The Sorrow of War Read online

  The lethargy brought on by rosa canina spread from Kien’s scout platoon huts through the entire regiment. It wasn’t long before the Political Commissar ordered the units to stop using rosa canina, declaring it a banned substance.

  The Commissar then ordered troops to track down all the plants and cut all the blooms then uproot all the trees throughout the Screaming Souls area to ensure they’d grow no more.

  Along with the gambling and smoking of canina went all sorts of rumours and prophecies. Perhaps because the soldiers in their hallucinations had seen too many hairy monsters with wings and mammals with reptilian tails, or imagined they had smelled the stench of their own blood. They imagined the monstrous animals plunging about bleeding in the dark caves and hollows under the base of Ascension Pass on the other side of the valley from the jungle.

  Many said they saw groups of headless black American soldiers carrying lanterns aloft, walking through in Indian file. Others paled in terror as horrible, primitive wild calls echoed inside their skulls in the rainy, dewy mornings, thinking they were the howls of pain from the last group of orang-utans said to have lived in the Central Highlands in former times.

  The rumours and the predictions were all seen as warnings of an approaching calamity, horrible and bloody, and those who leaned toward mysticism or believed in horoscopes secretly confided these fears to their friends. Soon there sprang up tiny altars in each squad hut and tent, altars to the comrades-in-arms already fallen. And in the tear-making smoke of the incense soldiers bowed and prayed, whispering in prayer:

  ‘…suffering in life, pain in death,

  the common fate of us soldiers.

  We pray the sacred souls will bless us,

  that we may overcome enemy fire,

  and avenge our lost comrades…’

  The rain had kept pounding, day after day. The fighting seemed blanketed by the immense dull sea of rain; if one stared hard and long into the dark, grey, wet-season sky, or listened to the rain falling on the canvas canopies, one thought only of war and fighting, fighting and war.

  The rain brought sadness, monotony, and starvation. In the whole Central Highlands, the immense, endless landscape was covered with a deadly silence or isolated, sporadic gunfire. The life of the B3 Infantrymen after the Paris Agreement was a series of long, suffering days, followed by months of retreating and months of counter-attacking, withdrawal, then counter-attack. Victory after victory, withdrawal after withdrawal. The path of war seemed endless, desperate, and leading nowhere.

  At the end of the wet season the echoes of cannon fire could be heard a hundred kilometres away, a harbinger of a poor dry season over Con Roc, Mang Den and Mang But.

  That September the NVA forces attacked Kontum township’s defence lines. The firing was so loud that it shook the earth as if every square metre would rise in a groundswell and burst. In the 3rd Regiment, hiding in the Screaming Souls Jungle, the soldiers waited in fear, hoping they would not be ordered in as support forces, to hurl themselves into the arena to almost certain death.

  Some of those waiting found they were hearing a musical air in their heads, the sound of guitars rising and falling with the sounds of the Kontum carnage. Soldiers of that year 1974 sang:

  ‘Oh, this is war without end,

  war without end.

  Tomorrow or today,

  today or tomorrow.

  Tell me my fate,

  when will I die…’

  Late in the afternoon of Can’s escape, that wet, boring autumn afternoon, Kien was sitting by the stream, fishing. The drizzle was relentless, the day lifeless and gloomy. The stream was swollen, its waters turbulent and loud, as if it wished to wash the banks away. But where Kien sat fishing there was a silent eddy around bare tree roots, exposed where flood waters had bitten deep.

  Kien nestled in his jute raincoat, hugging his knees, staring blankly into the rolling stream, thinking of nothing, wanting nothing. Now that the rosa canina had all gone there was nothing for his soul to grab hold of. So it wandered, meandering freely. Every day Kien would sit for hours by the stream, motionless, letting its sorrowful whispering carry him along.

  That autumn was sad, prolonged by rain. Orders came for food rations to be sharply reduced. Hungry, suffering successive bouts of malaria, the troops became anaemic, and their bodies broke out in ulcers, showing through worn and torn clothing. They looked like lepers, not heroic forward scouts. Their faces looked moss-grown, hatched and sorrowful, without hope. It was a stinking life.

