The Sorrow of War

THE SORROW of WAR

A Novel of North Vietnam

Bao Ninh

Translated from the Vietnamese

by

Phan Thanh Hao

On the banks of the Ya Crong Poco river, on the northern flank of the B3 battlefield in the Central Highlands, the Missing In Action Remains-Gathering Team awaits the dry season of 1975.

The mountains and jungles are water-soaked and dull. Wet trees. Quiet jungles. All day and all night the water streams. A sea of greenish vapor over the jungle's carpet of rotting leaves.

September and October drag by, then November passes, but still the weather is unpredictable and the night rains are relentless. Sunny days but rainy nights.

Even into early December, weeks after the end of the normal rainy season, the jungles this year are still as muddy as all hell. They are forgotten by peace, damaged or impassable, all the tracks disappearing bit by bit, day by day, into the embrace of the coarse undergrowth and wild grasses.

Traveling in such conditions is brutally tough. To get from Crocodile Lake east of the Sa Thay river, across District 67 to the crossroads of Cross Hill on the west bank of theYa Crong Poco—a mere fifty kilometers—the powerful Russian truck has to lumber along all day. And still they fall short of their destination.

Not until after dusk does the MIA Zil truck reach the Jungle of Screaming Souls, where they park beside a wide creek clogged with rotting branches.

The driver stays in the cab and goes straight to sleep. Kien climbs wearily into the rear of the truck to sleep alone in a hammock strung high from cab to tailgate. At midnight the rains start again, this time a smooth drizzle, falling silently.

The old tarpaulin covering the truck is torn, full of holes, letting the water drip, drip, drip through onto the plastic sheets covering the remains of soldiers laid out in rows below Kien's hammock.

The humid atmosphere condenses, its long moist, chilly fingers sliding in and around the hammock where Kien lies shivering, half-awake, half-asleep, as though drifting along on a stream. He is floating, sadly, endlessly, sometimes as if on a truck driving silently, robotlike, somnambulantly through the lonely jungle tracks. The stream moans, a desperate complaint mixing with distant faint jungle sounds, like an echo from another world. The eerie sounds come from somewhere in a remote past, arriving softly like featherweight leaves falling on the grass of times long, long ago.

Kien knows the area well. It was here, at the end of the dry season of 1969, that his 27th Battalion was surrounded and almost totally wiped out. Ten men survived from the Lost Battalion after fierce, horrible, barbarous fighting.

That was the dry season when the sun burned harshly, the wind blew fiercely, and the enemy sent napalm spraying through the jungle and a sea of fire enveloped them, spreading like the fires of hell. Troops in the fragmented companies tried to regroup, only to be blown out of their shelters again as they went mad, became disoriented, and threw themselves into nets of bullets, dying in the flaming inferno. Above them the helicopters flew at treetop height and shot them almost one by one, the blood spreading out, spraying from their backs, flowing like red mud.

The diamond-shaped grass clearing was piled high with bodies killed by helicopter gunships. Broken bodies, bodies blown apart, bodies vaporized.

No jungle grew again in this clearing. No grass. No plants.

"Better to die than surrender, my brothers! Better to die!" the battalion commander yelled insanely; waving his pistol in front of Kien he blew his own brains out through his ear. Kien screamed soundlessly in his throat at the sight, as the Americans attacked with submachine guns, sending bullets buzzing like deadly bees around him. Then Kien lowered his machine gun, grasped his side, and fell, rolling slowly down the bank of a shallow stream, hot blood trailing down the slope after him.

In the days that followed, crows and eagles darkened the sky After the Americans withdrew, the rainy season came, flooding the jungle floor, turning the battlefield into a marsh whose surface water turned rust-colored from the blood. Bloated human corpses, floating alongside the bodies of incinerated jungle animals, mixed with branches and trunks cut down by artillery, all drifting in a stinking marsh.

