The Phantom Blooper (12 page)

The title of Bo Doi Bac Si's talk is "Ho Chi Minh's Armies March by Night."

Bo Doi Bac Si opens a small pocket diary. The pages of the diary are stained. The cover is faded and torn. He turns the pages of the diary for a moment, then looks at the audience. He has happy eyes and an easy grin. He is the Audie Murphy of the NVA. When he speaks, his voice is touched with emotion: "We began our historic journey with a cheer, "
Nam Tien
!"--"Let's march South!"

As Bo Doi Bac Si speaks, Song whispers a translation into my ear. She knows that my understanding of Vietnamese is sketchy and that Bo Doi Bac Si's northern speech is too fast and too heavily accented for me to understand clearly.

Before Bo Doi Bac Si can exploit the momentum of his dramatic beginning, Trang, his pet monkey, stops eating peanuts from the shell and suddenly grabs the Coporal's pith helmet and pulls it from the Corporal's head, revealing a closely cropped shock of ink-black hair.

Holding the pith helmet with both hands, Trang puts the helmet onto his own head. We all laugh, of course, but we struggle to be polite while the Corporal lunges at the little brown monkey in a vain attempt to recover his headgear. Some of us laugh as the chattering monkey and the pith helmet disappear over the back end of the armored car. We can hear Trang screeching as he runs away.

We are quiet and respectful as Bo Doi Bac Si continues: "Before I joined the People's Army I worked as a petrol station attendant just outside of Hanoi. My father is a bricklayer and my mother works part-time as a volunteer nurse."

"On the day I left home I told my mother and father to think of me as dead, and not to be sad for me, but happy.

"In my training battalion were comrade soldiers from all over Viet Nam. We were issued uniforms, boots, pith helmets, a mosquito net, a knapsack, a rice bowl and a pair of chopsticks, and a war surplus Russian Army belt with an enameled red star on the buckle. With so many fine things we felt like very rich men.

"We were given many pieces of paper to write on, and we complained that we were eager to fight the puppet armymen of the Saigon gangsters and wanted to win many battles agains the American imperialist aggressors, not waste time writing our names and birthdates and natal villages on endless pieces of paper.

"Our training was hard, six days a week, and our instructors were very strict. We marched in formations, ran up hills, ran down hills, crawled under barbed wire, thew hand grenades, bayoneted wicker men, and learned how to clean and fire our rifles effectively.

"I was assigned to a school and trained to doctor wounded comrade soldiers in battle.

"The day our training ended we were the happiest and proudest men on earth, with a strong fighting spirit. We felt that it was a great honor to have been selected to defend our beautiful country and our way of life.

"We rode to Tchepone on a train. Most of my comrades had never ridden on a train and we were frightened. But soon we were laughing and joking, happy that our training was over, and looking forward to a great adventure and to great victories in defense of our southern brothers, who were gallantly and steadfastly resisting the cruel domination of foreign criminals. From our train windows we could see happy children standing on thebacks of their water buffaloes, waving to us. We were their protection. We were the sons of their people, the armymen of the people, and we all understood deep down inside that our responsibilities to our people were great.

"We got off the train and climbed into big gray-green Russian trucks. The trucks had low-lamp shuttered headlights. We rode in the trucks day and night for two days. When we got off the trucks we were in a big camp with thousands and thousand of
Bo Doi
--comrade soldiers--just like us. We had never seen so many soldiers.

"Our commanders ordered us to take off our uniforms and put on black pajama outfits. We were instructed to say, if captured, that we were not
Bo Doi
, government soldiers from the North, but
Chien Si
, guerrilla fighters of the South from the National Liberation Front. We were not told where we were going. We did not ask.

"Each fighter was issued two grenades, one hundred bullets, a poncho, a small shovel, an assault rifle, and eight pounds of rice, which we carried inside a hammoch lined with wax paper and slung across our chests.

"We cut twigs from tree braches and tied them to our pith helmets and equipment with string. Each fighter was assigned a heavy load of military supplies to carry on his back. I was given a knapsack containing six 61-millimeter mortar bombs.

