Unleashed Voices: The Story of a Miraculous Vase / Episode #2
The pursuit of peace continues in Vietnam a half century ago with the vase that served as a centerpiece of art and diplomacy, journalism and history…the denouement.
This is the second and final part of the first in a new “Unleashed Voices” series for Andelman Unleashed showcasing compelling voices with unique stories—past, present and future. Today our voice continues to be that of Audrey Ronning Topping, a remarkable photographer, journalist and chronicler with a pedigree nonpareil …widow of the late Seymour Topping, daughter of the first Canadian ambassador to Mao Zedong's China. The Toppings traveled the world, chronicling the ends of some eras, beginnings of others. This is just one of her compelling recollections. Episode #1 continues to be available here to our subscribers.
By Audrey Ronning Topping
Dad [Chester Ronning] arrived in Hanoi March 7, 1966, carrying a letter to Ho Chi Minh from Lester Pearson urging peace talks. He was welcomed by Vice Foreign Minister Colonel Ha Van Lau, whom he had known in New Delhi. On the way to the city, they were held up by a convoy of trucks hauling camouflaged ground-to-air missiles. He was finally installed in The Metropole, the famed but now war-torn hotel, where in 1950, Top and I had stayed during the French Indochina War.
At seven the next morning, agent Ronning conducted his first interview followed by dozens of formal and informal discussions attempting to find some basis for an understanding between the enemy forces. Unfortunately, Ho Chi Minh was ill and sent his regrets.
As my father later told me: “I have never used more arguments to put the American intervention in Vietnam’s civil war in the best possible light to persuade Ho Chi Minh’s DRVN [Democratic Republic of Vietnam] officials with whom I talked to negotiate the end of the war…I have never worked so hard and steadily in my life visiting various branches of the North Vietnamese government until I got up to Prime Minister Pham Van Dong. I reminded him that Canada’s Prime Minister was the first foreign Head of Government to propose a halt to the bombing. After long and complicated negotiations, he finally said to me: ‘You can tell the Americans that we are willing to make peace with them on one condition that they stop the bombing of North Vietnam. It has nothing to do with the war in South Vietnam. We can talk about that later. We will come to the peace table, and we will name the place once the Americans stop the bombing.’ I was elated. I thought I had achieved a breakthrough, a simple first step that could lead to greater things.”
Now this is where the story of the yellow vase truly begins and where it begins its very long intersection with our lives. Although Dad was exhausted from his efforts to stop the war in Vietnam, for relaxation he would walk across a small bridge leading to a picturesque island in “Return Sword Lake” which lay in the middle of the “Paris of the North,” all the while musing about the symbolism of his secret mission “Smallbridge.” One day, returning to the hotel, he was riveted by the setting sun reflecting on a yellow vase glowing in the window of a shabby antique shop. Venturing in, he was greeted enthusiastically by an elderly French couple who offered tea while chatting about the treasured item this friendly foreigner obviously coveted.
Gracing the front façade of the vase was a golden sky backgrounding a group of cotton-wood trees and lilac blossoms branching over pale-blue water strangely like the waters of the “Return Sword Lake” which the French couple could see from their window.
On the other side of the vase was the shadowy figure of Notre Dame Cathedral rising from the banks of the river Seine curving through Paris on its way to the English Channel. Just below, they proudly pointed to the signature of the famous glass maker: Emile Galle, a turn of the 20th century French artist considered a major innovator of the French Art Nouveau movement, comparable to America’s Louis Comfort Tiffany. Allegedly, the couple had acquired the vase from Galle himself and brought it from Paris almost 50 years earlier. They were reluctant to sell it, but because of the bombing, for safety’s sake, they would accept a very special price. Dad told them sadly that their kind offer was beyond the amount of cash he was allowed to bring into Hanoi. He left promising to continue discussions on his return.
At Chester’s last meeting with North Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, he confirmed negotiations to bring the two opponents to the peace table: “Is there some possibility of starting informal talks between you and Washington if the United States stops the bombing of North Vietnam so that talks leading to a ceasefire may start?”
Prime Minister Phan Dong replied: “Our position embraces many aspects, but in brief, we can say that informal talks and a cessation of attacks against North Vietnam go together.”
“I shall be glad to carry the proposal you make and your position to the United States,” my father pledged. He left Hanoi leaving the yellow vase behind but believing that he had achieved a major concession from the North Vietnamese. Dad returned to Ottawa via Hong Kong where we all went sailing while he described the yellow vase to us but revealed nothing about mission ‘Smallbridge’.
