MAY 2022
 
CONTENT
  • The mystical pythons of Southeast Asia
  • In memory of John Paul Vann: "a not so quiet American"
THE MYSTICAL PYTHONS
OF SOUTHEAST ASIA
In this newsletter, Secret Indochina looks at a legendary creature of the Southeast Asian Forest: the Python.

The python is a reptile that belongs to the order Squamata, which includes lizards and snakes, and the family Pythonidae with genera such as Antaresia, Apodora, Aspidites, Liasis, Python, Malayopython (newly placed in a separate genus), and the only species in the family, Loxocemidae. There are about 30 species and 20 subspecies of python living in Africa, Australia, India, and Southeast Asia, Africa.

In Southeast Asia, we mainly meet the reticulated python (Malayopython reticulatus) and the python molurus (Python molurus bivittatus). Giant predatory snakes, their length varies from 50 cm to more than 10 m for the reticulated python, which holds the title of longest snake in the world, in competition with the anaconda. Their weight varies from 60 to more than 140 kg as an adult.

The body of the reticulated python is a varying shade of brown with complex diamond-shaped patterns in dark brown and ochre yellow that are more or less regular and sometimes spotted with brown, creating an iridescent reflection. The python’s head is light brown with three thin black bands, one on the top of the skull and two on the sides starting from its eyes, which are orange. The python molurus has a uniformly shaded body with irregular brown-green geometric spots and black circles on the pinkish beige dorsal side. A dark arrow appears on the top of the head. These colorations, at first sight gaudy and contrasting, serve as visual disruptors that mask the snake’s contours and help camouflage it.

These pythons are solitary with a lifespan of 20 to over 30 years. They live in various habitats such as jungles, grasslands, swamps, tropical forests, and rocky areas. They are sometimes found in abandoned mammal burrows, hollow tree trunks, or mangroves. They often settle near a permanent water source.

Feared like the tiger and the gaur, these pythons feed on birds, small rodents, and larger prey such as monkeys, deer, wild pigs, small bears, and humans. Ambush hunters with infrared detection, pythons are primarily active at night, hiding on the ground or in a tree waiting to surprise their victims, choking and embracing them before swallowing them whole. After that, a digestion period of several hours to several weeks follows, depending on the intake. The mass of the heart’s ventricles can grow up to 40 percent, the oxygen demand of the organism being seven times higher than usual. During the digestion period, pythons are particularly vulnerable to predators. 

In ancient Greek religion, the Pythia (Ancient Greek Πυθία), also known as the Pythoness, takes her name from “Python” – the legendary and monstrous serpent (also characterized as a dragon woman) and son of Gaia (the Earth) or Hera – who dwells on Mount Parnassus, northeast of the city of Delphi (originally named Pythô), the most important religious site of the time. It is here that the god Apollo erected his temple in the seventh or eighth century B.C. after slaying the reptile that watched over the oracle of Delphi, originally dedicated to Themis, daughter of Uranus and Gaia. After a purifying exile of nine years and to appease the anger of Gaia, Apollo created the Pythian Games (also known as the Delphic Games), the most significant Panhellenic Games after those of Olympia.
From the seventh to the fourth centuries B.C., the Pythia, or priestess of Delphi, served as an interpreter of Apollo in a cave near the temple, where she was consulted by kings, generals, settlers, and citizens. There, she delivered her oracles and her hallucinatory prophecies after reaching a state of trance, or state of enthusiasm from the Greek expression entheos, meaning to have the god with oneself.

More locally, in the jungles of the Indochinese peninsula, the python has given rise to all sorts of fantastic tales. As Nicolas Vidal notes in his 2003 book Les Jungles Perdues, “its irresistible magnetic gaze is said to have the power to bewitch humans, whom it would then devour. Pythons are also the only living beings capable of reaching the celestial worlds other than dying or entering a trance. They are considered hermits because they lie in circles to digest and often go on long fasts.”