When the flood receded everything dried in the heat of the sun into thick mud and stinking rotting meat. And down the bank and along the stream Kien dragged himself, bleeding from the mouth and from his body wound. The blood was cold and sticky, like blood from a corpse. Snakes and centipedes crawled over him, and he felt death's hand on him. After that battle no one mentioned the 27th Battalion any more, though numerous souls of ghosts and devils were born in that deadly defeat. They were still loose, wandering in every corner and bush in the jungle, drifting along the stream, refusing to depart for the Other World.

From then on it was called the Jungle of Screaming Souls. Just hearing the name whispered was enough to send chills down the spine. Perhaps the screaming souls gathered together on special festival days as members of the Lost Battalion, lining up in the little diamond-shaped clearing, checking their ranks and numbers. The sobbing whispers were heard deep in the jungle at night, the howls carried on the wind. Perhaps they really were the voices of the wandering souls of dead soldiers.

Kien was told that passing this area at night one could hear birds crying like human beings. They never flew, they only cried among the branches. And nowhere else in these Central Highlands could one find bamboo shoots of such a horrible color, with infected weals like bleeding pieces of meat. As for the fireflies, they were huge. Some said they'd seen firefly lights rise before them as big as a steel helmet— some said bigger than helmets.

Here, when it is dark, trees and plants moan in awful harmony. When the ghostly music begins it unhinges the soul and the entire wood looks the same no matter where you are standing. Not a place for the timid. Living here one could go mad or be frightened to death. Which was why in

the rainy season of 1974, when the regiment was sent back to this area, Kien and his scout squad established an altar and prayed before it in secret, honoring and recalling the wandering souls from the 27th Battalion still in the Jungle of Screaming Souls.

Sparkling incense sticks glowed night and day at the altar from that day forward.

There were civilian souls loose in the wood, too. Quite near to where the Zil truck parked on this rainy night there was once a tiny trail leading to Leprosy Village. Long ago, when the 3rd Regiment arrived, the village had been empty. Disease and successive famines had erased all life.

Still, it seemed the naked, warped, and torn souls had continued to gather, emitting a stink that penetrated the imagination. The regiment sprayed gasoline and set the village alight to cleanse it, but after the fire the soldiers were still terrified and none of them would go near the place again for fear of ghosts and lepers.

One day "Lofty" Thinh from Squad 1 courageously went into the village and there, in the ashes, shot a big orang-utan. He called in three others to help him drag it back to the squad huts. But, oh God, when it was killed and skinned the animal looked like a fat woman with ulcerous skin, the eyes, half-white, half-grey, still rolling. The entire squad was horrified and ran away screaming, leaving all their kit behind. No one in today's regiment ever believed the story, yet it was true. Kien and his colleagues had buried her, making a little headstone for the grave.

But none escaped her vengeful, omnipresent soul. Lofty Thinh was soon killed. Gradually the entire platoon was wiped out. Only Kien remained.

That had happened during the rainy season. Before marching to the South Wing to attack Buon Me Thuot, Kien's regiment had been based on this very spot for nearly two months. The landscape was much the same and the roads over which they passed had not become overgrown.

At that time the scout platoon had built its huts on the bank of this same stream by which they were now parked, but farther along, where the stream hits the foot of the mountain, divides, then continues along as two separate streams. Now, perhaps, at that branching of the stream their old grass huts remained. Thatched roofs, side by side, near the rushes by the water.

The area had been used then to house front-line soldiers called back to the rear for political indoctrination. Politics continuously. Politics in the morning, politics in the afternoon, politics again in the evening. "We won, the enemy lost.The enemy will surely lose.The North had a good harvest, a bumper harvest.The people will rise up and welcome you. Those who don't just lack awareness. The world is divided into three camps." More politics. Still, the scouts were treated lightly, not being pressured as much as others to attend the indoctrination sessions.

They had plenty of time to relax and enjoy themselves before returning to the battlefields. They hunted, set traps, caught fish, and played cards.