Back in Washington, Ronning laid out the details of his meeting. Canada’s Prime Minister was in favor of accepting Hanoi’s proposal, but [Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs] William Bundy treated it with suspicion, saying it was only a maneuver by Hanoi to obtain a halt in the bombing.
However, Bundy said he would consider the matter. After six weeks of unwarranted delays, (in which hundreds of American and Vietnamese lives were lost) Bundy messaged that the bombing would be halted only if Hanoi reciprocated by terminating all military assistance to the Vietcong. The United States was not willing to stop the bombings as a “non-reciprocal precondition to the holding of discussions.”
Dad was devastated, but in early June 1966 he returned via Hong Kong to Hanoi carrying the American reply to peace negotiations. He was convinced that North Vietnam would reject the American counter proposal but was committed to salvaging what he could from mission Smallbridge. Dad’s only compensation was that he hoped the yellow vase would still be there. He had no idea he was running into the eye of a storm.
Chester was not the only family member involved in international conflicts. When he passed through Hong Kong on his return visit to Hanoi, we were all in enemy territory. Only our two youngest daughters, Lesley and Robin, together with Charlie, our cockatoo, were there to greet their grandfather. Their two older sisters, Susan and Karen, were at school in Taiwan. Their father, Top, was in Vientiane, Laos, covering the Laotian civil war between the American-backed Souvanna Phouma government and the communist Pathet Lao. I was on assignment to Beijing, reporting on the Cultural Revolution for The New York Times. Chester continued his journey to Hanoi, against his better judgement.
Canada’s External Affairs ministry was not aware that Ronning would be in Hanoi on June 10, the exact date the Americans had planned to bomb oil depots in and around Hanoi and Haiphong. Nor did they know that Secretary of State Dean Rusk had messaged Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara raising concerns about the timing of their nefarious plan that had been endorsed by President Johnson.
“I am deeply concerned,” wrote Rusk “by the general international revulsion and perhaps a great deal at home, if it becomes known that we took action which sabotaged the Ronning mission to which we had given our agreement. We could make arrangements to get an immediate report from Ronning. If he has a negative report, as we expect, that provides a firmer base for the action we contemplate and would make a difference to people like British Prime Minister Wilson and Canada’s Pearson. If there is any serious breakthrough towards peace, the president would want to know before an action which would knock such a possibility off the tracks.” Rusk sent a similar message to Johnson who agreed to postpone the air strikes until Ronning left the area.
Chester was not surprised when the North Vietnamese refused to countenance the American preconditions. He found his several hours of talks with Hanoi leaders wearing and frustrating. Before leaving Hanoi, Dad called on the friendly French couple and was elated to find the yellow vase still waiting for him in the window of their antique shop. While savoring the wine he brought they settled on an appropriate value and Dad headed for the airport with his treasure in a carry-on bag.
By chance, my husband Seymour Topping, ever the investigative reporter, had picked up Chester’s trail in Vientiane. Tipped off that his father-in-law would be returning from Hanoi via Bangkok, Top flew from Laos to Thailand’s capital and left an urgent message at the Canadian Embassy in Bangkok. When Dad found it, he contacted Top. They agreed to a secret, late evening rendezvous at a secluded corner table on the balcony of the garden restaurant in the Oriental Hotel. Top noticed Dad was carrying a bulging leather bag which he assumed contained classified material. Dad confessed that it held a treasure. He said his negotiations for the yellow vase were significantly more successful than his negotiations to bring Ho Chi Minh and Lyndon Johnson to the peace table. Then he revealed to Top the classified details of Mission Smallbridge and characterized the results of his mission by quoting an old Chinese saying: “I have travelled ten thousand miles to present a feather.”
The next morning, June 21, 1966, Chester flew to Ottawa. Top flew to Hong Kong balancing his portable typewriter on his knees to write, under a Hong Kong dateline, The New York Times front page lead story of Hanoi’s rejection of the American terms, attributing the news to unnamed sources. It was published on June 21, as Bundy was landing in Ottawa to hear Ronning’s report. Ronning and Bundy met in an Ottawa Hotel and talked for seven hours. It was no surprise to Dad that Bundy messaged Rusk that in his view “Ronning had found no opening or flexibility in the North Vietnamese position.”