"The night before we stared South we had a feast, spicing our rive with mushrooms and chopped fish. We even drank a few beers we'd smuggled into camp. We listened to a puppet radio station, careful not to be caught by the cadres, who were afraid we might be brainwashed by the propaganda of the Siagon gangster regime. If we were caught, our cadres would criticize us.

"My comrades and I all bought pocket diaries for recording our historic march and for writing poetry during the long march South to almost certain death. We knew that our descendans would treasure our diaries after we were killed in battle. We had no thought but that we would fight on until we were killed. We were committed to the cause of the salvation of the nation, which is very sacred.

"We carved walking sticks and inscribed them with out motto: 'Live great, die gloriously.'

"We walked for what seemed like thousands of kilometers. We saw
Bo Doi
battalions singing as they marched. We sang too. Up mountains, down mountains, along paths barely visible, along paved roads, through jungles that were wet, green and gloomy.

"Crossing rivers and streams was the hardest part of traveling in the jungle. Our feet were always wet and diseased. Every cut became infeced. Leeches were our constant compaions.

"Everywhere the
Dan Cong
Labor Brigades were working to repair the Strategic Trail, which was sometimes called the Truong Son Route. Pirate planes bombed the trail every day, sometimes near, sometimes far away. But nothing slowed the flow of the camel bikes--Chinese bicycles loaded with up to one thousand kilos of military supplies.

"We ate at food stations, hot rice boiled in big black iron pots. We saw hospitals, vast supply depots, and antiaircraft cannons. Thousands of workers and fighters lived all along the Strategic Trail to assist the river of People's Army battalions marching South. Food was stored in bomb craters covered with canvas.

"Casualties due to dysentery were increasing. In the second week, two fighters were killed by the bombs. Heat casualties were becoming more common--we left them behind in the underground hospitals. Some of them caught up with us later, but some died.

"I tended wounds, gave out medicine, and checked everyone's feet regularly to prevent jungle rot.

"Half of our battalion had malaria. I remember walking all day with such a high fever that while my body moved forward my mind was unconscious.

"By the third week we were seeing heavily bombed jungle and burned and blackened rain forests. Lake-bomb craters were everywhere and we saw scary places where every tree and every plant and every living thing had withered and died.

"In the fifth week, American pirate planes dropped fire from the sky and many fighters were burned alive. The air was pulled out of our lungs by the fire and I fainted. When I woke up, the trees were charred, smoking stubs, and I had burns on my arms and face and my hands.

"After two days of burying the dead, we collected out equipment and continued our march. We walked through a beautiful forest. Upon hundreds of trees were carved thousands and thousands of names of fighters who had gone before us. After we got over the strangeness of the sight we carved our own names into trees. We were tired, but we wanted to inspire our brothers who would follow in our steps after we were sleeping honorably with our ancestors. That day my platoon sergeant stepped into a gopher hole and broke his leg.

"In the sixth week we were being bombed every day, sometimes more than once a day. We were so tired, we almost welcomed the bomb attacks as rest breaks. The monsoon rains began to fall and we were homesick. By this time almost every man in the battalion had malaria to some degree, and many comrade soldiers had to be left behind. We were losing men every day now, to malaira, dysentery, enemy bombs, and injuries. Two fighters died from snake bites. The tigers were eating our dead. We couldn't sleep because our eyes were swollen with mosquito bites. At night we could hear comrade soldiers crying.

"There were no more food stations. We ate wild fruits, nuts and berries, even roots. Sometimes our commanders allowed us to fish with hand grenades. Fires were forbidden, so we ate the fish raw.

"Now our food was being brought to us in small quantities by Front fighters from villages like Hoa Binh. Without this food, harvested by the people and carried on the backs of women and children through enemy lines, my comrades and I would have starved.

"Hundreds of rickety bamboo bridges spanning hundreds of foul-smelling streams began to blur into one long green and black dream. Now there was nothing to break the monotomy of the jungle except grave mounds and skeletons by the trail. We marched only by night. During the day we slept deep in the earth in cool, damp tunnels and listened to the constant droning of bombs, cannons, and the flying war machines.

