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A collection
of short stories on the Viet Nam wars
(Twenty stories completed; twelve coming…)
Excerpts from The
Village Woman
(Back
to top)
 When
I was born my country was already at war but we didn’t know
anything about it until resistance forces hiding in our
mountain and government forces stationed in the valley
started fighting six or seven years ago. Once or twice a
month, the guerrillas come down from their camps high up in
the mountain to attack government soldiers, usually at
nightfall or at dawn. On the way back, they stop by the
villages to lecture us about American imperialism,
government puppet troops and what the resistance is going to
do for us after the war is won. At first they would always
pay us for the food they ate, but after a while they stopped
doing this and gave us resistance chits instead. They said
we could collect on these after the war ended. The next day,
around noon, government soldiers would come halfway up the
mountain and shell the guerrilla camps from a safe distance,
stopping off at different villages to tell us about the
evils of communism. As they eat our food, they advise us
against feeding the enemy. They also don’t pay for what they
eat and drink.
Lately the
Americans have begun strafing and bombing the resistance
camps above us. They don’t know where the enemy camps are
and just drop their bombs anywhere, making huge holes in the
mountainside. Large rocks are dislodged and roll down,
sometimes going right through a village. Our life is one big
tragedy that drags out day after day but there’s nothing we
can do to change it unless we move away, but where would we
go?
Before the
sun rises, I warm up yesterday’s rice for the children’s
breakfast before all three of them can walk down to the
school in the valley, carrying cold rice, sweet potatoes and
pickles in a bamboo tube on their backs for lunch. Then I
help the old folks with their toilet needs and give them
their morning tea. Later I’ll help wash them before leaving
our hut to tend our communal rice fields with the other
women. At noon I return to prepare lunch for us three and
dinner for us six. In the afternoon, I sit by the stream for
hours to catch frogs or eels for dinner. During the
harvesting season I always manage to trap field rats, which
are fat and tasty. We dry out the meat we don’t eat and the
kids take it to school for lunch.
My husband has been away for two years, God knows where.
Never heard one word from him since. We have become used to
living without him. He didn’t want to fight but we had no
money so he joined the government side because they paid a
monthly salary. His sergeant, who was known in the valley as
a gambler and a womanizer, only paid him half his salary on
the first month because he said deductions had to be made,
showing him all kinds of official documents. My husband
couldn’t read and he said nothing but when he handed me his
pay I could see he felt ashamed. People say that my husband
killed the sergeant and I can believe that. My husband was a
good man and a kind father but when he was angry he wasn’t
afraid of anyone.
My
immediate problems are mum’s hands, which are crippled with
arthritis, so she can’t do anything in the hut. Then dad is
going blind in one eye and always talking about dying; the
kids are growing by the day and eating like tigers, while
there is less rice each year as the fighting grows. Last
night American bombs fell on the dam in the valley and there
was some flooding this morning. Lucky this is the dry
season. In the rainy season we would have had landslides.
Maybe I should
go and work in the nearby town of Tam Ky, like some of the
others. They say there’s plenty of money there if you are
willing to sleep with Americans, who give a hundred dong
to fuck a woman, whatever her age. They say the black ones
have huge dicks and give a girl as much as five hundred to
suck it. That’s enough for a whole family to live on for a
whole month! But who’s going to look after the family if I
leave?
Ah well, no
use thinking about all that. It’s a disgusting profession
anyway. For the time being we can manage and if one day we
can’t, I’ll think about it then.
The other
women are walking out into the communal fields. Better join
them. For lunch today I’ll come back and prepare rice congee
for the old folks. They’ll like that because they don’t have
any teeth left. For tonight, when the kids get back, I have
eels cooked with coriander leaves. They don’t really like
eels but with the flooding all the frogs have disappeared.
Anyway, we still have some rice left.
Well, got
to get up and get out there. Sun’s almost up now. I wish I
had some money, I’d buy myself a new blouse. This one’s just
worn out already. It’s my favorite blouse. I bought it in
the valley when my husband was still with us. But never
mind, it’s good enough for planting rice.