In his entire life Kien had never developed such a passion for cards as he developed here.They played all the time. At dark, straight after dinner, the game started. In the warm air which smelled of sweat and mosquito repellant the gamblers gathered enthusiastically, concentrating on their cards. The kitty was usually stinking "Compatriot" cigarettes,

made from wild leaves. Or if the stakes were higher, it would be snuff or pieces of flint or the roots of
rosa canina
plants, which were smoked like marijuana. Or dried food, or photos: photos of women of all kinds, foreign or Vietnamese, ugly or beautiful, or anyone's sweetheart. Any photo was valid currency. When the kitty was gone they used to get lampblack and paint mustaches on each other. Some played, others watched, joyfully, noisily, sometimes all through the night. It seemed a period of happiness and calm. An easy, carefree time.

They were really happy days because for most of that rainy season they didn't have to fight. The entire platoon of thirteen was safe. Even Lofty Thinh spent a happy month here before being killed. Can hadn't yet deserted. His friends Vinh, "Big" Thinh, Cu, Oanh, and "Elephant" Tac were all still alive. Now only the torn, dirty set of cards, fingerprinted by the dead ones, remained.

Nine, Ten, Jack!

Lofty, Big Thinh, and Can!

Queen, King, Ace!

Cu, Oanh, and Tac!

Sometimes in his dreams these cards still appear. He shouts their names and plays solitaire. "Hearts, diamonds, spades . . ." They had bastardized the regimental marching song and made it a humorous cardplayers' song:

We'll all be jokers in the pack,

Just go harder in attack.

Dealing's fun, so hurry back,

Enjoy the game, avoid the flak.

But one by one the cardplayers at their fateful table were taken away. The cards were last used when the platoon was down to just four soldiers.Tu,Thanh,Van, and Kien.

That was in the early dawn, half an hour before the barrage opened the campaign against Saigon. On the other side of an overgrown field was the Cu Chi defense line. The Saigon defense forces then started returning fire with artillery and machine guns and they registered some lucky hits. In the trenches and in shelters the infantry were trying to enjoy last moments of sleep. But for Kien's scouts, who were going to lead the attack as the advance guard, it was going a bit too fast. They were spooked by their cards, not at all liking how the hands fell as they played the game called "Advance."

"Slow down a bit," Kien suggested. "If we leave this game unfinished Heaven will grant favors, keeping us alive to return and finish the game. So, slow down and we'll survive this battle and continue the game later."

"You're cunning," said Thanh, grinning. "But Heaven's not stupid. You can't cheat Him. If you play only half the game The Man Up There will send for all four of us and we'll torment each other."

Tu said,"Why bother to send all four? Send me with the cards.That'll do it. I'll play poker, or tell fortunes from cards for the devils in charge of the oil urns. That would be fun."

The dew evaporated quickly. Signal flares flew into the air.The infantry noisily came to life and began to move out. Armored cars motored to the front line, their tracks tearing the earth, the roar of their engines reverberating in the morning breeze.

"Stop, then!" Kien threw the cards down, adding petulantly, "I just wanted to slow down for good luck, but all of you rushed the game to the end."

"Hey there!" Van slapped his thigh happily. "I didn't know until now just how much I enjoyed playing cards. I'll have to learn to play better. If I die, remember to throw a deck of cards on my grave."

"We have only one deck and Van wants it for himself. Selfish bastard!" Thanh shouted back as he moved out. Before an hour was up Van was burned alive in aT54 tank, his body turned to ash. No grave or tomb for them to throw the cards onto.

Thanh died near the Bong bridge, also burned in a tank together with the tank crew. A big, white-hot steel coffin.

Only Tu had fought, together with Kien, to Gate 5 of Saigon's Tan Son Nhat airport. Then Tu was killed. It was the morning of 30 April, with just three hours to go before the war ended.

Late in the night of 29 April and into the 30th when the two of them met for the last time at the airport,Tu had taken the deck of cards from his knapsack and given it to Kien.'Tll go in this fight. You keep them. If you live on, gamble with life. Deuces, treys, and fours all carry the sacred spirit of our whole platoon. We'll bring you permanent luck."