  To buoy himself up, Kien sometimes tried to concentrate on uplifting memories. But no matter how hard he tried to revive the scenes they wouldn’t stay. It was hopeless. His whole life from the very beginning, from childhood to the army, seemed detached and apart from him, floating in a void.

  Since being recruited he’d been nicknamed ‘Sorrowful Spirit’ and this now suited his image and personality, just as the rain and gloom fitted the character of the Jungle of Screaming Souls.

  Kien waited for death, calmly recognising that it would be ugly and inelegant. The thought of his expected end brought a sense of irony.

  Just the week before, in a battle with Saigon commandos on the other side of the mountain, Kien had truly made fun of death. When the Southern ARVN had faced his own Northern NVA troops both sides had quickly scattered, rushing to take cover behind tree trunks and then firing blindly. But Kien had calmly walked forward. The enemy had fired continuously from behind a tree ahead of him but Kien hadn’t even bothered to duck. He walked on lazily, seemingly oblivious to the fire. One southern soldier behind a tree fired hastily and the full magazine of thirty rounds from his AK exploded loudly around Kien, but he had walked on unscratched. Kien had not returned fire even when just a few steps from his prey, as though he wanted to give his enemy a chance to survive, to give him more time to change magazines, or time to take sure aim and kill him.

  But in the face of Kien’s audacity and cool the man had lost courage; trembling, he dropped his machine-gun.

  ‘Shit!’ Kien spat out in disgust, then pulled the trigger from close range, snapping the ARVN soldier away from the tree, then shredding him.

  ‘Ma… aaaaaa!’ the dying man screamed. ‘Aaaa…’

  Kien shuddered and jumped closer as bullets poured from all sides towards him. He hadn’t cared, standing firm and firing down into the man’s hot, agonised body in its death throes. Blood gushed out onto Kien’s trousers. Walking on, leaving blood-red footprints in the grass, he slowly approached two other commandos hiding and shooting at him, his machine-gun tucked carelessly under his arm, his shirt open. He was unconcerned and coldly indifferent, showing no fear, no anger. Just lethargy and depression.

  The enemy backed away and dispersed in retreat.

  Despite that imprudent, risky action Kien was invited on return to the military personnel section and told he was on the list of officers selected to attend a long-term training course at the Infantry Institute near Hanoi. The order would soon come down from the Divisional Commander and Kien was to travel back up north.

  ‘The fighting is endless. No one knows when it will stop,’ the hoarse, gloomy personnel officer told Kien. ‘We must keep our best seeds, otherwise all will be destroyed. After a lost harvest, even when starving, the best seeds must be kept for the next crop. When you finish your course and return to us your present officers will all be gone, and the regiment with them. The war will go on without you.’

  Kien remained silent. A few years earlier he would have been proud and happy, but not now. He did not want to go north to do the course, and felt certain he would never join them, or become a seed for successive war harvests. He just wanted to be safe, to die quietly, sharing the fate of an insect or an ant in the war. He would be happy to die with the regular troops, those very soldiers whose special characteristics had created an almost invincible fighting force because of their peasant nature, by volunteering to sacrifice their lives. They had simple, gentle, ethical outlooks on life. It was cle
arly those same friendly, simple peasant fighters who were the ones ready to bear the catastrophic consequences of this war, yet they never had a say in deciding the course of the war.

  Someone was coming up to him from behind, but Kien didn’t turn. The person came closer then silently sat down behind Kien as he fished on the edge of the stream. At that late hour the bamboo forest on the other bank seemed to make the dusk thicken. The brief, rainy day faded away quickly.

  ‘Fishing?’ the person asked.

  ‘Obviously,’ Kien replied coldly. It was Can, chief of Two Squad. A small thin boy, nicknamed ‘Rattling’ Can.

  ‘What’s your bait?’

  ‘Worms.’ Kien added: ‘I thought you had a fever. What’re you doing here in the wet?’

  ‘Caught anything?’

