The thud, thud, thud, knocked upon the silent night of her September slumber, awakening her to a puzzled dawn of her South Vietnamese life she knew.In the sultry song of the night, there now came in seesaw tones the thump, thump, thump of the 82 mm mortars striking a click off in the distance.
She puzzled over the sounds at first as sleep shrouded her thoughts of nothingness in what it was, and then familiar sounds awakened her more to her bedtime story with the hissing of the shells as their trajectory made their own wind song in the autumn skies of Pleiku.
The highlands were always pretty, even in war. Something John Wayne western in them in the peaceful valley which linked the highlands to the coastal ocean now created by the 70th Combat Engineers.
The French had come first as colonials and were pushed out by Uncle Ho when she was a little girl, and then in 1965 the Americans had come in force, first by engineers who had landed on the coast with orders to build the base at An Khe, and for two years they built their city of war which soon cut up the valley into the Highlands in that operation which now touched her world with work on the base at Pleiku.
There were many bases there, the foremost being the 1st Air Cavalry in which the engineers had invested the greater part of their lives, as there was never any down time for the builders of the foundations of this war. Every moment was invested with pride in their roads, bridges, clearing trees with the massive Rome cutters from Georgia shipped from back in the states all to keep the Soldiers safe from ambush.
The 70th as always was left to fend for themselves. There was nothing glamorous in the badly clothed boys from the American heartland. The glamour was with the helicopter base or the hospitals they constructed for the war.
No the bulldozer, grader, the minesweeper, the patrols were all a part of their routine without enough time, as their base was left without all the frills the other commands enjoyed.
She wondered at the seesaw melody of the night, how much like thunder and so yet unnatural as the sounds echoed across the plateau in a dull beat that reached into Cambodia where the new commander was safe in the old plantation house, where the White Feather, the long trang, had assassinated his predecessor beside his car the previous year.
There were many operation plans laying on this desk as he laid on his bed in shorts and cotton night shirt, one was concerning the precious 82mm mortars which had come from China on rail, slowing winding their way to Hanoi, and then carried on the Ho Chi Minh trail across the border into South Vietnam.
Elephants, sometimes cattle and often funeral processions in daylight were the foils for the death held in the shells.
She remembered visiting her aunt in the village where they grew rice, in how the communists had come and told them of Uncle Ho and of freedom. She remembered how one old man had turned away and went to the hut, for this was her uncle, and how the communist had noticed this too, and later gave a speech to the water buffalo he farmed with in killing it, with a message that the people's fight was all the people.
She remembered how the tinkle of the brass cases from the Soviet Union came near her window in the night, and how she was told to turn away and not notice, as the shells would disappear as her uncle was informed he was to fire them at the American base before he tended his rice crop, and bring back the spent cartridges as proof he was of the party and more shells would appear the next night.
The mortars hissing in the night sounded like the Vietcong who came in that darkness and rustled the walls of the grass hut with the shells from her childhood memories.
She remembered how now being grown the same black pajama clad communists had come here too, and how a woman with a sewing machine from America had not readily enough agreed to the euphoric splendor of Marx, so that her sewing machine had been killed too.
That is why when the VC had told her to wear the Rosary the French Catholics had given her that she obeyed and, how they had measured her shoe in being 10 millimeters long, as she had small feet, and they had told her to walk the road, and every ten steps to move one of the beads on the Rosary to remember her journey.
When she reached the end of the Rosary, she would mark it on her paper of washing she did at the engineers camp, and she would do it daily and the steps would always match.
They yelled at her as they instructed her for information. They wanted the location of all things on the base, and wanted the location of the night quarters of the Américain de sourire, but the communists did not like anyone speaking French as the nuns had taught the children, and it had to be the, mỉm cười Mỹ, the VC wanted the place where the smiling American was. The one who gave the children candy, the one who was thought well of by the locals, the one which the officer at the plantation wanted a thousands times across Vietnam for they were the problems these Americans as the people liked them better than Uncle Ho.
They had successfully fed the Americans by children's hands cut glass in Coca Cola shared with them. They had successfully wired children to explode when the Americans had come too close.
She had heard the smiling American even say, "This was the damnedest war I have ever seen in one day these people like you and the next day they are killing you", and she knew it was like the rice farmer with his old Mosan who was her uncle.
Her little brother and sisters always smiled when she gave them the candy the American gave her. She could not tell them as the communists had minders every where. It was bad enough that she had candy as candy was an extravagance and that money should have been donated to the fight for Ho's freedom.
She knew the NCO quarters, and had walked directly from the camp gate to the center as instructed, counting her steps, and then turned directly to the quarters of the Americans and counted time and again the distance she traversed.
The pajama clad communists did not yell close to her face as her numbers matched, but her thighs would ache in walking so deliberate as it was not natural for any human. It was the price she paid in her peace in a land of Ho's war.
The thud and thump now ended in the attack. Sometimes the American artillery would respond as twenty one shells was a long signature for any attack. The 82 was a Soviet invention of over two miles in accuracy by which the Chicom Type 53 design was now in use in the war. The shells weighed 3 kilos with the High Explosive rounds. The mortars could fire the American 81's not as accurately, but the NVA especially promoted the 57 kilo platforms as the VC teams could fire, break down the base, hide it and move on, making them a perfect guerrilla weapon against the Americans.
As she laid there, sleep would no longer come as this was war and other things would come with the sounds of the night. It would be better to prepare for the day to come in which she would clean and do laundry at the American camp to earn her living.
She started off early for her work, counting the steps now by instinct as the Rosary clicked every ten steps. The base was different this morning though as the Americans at the gate seemed more on edge and looked at her more closely before sending her on.
There were the voices in the camp she was to take note of. The VC had reported already that their 21 rounds certainly had killed hundreds of Americans, but the officer who was talking low near her in those things covered up, spoke of casualties.
She did not know what she was looking at, at first when the blanket was removed and the body bag laid out, but there was the sound of the flies as the warmth of the night spread to an even warmer day.
It was then it occurred to her as she studied the form, that it was human, but the hands were gone and the legs were too. Blood covered a deep wound on the top of the head which made her squint in reaction to the perceived hurt she would feel, and then, she recognized him, this was the smiling American who always was friendly with the children and gave the candy.
She watched as the medics slid the body with care into the bags and then uncovered a black Soldier laying next to the smiling American.
They noticed her then and she by instinct moved off in guilt of her part in this, but in that same instinct she made her way to the quarters, but there were no non commissioned officers there any longer as the first round the VC had fired struck where her steps had counted, killing the smiling American and wounding severely the other two NCO's who had already been medivaced to the hospital the engineers had constructed when they arrived on orders in August of '65.
It was now though September of 1968, the 21st, and in another year word would reached the engineers their work was done and they would be back at Fort Lewis, Washington and deactivated in November of '69.
The NVA had accounted for it being early Saturday morning for the attack, for news would travel to the Americans and reach them for effect when it was Sunday morning as they were leaving Church, as these Patriotic Americans always had families who went to Church on autumn mornings.
There would be no candy when she returned to her home to her eager brothers and sisters. She thought of the American's words to her in his constant smile, and, then the vision of him gently lifted to be put in the body bag made her recoil in these night and dawn memories, as the sounds came back to her in the thud, thud, thud which aroused her from dreamless sleep and how in the daylight the haunting laugh of the American would always be with her..........au mon Vietnam, Trang này hiện chưa có gì.
In my Vietnam.
agtG