Excerpts from Le Bordel Militaire de Campagne
(Back
to top)
 As
with most large French garrisons, Lieutenant Jean-Marie de
Lyaute’s predecessor had set up a BMC
inside the camp. Two villas, one small and one large, stood
facing each other near the football field and the rifle
range. Painted ochre yellow, with green wooden-slatted
windows, they were lit up at night by a string of red
lights. On the other side of the camp’s perimeter fence,
straw huts housed the young native prostitutes who worked in
the BMC. Inevitably,
holes had been cut in the barbed wire fence to facilitate
entry and exit for the girls and their pimps. Camp security
was lax and even soldiers took to using these bolt holes to
leave the camp at night for a bit of fun in the villages
surrounding Yen Bai military camp.
The larger villa, a one-storied affair, was for enlisted men
and non-coms. The main living room, garishly lit by military
pressure lamps, housed a number of tables and chairs in
various states of repair, victims of regular brawls between
the BMC patrons. Two large overhead fans churned the thick, stale air reeking
of cigarette smoke, beer and musk. Men and women sat around,
talking loudly, or groped each other on the dancing floor
while waiting for a room. On a long and sturdy bar, which
served beer and snacks, a large phonograph blared out old
Parisian dance tunes. The 33 rpm records were old, the music
often scratchy and the steel needles had to be changed every
ten records. This was the responsibility of Madame Nam, a
woman of indeterminate age from Hue who ran the brothel with
an iron hand and tended the bar at the same time, a
Gaulloise cigarette stub stuck in her betel-stained mouth
from morning to night. Once in a while, she took large swigs
of beer from mugs that the soldiers had left on the table.
She also collected the fee from each soldier, paid off the
prostitutes, and kept the brothel’s account books. It was
rumored she was, or had been, the local wife of the French
sergeant in charge of the Military Police contingent. She
had been known to take on a customer or two herself, after
too many beers. It was said she was the best fuck of the
lot, but she always made them pay double.
The soldiers’ brothel had
a smattering of North African women, but was mainly composed
of young local women, selected from the hangers on at the
camp’s gate and from the maids hired to work inside the
camp. The rooms were very small, like cubicles, with a
military cot bed and a chair. On the chair was a small
towel. Under the bed were a bowl of water and a bar of local
soap. Locally recruited Vietnamese women of a certain age
serviced the rooms, changing the towels and throwing out the
dirty water. They briefly cleaned out the room, readjusted
the cot, called out to the next occupant and then sat down
on a small stool outside the door.
The officers’ brothel was
a two-storied villa, with a balcony on the second floor.
Considerably cleaner, it had quality furniture on the floor
and paintings and photographs on the walls. The Tricolor and
the regimental colors adorned the main wall. Below them, a
bouquet of fresh flowers stood in a white ceramic vase whose
lips were painted gold. Junior officers gathered downstairs,
while Lieutenant de Lyaute and his guests from Ha Noi were
entertained upstairs. The lighting was discreet and a large
radio, the size of a small cupboard, played soft tunes. The
bar was well stocked with aperitifs as well as wines and the
bartender was a non-commissioned officer.
The manager was Madame
Tien, a mature Vietnamese woman from Ha Noi who spoke French
perfectly and had once been the mistress of a French
general. It was rumored she was now sleeping with Big Nose
Lyaute, or at least had slept with him. She knew each
officer personally and had become a confidant to many.
Officers met there as much to relax as to have sex with a
prostitute and although there had been serious disagreements
between the patrons there had never been a fight. The girls
were from Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon and the Chad, many of them
quite young and all of them fluent French speakers. They
were rotated around the many BMCs
in Tonkin every four months to keep up the freshness of the
brothels. Once in a while, a Caucasian woman turned up in
the latest batch, often a French AFAT whose life and career
had turned sour. Their stories always verged on the tragic,
but they often managed to meet up with an understanding
customer and marry their way out of the brothel.
Next to the BMC
stood a small guard-post,
manned by a squad of military police. They often had to
break up fights between the soldiers, between the patrons
and the prostitutes, and between the prostitutes themselves.
These men enjoyed freebies when the brothel was closed to
the regular customers.