In the late 1930s, the python was at the center of a religious and revolutionary movement that inflamed the highlands of Indochina, the messianic movement of the Python God. The region’s inhabitants – mainly the Jarai, Edé, Sedang, and Katu peoples, called Moi or Montagnards by the colonists – believed that the mythical Python God, familiar to all the ethnic groups of the highlands, had returned to Earth to herald a new Golden Age. Before this Golden Age could begin, a six-day, six-night typhoon-like cataclysm would overturn trees and forests and upset the mountains to flatten the country. Only those Montagnards who complied with specific instructions would be spared, notably the possession of magical water (lustral water or influx water) and magical rice grains, elements distributed by Sam Bram (or Ama Cham, “the father of the Cham”), the prophet and incarnation of the Python God. All others would be destroyed, particularly foreigners including the French and the Kinh people. This movement brought together distant, isolated, and independent ethnic groups under the influence of a mystical belief. It was quickly put down by French security forces.
The Python God movement, considered by some to be millenarian, is similar to the Cargo Cult of the Aborigines at the end of the 19th century in reaction to the colonization of Melanesia (Oceania) and the Ghost Dance of the North American Indians. Both proclaimed the coming of a prophet predicting a golden age

From now on, the python is only found in the depths of Southeast Asian last great forests, notably in Xe Xap NBCA in southern Laos or in Virachey National Park in northeast Cambodia


© Illustration credit: Oliver Goldsmith

 
IN MEMORY OF JOHN PAUL VANN
"A NOT SO QUIET AMERICAN"
 
 
“We don’t have 12 years’ experience in Vietnam. We have one year’s experience 12 times over.” – John Paul Vann

June 9, 2022, marks the 50th anniversary of the death of John Paul Vann, a “not so quiet American” of the Vietnam War made famous by Neil Sheehan’s acclaimed book A Bright Shining Lie, among others.

John Paul Vann was born in 1924 in Norfolk, Virginia. From humble beginnings, he was able to attend boarding school through the patronage of a member of his parish. In 1943, he joined the U.S. Army, where he participated in pilot training and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. In October 1945, Vann married Mary Allen de Richestor, with whom he went on to have five children. He joined the infantry and was sent to Korea, where he coordinated the transportation of the 25th Division and participated in the Inchon landing. In 1954, Vann earned a B.S. in economics and statistics and joined the 16th Infantry Regiment in Germany. He returned to the United States in 1957 to attend the Command and General Staff College, a prerequisite for further promotion. During this time, he received an M.B.A. from Syracuse University and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1961.

In 1962, Vann volunteered for service in Vietnam, where he became an advisor to Colonel Huynh Van Cao, commander of the ARVN IV Corps. He was involved in anti-guerrilla actions, notably during the disastrous battle of Ap Bac on January 2, 1963, for which he received the Distinguished Flying Cross. Vann then tried to draw public attention to the “management of the war” through the New York Times journalist David Halberstam. In 1963, Vann completed his tour in Vietnam and, partly out of spite, left the army a few months later.

Vann took a job with Martin Marietta in Denver, but he missed Vietnam and its particularities. He returned to Vietnam in March 1965 as a civilian employee of the Agency for International Development (AID). He then joined the Civilian Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS), a group composed of USAID, intelligence, CIA, State Department, and U.S. Army personnel. Vann participated in various operations and campaigns until 1970, when he was assigned as a senior U.S. advisor to the II Corps military region (Pleiku - Kontum, the central and northern highlands). There, he served as advisor to the ARVN commander – a position equivalent in responsibilities to a major general in the U.S. Army – and became the first American civilian to command regular troops in combat.

Vann fought in the Battle of Kontum, which took place from May 2 to July 1, 1972. On June 9, during a night transfer between Pleiku and Kontum, his helicopter (call sign “Rogues Gallery”) crashed on a small, wooded hill, strangely enough the location of a proto-Indochinese cemetery and its enigmatic totems. On June 16, he was buried in Section 11 of Arlington Cemetery. On June 18, President Richard Nixon posthumously awarded him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for his ten years of service in South Vietnam. He also received the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during the Battle of Kontum, the only civilian so honored since World War II.

The story of Vann’s life was told by Neil Sheehan in his book A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, which won the National Book Award in 1988 and a Pulitzer Prize in 1989. In 1998, HBO produced the film A Bright Shining Lie, adapted from the book, with actor Bill Paxton as Vann.

There are various sites related to John Paul Vann still in existence, such as the Ap Bac rice fields on the Mekong Delta road; the hills of the Battle of Kontum, including Hills 823, 875, and 1338; the camps of Ben Het and Dak Seang; the remains of the Dak To base and airport; and, south of Kontum, the ill-fated totem hill


© Photo credit: Horst Faas
 
 
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