La Table du Mandarin.
General Paul D. Harkins, the U.S. commander in Saigon from 1962 to 1964, who labored mightily to build up South Viet Nam's military and economic reserves, used to tell doubting reporters: "I am an optimist, and I am not going to allow my staff to be pessimistic." General Harkins retired after his Viet Nam assignment, and now, at 68, he lives in Dallas, where he serves as a director of the Independent American Life Insurance Co. Says he: "Looking back on all these years—all of the blood and agony—I have to wonder what we accomplished."
One of the single most horrifying photos of the war was that of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, then director of the national police, emptying his pistol into the head of a bound prisoner during the 1968 Tet offensive (see page 20). Three months later, in a Saigon street battle, Loan was seriously wounded in the right leg and thigh. A year later, he was treated in Washington's Walter Reed Hospital for complications from the wound. He is now back in Saigon in a minor defense post, with the leg atrophied and useless.