"In the seventh week we slogged through a swamp, coughing with pneumonia, sick with fever. We stumbled through a dirty gray mist, our legs black with leeches, mud sucking at our swollen and blistered feet. We saw a big complex of tree houses in the swamp, abandoned by some strange race of forgotten people.

"Our food was reduced to a handful of rice a day.

"When we finally emerged from the swamp we saw our first
Truc Thang
--our first helicopter. Every fighter was camouflaged with fresh leaves and twigs. We dropped to the ground while the horrible metal dragon sat in the sky directly above us. There was a very loud noise and a big wind. Guns fired and a comrade was killed where he lay. We were afraid, but no one moved. We waited for the order to return fire, but it never came. After a while the big machine flew away.

"In our eighth week we were met by
Chien Si
cadres. The cadres were southerners and had strange accents. They gave us the traditional welcoming greeting for comrade soldiers arriving in the South, a drink from a coconut. Then they led us to a carefully concealed network of tunnels and underground bunkers.

"Underground, in the vast complex of tunnels, we cheered. We were safe. We had survived. And, having survived, we would be able to contribute to the struggle against the enemies of the people. We asked for no greater honor. Of the two hundred fighters in our unit only eighty made it to the South. We, the survivors, greeted our southern brothers with enthusiasm.

"We were issued rations, and even some salt. Now, our journey over, we began to feel depressed. We had time to miss the comrades who had been killed or left behind. We missed our homes and our families.

"I had infected cuts all over my legs and hands. My black pajama outfit was rotting and hung in rags on my body. The climate in the South was depressingly hot.

"The earth-shaking advance of the Liberation Army was reduced to a crawl.

"But our cadre inspired us. He told us about how the first platoon of the People's Army was formed by General Giap. At eighten, General Giap was locked up in a French prison. His wife was also imprisoned, and was tortured to death.

"General Giap is only five feet tall and weighs less than one hundred pounds. But in December 1944, at age twenty-nine, he led the first platoon of the People's Army, thirty-four men and women, armed only with swords and muskets, against the French.

"The French captured General Giap's sister and cut off her head with a guillotine. General Giap and Uncle Ho lived in the high mountains for twenty years, sweating in the hot jungle, sometimes with nothing to eat but snakes and roots, but enduring without complaint, because they never doubted for a moment that the people would be victorious.

"Our cadre led us in a cheer to Uncle Ho and General Giap. Then he told us that the People's Army will advance aggressively. When we are attacked, the enemy will meet our strong defense and our strong fighting spirit. We will never falter in our duties, because the people have given us their sacred trust, and Comrade-General Giap and Uncle Ho are depending upon us to carry out our duties cleverly.

"When we left the North we were dead men and dead men have no fear. When our cadre asked us to tell him what our duty was, we stood up. Ragged, sick, starving, the fighters of my unit stood tall and proud, and cheered with hoarse voices, and replied in chorus: 'Born in the North to die in the South, it is the duty of our generations to die for our country.'"

The voice so full of pride and sadness stops speaking. Bo Doi Bac Si gazes silently at the pages of his diary, remembering.

The people of Hoa Binh sit in respectful silence, thinking about the sacrifices and struggles of the heroic soldiers who march daily down the Strategic Trail, young soldiers of the people who are marching this very minute not ten miles away, steadfast comrades who depend upon Hoa Binh for food or they will die as surely as if hit by an American bomb.

Ba Can Bo stands up and makes an announcement. "Tomorrow we will complete the Better Water for the Village Project. Rice fields are battlefields and the people are the strongest weapon."

At dawn Song and I take our hoes and walk down to the river to take part in Ba Can Bo's Better Water for the Village Project.

We meet the Broom-Maker on the path to the river. She detours across the village common to intercept us. The Broom-Maker never misses an oppurtunity to make me feel welcome in the village.

The Broom-Maker is maybe a couple of thousand years old. She walks hunched over, a blue and white shawl over her shoulders. Her teeth are black, her gums dark red. The Broom-Maker has a serious drug-abuse problem in the area of betel-nut consumption. She is always chomping away on a cud about two-thirds the size of a tennis ball. Like a sapper probing for a land mine, the Broom-Maker pokes each foot of ground in her path with a dragon's-head walking stick carved out of teak and brought to a high polish by time.