  ‘No. Just killing time.’

  Kien mumbled. He hated any confidences, any sharing of personal problems. Hell, if everyone in the regiment came to him with personal problems after those horrendous firefights he’d feel like throwing himself over the waterfall. He knew Can was going to unload some personal problems on him.

  ‘It’s raining heavily in the north,’ Can droned on in his gloomy, dispirited voice. ‘The radio says it’s never rained as hard. My home district must be flooded by now.’

  Kien just cleared his throat. More rain was falling. The air was getting colder and now it was quite dark.

  ‘You’re about to go north, I hear.’

  ‘What if I am?’

  ‘Just asking. Congratulations.’

  ‘Congratulations? Congratulations?’

  ‘Please. I’m not jealous, Kien. I’m sincere. I know you don’t like me but can’t you understand a little of what I mean. Accept what heaven gives you. You’ve survived down here and now you’ll go north and continue to survive. You’ve suffered a lot. You were from an intellectual family, so it’s not right for you to die anyway. Just go, and let events unfold here. We feel pleasant envy for you. You deserve it.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere to make others happy. I know you’re scared of being killed, but you have to overcome your fear by yourself. You can’t place that responsibility on others’ shoulders.’

  Can seemed to ignore the taunt.

  ‘As for me, I’ve always longed for the opportunity to get into an officers’ training course. Truly, that was my dream. I’m younger than you. I was top of the class at school. I’ve tried to discipline myself, to fulfil all my duties. No disobedience, no gambling, no alcohol, no dope, no women, no swearing. And for what? All for nothing! I’m not jealous, just depressed.’

  Kien felt uneasy about what was coming. He feared it, yet he expected it.

  Can continued, ‘I haven’t lived yet and I want very much to live.’

  Kien remained silent.

  ‘For just one week in the north I’m prepared to lose everything. Everything.’

  ‘So I’ll tell Personnel to put your name down, instead of mine,’ said Kien sarcastically. ‘Don’t moan! Please, go back to your hut and lie down.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me! I’m telling the truth, not trying to change things. I can look after myself. I’m not afraid of dying, but this killing and shooting just goes on, forever. I’m dying inside, bit by bit. Every night I have the same dream, of me being dead. I swim out of my corpse and turn into a vampire going off to suck human blood. Remember the Playcan fighting in 1972? Remember the pile of corpses in the men’s quarters? We were up to our ankles in blood, splashing through blood. I used to do anything to avoid stabbing with bayonets or bashing skulls in with my rifle butt, but now I’ve got used to it. And to think that as a child I wanted to take orders and go into a seminary.’

  Kien turned and looked curiously at Can. You occasionally found such traumatised misfits in the army. Their chaotic minds, their troubled speech, revealed how cruelly they were twisted and tortured by war. They collapsed both spiritually and physically. But it was curious that after fighting alongside Can for so long Kien had never heard him go on like this. He had seen Can only as a trusty farmer who’d gradually adjusted to the hell of the battlefield.

  ‘You’re an experienced front-line soldier, but you’re starting to whinge and moan. That will make you even more miserable, Can. You’d better transfer out of the scout group. We’re the first to go into the fight.’

  Can continued his gloomy confessions as though he had not heard a word. ‘I used to ask myself why I’m down here while my old suffering mother is at home, helpless, day and night crying for her distant son. When I joined up my village was flooded and it was hard for mother even to get by. Who was left to help her? My brother was already in the forces. I could have been exempted as the only son left but the village chief wouldn’t agree. We have so many of those damned idiots up there in the north enjoying the profits of war, but it’s the sons of peasants who have to leave home, leaving a helpless old mother, exposed to hardships. So, Kien…’

  Suddenly, Can burst into tears, burying his face in his knees, his shoulders heaving and trembling, his thin back wet and shivering.

  Kien stood up, picked up his fishing rod and looked down, frowning, at Can. ‘You’ve been reading too many enemy pamphlets. If someone reported you to the upper levels you’d be a goner. Are you going to desert?’