In the weeks preceding
the Yen Bai insurrection, when military intelligence wire
services worked overtime to alert Lieutenant Lyaute’s
garrison, Madame Tien was observed talking to a stranger
outside the camp fence where the prostitutes were housed
with their pimps. When later questioned on the matter by
garrison intelligence agents, she said the man was her
brother, who had come to warn her of an impending attack by
the resistance to seize and hold Yen Bai valley against the
garrison troops. The plan was to declare a liberated area in
the hopes of attracting similar uprisings throughout Tonkin.
She said he had advised her to leave the camp and go to Ha
Noi until the fighting died down.
Excerpts from
The Prison Commander
(Back
to top)
 At
dawn I hurried out of our dormitory cave to take a piss. It
was cold outside and I tightened the blanket around my
shoulders as I squatted at the edge of the escarpment,
halfway up the mountain. In the valley down below wisps of
smoke were rising from the villages nestling in the river’s
bend. Higher up the mountain slopes, colonies of black
gibbons swung from tree to tree with effortless ease, their
loud hoots rising to a mad crescendo before cascading into
maniacal laughter. Far in the distance, small Ravens
observation helicopters were flying in concentric circles.
The Americans had resumed their search for the two missing
snipers.
I stood up
and hurried to the cave for Class 1 prisoners. Both men were
still there, hanging by their wrists from the thick bamboo
cross bar where I had left them night before. I walked
around them to have a better look at their backs, from which
the skin had been peeled away the day before. The exposed
flesh had turned liver colored and presented a grainy
surface. Under a film of mucus-like fluid, there were
hundreds of little black dots where flies had laid their
eggs. Some of the eggs had hatched during the night and
there were dozens of little open sores whose surface
undulated with tiny little white worms busy eating away at
the dead flesh around their newfound nests. I picked up a
bucket of water, swished it around to melt the salt and
chili sediments and splashed it onto the two killers. Then I
went up to them and spat in their faces. They cringed, and I
could see naked fear in their eyes. I suddenly felt better,
and went to join the women in the kitchen cave to help cook
the day’s meals.
Outside,
for a few hours each day, bird dog helicopters flew in
holding patterns high above the valley, looking for us.
They knew we were there somewhere, but it was a large
valley, the mountains were high and densely covered with
trees, and they couldn’t pin point us. They sometimes
hovered at our height, mid-way up the mountain, just a
hundred meters out from us, looking directly at our camp
with field binoculars. We could see them clearly and could
have shot them out of the sky with our Russian RPG
launchers, but our orders were to remain invisible. The new
camp commander knew that the crew, sitting on a vibrating
platform, couldn’t see us through the double green nettings
we had hung between the thick branches.
As I cut
and chopped the vegetables before me, my mind ran on and I
felt my face becoming hot. Hatred was returning. My life had
been ruined by these white monsters who had come from far
away to bring death and destruction to our people. We had
never done anything to them. We didn’t even know where
America was. Yet they were
bombing and killing our people by the hundreds every day. My
children disappeared in a napalm bombing attack and my
husband died later of wounds received when he stepped on a
mine which bounced up and exploded chest high. Had it not
been for the resistance, we would have been dispersed all
over the country, running from morning to night on bare feet
and empty stomachs.
Hurriedly,
I finished packaging the rock salt and fresh chilies and
took out the special tools I used for skinning snakes and
wild civets. Today, I would skin their buttocks and the back
of their legs. I would have liked to hang them upside down,
like pigs, and slit their throats slowly, but orders were
orders. I could get away with skinning and beatings, but my
orders were to keep them alive for interrogation. In the
resistance, discipline was very strict.
Excerpts from Guard Duty
(Back
to top)
 The
little girl appeared around the bend of the dirt road
leading to our new campsite in Quang Tri province. The week
before, when Pete was pulling guard duty, a young boy walked
up the same dirt road to our perimeter fence, carrying a
bamboo basket filled with vegetables. No one thought
anything about the boy until he suddenly took out a cabbage,
hauled back and threw it far over the coils of razor wire.
It landed on the hooch I shared with Pete but didn’t
explode. We all dived for cover and the kid skedaddled off,
laughing and shouting like a monkey as he disappeared around
the bend in the tracks. It turned out the pineapple
fragmentation grenade inside the cabbage was no dummy, but
he had forgotten to pull the pin out before throwing it. So
much for the training the dinks give these kids before
sending them out.