This was the signal for which the US Joint Chiefs of Staff were hoping. They needed Ronning out of North Vietnam before authorizing massive air strikes near Hanoi the next day. Seventh Air force headquarters later labeled the action “the most significant strikes of the war.” Ronning’s Smallbridge peace mission was shattered. The bombing shut down Canadian diplomatic channels to Hanoi at the cost of incalculable military and civilian lives. It took two years before President Johnson changed his mind.
Ronning knew his second visit was dead in the jungle even before he’d arrived. In Washington he faced a wall of doubt and suspicion. His mission was not taken seriously, and his advice was not heeded. The war continued with immense destruction and misery. On January 27, 1973, talks in Paris between Henry Kissinger and Hanoi’s Le Duc Tho called for a ceasefire, but it took two more terrible years until the United States, on April 30, 1975, conceded defeat and all Americans made a hasty, tragic retreat from Saigon by river boat and helicopter from the roof of the American Embassy. The North Vietnamese forces of Ho Chi Minh marched victoriously into Saigon and took control of the whole country.
Top later wrote in his book On the Front Lines of The Cold War:
“Two years after Ronning returned from Hanoi with the North Vietnamese proposal for the opening of negotiations, President Johnson took a first step toward accepting the terms of the Canadian proposal, which he previously rejected. The bombing had failed to break the will of the North Vietnamese, and American casualties were mounting. On March 31, 1968, Johnson halted all air and naval bombardments north of the 20th parallel. Hanoi responded positively to the partial bombing halt, and preliminary talks opened in Paris. In the two-year interval between the time Ronning returned from Hanoi with the conditional offer to negotiate and Johnson’s acceptance of similar terms which in effect meant cessation of bombing, tens of thousands of Vietnamese and American lives had been lost.”
Dad was 72 when he returned from Hanoi. He proudly presented the yellow vase to my mother, his beloved wife of 50 years, who positioned it carefully in a place of honor before a window in the sun parlor of their house in Camrose, Alberta, which he had built in 1928, the year I was born, and where they retired after traveling the world as diplomats. They loved to watch the setting sun enhance the vase with a glow that radiated peace and tranquility.
Chester’s peace missions had failed, but it didn’t take him long to turn a diplomatic defeat into a public relations victory. As a private citizen he was free, and willing, to talk about Vietnam and explain how he believed the US had sabotaged his peace efforts.
He also advocated diplomatic recognition of China and was outspoken on all issues. His mission to Hanoi had raised his profile to even higher international levels. He never missed a chance to discuss China and the “the fallacious analysis” upon which, he believed, American policy was based. In the book The Remarkable Chester Ronning, Canadian scholar Brian Evans described Ronning as an “engaging, loquacious man, of optimism and good humor.”
No one knows what would have happened had the United States taken Dad’s 1966 missions seriously, but at least two key policymakers later stated that they wished they had.
Shortly after Dad joined his ancestors in December 1984 at the age of 90, Top and I met Bundy at a reception in New York. He took my hand and said sincerely that he had felt guilty ever since his last meeting with my father. He said, “I wish I had given more weight to the proposal your father brought back from Hanoi. I wanted to apologize to your father, but since that is not possible, I am glad I can express my regrets to his daughter.”
In his book In Retrospect, published in 1995, Robert McNamara, discussed the Ronning mission: “The Canadian considered Pham van Dong’s message a bona fide peace move…Many in Washington did not agree. Thus, the Johnson administration refused to authorize another pause. In retrospect we were mistaken in not having Ronning at least probe the meaning of Pham Van Dong’s words more deeply….Of one thing I am certain: we failed miserably to integrate and coordinate our diplomatic and military actions as we searched for an end to the war.”
Before Dad passed, he told me he wanted me to have the vase because I was the only one of his six children who had lived in Vietnam and fully understood the situation.
The yellow vase now stands proudly before a window in my living room exuding peace and tranquility to all who pause long enough to admire it.
It is indeed a privilege to be able to feature the incomparable Audrey Ronning Topping and hope there will be many more opportunities in the future!
And with thanks for pointing out your kind and vigilant brother-in-law Alan !
Thanks ever so much, Alan ... yes indeed, your grandmother (?!) is indeed a national treasure with any number of memorable, historic experiences she is able and apparently willing to share with her scintillating voice. The 'Unleashed' family is privileged to be able to bring them to the world! Do keep reading (& of course spread the word !!)