  Can remained sitting, his head on his knees. His voice came low, mixing with sounds from the stream and the rain. ‘Yes. I’m going. I know you’re a real friend. You’ll understand. Say goodbye to my mates for me.’

  ‘You’re nuts, Can. First, you’ve no right to escape. Second, you can’t. You’ll be caught and brought back. Court-martialled. Shot. You’ll be worse off than now. Listen to me. Calm down! I won’t rat on you.’

  ‘Too late. I’ve already hidden my bag in the jungle.’

  ‘I’m not letting you desert. Go back to the huts. Try to hang on a bit longer. The war has to end sooner or later.’

  ‘No. I’m off. Win or lose, sooner or later, that means nothing to me. My life is fading fast, and I still have to see my mother once more, and my village. You won’t stop me? What for? Why would you?’

  ‘Listen, Can, leaving like this is suicidal. And shameful.’

  ‘Suicidal? Killing myself? I’ve killed so often it won’t mean a thing if I kill myself. As for the shame,’ Can stood up slowly, looking into Kien’s eyes. ‘In all my time as a soldier I’ve yet to see anything honourable.

  ‘Back home I might be even more humiliated. They won’t let me live. Even so, these nights all I dream of is my mother calling me. Perhaps my brother is dead already and she’s ill and suffering. I can’t wait any longer. It’s you, not me, who’s been chosen for the officers’ course and being sent back. Me, I’ll just have to find my own way home. I hope my mates take pity on me.

  ‘I won’t get caught, not if the scouts don’t chase me. And that’s you, Kien, you’re in charge, you’re the one who can guarantee my safety. Let me go.’

  Can continued softly, ‘When this is all over, well, you know my village in the Binh Luc district, Ha Nam province. Drop in when you get a chance.’

  In the darkness Can grasped Kien’s wrist with his cold, thin hand. Kien slowly took the hand away and turned his back without saying a word, leaving Can by the stream.

  Nearing his hut Kien seemed to awaken, and change his mind. He dropped his fishing gear and turned back, running to the stream, calling ‘Can. Caaaaaaan!’

  He called again, ‘Caaan, wait.’

  He rushed back through the heavy rain along the dark path to the edge of the stream. Can was gone. In the tiny clearing Kien felt imprisoned by the rain and the thick bamboo jungle wall on the other side of the stream.

  The restricted visibility compressed the space. The only movement was the stream, which gurgled on.

  Kien stood there, staring, then burst into tears, the rain washing over his face as the tears gushed out.

  Desertion was rife throughout the regiment at that time, as though soldiers were being vomited out, emptyi
ng the insides of whole platoons. The authorities seemed unable to prevent the desertions. But the commanding officers issued specific orders for Can to be traced. They feared he would desert to the enemy and betray the secrets and the battle plans of the entire regiment.

  After many days splashing around on their search the military police finally found Can the deserter. He’d only made it to a small dead-end track between hills, two hours from the huts. He still had months to travel, so many obstacles between him and home in Binh Luc.

  In late September, just before the regiment’s departure from the Jungle of Screaming Souls, the men got mail from their families, their only delivery for the wet season. Kien’s scout platoon got just one letter. It was for Can, from his mother.

  ‘…the whole hamlet shares my joy at having received your letter and I write back immediately with the hope that the kind military post officers will take pity on me and deliver it as quickly as possible to you. I might already have died, but thanks to your letter I now continue to live and hope, my dear son.

  ‘…Oh, my son, since receiving word of your brother’s death from his unit, then having his commemoration ceremony in the village, and getting the Patriotic Certificate, my dear son, I have worked night and day in the ricefield, ploughing land and transplanting. And I pray always to Heaven, and the ancestors, your late father and brother, to bless you in that distant battlefield, praying you and your comrades will return safely…’

  Kien read and re-read the letter. His hands trembled, tears blurred his eyes. Can was no more. The military police had found his rotten corpse. Only his skeleton was complete, like that of a frog thrown into a mudpatch. Crows had pecked away Can’s face; his mouth was full of mud and rotting leaves.