I
readjusted the sling around my forearm to steady the M16
that had become an extension of me since I volunteered for
the Marine Corps back in Huntsville, Alabama. That was on my
eighteenth birthday, but it seemed like forever. After
eleven months in ‘Nam I hadn’t seen any combat yet but I
felt like I was thirty years old or something, like the
Gunny. I had spent a lifetime guarding perimeter fences
around large US support facilities since my arrival and now
I was short, with one month to go before returning to the
real world.
I eased
myself into a comfortable position, my eyes on the girl. She
looked like six or seven, but could have been a lot older.
Local kids are like that, you can’t tell their age by
looking at them. Her shiny black hair was cut short and it
bobbed as she walked. She was carrying three large mangoes
in a wicker bag hanging from one skinny arm and it was
obvious she intended to sell them to us over the fence. The
other hand held up a crude sign, made of cardboard. It had
something written on it in large letters. But Lt. Timson had
forbidden any more trading over the fence since the grenade
incident. Duty guards had been ordered to fire two warning
shots to scare off approaching villagers, young or old, and
then to shoot them dead.
I
scoped the placard in her hand. It said “DIEC”. Was that her
name? Or the slope word for mangoes?
I took
another deep breath, my fifth. Would a sweet little thing
like this throw a hand grenade at us? And what the fuck was
I going to do about it? Shoot in the air? Shoot her?
I tightened
my grip on my gun and laid my cheek against the cool,
familiar plastic body. I could see that her face had lit up
when she saw the American soldiers jumping up and down.
Maybe she thought they were waving for her to come forward.
She began to trot faster towards the perimeter fence,
hugging the wicker basket with one arm and waving that
placard with the other hand, above her head. I could now see
she had a pronounced limp, and bounced from side to side.
Loud
explosions sounded in my head, images of Pete being bawled
out by the Gunny flashed by my eyes and my mind went on
automatic. I was back on the firing range, with the gun
sergeant standing behind me, just a little to my right. I
was breathing out halfway, thinking…fire…fire…fire…and
I softly squeezed the trigger on the third word, as I had
been taught, shooting the girl through the chest.
Later that
day the village head and a bunch of old women came up to the
fence to claim the girl’s body, weeping and wailing loudly
and not making eye contact with us. That night, when we
asked him, our local interpreter told us that DIEC meant
deaf in slope language.
Excerpts from
Emergency Field Station
(Back
to top)
 Lying
absolutely still, like dead men, we could hear the puppet
scouts the American Rangers had used to ambush us. They had
fanned out in front of us, hiding in the tall elephant
grass, and were calling on their hand-held loudspeakers for
us to chieu hoi, to give up our weapon and rejoin the
fold. We could have shot blindly in their direction and
maybe hit one or two, but that would have given our position
away. Caught with our backs to the rocks, our main force
regional guerrilla company would have been wiped out had the
Americans pressed their attack.
By late
afternoon the ambush was over, and we could hear the
Americans and the puppet troops moving away towards a
landing zone where helicopters would fly them back to base.
That was the American way of war: at the end of the day,
they went home to a hot meal and a good night’s sleep.
As soon as
it was safe, we broke up into three parties and slipped away
from the cave openings to regroup in the mangrove swamps
near the river, where we waited for nightfall. Before
leaving, I decided to booby-trap the two men who had died,
in case the Americans returned to collect war trophies. We
made bamboo stretchers for the two seriously wounded men and
cut bamboo crutches for the other two, for them to hobble on
after us the best they could. We collected all our weapons
and the unspent ammo; we had no radio, but as soon as my
runner returned we headed for the river.
The
emergency station was inside a natural cove formed by
curving mangrove stems all around a thin canopy of leaves
above. Inside this little cave-like structure, a hissing
pressure lamp hung from a branch. An enamel toilet bowl had
been placed upside down over the light to shield its glare
from enemy helicopters while reflecting as much light as
possible downward onto the operating table. A pale young
doctor, a large male assistant and two little nurses who
reminded me of my younger sisters at home stood knee deep in
brackish water around the wooden plank that served as an
operating table. This plank hung from ropes attached to its
four corners and the thick, overhanging mangrove stems. The
doctor was cutting at a soldier’s leg while the assistant
held him down and the girls struggled to keep the platform
steady. There was blood everywhere. I sent two of my men to
help the girls while we draped our wounded around sturdy
mangrove trunks and waited our turn, ankle deep in swamp
water.
The leg was
being cut without anesthetic and the man had been tied to
the board and gagged to prevent him screaming. With every
inch of his body, he grimly fought the doctor’s assistant.
Sweat poured from his forehead; his nostrils flared; his
eyes were popping out of his head and unearthly sounds came
from the back of his throat. In the resistance, painkillers
and antibiotics were reserved for those whom the doctor
thought could be saved to fight another day. Obviously, this
was not the amputee’s case. For these rejects, acupuncture
was used to deaden the pain but this doctor hadn’t been
trained in that discipline. After the operation, to kill the
germs, poultices made of Chinese herbal powders mixed with
alcohol and chewed rice would be used, sometimes with
miraculous results, sometimes not. It all depended on
whether the field doctor had received training in that
discipline too.
While waiting
our turn, out came the precious plastic pouches; we rolled
our cigarettes and smoked in silence, glancing every now and
again at the operating table. To keep out jungle rot, we
wrapped everything important in small plastic sheets. This
included tobacco, family photos, malaria pills, dysentery
pills, paper and pencil. When our turn came, I saw that the
doctor did have some Russian painkillers and East German
antibiotics and that he would use them for my men. Out came
clean bandages, made from strips of bright orange parachutes
captured from downed American paratroopers. These were
precious, and after use the coagulated blood was washed out,
the strips were hung out to dry and re-rolled for future
use.
Later that
night a courier arrived from our main force regular unit at
Phung Hiep. The Americans who had ambushed us were Marines,
a reconnaissance unit that had had been air dropped at Tam
Ky to block our retreat after we had attacked the ARVN base
at Hiep Hoa. Puppet troops from the ARVN Special Forces who
knew the terrain were with them, which is why they
successfully ambushed us. They had not returned to collect
war trophies and there had been no casualties on their side.
My orders were to leave my wounded men at the medical
station and move out immediately to join up with a
multi-platoon force preparing for a dawn ambush on a landing
zone the Americans were carving out of the forest near Phung
Hiep.
I stubbed
out my cigarette and signaled with my hand that we would eat
first. Tea was instantly brewed, out came bandoleers of cold
rice, pickles and pork and we ate in silence. We always
carried lumps of rock sugar in our rucksacks and we sucked
on them for instant energy before picking up our ammo and
moving out. That short rest at the field station had been
heavenly, but we were a main force unit and had to maintain
mobility at all time. We had been on the move for over a
month and had taken seven casualties so far. The courier had
said that he had heard the battalion commander say that unit
917 would be pulled back for a rest after this attack. Unit
917 was our unit, but I didn’t pass this information on to
my troops. We had already been promised a rest twice and
nothing had happened. It was best to keep your mouth shut
and just obey orders.
Excerpts from
Breakfast with the Bo Doi
(Back
to top)
 At
four thirty in the morning, rain blanketed the miserable
refugee column strung out on the highway to Hai Phong and
woke everyone up. Exhausted parents covered their children
with their own bodies while young men and women spread
plastic sheets and tarps over their grandparents.
Conversation rippled up and down the ragged line and
children could be heard crying until suddenly silence fell.
From far away a rhythmic beat could be heard. Old and young,
a thousand ears strained to identify what sounded like flat
wooden paddles slapping the water in unison. As it got
nearer, bugles and whistles could be heard faintly. It was
now five thirty, and the rim of a red sun was brimming over
the horizon in the east, a presage to another scorching day.
A group of men, in a
tightly packed formation, was moving rapidly in our
direction, with the sun behind them. They seemed to be high
off the ground until it became clear they were running along
the raised railway tracks. We all froze as one man. The dawn
light was now good, and we could see the bo doi
clearly, running four abreast, eyes straight ahead, their
sandals made of old tires slapping against the ground in
controlled cadence. They ran steadily in complete silence,
rifles slung across their backs and bandoleers of ammunition
tied down against their bodies. Some wore rubberized green
ponchos, which flopped around their thin frames. On each
head, a flattish green pith helmet was held in place by a
leather strap wound tight under the chin. On each helmet, a
single red star. This was the famous bo doi,
the home grown peasant
infantry that had crushed the French at Dien Bien Phu only
last month.
When the Viet Minh main
force regulars drew up more or less level with our refugee
column, shouted orders were heard and the long green column
came to an orderly stop. As a sergeant recently discharged
from the French auxiliaire
forces, I had to admire their discipline on the move. As a
refugee trying headed for Hai Phong port to escape to the
south with my family of four, the sight of the communist
infantry on the move froze the blood in my veins. Some two
hundred soldiers sat down on the railway bank, about one
hundred meters away. Each man carried a small backpack with
personal belongings in it, a bandoleer of cooked rice slung
over one shoulder, ammunition, a shovel and a water bottle.
I looked at them with fascination mixed with fear and I knew
with absolute conviction that everyone of us refugee thought
the same thing…the geneva agreement allows us to
leave the north and go south…but will the viet minh honor
this…or will they slaughter us right here in the middle of
nowhere…
The soldiers were very
young, boys really, and they carried a variety of weapons,
among which I recognized the French 9mm MAT-49, the American
.30 caliber M-1 semi-automatic and the Soviet 7.62mm SKS
carbine. No one wore any rank but discipline was palpable.
Everyone knew exactly where to sit and, almost at the same
time, off came the cloth bandoleers into which the cooked
rice had been rolled and slices were cut off. Out of the
rucksacks came small bamboo tubes containing salt, sour
pickles and pork jerky. Everyone drank hot tea, which was
brewed communally, then sucked on lumps of rock sugar for
energy. They all ate their breakfasts carefully, in silence,
savoring each mouthful. The rain had picked up but
visibility was good because it was now daylight.
After a while, when we
realized that we wouldn’t be killed immediately, bits of
food appeared here and there in our column, tea was brewed
and we also began eating our breakfast. The two sides ate
slowly, in absolute silence, their eyes looking at the
ground while their jaws moved slowly.
My attention was caught
by one soldier, who could have been eighteen but looked like
a twelve year old. He was sitting directly across the field
from me, less than one hundred meters away, and I studied
him covertly, while keeping my head down…sloping
forehead …good
peasant stock…
bulging jaw muscles,
plenty of teeth…like
a piranha fish…skin a malarial yellow, eyes with no light in them…a dead
man’s eyes…In his hands was a Japanese Arikasa rifle, a 6.5mm caliber bolt action
weapon, a copy of the German Mauser. He never put the gun
down while eating or drinking or rummaging in his rucksack
but it never got in his way. It was as if he had been born
with it attached to his hand. The rain fell steadily onto
his pith helmet, sloped off onto his poncho and ran to the
ground. At one moment, the rain changed pitch, and angled in
from the side between the pith helmet and the top of the
poncho, running down his neck. The boy continued eating with
care, relishing each mouthful, before he casually readjusted
his poncho to keep the rain out…a son of the soil…sun
rain and mud are like the air he breathes…comfort means
nothing to him…we did everything we knew to kill him…we
couldn’t…now he’s sitting there with a gun in his hand…and
we’re sitting here…helpless…
At six thirty the rain
stopped, the sun came out in full strength and steam soon
began to rise from the two columns. The bo doi
began to gather up their cooking and eating utensils and
putting them away. Not one word had been spoken between our
two groups. Whistles were blown, orders shouted, and the
soldiers formed up like before. A bugle sounded and they
began walking slowly towards Ha Noi. After a while, they
picked up pace and began to run to the slapping sounds of
their rubber sandals. Like one man, we all stood up and
began moving east.
During the two hours that
we had sat, parallel to each other, eating our respective
breakfasts, not one word had been spoken, not one sign of
recognition had been exchanged, no eye contact had been
attempted. It was as if two alien groups had met by chance
on the moon, and had decided to ignore each other.
The partition of Viet Nam
had already begun in our minds.
*
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